The Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center (TBLC), Labsum Shedrub Ling, was founded through the great efforts of Geshe Wangyal, a Kalmyk-Mongolian lama who received his Buddhist training in Kalmykia and in Tibet. The center was founded in 1958. Over the years, Geshe-la took on Western students who had developed an interest in learning about Tibetan Buddhism. Before Geshe-la passed away on January 30, 1983, he appointed Joshua W. C. Cutler as director of the activities of the center. In the following year, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, always revered by Geshe-la as the spiritual head of the center, advised that the English name be changed to the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center to clearly reflect that its main activity is teaching Tibetan Buddhism.

In summer, winter, and spring, TBLC gives weekend seminars intended as intensive instructions on specific topics for beginners and advanced students alike. Our primary aim is to develop a Buddhism that is culturally American and, at its heart, not different from the Buddhism that traveled from India through Tibet to TBLC's Tibetan monk—

scholars and students in the United States.

TBLC also has a limited number of resident students who study Tibetan language and Buddhist philosophy for extended periods of time. Living in this Buddhist contemplative community gives them a unique opportunity to apply the Buddhist teachings in a practical way.

The Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center holds a weekly prayer and meditation session every Sunday beginning at 11 a.m. in the main temple followed by a class in the School House from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Buddhist philosophy and meditation.