Month: December 2022

By: Alexander Farjadi

Introduction

The Kadampa center is a vibrant Buddhist community located in Raleigh, North Carolina and was officially founded in 1991 by Don Brown. The center follows the doctrines of Tibetan Buddhism based in the Gelugpa tradition, teachings from Kelsang Gyatso, founder of the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT), and the lineage of Lama Thubten Yeshe, co-founder of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). The FPMT is an international family of city and retreat center, monasteries, publishing houses, hospices, and healing centers which the center pledges membership to. The Kadampa center is one of the 160 FPMT organizations and 1200 NKT centers globally.

The Kadampa center’s mission is to “transform the minds and lives of individuals and societies into the highest ideas of enlightened wisdom, compassion, and skillful action through the study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism”. They claim this can be attained through studying the literature and teachings of Kelsang Gyatso, founder of the NKT. The Kadampa center follows the Lamrim textual tradition, the backbone of Kadampa Buddhism which outlines essential spiritual instructions to achieve awakening. The Kadampa center is part of the NKT, a broader religious movement which emphasizes incorporation of Buddhism into daily life and seeks to make Buddhism more accessible to a wider audience. Some Tibetans have labeled the NKT as a controversial movement because of some of their ideology and for being a “breakaway” sect from Buddhism. The Kadampa center however avoids controversy.

Because the center is non-profit, Kadampa relies on the generosity and dana of its members, which currently sits at 101 monthly sustainers. Their website encourages donations for meritorious karma and also to finance the pujas, retreats, and statue Lama Atisha that the center acquired. Alongside member donations, the Kadampa center funds its operations through running a bookstore which is regularly restocked with Buddhist classic canonical texts as well as more contemporary texts on Tibetan Buddhism.

Spiritual Leaders

Lama Thubten Yeshe was born near the Tibetan town of Tolung Dechen in 1935. At the early age of six, he was sent to Sera Monastery where he studied until 1959 when he was forced into exile due to the Chinese invasion. Lama Yeshe continued to study until 1967 when he and his chief disciple, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, relocated in Nepal. Rinpoche would become a trusted partner of Lama Yeshe, and the two would collaborate throughout the rest of Lama Yeshe’s life. It was during this time period where Lama Yeshe founded the Kopan Monastery, seeking to educate Westerners on the Buddhist tradition, much to the reprobation of the Tibetan religious community at the time. Around 1974, Yeshe and Rinpoche began making regular tours to the West gradually building the infrastructure and network which would eventually become the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). After a long and accomplished legacy of spiritual teaching, Lama Yeshe passed away in 1984 and was cremated in the Vajrapani Institute in Boulder Creek, California.

One of Kadampa center’s prominent spiritual leaders and official spiritual director of the FPMT is Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche. Born in 1945, Rinpoche was believed to be the reincarnate of Sherpa Nyingma yogi Kunsang Yeshe, the Lawudo Lama. Rinpoche studied and meditated at the Domo Geshe Rinpoche monastery near Pagri in Tibet up until 1959 when the Chinese occupation forced him to flee. In a refugee camp in West Bengal, India, he met Lama Yeshe, who would become a close teacher and partner in spreading Buddhist dogma to the West.

Despite the frictions between some groups within the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) and the Dalai Lama, Raleigh’s Kadampa Center recognizes the authority of the Dalai Lama as Tibet’s spiritual leader and sees him as an “outstanding example of how to live a simple, happy, spiritual life in these complicated, stressful times”.

Geshe Gelek and Geshe Sangpo comprise Kadampa’s resident teachers and lead its spiritual and ritual practice. Gelek was born in Sikkim and practiced Buddhism at Sera Jey monastery, attaining the degree of Geshe Lharmpa in 1997. He continued his studies at the Gyume Tantric College when Lama Zopa Rinpoche requested him to become a resident teacher at the Kadampa center. Geshe Sangpo was born in 1972 in Kham Karze, eastern Tibet. Similar to Gelek he studied at Sera Jey monastery and eventually received his Geshe degree in 2001 after 17 years of studying. Sangpo specializes in Haya Griva ritual practice and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 2008 to teach ritual practice at the Kadampa Center. In October of 2014 Sangpo was officially approved by FPMT as resident teacher at Kadampa Center.

The Kadampa center additionally employs several registered teachers who lead spiritual practice and teaching programs for various levels of practitioners. Among them are Robbie Watkins, current spiritual program director, and Don Brown, founder, both of whom studied alongside Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche at the Kopan Monastery. Stephanie Smith, Hemant Pandya and Venerable Lhundub Tendron.

