American Buddhist Net

A Buddhist sangha in Gainesville, Florida has teamed up with a small software company to help in their effort to fulfill a mission handed to them by their spiritual leader. Several years ago H. H. The 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, envisioned a retreat, teaching and meditation center close to Gainesville, Florida he has named the “Karmapa’s Writing Garden”. This center would become His Holiness’ winter residence in the US and serve Buddhists and others interested in Buddhism and Tibetan culture thoughout the Southeastern part of the country. The center, which will be known as the Florida Tibetan Buddhist Center, is to include a shrine room, meeting and teaching center, retreat cabins, and possibly residences for devotees as well as an elder enclave.

Members of the Gainesville Karma Thegsum Choling (GKTC) began working at that time to help fulfill His Holiness’ vision and located a piece of property along one of North-central Florida’s most beautiful lakes. This property on Lake Santa Fe has the last pristine natural shoreline along the lake as well as nearly 100 acres of natural Live Oak and Pine Forest ecosystems. With the help of a few local donors a small down payment was placed to secure the property so that major fundraising and project planning could begin. While there are several fundraising projects in the works, the group has enlisted the help of a small software development company, Apricle Technologies, to raise immediately needed funds to help with property mortgage payments and monies to develop future major fundraising activities.

With the help of Apricle Technologies an Apple iPhone and iPod Touch application has been produced featuring GKTC’s resident Lama David Bole presenting three short interactive podcast lessons introducing mindfulness meditation. The application, called “bSerene” also provides an adjustable meditation timer allowing the user to set a precise time for their practice and to gradually extend and deepen their practice sessions. Proceeds from the sale of the application, which can be downloaded through Apple’s iTunes Store, will go to support the efforts of GKTC’s development of the retreat center. People can check out a short introduction to the application at Apricle Technologies web page http://www.apricletechnologies.com/Welcome.html or even on You Tube by searching for “bSerene”.
More information about the future retreat center can be found on the web site created to describe the project http://www.floridatbc.org or through members of Gainesville KTC at http://www.ktcgainesville.org/retreat_center.html.