A Tibetan Refugee Visits an American-Tibetan Buddhist Monastery
[Guestpost by Kunsang Palmo]
I pass by a Tibetan monastery every time I am on the shuttle to my liberal arts college from my apartment offcampus. I never thought of visiting it because monasteries have never been places that are meaningful independently. They are places where I have formed a lot of beautiful memories and they have also been places where I felt trapped by ritualistic handshakes, bows, smiles, and other social formalities. As a child in Nepal, I played games there, and as an adult in America, I sit next to the popular gossips and listen to my mom reminisce about refugee life with them. Going to a monastery means that my mom and I pull out our best chubas, Tibetan dresses, and sit down with other beautifully dressed women and speak in Tibetan. We remind ourselves that we are indeed Tibetan and not the Americans we are most of our lives. Between gossips and snacks that are spread before us on the floor, we would listen to our teacher and marvel at his wisdom and rhetoric. After which, we would all get up and fight for a spot on a line to receive blessings.
I remember when I was little and the heir to the Sakya tradition, Sakya Vajra Rinpoche, visited Nepal. Thousands of people cramped to see him in what I had always considered a big monastery. I, only a child then, fell from the grip of my grandmother’s hand and was being pushed around in the crowd until one stranger hoisted me up over their head and then handed me over to another stranger. I was then being passed over the heads of one stranger to another until I reached the front of the line in a corner allotted for lost children. It was there that I cried so loudly and fervently that I got scolded for not realizing the good fortune of being in the presense of the Lama, who was sitting in front of me.
So, when a friend told me that she had had a spiritual revelation, had developed a sensitivity to the plight of the world, was in need of spiritual guidance that would allow her to make sense of her newly found awareness, and that she had found that guidance in a Tibetan monastery, I had some issues. My friend was using the Tibetan monastery in a way that I had never conceived of before. The way she went on about this Tibetan monastery; in an instant, she made all that felt familiar to me, my childhood memories at the gompa, feel foreign.
I told her about the discomfort I felt. She responded by saying she wasn’t doing anything bad and that her intentions were in the right place. She wanted to appeal to my good sense and convince me out of what she believed was an irrational attachment to my belief that the monastery should be a place only for Tibetans. She argued that there is a way of thinking of religion that is detached from the institutionality of it. It is separate from the community and closer to the idea of spirituality and a sacred truth, she explained. I was not convinced by her definition of spirituality. I told her that her understanding of Tibetan Buddhism reminded me of the rendition that I had heard from Richard Gere. Her intentions were of no importance to me nor did I pay any heed to her claim to goodwill. As for her emotional problems and her need for Buddhism to save her, I couldn’t have given less shit. I didn’t say the last bit out loud. However, I did say that I did not want to participate in an institution that is perpetuating the exoticized narrative of the Tibetan people, which in turn is the influence behind the fundamentalism that is at rise within the Tibetan community; it is responsible behind the popular belief there exists a pure Tibet; the belief that the Tibetans have historically practiced a homogenized form of Buddhism, the only source of which can be found in the new age movement; a movement as White as White can be. I believed I had given an apt response but she did not yield. She said, “I am Jamaican. I know what you are talking about. I have read Said and Fanon.” So, does that mean that her blackness gives her immunity and that her elite, bourgeoisie self can legitimize the appropriated, exotifying narrative of Tibetan Buddhism?
I was fuming. She knew I was. However, there was a part of me that yearned to be a Tibetan amongst Tibetans. I joined a prayer session as my friend recommended. She said it would eradicate my bias against the monastery and potentially alleviate my propensity to rage. I saw the head lama sitting on the highest seat in the front side of the room next the elaborate shrine, which took up an entire wall. Next to him, in a lower seat were his wife and the second head lama, and in the lowest of the elevated seat, was a lone monk. Couple of feet away from them, were pillows and tiny tables organized in rows. Two White women in chubas were sitting there. Their style of wearing chuba imitated impeccably the popular fashion among middleaged Tibetan women. They wore muted fabrics that were tailored to their bodies, which was a strange sight. I have seen many White women wear chubas, but they have always looked awkward with the hem falling too short and the bust either stretched to a distorted shape or hanging loose in an unattractive silhouette. However, these women even matched their tailoredtofit chubas with oversized, dark, felt material winter sweaters of the North Face brand that I have only seen Tibetan women sport in the stupas of Nepal out on their daily circumambulation. Needless to say, I was slightly disturbed. I sat in silence in a room where there were no gossips, no snacks, and was altogether too unnaturally Tibetan.
