December 2001 – February 2002

The gap in Dick Jeffery’s “life of many blessings,” with his children grown and independent, was easily filled by around 200 children on the other side of the world. Dick, a resident of Tara Institute in Melbourne, Australia for the last six years, is director of the Maitreya Project’s Universal Education School in Bodhgaya. He spends about three or four months a year in India.

For 10 years before I became involved with the Maitreya Project (firstly as security manager for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s last teaching in Bodhgaya in December 1999), I was an education and training consultant. Earlier, I spent 12 years in technical education in Melbourne. My original training was in mechanical engineering, which I had practiced for 10 years in the UK and Australia.

As director of the Maitreya Universal Education Project I am responsible for overall management and strategic planingg of the Project’s educational program in Bodhgaya, and for fundraising. When I’m back in Melbourne I am continually coordinating fundraising in Australia for the Maitreya statue.

I game to Buddhism by learning meditation through Siddha Yoga in the 1980s; later I developed an interest in the nature of the mind and consciousness. Over the last eight years I have found the Tibetan Buddhist teachings to be the most complete system in terms of both theory and practice….

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