About us

The Himalaya Karuna Deutschland e.V. association was founded in 2008

and has been supporting the aid projects of its patron Acharya Lama Sönam Rabgye.

Through Lama Sönam's personal connection  and his local contacts, all aid goes directly and unbureaucratically

to where it is needed in the remote rural areas of the Himalayas, to Nepal, Tibet and northern India. 

The name 'Himalaya Karuna'

The word Karuna is Sanskrit and means compassion, sympathy (not pity) and is a central concept in Buddhist spiritual training and ethics. It describes the virtue of kindness, love and active compassion. This attitude of mind is one of the four basic virtues (brahmaviharas) that a bodhisattva should develop on his path to helping others achieve enlightenment. Karuna is an attitude of compassion in which all dualistic ideas and the associated resistances and aversions dissolve: All beings and all phenomena in this world are met with the same all-encompassing love and helpfulness. The virtue of this attitude is embodied in Mahayana Buddhism by the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.

(from: Wikipedia, as of 20.5.2020)