What is the Southern Dharma Celebration?

The Southern Dharma Celebration is a regional Buddhist meditation festival where people gather to receive blessings, learn about the Buddhist spiritual path and meditate together. This regional event is organized by Kadampa meditation centers and branches in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi and the Florida Panhandle.  In 2025, the Southern Dharma Celebration is hosted by Kadampa Meditation Center North Carolina. 

During this rare and precious event, the New Kadampa Tradition’s Eastern U.S. National Spiritual Director, Kadam Morten Clausen, will grant the blessing empowerment of Medicine Buddha.. Everyone is welcome!

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What is an empowerment?

“An empowerment bestows upon us special blessings that heal our mental continuum and awaken our Buddha nature.”  — Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche

A blessing empowerment is a transformative guided meditation. It servers to connect our body, speech and mind to a Buddha’s enlightened body, speech and mind. Through receiving their blessings we can swiftly actualize our own potential and gain the confidence we need to progress along the spiritual path. Through the power of our compassion we can help to bring enormous relief to our suffering world.

Becoming Medicine Buddha

We all have the potential to become a Medicine Buddha. During our Southern Dharma Celebration we will learn how to actualize this potential.

Within our mind we carry the seeds of our own mental and physical suffering. But these seeds, because they are rooted in distorted states of mind such as ignorance, anger, and uncontrolled desire, can be purified and removed. We also carry within us the seeds of our own healing, freedom and indeed enlightenment.

During the 2025 Southern Dharma Celebration, Eastern National Spiritual Director, Kadam Morten Clausen, will grant the blessing empowerment of Medicine Buddha. The empowerment is essentially a blissful and imaginative guided meditation through which we make a deep connection with this enlightened being. Through beautiful visualizations we receive the profound healing blessings of Medicine Buddha and create powerful causes for our own future enlightenment. Subsequently Kadam Morten will give a commentary to the self-generation practice of Medicine Buddha. This rich and delightful practice helps us to nurture both our potential for healing ourself and for healing others.   

The Southern Dharma Celebration provides a special opportunity to study, listen to and practice the special presentation of modern Buddhism taught by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche, the Founder of the New Kadampa Tradition. Everyone is welcome and no prior experience is necessary.