TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – About 130 lamas from four branches of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and India attended a peace prayer meeting in Taipei City Saturday.
An estimated more than 1,000 people were present at the event, which was designed to pray and meditate for the well-being of Taiwan.
Tibetan forms of Buddhism have made rapid progress on the island since the 1980s, with more than a thousand lamas from overseas, including China, visiting Taiwan each year for educational, religious and cultural work.
At the center of Saturday’s event was 32-year-old Trinley Thaye Dorje, the 17th Karmapa of the Karma Kagyu School, one of the four main branches of Buddhism in Tibet.
The India-based religious leader visited Taiwan four times before and already has a significant number of followers in the country, as well as in the United States and Europe.
Saturday’s prayer meeting formed part of a series of Tibetan cultural and artistic festival events supported by the government’s Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission. There were already more than 400 Tibetan Buddhist groups in Taiwan, counting a total of hundreds of thousands of members, according to government data.
The commission said the event symbolized the pluralist development of religion and culture in Taiwan.
More than 100 Tibetan lamas visit Taiwan
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