Alongside Geshe Gelek and Geshe Sangpo, the Kadampa Center has also ordained several women. Lhundub Tendron, Ngawang Lhamo, Ngawang Choekyi, and Ngawang Khanda make up the center’s female sangha and represent the majority of Kadampa’a monastics, a ratio which speaks to Kadampa’s inclusivity. Despite being limited by demographic factors, the Kadampa center also sports significant Asian membership in addition to several other ethnic groups. Their membership though still seems to be predominately white and is largely convert Buddhists.

Courses, Rituals, Outreach and Other Special Events

The Kadampa Center divides its spiritual programs into three categories:

The Introductory Program:

Intermediate Program:

Students wishing to deepen their spiritual knowledge and seek more rigorous courses can consult the intermediate level programs. The “Basic Program” is an intermediate level course which is conducted over 5 years and covers the nine main texts of the Buddhist tradition. The course is offered Friday nights and covers a wide swath of Buddhist literature and philosophy. The course culminates in a final exam and a three-month retreat. Students seeking extra opportunities may also choose to join in Geshe Gelek’s Lamrim Topics which discusses the Lamrim Chenmo, a core text in the Gelug tradition.

The Kadampa center also holds pujas and prayer gatherings each month where practitioners recite mantras and prayers with each targeting different objectives. The pujas the center holds are the Guru Puja, the Buddha Tara Puja, and the Medicine Buddha Puja. The Tara practice is meant for eliminating the obstacles to fulfillment. Medicine Buddha Puja is designed for those experiencing acute mental or physical illness, in addition to those recently deceased. The Buddha puja is centered around building meritorious karma and positive energy. The center also provides special pujas at request for members with loved ones that have recently passed away. On their website the Kadampa center has provided a prodigious number of resources for illness and dying, listing advice on advance care planning, funerals, and other general resources that prepare caregivers or those in critical conditions for death.

The center organizes weekend and one-day retreats which are offered at the center and other offsite residential settings. The longer retreats such as “The Light of the Path Retreats” offers a series of special two-week retreats with Kadampa’s spiritual director, Lama Zopa Rinpoche at a facility in Black Mountain, North Carolina. During the retreat, Lama Zopa Rinpoche mainly relies upon the text, Lamp of the Path by Lama Atisha as the main teaching resource.

The Kadampa Center also holds pujas and other special events on the various Tibetan holy days. The center celebrates Monlam Chenmo (the two-week period during which the Buddha performed various miracles), Saka Dawa (Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and parinirvana), Lhabab Duchen (Buddha’s descent from Tushita back to Earth), and Lama Tsongkhapa Day (anniversary of Lama Tsongkhapa’s enlightenment). In addition to the holy days they also hold celebrations for Losar, the Tibetan New Year which features music and authentic Tibetan food.

Through Kadampa’s affiliation with Triangle Interfaith Alliance, the Kadampa center participates in several community outreach initiatives to provide opportunities for those struggling and engage in activities of goodwill and compassion for others. They have organized food drives, volunteer services for Habitat for Humanity, Adopt-A-Stream clean-up campaigns, and supported climate change projects within North Carolina.

Citations:

Kadampa Center | Kadampa Center.” Accessed December 5, 2022. https://kadampa-center.org/.

Kadampa Buddhism. “New Kadampa Tradition – International Kadampa Buddhist Union.” Accessed December 5, 2022. https://kadampa.org/.

Overview

Wat Pasantidhamma is a Buddhist Community in southeastern Virginia, located in Carrollton. The Wat Pasantidhamma community practices Theravada Buddhism and provides a wide variety of Buddhist services to the community. Their mission statement is simply defined by “peace”: peace up, or loving Buddha, which is done through practicing the Dhamma; peace in, or serving each other, which in turn serves Buddha; and peace out, which changes the world through peace among all.

