Location

The Centre

Inspired by the advice given by Kyabjé Dodrupchen Rinpoche and Sogyal Rinpoche, Rigpa has been looking for an appropriate location for its city centre in Berlin since the early 1990s.

In November 2003, a group of Sogyal Rinpoche’s students intensified the search for Rigpa’s first residential city centre. The initial aim was to find a place large enough for Rinpoche to be able to teach whenever he visits Berlin. After one year’s extensive research that involved visiting more than sixty potential sites, we found a building in the Soorstrasse, Charlottenburg that captured our imaginations.

Built in 1895, it was originally a casino for the officers of the regiment of the personal guard to Queen Sophie-Charlotte! From the 1950s until 2003 it became a youth club for the young people of Charlottenburg. The original dining room of the Casino on the ground floor, with its elegant wood panelling and lofty ceiling, will be transformed into the main shrine room, and can comfortably accomodate between 350 and 400 people. The building is very large indeed, with enough rooms to provide, among other things, several smaller shrine rooms, offices, a shop, and an information centre.

One of the most exciting elements of the vision for this new centre is that it will be possible to provide an apartment for Sogyal Rinpoche and other visiting teachers, as well as about 25 self-contained rooms in the enormous area under the roof, so that students can live and, of course, practise in the centre. A practising sangha will then be established in Berlin, providing a much-needed spiritual home for the community that will be particularly important for those wishing to take part in the Three Year Retreat from Berlin.

The centre will then be open every day of the year, with regular daily practise sessions and, of course Rinpoche’s teachings will be offered to both the general public and to Rigpa students through a wide range of courses.