“It is through study, contemplation, and meditation that we discover and embody the ever-present compassion, joy, and innate wisdom of the awakened mind”
Welcome to Urgyen Samten Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist temple located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Urgyen Samten Ling translates to “Guru Rinpoche’s Place of Meditation.” This title is meant to honor Padmasambhava, the founder of the Nyingma school of Vajrayana Buddhism. Padmasambhava is called the Guru Rinpoche to recognize his roles as a highly respected teacher and the second Buddha of our time. This temple was established by Lama Thupten Dorje Gyaltsen (Jerry Gardner), and Jean LaSarre Gardner through the blessings and guidance of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche in 1994. This community offers a traditional approach to Vajrayana Buddhism of the Nyingma school in the Tibetan tradition through the practice of pujas, group meditation, retreats, and individual instruction.
Urgyen Samten Ling traces its origins to Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. He was born in Kham, Tibet, and devoted his life to recognizing the nature of the mind. He was a teacher of many disciples in Dzogchen, or the Great Perfection which rejects visualization for direct experience and asks the meditator to see his or her true buddhanature. Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche taught Dzogchen to many disciples including Lama Thupten and Jean Gardner. Another of his disciples was Khenchen Thupten Ozer Rinpoche who established the retreat center Pangang in northern India. He also taught many students at Pangang, until his death in the year 2000, including Khenpo Konchok Monlam Rinpoche. Khenpo Konchok Monlam Rinpoche currently cares for fifteen nuns at Ngoedup Charbeb Ling in Nepal. He is also the spiritual head of Urgyen Samten Ling.
Lama Thupten, Jerry Gardner, was born on a United States military base in Guam and was immediately given up for adoption to Willie Lee, his mother, and Willie Gardner, his father. Living in Alabama during the 1960s, Jerry Gardner witnessed many expressions of racism and segregation throughout his childhood and young adulthood. He has been jailed, threatened with a gun, and has suffered other atrocities just because of his race. When Lama Thupten speaks of his childhood he says that he “was the kid in class who asked odd questions,” and that he could see “visions in the sky” (qtd. in Fletcher). Being the child of a military couple, he moved around frequently, and eventually ended up living with an aunt and uncle in New York City’s African American neighborhoods. This aunt encouraged the exploration of different religions, taking Jerry to “whatever Christian churches she wanted” (qtd. in Fletcher). Gardner learned how to play the saxophone in fourth grade. He says, “The arts were crucial in the development of my spirituality,” and that practicing “was like meditation” (qtd. in Fletcher). After studying psychology at Cameron University in Oklahoma, Staten Island Community College, and Fordham University, Jerry Gardner planned to begin a career in drug prevention when, in 1968, he discovered several Buddhist works including “The Tibetan Book of the Dead.”
After his discovery of Buddhism, Jerry Garner sought out Lama Kazi Rinpoche in New York to be his teacher. He studied at Rinpoche’s Tibetan shop regularly, and then began to frequent India and Nepal. It was on these trips that he became a student of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, learning the Great Perfection of the Vajrayana tradition from the man after whom he would eventually name his temple in the United States.
In 1975, Jerry Gardner, now a Buddhist convert, came to Colorado to teach and perform ballet, modern dance, and mime on the Navajo reservation where he met Jean LaSarre Gardner, an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer. LaSarre Gardner was interested in Jerry Gardner’s faith, but it was not until 1991 in Nepal that she accepted her own faith in Tibetan Buddhism. The two were married in Nepal by a monk that same year, and now have a daughter named Abriel. The couple moved to Utah where they began building the Urgyen Samten Ling Gonpa where they now serve as co-teachers, teaching the community of practitioners they have established as well as each other.
Lama Thupten earned a doctorate in Buddhist studies with an emphasis in ritual and meditation from the Ngagyur Samten Chockhorling Institute in Manali, India. He was ordained a Lama in 1997, and in 2013 was given the title of Rinpoche. Lama Thupten believes that everyone must rise above race, nationality, religion, and other barriers, and his goal is “to be fully human and to rise above human frailty…To inspire others” (qtd. in Fletcher). He fulfills this goal through the Urgyen Samten Ling Temple as well as the Red Lotus School of Movement which he and his wife established in 1994 to offer traditional classes in T’ai Chi, Ba Gua, and Wing Chun Kung-fu.
The Urgyen Samten Ling community is comprised of lay, monastic, and Ngakpa practitioners, or householder Vajrayana practitioners who take more vows than lay practitioners but who do not have the same commitment as a full monastic. Urgyen Samten Ling has many characteristics of both a traditional Tibetan community as well as a convert community with a diverse range of practitioners from many ethnic backgrounds. Both women and men are a part of this Buddhist community, which is not surprising considering one of the community’s founders is herself a woman. The community is traditional in its rituals and teachings of the Nyingma school, but members of the wider community are also encouraged to participate in the rituals and ceremonies of the temple including weekly Sunday Puja services. Classes for anyone interested are also offered in a wide range of practices including Sitting Meditation, Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist Practice Course which explores “the fundamental applications of Tibetan Buddhist Ngondro Practice,” Advanced Practice and Teachings which focuses on the teaching, theory, and practice of Tibetan Buddhism, and Awakened Mornings where the Gonpa is open weekday mornings for individual sitting and mediation. These courses all require a donation fee through which participants can “gain merit through the practice of generosity which includes the giving of donations” (Welcome to Urgyen Samten Ling); therefore, Urgyen Samten Ling is supported both by donations and by paid classes.
