Doubletakes are not infrequent; stares are not taken as offense. That's what Gen Norden, resident teacher at the Kadampa Meditation Center of Georgia (KMC-GA), a Mahayana Buddhist group, often observes as people walk past the center while she is teaching.

“As you walk past the building, you look through these glass windows in the front, and you see an eight-foot Buddha staring back at you,” she says. To be sure, it’s not an everyday occurrence to run into an eight-foot-tall Buddha.

KMC-GA held its official 25th-anniversary celebration in April with guest teacher Kadam Michelle Gauthier, the resident teacher at KMC Tampa Bay. KMC-GA is a member of the New Kadampa Tradition-International Kadampa Buddhist Union (NKT-IKBU), an international association of Mahayana Buddhist study and meditation centers, which follows the Kadampa Buddhist tradition founded by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.


Gen Norden teaches a foundation program class at KMC-GA—a systematic study program that deepens one’s practical experience of the Buddha’s teachings—and a more advanced class, a teacher training program.

Senior student Bob Buchman came to the center when it first opened, hoping to learn more about Buddhism and meditation in general. His concentration wasn’t very good when he started, he says, but he began to see improvement from the meditations.


“I was calmer and more peaceful,” says Buchman. “What really surprised me was that I learned how to bring my meditation experience into my daily life when I wasn’t meditating. For example, prior to attending the Center, I had major anger issues. Buddha teaches us how to recognize our harmful behaviors, such as anger, how to reduce them, and how to abandon them. For me, coming back was easy. The teachings and meditations are not separate, and I wanted more of that mental peace and clarity.”




Buchman feels that many people who come to the center have been on another spiritual path or have not been on a spiritual path at all, yet they find the teachings and meditations beneficial in their daily lives.

Christine Martyake has been attending classes at the center for about two years. Taking classes regularly has provided a lot of comfort in her life and has made her more appreciative of the present moment, she says.

“I think a lot of people go [to KMC-GA] when they’re having a hard time with something because life is so hard. [The teachers here] say right off the bat that life is hard for everybody. Everyone is suffering all the time. Now, what can we do to make things better?” says Martyake.

Today, the center is located in the heart of Inman Park, but it has had many homes before it got there. It started off in an apartment in Roswell and then moved to a house near Northlake Mall. When it needed to expand, it moved to a commercial space in Druid Hills, then Kirkwood and then two locations in Sandy Springs before it landed at its current location.


“Between finding the current Inman Park space, all the work with the architect, zoning, permits and the construction itself, we were without a physical space for two and a half years,” says Buchman. “However, during that time, we still met in several locations, including yoga studios, exercise facilities as well as several members’ apartments or condos. Interestingly, even without a physical building to meet in, we didn’t lose any core members. And today, you see the beautiful center we now have. So those two and a half years were definitely worth it!”




According to Gen Norden, the members of the community—who come from a variety of backgrounds—have kept the Georgia center flourishing. It offers classes around the Atlanta area, including Unity North Atlanta in Marietta. It also teaches classes in Birmingham, Chattanooga and Florence, Alabama. 

Buchman believes they’ve continued to thrive because they welcome everyone—not just Buddhists—through their doors. In fact, membership has grown significantly since he first came to the center, from just a few people to about 100 members. 

“You don’t have to take anything away from Buddhist teachings or add anything to them, but they really are incredibly practical and relevant to the modern times,” says Gen Norden.

“Kadampa Buddhism is very logical,” says Martyake. “If they are saying something that you don’t agree with, they encourage you to question it so that they can tell you how they got to that point in their beliefs.”




The Center has given Martyake and many others a different outlook on life and has allowed them to come to terms with the fact that bad things happen. Buchman says that what he finds memorable is the spiritual growth and happiness he sees in other people who are part of the spiritual community, and this, in turn, reflects his own growth back to him. Like Martyake and Buchman, students find that the lessons they learn and their meditation skills help them in their daily lives.

“Today, my mind is much calmer and more peaceful as a direct result of Buddha’s teachings and meditations. I am now very aware of the sources of happiness and how to access those sources. I now look inward for happiness and clarity, not externally,” says Buchman. ❧

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