Having said that, monasteries are not used by Tibetans only to gossip and display their fashionable outfits. It is one of the ways of using the space that directly contrasts what I had seen in the American Tibetan monastery. Being born in a devoutly Buddhist family, I had experienced in one way or another, all the ways a Tibetan refugee might use a monastery and sitting in utter silence was certainly not one of them nor was I accustomed to murmured chants. It was the silence that rendered me clueless and alienated me from the monastery, and it was silence and stillness that I had never witnessed at a monastery. It felt like the times I had wandered into empty rooms while visiting my monk relatives in the Tharig Monastery, or rather tharu monastery as my Khampa tongue is accustomed to saying. My instincts were telling me to do three quick prostrations in front of the shrine and then leave the room immediately after. Even in the most somber of activities, one of which would be prayer sessions, the room will reverberate with chants. The noisiness of the room also allows people to take breaks in between to have small chats. The chats will never be prolonged as the main purpose of a prayer session is to collect merit through the repetition of donba, mantras. Monks and nuns will not have small chats between their daily prayers, unless they are in a private setting, however, they will practice incorporating a booming bass to their voice so that the chants have the effect of sounding like it is partially vocalized and partially echoed. However, being a woman and a lay person means that most of my activities at the monasteries involve everyday Tibetan conversations. It also means that I go there mostly for wang, initiations. They tend to be more festive in nature, and usually involves a picnic afterwards.
However, the festivity does not take away the religiosity of the space. The main purpose of going to the monastery, regardless of what we do there, is to collect merit and everything that is associated with or taking place around the monastery also has a quality of religiosity to them. Even if you are within the vicinity of a wang, you are collecting merit, which is why parents will often bring their children with them and then have them play in the monastery yard. Anything that is associated with the monastery is sacred, even the food that is served there. As a result, the act of going to a monastery is, in itself, an act of piety and that experience is always shared with other people. Even when a person decides to become a hermit, which entails complete isolation, a community is involved.
My uncle trained himself for years in order to cultivate the physicality and the mental strength necessary to become a hermit. He did 300 prostrations in the morning, 300 more at night, and meditated for three hours, twice a day every day. His physical tenacity was such that he once walked the Raj Path to India gate, which stretches 1.2 miles, back and forth in 30 minutes, carrying with him refreshments and drinks for four people. He was in his late forties at that time. He took on an excruciatingly demanding regiment and his devotion is admired within our family. We recognize him as being singular in his practice and although we do not try to imitate him, we certainly have involved ourselves in every part of his journey. By taking over his Samsaric duties, we have allowed him to fulfill his Dharma aspirations and through him we have been able to collect merit. Therefore, it wasn’t the piety, which the silence was supposed to convey, that disturbed me. The alienation I felt stems from the fact that I wasn’t involved in the meritcollection of every single person there.
I wasn’t there to recognize their presence. I wasn’t there to acknowledge their piety. They recognized themselves and they were on an independent journey; a quest where I was all but necessary. It was clear to me that their Buddhism was different from mine. My Buddhism is confirmed to me through my connection with the people in my life and a prayer session without conversation and connectionmaking left my experience at the American Monastery incomplete.
Monasteries are places that have always required me to involve myself with other people. They would be places where I would meet the people that I don’t usually meet and connect with them and confirm to myself and them, the connectedness and the realness of our community. I am Buddhist because everyone else in the room is Buddhist. I am able to be Buddhist because of all the people in my life. Sitting in silence and gazing inward as I felt that I was expected to do, distanced me from that space. Even though it looked right, it didn’t feel right.
