HEALTH MINISTRY AWARDS ARJIA RINPOCHE’S VIRTUOUS DEED

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The Health Ministry named the most prominent acts and individuals of the year on Thursday. This year, the Ministry has named Arjia Rinpoche, who has launched a construction project of a leukemia hospital in a northern crowded apartment district of Ulaanbaatar city under his own funding, the most philanthropic person of the health sector of Mongolia. 8th Agya Hotogtu or Arjia Rinpoche (born 1950) is one of the most prominent Buddhist teachers and lamas to have left Tibet. He escaped to the United States where he now lives and started a Buddhist Center for Compassion and Wisdom (TCCW) in Mill Valley, California, a center committed to the preservation of Buddhist teachings, art and culture within and outside of Tibet and Mongolia. In 2005, he was appointed Director of the Tibetan Cultural Center (TCC) in Bloomington, Indiana by the 14th Dalai Lama. TCC was recently renamed the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center. Arjia Rinpoche is the only Tibetan high lama of Mongolian descent. He launched several projects including Red Cross Organization in Kumbum, Disaster Relief Project for local villages and a clinic for villagers run by monks of the Tibetan Medical Institute and a school for local village children.