The Bozeman Dharma Center
1019 E Main St, Bozeman, MT 59715
Report prepared by: Joe Maniaci
Bozeman is a small city resting at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in southern Montana. However, the buffalo are not the only creatures that roam here. Indeed, a small but diverse community of Buddhists have made their home where the deer and the antelope play. The Bozeman Dharma Center provides a “shared home for Bozeman’s Buddhist groups” and emphasizes its desire to provide a silent refuge fostering inner growth for those looking to escape the hustle and bustle of daily life.
Affiliated Buddhist Tradition
Although the Bozeman Dharma Center itself never outwardly identifies as aligning with a specific tradition of Buddhism (indeed, they state several times that they strive to provide a “shared home for Bozeman’s Buddhist groups”), they admit that the values of their organization were largely inspired by documents and value statements from Berkeley Zen Center (a Soto Zen Buddhist group) and Spirit Rock Meditation Center (an Insight Meditation Center rooted in the Theravada tradition). However, three distinct sanghas meet at different times within the Bozeman Dharma Center. The first of these, the Bozeman Zen Group, is a lay group aligning with the Soto Zen tradition. The second, the Bozeman Insight Community, is a Vipassana Insight Meditation community aligning with the Theravada tradition. The last is the Bozeman Dharmata Sangha, which follows the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
Community Views and Practices
The Bozeman Dharma Center’s focus is on providing the community of southwestern Montana with a reprieve from the turbulent, chaotic nature of daily life. Their statement of values stresses a strong desire to catalyze the community’s overcoming of the differences that society has encouraged them to emphasize (race, social class, sexuality, age, cultural identity, gender identity, etc.) and instead come together to form a peaceful and harmonious shelter and find freedom from the struggles of our times. The Bozeman Dharma Center emphasizes the pragmatic power of meditation and specifically states that religious affiliations need not be foregone for one to benefit from its restorative powers.
The Center hosts many events to engage the general public and its lay Buddhist community alike. Regularly scheduled quiet sitting times, drop-in meditation sessions, day and weekend retreats, classes, study groups, and video-recorded workshops are regularly available. Notably, the Bozeman Dharma Center is hosting a film screening on December 6th of a new documentary called “Walk with Me”, which documents life at a monastery with Buddhist monastic and scholar Thich Nhat Hanh. The Center is also hosting a Winter Solstice sit on December 7th to promote meditation. In addition to Center-wide events, each of the three Buddhist groups practicing at the Bozeman Dharma Center hosts their own events—they are careful to note that anyone can attend any event, though. For example, the Bozeman Zen Group is hosting a celebration of the Buddha’s day of enlightenment by welcoming all to meditate for a half day on the koan, ‘What is Enlightenment?’
Two of the sanghas which inhabit the Bozeman Dharma Center also engage themselves in various forms of activism. Among their other activities, the Bozeman Zen Group maintains a commitment to community service endeavors. Although they do not go into much detail on what these activities entail, they suggest that they are successful in reaching out to local teens, elders, and low socio-economic status individuals. The Bozeman Insight Community has come out in favor of the One Earth Sangha, a Buddhist activist organization working to protect the Earth and stop humanities harmful contribution to global climate change.
Finally, the Bozeman Dharma Center also maintains several nonaffiliated group gatherings beyond these three independent sanghas. Of particular interest is MindSpace, a gathering targeted at young adults “18-35ish” of age. MindSpace provides a welcoming and safe community for young adults to foster community connections in a contemplative environment focused on building a strong meditative foundation for life.
Founders
The Bozeman Dharma Center was co-founded by Mem Schultz (of the Bozeman Dharmata Sangha), Susan Morgan (also of the Bozeman Dharmata Sangha), Suzanne Colón, (of the Bozeman Insight Community) and Alice Robison (also of the Bozeman Insight Community). Mem Shultz is a member of the local Dharmata council, while Susan Morgan is a Tibetan Buddhist and an ordained Dharma leader. Suzanne Colón is the Sangha leader of the Bozeman Insight Community and has been practicing in the Vipassana tradition since 1992. Finally, Alice Robinson is a Theravada Buddhist and the Dharma leader of the Bozeman Insight Community.
Although none of the founders appear to have any published writings positing their interpretation of their Buddhist traditions, several have impressive track records of Buddhist training. Alice Robinson had completed six years of extensive training at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, and Suzanne Colón has been practicing in the Vipassana tradition for more than 25 years.
Key Members and Leadership
What the founders of the organization may lack in written works is more than made up for by the principal teachers of the BDC. Floyd Fantelli, the guiding teacher of the Bozeman Insight Community sangha within the Bozeman Dharma Center, has established a written database of his Dharma talks which range widely in focus. This as an extremely extensive resource, and topics vary widely from “The Hindrance of Doubt” all the way to “Election 2016 Dharma”.