Reblogged this on Canadian Buddhist Studies News.
Thank you for writing this beautiful article. I am an American that was raised Jewish, though I am no longer practicing. I live in the southern US and experience emotional pain every time a Christian tells me they are celebrating Passover and don’t even get me started about the so-called “Messianic Jews.” I want to scream, “Leave my traditions alone! You have no idea what you’re doing!” But I too have to check myself on cultural appropriation. There are a lot of beautiful traditions out there, but as a white person, I also need to remember how disrespectful it can be to incorporate some practice or belief into my life without the attached culture, history and traditions that should come along with it. It’s too easy to keep the blinders on and not think critically about the emotional pain that cultural appropriation can cause. I get to straddle both worlds, though, so I appreciate your words and reminder. Thanks!
Please give the Jamaican women a slack. There are always be fundamentalist movements be it national, religious, lingual.. You can’t blame exoticization of monastery by people of other culture/religion being responsible for rise in buddhist fundamentalism. And using her identity to invalidate her experience is ad hominem attack on her. I am sure you have been guilty of some form of cultural appropriation yourself.
The Buddhadharma is not the property of Tibetans; they have it on loan. It has been vouchsafed to them–and not only to them–by the great Indian pandits and siddhas of the past, and it is the proper inheritance of anyone who has the karmic connection to receive it.
A monastery is a place for monastics to live collectively, according to the rules of Vinaya, and practice Dharma. It is, secondarily, a place for laypeople to gather merit. It is not a place of social gathering where you meet people you do not normally meet and indulge in some gossip, nor is it there to confirm the “realness” of your community. Buddhism is not about confirming the “realness” of anything–quite the opposite, in fact.
There is something strange about your wounded feelings on witnessing the Dharma’s transmission to Westerners; that transmission is overseen by Tibetan carriers of the tradition who understand the tradition deeply. But your compulsion to impugn the lily-whiteness of the Westerners you saw at the monastery is all too familiar. It is the same compulsion that led internet feminists to decry the Dalai Lama’s alleged sexism. It is that palpable atmosphere of resentment in our time which emboldens people to always put the blame others for whatever paranoia is going on in their own heads.
You should perhaps consider the fact that you missed the point of the core teachings.
Let me see if I understand what you are saying here, as your article made things more confusing for me, rather than clarifying the situation: are you saying that any westerner engaging in Vajrayana practice is guilty of cultural appropriation? Isn’t that kind of strange when the majority of Vajrayana teachers (who happen to be Tibetan in origin) teach Vajrayana via the medium of Tibetan culture? What choice does a Westerner have in this regard? Are you also not forgetting that Vajrayana Buddhism (Tantra) was also “appropriated” by Tibetans from Indians? Mantras are in Sanskrit for a reason you know! 🙂 I can understand that your experience in the temple would have been disconcerting, but isn’t the character of the temple laid down by the head lama? And, yes, it is true that when westerners get serious about Buddhism they tend to become more uptight than a full vow holding monastic, but I imagine the fact that most come from a Protestant background carries some blame. Your description about what goes on at a Nepalese gathering is very similar to what happens at Greek Orthodox Christian festivals here in Greece. But you must excuse our behaviour, you see converts to any religion take their new religion way more seriously than people born into a religion. Normally people, when engaging in their indigenous religions, take the same sort of organic or natural approach that you describe, except for Protestants of course, they are super anal-retentive by nature! 🙂
Loved seeing a tibetan lay person’s insight into an American style monastery. As a westerner myself the way you saw the gompa growing up reminds me of the way my Mexican grandparents saw their Christian gatherings. Almost exactly the same. My grandmother gossiping in Spanish with the other women was part of the culture and was almost sacred because of the setting (church) Children running and playing in the church. For them just being there was a blessing. They don’t have the concept of merit but they believed in being blessed.