Foundation

Wat Pasantidhamma as an idea began in discussions around 1996, when Buddhists in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia expressed frustration with the difficulty in accessing Buddhist services in the region. At the time, the closest place to attend Buddhist services was in Washington, DC. This made the ability to worship in a Buddhist community difficult for some and outright impossible for others. Therefore, many people started reaching out to monks in Washington, DC for advice on how to remedy the issue at hand. Out of these discussions the idea of establishing a Buddhist temple in Hampton Roads was formed. After consultations with monks in both DC and Bangkok, followed by a unanimous vote, work began to form Wat Pasantidhamma. Searches were begun for a location and talks to discuss fundraising were held. As the project expanded, more and more people joined the team of devoted members working tirelessly to form the community. This team officially became an organization titled the “Samukee Dham Association.” The first president of the Samukee Dham Association was Dr. Tawatchai Onsanit, who was a major part in guiding the project through the troublesome beginning. After the first formal community meeting to discuss the project, a newsletter was created by a community member named Mrs. Sompong Bray. She was integral to the creation of Wat Pasantidhamma and worked tirelessly to provide communication about the project to members both inside and outside of the organization. This newsletter still continues to operate today. One of the biggest initial problems in finding the perfect place was the dilemma of either purchasing land, which was more expensive but more flexible, or renting, which was less expensive but much harder to work around. After nearly two years of searching for a location and securing funding, the organization was able to tour the plot of land in Carrolton Virginia. They decided it would be the perfect place, and in December of 1997 the land was finally purchased. Shortly afterwards, monks from Wat Thai in Washington DC visited the land, blessing it and bestowing the name of “Wat Pa Santidhamma” which means “Forest Temple Peace Dhamma”. In April of 1998, Wat Pasantidhamma was officially established.

Constituency

Wat Pasantidhamma has a wide variety of constituents. The temple itself has a community of monks who reside there full-time and also offers members of the community to stay for up to a week at a time regularly. The current abbot of Wat Pasantidhamma is the Venerable Udom Pabhangako. At the time of its founding, Wat Pasantidhamma was mostly supported and attended by local Thai, Laotian, and Cambodian members of the community. This continues today, but Wat Pasantidhamma stresses that the community is open to all regardless of their background or if one has been affiliated with Buddhist practices in the past. Another way Wat Pasantidhamma engages members of its community is through a book club, in which lay people and monks can read books and engage with one another about the texts they read.

Practices

Wat Pasantidhamma as a whole adheres to the Theravada practice of Buddhism, more specifically the Theravada Thai Forest Tradition. Readings include that of the Tripitaka, or three baskets, that serves as the base of Theravada practice. Discussions and lessons are held about the Vinaya Pitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, and the Abhidamma Pitaka. The temple leads daily mediative practices, as well as longer meditation retreats that involve learning about the teachings of the Buddha, and mediation in the forms of sitting, standing, and walking. This is offered throughout the year with the exception of winter. During December, January, February, and March, the monastics at Wat Pasantidhamma observe a silent winter retreat. It is possible to visit during the day in this time, but the temple will not allow overnight guests. Another practice implemented at Wat Pasantidhamma is the use of small groups. These are groups made of eight to twelve people, either couples or individuals, that pray, and discuss together. These small groups have five aspects: life change, cultivating relationships, promoting participation, providing care, and identifying future leaders. Additionally, the temple also offers an Upāsakā program to encourage laypeople to engage with monastics and each other over the Dhamma. The purpose of the program as stated by Wat Pasantidhamma is to encourage individual practice and discipline, strengthen understanding of Dhamma, increase contact with similar people, and to be able to better teach others the teachings of the Buddha. This program entails many guidelines for those participating, including following the Three Refuges and Five Precepts and formally taking them quarterly, gathering regularly with other Upāsakās, daily meditation, going on retreat, attending festival days or community gatherings, having basic knowledge of the Teachings, supporting the sangha, and keeping to the program for at least one year. There are two forms to this program, with Upasaka for men and Upasika for women. Aside from this, the temple also offers a radio program in order to allow people to listen to regular talks about the Buddha’s teachings. These talks are available for download on the Wat Pasantidhamma website as well.

Events

Wat Pasantidhamma offers a wide variety of events throughout the year, celebrating holidays and conducting retreats. Observances are held for full, half, and new moons throughout the year. Meditation services are offered every Wednesday from 5:00pm-9:00pm, whereas regular services are available from 6:00am-8:00pm Monday-Friday and 6:30am-8:00pm Saturday-Sunday. Meditation retreats are offered Friday-Sunday on certain weekends of each month outside of the monastic silent winter retreat period. Services are provided for national holidays, traditional Theravada Buddhist holidays, and Thai holidays as well. Celebrations are held for the anniversary of Wat Pasantidhamma and the Songkran Festival celebrating the Thai New Year. Ceremonies are also held of Vesak, or Visakha Puja each year to celebrate the Buddha. Asalha Puja, or Dharma Day, is also celebrated in July. A Buddhist Lent ceremony is conducted in July as well. A longer retreat, known as the five days Moment to Moment retreat, is conducted in the beginning of August. In September, a Sart Thai day ceremony is held. At the end of the Rain Retreat in October, a ceremony is held as well. This is followed by a Kathina Ceremony. Smaller ceremonies are also held throughout the year for days like Mother’s Day, Memorial Day and others.

