A newly constructed Tibetan Buddhist temple will be inaugurated next month to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Karma Tashi Ling Buddhist Centre in Bjørndal, Oslo. The official inauguration is set to take place at 3.00 p.m. on 2 June, and will be attended by several high lamas from the Karma Kagyu tradition. The temple is the first Tibetan Buddhist temple in Norway to be built so far.

In March and April, Australia was blessed by the Maitreya Loving Kindness Buddha Relics Tour, which visited both major cities and regional areas throughout the country. The tour was a free public exhibition of sacred relics from the historical Buddha, as well as from other Buddhist masters from India, Tibet, and China. 

This year’s Vatican message to Buddhists for Vesak is titled “Buddhists and Christians, together to counter modern slavery.” The message was delivered on 21 April by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and was inspired by Pope Francis’s “Message for the 2015 World Day of Peace.”

One Earth Sangha, an organization seeking to meld environmental activism and ecology with the Buddha-dharma, is offering an online course to train as an “EcoSattva.” According to the organization’s website, its mission is to “support awakening and responding to climate change and other threats to our shared home through education, sustainable living and advocacy,” and to “explore the teachings of the Buddhist path and how they can inform, support and motivate this work.” The course will consist of eight online meetings of two hours each to be held between 10 May and 19 July.

Following a brain hemorrhage last November, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh (known to his followers as Thay) was finally able to return home to Plum Village in Dordogne, southern France, on 3 April. He was greeted by blooming magnolia flowers, loving students, and a team of doctors who will continue to help him to recover.

An exhibition on the art of Avalokiteshvara, the Buddhist embodiment of compassion, will be held from 23 April until 28 June at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in New York. The exhibit is titled, “Embodying Compassion in Buddhist Art: Image, Pilgrimage, Practice.” The exhibition is divided into three thematic sections, including image, pilgrimage, and practice. This is the first comprehensive artistic exploration of this supremely important Buddhist divinity in the United States. 

His Holiness the 17th Karmapa is continuing his tour of the United States, which includes visits to six universities. He addresses topics such as gender equality, the environment, vegetarianism, and social activism. His first stop was at Stanford, on the west coast. He received his first honorary degree at the University of Redlands on 24 March. He gave a lecture at Harvard on 26 March, and at Princeton on 1 April. He will also visit Yale and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Having discussed the importance of the exclusive practice of Amitabha-recitation for assured rebirth in Amitabha’s Land of Bliss, we have the question: can Pure Land aspirants be reborn if they undertake mixed or miscellaneous practices? Well, it depends. According to the Commentary on the Contemplation Sutra, Master Shandao identified three different kinds of mixed or miscellaneous practices.

A thousand-year-old Buddhist relic, believed to have been stolen from a temple in China in 1995, has been withdrawn from an exhibition at a museum in Budapest.