Your experience of the gompa is the same as a Mexican lay persons experience at a cathedral or chapel. The Tibetan goes and receives blessings from the Lama just like the Mexican goes and gets blessings from the priest. You’re experience is a human cultural experience. If Buddhism was huge in the United States like Protestant Christianity is I would imagine the gatherings at American temples would look similar culturally. Lots of families, lots of gossip, and etc.
Reminds me of my grandma when she didn’t like all dem foreigners coming to her church. Like somehow her cultural traditions trumped the religious wisdom contained within. Grandma was a racist asshole.
Your vitriolic comments really make you sound like my Grandma. Your arguments and blind spots are so similar. Her solution was to move to a more culturally homogeneous small town.
Firstly the picture he is using is not a buddhist monastery it is the shrine room at Karma dzong in boulder To judge american buddhism by one person Is absurd And actually I highly doubt any thing this guy has to say. he sounds like a chinese plant
The picture is not meant to be taken literal. It’s one of the pictures picked from a random google image search for Tibetan meditation center in USA. An image of an empty meditation room from google was purposefully used, there’s no meaning behind the specific picture on display, an image that resembled what the author wrote about is used. Also the writer is a Tibetan woman. No need to worry for “a chinese plant.”
Dear lhakardiaries,
Thank you for the articles you are publishing. I wonder if you have no criteria in your comment section. Your highly educated and very Buddhist author Kungsang Palmo la, has chosen to express herself in an extremely offensive and unprofessional manner. This definitely discredits your website and her article.
Dear Tsomo,
Thank you for your inquiry. Yes, we do have criteria for our comment section. We leave it up to the author/s to look over and decide whether they want to make public comments made on their post. The comments on this post were made public with the authors permission and it is up to the author on whether they want to post a reply. For comments on this post, the author is responding to comments made on her own post, she has the right to respond which ever way she feels fit whether we agree with her replies or not. Hope this answers your question.
You sure have a lot of anger. Hmm…pretty sure there are Buddhist teachings to address that, little girl.
…or we can just use all this as an excuse to merely vent! 😉 Personally, for me it is fine line in most situations. A line that I often have problems discerning and others have problems interpreting.
…or we can just use all this as an excuse to merely vent! 😉 Personally, for me it is fine line in most situations. A line that I often have problems discerning and others have problems interpreting.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but when Padmasambhava came to Tibet, he didn’t force Tibetans to learn Hindi and adopt East Indian cultural forms, deities, etc. He poured the essence of the teachings into the existing forms of Tibetan Bon culture. (And Marpa didn’t force his students to adopt East Indian cultural forms either.) The Tibetan Holocaust complicates things because Tibetans didn’t come willingly into the west, they were forced out, and now the preservation of Tibetan culture and its forms are joined tightly with Buddhist teachings. With a few exceptions, not many Tibetan teachers try to pour the essence of Buddhism into Western forms. Instead, westerners have to adopt Tibetan cultural forms, and a few learn Tibetan, in order to get Buddhist teachings. I don’t know of a single Tibetan teacher that had to adopt the language and forms of a foreign culture in order to train and study in Buddhism. Has any Tibetan lama or Rinpoche had to chant liturgy in a foreign language they didn’t understand while they were training and studying Buddhism? (I’m not talking about Sanskrit or seed syllables.) In Buddhism, we are supposed to abandon our homeland (on many levels), but perhaps this is insurmountable in the face of the multi-generational trauma inflicted by the Tibetan Holocaust.
Sorry Chris, but you are wrong. All the Yidam are Indian in origin, their mantra are Sanskrit (not Hindi) as are the dharani and the sadhana (originally). The sadhana were translated into Tibetan.
Thank you, Kunsang Palmo, for this article. It challenges many stereotypes, which is a good thing. I would love to read more of your writing.
