Rosie – welcomed onsite and online attendees and outlined the plan for the meeting.

 Enthronement of Loden Rinpoche – Michael and others

Brief details:

• A number of our TBS community attended the enthronement at Sera-Je Monastery in India. In total, 60-70 invited guests (including TBS visitors, Rinpoche’s extended family, members of Geshe Loden’s family and others) attended the Enthronement in addition to all the monks at Sera Monastery.
• The enthronement ceremony lasted 3 hours
• An enthronement is the recognition of a reincarnated Lama, and the ceremony, at Sera Monastery marks the conclusion of the process of identification and recognition.
• There were extensive offerings made to all the monks at Sera Monastery on behalf of Loden Rinpoche. The TBS visitors helped with making these offerings.
• 600 rupees per monk was offered
• The monks at Denma Khangsten (one of the Sera Je colleges and the one that Loden Labrang – Rinpoche’s household – is linked to) offered breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for the visitors.
• We arranged for the enthronement and the subsequent ceremony at Denma Khangsten to be livestreamed so members of our community in Australia would be able to view them

 Timeline:

3^rd November – Enthronement at Sera Jey – livestreamed

4^th November – Denma Khangsten – livestreamed

5^th November – TBS covered lunch for 64 invited guests and 17 from Rinpoche’s family (TBS visitors met their own costs).

6^th November – Meet with Rinpoche and present offering & scarves & offering to the Loden Labrang Monks.

 Photo slideshow & commentary:

• Michael showed a number of photos of the proceedings and gave a summary of the visit to India.
• Cathy showed some photos and offered helpful commentary about modern travel and accommodation in Southern India today to assist those who might want to join future TBS group visits
• The TBS group arrived in the middle of Diwali – festival of lights celebration.
• Manikam spoke about the monastery program being quite intense each day from dawn to dusk and that in addition to meeting their commitments at the monastery the Denma monks prepared food for all the visitors, 3 meals a day, for the duration of the visit.
• Manikam also talked about the atmosphere of the monastery during semester (he had only been there during holidays in the past), and how wonderful the sound of the debates happening in the debate ground was – after which everything became silent again
• Michael spoke about a day in the life of Rinpoche and monks generally. They start early and attend school, 6 days per week.
• Rinpoche is attending a regular school at the monastery; the school has 800 monks. The curriculum includes regular school subjects and is officially recognised by the Indian Government.
• The Geshe degree takes about 25 years plus 2 years of studying English. There is limited time for meditation apart from winter retreat.
• Like all junior monks at the monastery Rinpoche has a full school schedule. Rinpoche’s guardian, Geshe Penpa is very mindful and caring about Rinpoche’s welfare, and on non-school days he makes a point of arranging activities and outings for Rinpoche.
• Geshe Penpa mentioned that Rinpoche has already been memorising many texts very well and practising debating
• Before the group from Australia and Singapore (students of one of the Loden Labrang lamas), Geshe Penpa offered a very moving speech in which he emphasised that TBS / Loden Labrang / Denma College are all now as one family.

 Michael – spoke about the fundraising TBS has done for Loden Labrang house, and what this has been used for.

Details:

• The Melbourne community made more than $40000 in donations to renovate the house in preparation for Loden Rinpoche’s arrival, including installation of split system air conditioning.
• The newer house has been fully renovated. There is also an older house that has 1 or 2 monks living in it, but which is in poor condition.
• 50% of the travel costs for Rinpoche’s relatives to attend the ceremonies was funded by TBS (and 100% for Rinpoche’s immediate family members).
• TBS also covers costs that Geshe Penpa incurs day to day as Rinpoche’s guardian.
• All costs so far have been covered by community donations.
• The old house needs to be repaired or rebuilt as it’s in poor condition and leaking
• TBS will also be giving ongoing support for these repair costs and ongoing household needs and members of the community will have the opportunity to contribute if they wish.

 New ideas from the community – Rosie

Rosie reminded people that one way of raising any new ideas for the centre was by requesting that the idea be put on the agenda for a community meeting. (New ideas can also be raised via the methods described on the community page or the TBS website.) The CST always ask for agenda items prior to each community meeting.  This time Vince responded and will now talk about an idea to build a stupa at the centre.

