Kagyu Monlam 2024 announcement

October 14, 2024

We are happy to announce that the annual Kagyu Monlam will take place again in December in Bodhgaya, the site of the historical Buddha’s supreme enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago. All sessions will be streamed on Karmapa’s website.

The Kagyu Monlam is the highlight of the Dharma calendar, where monks, nuns and lay practitioners from India and around the world gather in the shade of the Bodhi Tree to offer special aspiration prayers for the benefit of all sentient beings.

This year’s Kagyu Monlam will take place from the 15th to 21st December 2024 and it will be the 22nd Kagyu Monlam since 1996, when the late Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche gathered the resources for all Karma Kagyu practitioners to come together for the first time at the sacred venue of Bodhgaya.

Karmapa will once again lead the aspiration prayers, joined by many Rinpoches, Khenpos and Lamas.

The main prayer recited at the Kagyu Monlam is known as the ‘King of Aspiration Prayers’ or the ‘Samantabhadra Wishing Prayer’.

As Karmapa has said:

Let us use these days of the Kagyu Monlam to fully express our human nature by joining in the perfect aspirations of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, without any sense of a mission to accomplish, without any doubt or hesitation, but with whole-hearted enjoyment.

Please enjoy these photos of the 2023 Kagyu Monlam.