Problem is that your outbursts may just end up turning away the very people that are probably going to be the most sympathetic to your cause…
I don’t think anybody has said that you don’t understand what it means to be Tibetan. They have questioned your understanding of being Buddhist, but that is through the white-Anglo-Saxon-protestant prism of their Buddhist practice. Somehow I don’t think that telling people to stick things up their “pink asshole” would go down well in any Buddhist culture though. 🙂 Let’s get to the point: Yes, westerners may engage in an idealisation of Tibetan culture, it is not surprising given that their main source of info about Tibet is from Tibetan refugees. But aren’t you also idealising your experiences? You talk of how you had experienced things. How they were. How they should be. This is a form of idealisation/romanticisation. Don’t worry, you are not the first to do it. I can tell you about my experiences as a first generation New Zealander, the son of Greek migrants escaping a civil war and ensuing military junta. My parents and their friends tried to transplant, and keep intact a Greek culture they had lived before being forced to leave Greece. I grew up in this idyllic Greek-neyland. Imagine my shock when I came to Greece and saw the reality. Unfortunately that is the way it goes, almost every time, when we rely on memories of experiences.
Let’s move onto the next point, shall we?
I consider myself a Vajrayana Buddhist. I mean that’s what I practice endless hours a day, driving my poor suffering girlfriend nuts with the bells and incense. But when I say Vajrayana to people they look at me with a confused and naïve countenance. So I say: You know Tibet? Dalai Lama? To which they smile knowingly, even though in reality they don’t know shit about Tibet or the Dalai Lama. But here comes the weird part: although my “in house” teachers are all formally trained European lama, all the practices are done in transliterated “Tibetan”. Of course many of them have been translated. Others being “secret” haven’t been translated, apparently to keep the uninitiated at bay, which is pretty weird because theoretically any literate Tibetan, initiated or not, would be able to read the text so… Anyway. Now obviously if you saw us practicing you would scream “cultural appropriation”, possibly regardless of the fact that, being Greek, we would also be arguing and laughing and joking with each other as we practiced, while the ordained Greek sangha cast dirty looks our way… But if we were to be practicing Vajrayana Buddhism in Greek, using local deities, etc… you would then accuse us of being New Age.
Doesn’t leave much leeway does it? 😉
In my experience, it’s often the Tibetan teachers themselves who encourage westerners to adopt Tibetan cultural forms. Perhaps it would be more efficient to confront these teachers than confronting the westerners who are just doing what the teacher asked them to do?
Just last week, I was informed that the Tibetan teacher I was going to see preferred western women to wear chubas and western men to wear ngakpa robes. Dressing in ngakpa robes would be fraudulent, so I compromised and wore a maroon t-shirt. This summer, I attended another Tibetan teacher’s program and he strongly urged westerners to learn and participate in Tibetan khaita dances. Several years ago, another Tibetan teacher exhorted westerners to learn Tibetan. And with the exception of Shambhala, every Tibetan teacher I’ve every studied under has westerners chant in Tibetan, even if the westerners have no idea what they’re saying.
That shrine room in the photo is the one time Karma Dzong converted to New Age Shambhala Center. They wanted to distance themselves from the ” feudalistic Tibetans” – but ended up trapped up in a strange version of that very thing.
“They” is Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He introduced the Shambhala path (and it’s myriad forms) to westerners, not the other way around. Again, it’s a Tibetan teacher imposing these forms on his (or her) western students.
Here’s a good article that is relevant to this discussion: http://www.tricycle.com/blog/no-adaptation-required
Chris,
Trungba Rinpocge introduced ‘Shambhala path’ as a way of living this worldly existence- Samsara- incorporating basic Buddhist principles -specifically for the Western world.. Main point is one can follow this path & NOT be a Buddhist. Rinpoche knew what he was doing.
But ‘they’ incorporated & packaged this path together with Rinpoches previous traditional classic Tibetan Buddhist teachings as this Shambhala Buddhism
This neither here or there.
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Have you read ‘Hunger of Memory-the education of Richard Rodriguez. Please look it up.
This was a great article with some very hilarious comments. Can’t believe how riled up these white people got over you telling a personal story and writing about your own thoughts and your own culture and traditions. I was feeling nostalgic for Boulder recently, but this cured me of that. May your next article inspire even more rage!