Funding

Wat Pasantidhamma is funded entirely by donations of the public. This was the case for its founding and is still the case today. All services, including retreats, are offered entirely free of charge as the community believes that “the Buddha’s teachings are priceless.” The temple encourages donations on its website, particularly if one wishes to attend services, but stresses that these are not mandatory and would only benefit the community if one chooses to do so. Wat Pasantidhamma lists projects on its website which the temple wishes to either continue doing or complete in the future. Each of these projects has links to fundraising, with the goal amounts for each project listed. The largest such project was launched in late 2014. It is a Sala Ruam Jai, or multi-purpose building. This would allow a place for study of Buddha’s teachings, other religious functions, would serve as a cultural center for the community, and would provide classrooms as well. The project launched with a hefty goal of one million dollars to raise and did so successfully. The project was very recently completed, and now serves as a perfect meeting place for the Wat Pasantidhamma community.

Relationships with other Buddhist Communities

Since its founding, Wat Pasantidhamma has enjoyed a close relationship with Wat Thai in Washington DC. This is due to the great assistance of the monks from Wat Thai, particularly abbot Luang Ta Chi, in helping coordinate the founding and development of Wat Pasantidhamma in the early stages of its creation. Additionally, Wat Pasantidhamma retains relationships with Theravada Buddhists all around the area, and keeps an open line of communication with monks in Bangkok, Thailand as well.

Contact

Wat Pasantidhamma has several methods available to contact:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gowatpa/

Phone: (757) 238-3461

Website: https://gowatpa.org/

Austin, Texas

Chaz Litt

History of the Sangha

Palri Pema Od Ling is a Palyul Tibetan Buddhist Temple and Meditation Center located in the greater Austin Area, in Texas. The sangha did not initially begin as a planned community, but began in the 1990’s as a community gathering in a basement of a student of a Palyul teacher. The basement was fully stocked as a meditation area, complete with shrines. In the first years of the 21st century, the land was acquired to build the temple, and it was blessed by the Lama Pema Norbu Rinpoche, the 11th Throneholder of the Palyul Lineage. Effectively the founder of Palri, he was educated beginning at age 4 at the Palyul Monastery in Tibet in the mid 1930’s. Following China’s takeover of Tibet, Pema Norbu Rinpoche relocated to India in 1963. The Dalai Lama gave his endorsement of the Palyul Lineage and the Nyingma School in 1993, only a few years before the foundation of the Palri Pema Od Ling. His Holiness Pema Norbu Rinpoche founded the Palyul Retreat Center in New York, but before that, he began to build the Namdroling Monastery in Karnataka, India. The monastery is home to over 5,000 monks, 3,000 of which are permanent residents, while the rest frequently travel as teachers. He achieved parinirvana in 2009, and his reincarnation was found recently in the young Yangsi Rinpoche, who was throned in 2014.

 In 2003, the shrine received its Buddha statue, which was constructed in and shipped from Nepal. The community, while small, has relied heavily on traveling teachers and meditation experts. Every few years, the temple receives a new resident teacher, and nearly all have been educated in South Indian Monasteries. The current Resident Lama is Loppon Rapjee Wangchuk. A personal attendant of His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, his studies are specialized in mandala construction and Palyul masked ritual dances. He studied with the late Pema Norbu Rinpoche at the New York Retreat center until his appointment to Palri Pema Od Ling this past November, and has studied at the Namdroling Monastery in the past.

The New York Palyul Retreat Center has close ties with Palri Pema Od Ling, as many of the teachers have resided or studied there, and the Namdroling Monastery has educated many of those teachers as well. 

Palyul Lineage

Practices

Palri Pema Od Ling has slowly made its transition back to in-person practices over the past year, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. While many of their services are still available through Zoom, the temple has made a conscious effort to allow in-person meditations and teachings to bring the community closer together. Every Monday is the Guru Yoga and Chod Practice, and every Wednesday there is a Meditation session. Additionally, every morning the temple hosts a Nam Cho Ngondro service, from 7 to 8 AM, for regular practitioners. This Terma is directly from Avalokiteshvra, passed through Guru Rinpoche. It is part of the Great Perfection – Buddha in the Palm of the Hand, and is a Nyingma practice concerning revealing the nature of the mind in order to achieve enlightenment. This involves meditation on the 10 virtues, and the 10 non-virtues, and is part of the first steps to achieving enlightenment in one lifetime. 

