The Deer Park Buddhist Center and Monastery in

Oregon, Wisconsin Oregon is a village in Dane County, Wisconsin, Dane County, Wisconsin. As of the census of 2020, the population was 11,179. Oregon is part of the Madison, Wisconsin, Madison Madison, Wisconsin metropolitan area, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The ...

is headed by Geshe

Lhundub Sopa Lhundub Sopa (born Tsang, 1923 – August 28, 2014) was a Tibetan monk. Biography Sopa was born in Tibet. He became a novice monk and entered Gaden Chokor Monastery in 1932. In 1941, he joined Sera Monastery in Lhasa. He was chosen as one of th ...

, the first Tibetan tenured professor in an American University who taught Buddhist philosophy, language and culture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for 30 years. During that time, Geshe Sopa trained many of the United States first generation of respected Buddhist scholars and translators, including

Jeffrey Hopkins Jeffrey Hopkins (born 1940) is an American Tibetologist. He is Emeritus professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia, where he taught for more than three decades since 1973. He has authored more than twenty-five books ab ...

and

John Makransky John Makransky is an American professor of Buddhism and comparative theology at Boston College, and a meditation teacher within the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Career Makransky practices the meditations of compassion and wisdom from T ...

. The Deer Park Corp. is in the process of building a new $2.7M temple projectThe Temple Project at Deer Park
/ref> to house an extensive collection of Tibetan art and artifacts, provide greater capacity for group meetings and educational sessions, continue the expansion of Tibetan Buddhism in the United States by training a successive string of new monks, and to continue the promotion of the cause of Tibetan freedom from

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Part of the project also includes restoration work that will be done on the current temple, which was originally an open-air pavilion erected to house the first Kalachakra Initiation performed by the Dalai Lama in the western world. That event, performed in 1981, is commemorated by the

stupa A stupa ( sa, स्तूप, lit=heap, ) is a mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics (such as ''śarīra'' – typically the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns) that is used as a place of meditation. In Buddhism, circumamb ...

that was erected the following year near the current temple. Geshe Sopa founded Deer Park Buddhist Center in 1975, after students began requesting instruction outside the formal academic setting. Deer Park today remains the only full-scale monastic and teaching center upholding the Dalai Lama's tradition in the Midwest, attracting students from around the world to its annual programs. Geshe Sopa has facilitated an ongoing relationship between the Dalai Lama and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which he has visited five times, and from which he has received an honorary doctoral degree.

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* Asian-American culture in Wisconsin Buddhist monasteries in the United States Buddhism in Wisconsin Buildings and structures in Dane County, Wisconsin Tibetan Buddhism in the United States Tourist attractions in Dane County, Wisconsin Buddhist temples in Wisconsin {{Buddhism-monastery-stub

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