The chief instructor of the Bozeman Zen Group is Karen DeCotis. DeCotis has a long history in the Zen tradition—she has practiced for more than 30 years and received instruction from Sojun Mel Weitsman Roshi, a teacher at Berkeley Zen Center. DeCotis is a recognized member of the Lay Zen Teachers’ Association and recently ordained as a Soto Zen priest.
The Bozeman Dharmata Sangha is under the remote but principal instruction of Anam Thubten, a Buddhist of the Tibetan Nyingma lineage. Anam Thubten is the sole founder and ‘spiritual advisor’ to the international Dharmata Foundation and has written several books (in both English and Tibetan), including The Magic of Awareness, No Self, No Problem, and Embracing Each Moment. Susan Morgan, the local Dharma instructor at the Bozeman Dharmata Sangha, was ordained by Thubten in 2012 before co-founding the Bozeman Dharma Center in 2013, but she does not appear to play a major role in the formal instruction of the Bozeman Dharmata Sangha, as all listed instructional events are direct live streams of Thubten’s Dharma talks or discussion groups centered on Thubten’s books. Morgan does make herself available for individual instruction on meditation via email, though.
Community Constituency and Ethnic Composition
There is very little information available about the ethnic or group makeup of the Bozeman Zen Group, the Bozeman Dharmata Sangha, or the Bozeman Insight Community. However, careful inspection of the Bozeman Dharma Center’s website reveals some information about the demographic and ethnic characteristics of the center’s attendance as a whole. One of the website’s title bar images displays a group of seven individuals (one child, two young adults, and four middle-aged individuals) listening to a presentation given by a young adult woman. All individuals shown are of Caucasian descent. Another image, this one from the MindSpace young adult cohort’s page, shows about a dozen Caucasian youths meditating in a circle. The instructor for the Bozeman Zen Group appears to be of middle age and South-East Asian descent, while all three instructors for the Bozeman Insight Community are Caucasian (one is a middle-aged male, two are young adult females). Little information is available regarding the Bozeman Dharmata Sangha’s local leadership. From this (admittedly low-power) information gleaning, we can tentatively conclude that a majority of the community members are Caucasian and young or middle-aged adults.
Affiliations of Communities
As stated earlier, the Bozeman Dharma Center tries to maintain fairly detached from any one tradition, noting that it is dedicated to “the timeless teachings of the Buddha”. While they do admit to borrowing language from the Berkeley Zen Center and the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, it is clear that they are not directly affiliated with these organizations. However, the individual sanghas which meet within the Bozeman Dharma Center do maintain independent relationships with other Western and Asian Buddhist organizations.
The Bozeman Zen Center is affiliated with Branching Rivers, a consortium of Soto Zen sanghas in the Shunryu Suzuki lineage of the San Francisco Zen Center. The Bozeman Zen Center’s inception dates back to 1999, when a senior instructor from the San Francisco Zen Center hosted a retreat in Bozeman, Montana. Later that year, a small potluck Zen interest meeting turned into a weekly meditation session and Dharma discussion. In 2002, Karen DeCotis began formally instructing the group and in 2003, the Bozeman Zen Group moved into their permanent home at the Bozeman Dharma Center.
The Bozeman Insight Community was originally founded in 1996 to provide residents of Bozeman, Montana the opportunity to incorporate the practice of insight meditation into their daily lives. Its primary affiliation lies with the Insight Meditation Society, an organization born out of New England in 1976 which is dedicated to the Vipassana tradition (the practice of insight mediation).
The Bozeman Dharmata Sangha began in 2010 and is intrinsically linked with the international Dharmata Foundation. All of the instructional events hosted by the Bozeman Dharmata Sangha are directly linked back to the international Dharmata Foundation, whether it be a live stream of the dharma talks given by the founder of the organization, Anam Thubten, or a discussion of Anam Thubten’s most recent book. Thubten created the Dharmata Foundation in 2005 and the organization is based in Richmond, California.
Sources/Webpages Consulted:
The Bozeman Dharma Center
The Bozeman Insight Community
The Berkeley Zen Center
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
The Insight Meditation Society
The One Earth Sangha
Robinson, A., & Colon, S. (2015, Summer). Three Bozeman Buddhist Groups Share a New Home: Bozeman Dharma Center. Retrieved from https://Northwestdharma.org/2015/09/Three-Bozeman-Buddhist-Groups-Share-a-New-Home-Bozeman-Dharma-Center/