Here, the services lined with the Gregorian Calendar largely stop, as the Palri Pema Od Ling temple follows the Tibetan Lunar calendar. The Medicine Buddha Practice only happens on the 8th lunar day of the month. Prayers are offered to Bhaisajya Guru, a Buddha that manifests healing energy. 

Specially scheduled events include the Vajrakilaya, which happens on the 29th day of the lunar month, and is a famous Tibetan practice. It concerns the Heruka Vajrakilaya, a deity who symbolizes both the compassion and wrath of the Buddhas. While a Buddha of wrath may seem like a counterintuitive representation of a being famed for attempting to eliminate emotion, practitioners view the deity as a being that can wipe away mental obstacles that get in the way of enlightenment. The Twenty One Taras is a Tibetan Buddhist practice that involves the devotion to the deity Arya Tara, a Buddhist deity that is worshiped twenty one times during the course of a mantra. 

Recently, the sangha has doen several fish release practices, meant to inspire good action and good karma. Instead of thinking about karama negatively, while taking the life leads to worse endings down the road, helping another being to live longer will generate good consequences. The practice is called fangsheng, and is a traditional Tibetan practice.

The practices are posted online, with Zoom links, and the practices’ requisite papers and informational material are also provided online. Keeping with the tradition in a modern world, the texts are provided in English, Chinese, and other languages. Many of the daily practices, and the monthly holidays, are free to attend and worship.

Teachings

Palri Pema Od Ling is Tibetan, of the Nyingma School, in the Mahayana Tradition of Buddhism. The Nyingma School teaches both kama and terma teachings. The long lineage in the kama teachings are from the Buddha, and are available to many scholars, from all kinds of Mahayana Buddhists, but the termas were passed down to specific masters after being hidden by Guru Rinpoche. Pema Norbu Rinpoche ordained over ten thousand monks and nuns during his tenure on the throne, and he not only received many ancient transmissions, but also transmitted many of the teachings to his disciples, in earnest after his exile from Tibet and into India. He established a now-flourishing monastery with an initial investment of 300 rupees (~$340 in present-day American dollars), and performed much of the physical labor himself. By the early 1990’s, he was traveling abroad and training monks and nuns, transmitting the teachings of the Dharma to as many as possible. By the late 1990’s, he was establishing schools like Kunzang Palyul Choling in Maryland, the Palyul Retreat Center in upstate New York, and blessing the Palri Pema Od Ling in Texas. He brought rare copies of the Nam Cho cycle to India, a key feature in Buddhism. It translates roughly to Sky Dharma, and according to Loppong Rapjee Wangchuk, it is one of the main teachings at Palri. The temple also is a proponent of Dzogchen meditation, which proposes that awakening stems from fundamentally understanding the building blocks of reality, and their emptiness. Most of the basic teachings for meditations, including mantras, are posted on their website. 

If you’d like to view some of these texts in English, click here: https://www.palri.org/english-texts/

If you’d like to view some of these texts in Chinese, click here:https://www.palri.org/chinese-texts/

The Sangha

While Buddhism was brought to Texas in the mid-nineteenth century, this particular sangha formed in the last decade of the twentieth century, and has remained fairly small over the years, but consistent, even through the recent troubles of the pandemic. Lama Loppon Rapjee Wangchuk estimates that there are anywhere between ten and fifteen practitioners each morning, but special events bring in more people. The sangha is a mix of white and non-white members, which is well maintained by the multi-lingual temple. Many of the teachers, including the founding lama and the Resident Lama, are foreign-born, and are not native English speakers. This lends well to the sangha being multicultural, as they give worldly perspectives for the teachings. The location, Austin, Texas, is a multiracial area, mostly white and Latinx, meaning many people who are interested in the temple’s teachings come from those backgrounds. The temple is funded mostly by donations from visitors, and from practitioners, but they also sell tickets for some of the more advanced practices taught to raise money. 

Further Links

Palri Pema Od Ling’s Website: https://www.palri.org/ (Please consider donating!)

Namdroling Monastery’s Website: https://www.namdroling.net/Portal/Home (Also consider donating!)

Citations