From October 4 through October 6, 2025, practitioners from around the world gathered, across continents, cultures, and time zones, for the Fifth Annual Dzogchen Buddha Path 48-Hour Global Medicine Buddha Event. Guided by His Eminence Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche, this continuous online ceremony unfolded as a living expression of compassion, wisdom, and collective healing within the Nyingma Dzogchen tradition. Supported by the Dzogchen Shri Singha Foundation, the event reflected the lineage’s deep commitment to benefiting beings in times of widespread suffering and uncertainty.
It commenced on Saturday afternoon and continued uninterrupted for forty-eight hours through Monday, this autumn full moon gathering invited practitioners to unite their minds in prayer, meditation, mantra, and offering to the Noble Guru Medicine Buddha. Although participants joined online, the intention and practice formed a single, unbroken mandala dedicated to easing illness, restoring balance, and cultivating peace in this world and beyond.
Medicine Buddha
Medicine Buddha—known in Sanskrit as Bhaiṣajyaguru and in Tibetan as Sangye Menla—is not regarded merely as a benevolent figure who cures physical disease. He is understood as a fully enlightened Buddha, whose awakened activity manifests specifically as healing on every level of existence: physical, emotional, mental, energetic, and karmic.
Medicine Buddha made vast aspirations to liberate beings from suffering arising from physical illness, mental afflictions, emotional imbalance, karmic obscurations, and ultimately the root disease of ignorance. His deep blue form symbolizes vast, space-like wisdom. From a buddhist perspective, disease arises from negative thinking and negative karma. Healing occurs when that negative karma is antidoted and obscurations are cleared. Medicine Buddha is healing wisdom and compassion, restoring harmony to body, speech, and mind.
Why a 48-Hour Global Medicine Buddha Event?
The annual 48-Hour Global Medicine Buddha Event, led by Khenpo Choga Rinpoche, is not designed merely to accumulate prayers or blessings in an abstract sense. It is a practice environment intended to actualize realization through collective focus and continuity. When practitioners gather in sustained practice over an extended period, the field of merit becomes exceptionally strong. Practice remains unbroken, obstacles are subdued, and blessings naturally multiply.
This collective power allows the healing activity of Medicine Buddha to reach far beyond individual participants. The practice is dedicated to those who are sick or dying, those experiencing mental and emotional distress, and regions affected by conflict, pandemics, and natural disasters. Through shared intention and disciplined practice, healing energy is directed toward the benefit of all beings.
Collective Practice in a Modern World
While individual practice is powerful and essential, an event of this scale multiplies merit and blessing through shared commitment. Continuous group practice establishes a pure mandala of realization, invokes protective forces to remove obstacles, and sustains focused awareness day and night. The online format allows this traditional form of collective practice to unfold globally, making it accessible to practitioners who might otherwise be unable to attend in person.
Registration for the event was required, with sliding-scale admission that included all members of a household. As always, the teachings and ceremonies themselves were offered freely, in keeping with Buddhist tradition. Participants were able to choose to make voluntary offerings to the teacher during the event—an act regarded as especially auspicious at the beginning or conclusion of the practice. Funds raised supported the Dharma activities of Khenpo Choga Rinpoche and the ongoing work of the Dzogchen Shri Singha Foundation, creating merit for all who participated.
The Guidance of Khenpo Choga Rinpoche
The depth and integrity of the 48-Hour Global Medicine Buddha Event are inseparable from the presence of Khenpo Choga Rinpoche. A 33rd-generation Dzogchen lineage holder, lama of Dzogchen Monastery, and professor at the Dzogchen Shri Singha University, Rinpoche embodies the union of scholarship, meditation, and compassionate activity. His years of solitary cave retreat in the holy Dzogchen region, combined with decades of teaching and writing—including the widely used text The Buddha Path—inform his ability to guide practitioners with clarity, discipline, and warmth.
Healing as the Path Itself Through the Medicine Buddha Event
This year’s 2025 Dzogchen Buddha Path 48-Hour Global Medicine Buddha Event was an auspicious success. Ultimately, the Medicine Buddha Event created immeasurable good karma and healing power and positive energy in a world desperately in need of that. By uniting healing activity with realization, the event served beings with compassion, wisdom, and unwavering integrity under the guidance of Khenpo Choga Rinpoche.