In-Person and Online: The Joy of the Dhamma – A Special Event with Bhante Buddharakkhita
with Bhante Buddharakkhita and Leslie Booker
Co-Sponsored by Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
Saturday, January 10th, 2026 | 10:00am – 5:00pm ET
In-Person Location: New York Insight at 115 West 29th Street, 12th Floor
New York Insight, in collaboration with Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, is honored to welcome Bhante Buddharakkhita for a special daylong program exploring The Joy of the Dhamma.
Join us for a rare opportunity to practice with a senior monastic teacher whose life and teaching embody the dharma in both formal meditation and community life, integrating inner practice with ethical action, service, and collective care.
The day will begin with a morning of guided practice and teaching from Bhante, focused on joy as an essential and cultivated quality of the path. Participants will explore how joy functions within Buddhist practice as a source of energy, clarity, and continuity, and how it can be intentionally cultivated to support wisdom, compassion, and resilience in daily life. Drawing on meditative experience and classical dharma teachings, Bhante will examine how joy arises through mindful engagement with the heart-mind and the world, and how it helps sustain practice over time.
In the afternoon, Bhante will reflect on nearly twenty years of the Uganda Buddhist Centre, which he founded and serves as abbot, offering insight into what the dharma looks like when expressed through long-term commitment, community building, and service in the world. He will then be joined in conversation by Leslie Booker, Guiding Teacher at New York Insight and the Centre’s first international guest, for a dialogue on practice, joy, and the role of community in sustaining our spiritual path.
Participants will explore joy as a cultivated and supportive aspect of Buddhist practice, gain insight into how the dharma is lived beyond formal meditation, and reflect on what it means to sustain practice through service, community, and long-term commitment.
We hope you can join us for this day of practice, reflection, and conversation. All are welcome!
This program is brought to you by New York Insight Meditation Center and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
Note: This program will be recorded. The recording will be sent to all registrants after the program, so please feel free to sign up even if you cannot join in real time.
In-Person Registration:
Please register below for in-person participation. If you are able, registering at the “Supporter” level enables others to attend at the “Subsidized” level. Thank you for your generosity! (Please note that the registration price includes a base level of teacher support, and you will have the opportunity to donate more after the program.)
If you are registering via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can scroll right and left and up and down within the below form if it is partially obscured or cut off.
CLICK HERE to open the registration form in a new browser window.
Bring a Buddy: If you are a member of our Circle of Friends, you’re invited to bring a Dharma buddy to this program for no additional cost. Simply select “1” from the drop-down next to the Bring a Buddy level, and enter your special discount code (provided in your Circle of Friends welcome email) to reduce the price to that of a single, standard registration. This registration will grant attendance for you and your buddy.
Online (Zoom) Registration:
Please register below for online participation via Zoom. If you are able, registering at the “Supporter” level enables others to attend at the “Subsidized” level. Thank you for your generosity! (Please note that the registration price includes a base level of teacher support, and you will have the opportunity to donate more after the program.)
If you are registering via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can scroll right and left and up and down within the below form if it is partially obscured or cut off.
CLICK HERE to open the registration form in a new browser window.
Bring a Buddy: If you are a member of our Circle of Friends, you’re invited to bring a Dharma buddy to this program for no additional cost. Simply select “1” from the drop-down next to the Bring a Buddy level, and enter your special discount code (provided in your Circle of Friends welcome email) to reduce the price to that of a single, standard registration. This registration will grant attendance for you and your buddy.
Volunteering
All of our programs rely on volunteers to support our teachers and staff with various tasks and responsibilities. Volunteering allows you to participate in our programs at no cost. To inquire about volunteering opportunities, please fill out our inquiry form, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Teacher(s)
Bhante Buddharakkhita
Ven. Bhante Buddharakkita, Founder & Abbot, was born and raised in Uganda, Africa. He first encountered Buddhism in 1990 while living in India, and he began practicing meditation in 1993. He was ordained as a Buddhist monk by the late Venerable U Silananda in 2002 at the Tathagata Meditation Center in San Jose, California. He then spent eight years under the guidance of Bhante Gunaratana at the Bhavana Society, West Virginia. Bhante is the founder of the Uganda Buddhist Center in Uganda. Besides spending time at the Buddhist Center in Uganda, he is the spiritual director of Flowering Lotus Meditation Center in Magnolia, Mississippi. He is also on the council of spiritual advisers to the Global Buddhist Relief, New Jersey. Bhante has been teaching meditation in Africa, Australia, Europe, Asia, and the U.S. since 2005. His book “Planting Dhamma Seeds: The Emergence of Buddhism in Africa” tells the story of his religious and spiritual work in Africa.
Leslie Booker
Booker is a heart – centered, spirit – driven activist and meditation teacher committed to creating a culture of belonging through her teaching and writing. She completed Spirit Rock’s 4 year Retreat Teacher Training in 2020, and shared the practices of yoga and mindfulness with New York City’s most vulnerable populations for over a decade. Booker has co – authored and contributed to several publications including the trauma – informed anthology Practicing Liberation and its accompanying workbook, for folks working towards social justice. She is a co-founder of the Yoga Service Council at Omega Institute and the Meditation Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. In 2020 she was invited to be a Sojourner Truth Leadership Fellow through Auburn Seminary and was voted by her peers as one of the 12 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement.
Booker moved to Philadelphia in August of 2020 to vote in a swing state, and currently serves as the Guiding Teacher of New York Insight.
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