In practice, Urgyen Samten Ling offers puja ceremonies and services every Sunday morning, group meditation, retreats, and instruction in individual practice, as well as classes in Tibetan Buddhism, sitting meditation, and Green Tara. They have an annual ritual called the New Year’s Eve Puja, and they practice a Renewal of Vows ritual bi-monthly in accordance with the new and full moons where the practitioners all renew their vows to Buddha as a group. Urgyen Samten Ling also began an annual Prayers for Compassion celebration. This is a three day festival which takes place in July. Participating practitioners recite “Om Mani Padma Hung Hrih” to signify that the jewel in the lotus is the compassionate nature that resides in the minds of all sentient beings. In 2014, Lama Thupten invited two visiting Buddhist teachers to the festival: Tulku Choejor Rinpoche, a recognized incarnate master, and Ani Yangchen Lhamo, a recognized female lama from Nepal. In accordance with many of their practices, Lama Thupten welcomed all members of the wider community, whether or not they were of the Buddhist faith, to be present and participate in the ceremony. He said, “It doesn’t matter what belief you have. … Anyone is invited to come and sit and participate to whatever degree they can” (qtd. in Jacobsen).
Danielle Wickingson, a student at Salt Lake Community College, recently wrote an article about her experience visiting Urgyen Samten Ling for a traditional Puja service. The service was conducted primarily in Tibetan (although Urgyen Samten Ling does conduct some services and classes in English) and the practitioners made use of a damaru or hand drum throughout the service. This drum is used during the recitation of mantras to serve as a conduit for one to send compassion and wisdom to other sentient beings. She also describes the use of prayer beads in the service: “I noticed that all of them had the beads in their left hand as well as a prayer wheel…in their right hand. Unlike the previous hour when they had been reciting mantras as a group, during this period, they each went at their own pace, sometimes resting for a small amount of time before continuing. They recited mantras quietly and, overall, the result resembled humming and created a soothing vibration throughout the room” (Wickingson). Wickingson goes on to describe the overall atmosphere of the temple: “From the instant I walked in the door, I was surrounded with bright colors. Pictures of various Buddha’s, monks, or deities adorned the walls, all of which were painted yellow with red trimming. Everything was colorful…the predominant colors in the service, like red and yellow, were examples of colors that had been blessed by Buddha, but…any individual color can symbolize a multitude of things. For instance, the color red embodies the energy of life force, but also signifies the delusion of attachment transforming into the wisdom of discernment and is represented by the Buddha Amitabha” (Wickingson). This description of Urgyen Samten Ling practice illustrates how this community mixes its traditional Vajrayana rituals with a modern sense of inclusion of all who wish to learn about their practice.
Urgyen Samten Ling is traditional in its practice of the Nyingma school of Vajrayana Buddhism. The practitioners and teachers believe that everything is a manifestation of the Buddha, including sentient beings who contain the buddhanature within themselves. This nature is always present, it just has to be accessed through meditation and other practices. Lama Thupten expresses this point in a quote from the homepage of the Urgyen Samten Ling website: “Buddha nature is a precious gift that each of us already possess. So then, how do we find something we’ve never lost? Through practice we arrive at uncovering the innate qualities that are already within our body, speech and mind. The qualities of loving kindness and compassion which are the spontaneous expression of the Buddhas, naturally come forth when we know how to simply let go and rest in the natural state of mind” (Welcome to Urgyen Samten Ling). Through his teachings, Lama Thupten hopes to bring out the “innate wisdom of the awakened mind” in his students and practitioners. All people, lay or monastic or something in between, are welcome at this temple to practice through direct experience so as to realize the enlightened quality inherent in all beings. The main goal of this temple is, through study, contemplation, and meditation, to discover and exemplify the compassion, wisdom, and joy that come from an enlightened mind.
Works Cited
Fletcher, Peggy. “A Spiritual Teacher’s Long and Winding Road from Baptist to Buddhist, New York to Utah.” The Salt Lake Tribune. N.p., 17 May 2015. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.
Jacobsen, Morgan. “Buddhists Hold ‘Prayers for Compassion’ with Fellow Community Members.” DeseretNews.com. N.p., 04 July 2014. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.
“Welcome to Urgyen Samten Ling.” Urgyen Samten Ling. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.
http://www.urgyensamtenling.org
Wickingson, Danielle. “World Religions.” World Religions. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.
http://dwickingson.yolasite.com/excerpt-rel.php