 Stupa idea – Vince

Vince – presented a proposal for building a stupa on TBS grounds near the temple; a handout was distributed to those attending onsite.

Comments:

• People really liked the concept.
• Timing is important and it needs to be thought about in the context of other priorities.
• Temple roof maintenance is a major priority at the moment, including repair of water leaks. It is likely to be a large job.
• There are also other pressing temple maintenance issues such as repair of the windows and repainting.
• People felt that it would be great to keep the stupa concept on the wish list and re-visit the idea after perhaps 2 years.
• Vince was thanked for raising this excellent proposal.

 Volunteer hub – Jenny

Jenny gave an overview of the new volunteer hub on the TBS website

Details:

• The volunteer hub is up and running.
• Aim is to encourage and support volunteering at TBS.
• A lovely community effort came about with putting this together.
• It is located on “be involved” page on TBS website and has numerous sub- headings such as where to start / benefits of volunteering / volunteering stories / the teams and how they work/ FAQ.
• Hub is a work in progress and any suggestions are welcomed regarding where we take it from here.

 Comments:

• Needs to be promoted to know it is there i.e. drive folk to the hub / promotion plan, perhaps for example to include social media posts. This is to be referred to the communications strategy team.
• It was suggested that we think about ways to generate more interest in volunteer roles; g. some centres advertise for volunteer roles (like a job advert) It was suggested that this approach needs to be used to select jobs only, due to security access levels required.
• Ideally we would create a page that can be updated / changed and be dynamic that might for example advertise volunteer needs for upcoming events. It was noted that this would also require the person-power to keep such a page updated.

 Updates from last community meeting

 Tim’s prayer book idea – Rosie (for Tim who can’t attend this meeting)

Details:

• An update was given on where this is up to.
• We have a blank lined book with Tibetan symbols and motifs on the cover.
• “Community prayer book” is Tim’s suggested title for the book.
• A laminated list of instructions has been prepared to guide people’s use of the prayer book and how to request names to be read out in class.

Comments:

• We fall under privacy laws and we could come under scrutiny if someone did prayers and the person didn’t want to be mentioned by name or have anyone else know about it – though it is not necessarily the case that prayers mentioned in the book are read out at class. People listing the prayers can request this but need not.
• If a person wishes the person’s name to be mentioned it is their responsibility to make sure they have permission. The instructions on the community prayer book have (subsequent to the community meeting) been updated to explicitly state this.
• Information filled out on the webpage when paying for a light offering (donations page) doesn’t go anywhere; the requestor also needs to speak to someone at the centre to organise the light offering. This is not made clear on the donations page when paying for a light offering.
• The community prayer book is now in use.

 Action:

• Text about permission to be included in instructions on book (done).
• Michael and tech team to create a separate light offering form on the website – to be set up so details of light offerings on the webpage form are automatically sent to the events team email, as this email gets monitored daily.

 Financial suggestions from previous community meeting – Michael

Details:

• Bequest information on TBS website. Legal wording on how to provide a bequest has been prepared by Martin. Future work is to construct the general wording around the legal wording for publishing on the TBS website. In the interim, there is a note on the website to contact someone at the centre if information on making a bequest is required.
• Recurring donation is now on donation form.
• • this has implications for retreat team managing retreat registrations and creates a lot more work for the finance team. To implement this suggestion currently creates too much work.
  • Facility charges can be directly transferred if people want to and donations – but TBS needs to know what the money is for, to allocate it correctly.
  • Some people are reluctant to pay via credit card and would like the option for direct debit transfer

 Open Forum

Rosie – Spoke about the TBS community page and reminded people that all community meeting notes go on this page as well as notes from directors’ meetings.  The community page also has information about how to put ideas forward, and ideas forms, as well as a TBS code of conduct and complaints process. The community page isn’t readily accessible to the public so to access the page – suggest saving the link to favorites – the link is always provided at the bottom of any CST communications.

A comment was made that information on the community page is findable via a Google search. 

Michael commented that if the page is not indexed then details will not be revealed via a search engine.  This will be followed-up by CST in conjunction with tech team. 

 Thanks

Rosie thanked everyone who presented and helped out with the community meeting. Afternoon tea followed.