New Year’s Eve is a popular time to celebrate our future - saying goodbye to the previous year and looking forward in hope to a better year ahead. 

How can we find success in 2024? Is there any way we can guarantee that we will have a better year in 2024?

Buddha's teachings provide the ultimate guide to finding happiness and success in our future - through spiritual practice.  What is spiritual practice? What does it mean to live a spiritual life?

Join us for our annual 'Alternative New Year's Eve' Celebration, about wisdom, community and a great spiritual outlook for 2024!

Talk  |  6:00-7:00pm

Refreshments   |  7pm

Buddhist Refuge Vow Ceremony  |  7:30-8:30pm

Find the Confidence of Refuge 2024

Special Talk, Party & Buddhist Refuge Ceremony

We invite you to join us for an inspiring and meaningful evening this New Year’s Eve! Enjoy spiritual community, a special talk and delicious refreshments with us at Heruka Kadampa Meditation Center.

The event starts with a talk by our Resident Teacher Trina Gunther on how we can find a special confidence in our life that comes from the Buddhist practice of refuge. With such refuge, over time, we can overcome all our negative states of mind and problems and we gain the ability to make ourselves truly happy. “Going for refuge” is the very heart of the Buddhist way of life.

Then we will enjoy New Year’s refreshments and community, followed by an optional opportunity to participate in a Refuge Vow Ceremony, in which we can make a firm commitment to following the Buddhist path by taking Refuge Vows. The essence of these vows is to put effort into receiving Buddha’s blessings, receiving help from Sangha and putting Dharma (Buddha’s teachings) into practice. It is a wonderful commitment to make or deepen in preparation for 2024.

With Resident Teacher Trina Gunther

Trina Gunther is a long-time practitioner of Modern Kadampa Buddhism. She has studied and practiced in Dharma centers under Gen-la Dekyong and Gen Rigpa, and she has worked as Education Program Coordinator at centers in Los Angeles and the UK. She is an inspiring example of a lay practitioner of Kadampa Buddhism, and brings with her a wealth of practical experience of putting Buddha's teachings into practice amidst a busy daily life.