monasticism

Dalai Lama appoints American as monastery abbot

Via NPR.

Michel Martin: if you wanted to predict just who the Dalai Lama might select to lead one of the faith’s most important monasteries, you probably wouldn’t think about a boarding school educated, globe-trotting New York photographer whose grandmother was one of the most celebrated fashionistas of her time, but that’s just who the Dalai Lama did select, saying his, quote, “special duty is to bridge Tibetan tradition and the Western world,” unquote.

Nicholas Vreeland is the new abbot of the Rato Monastery in India and he joins us from there now. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

NICHOLAS VREELAND: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.

MARTIN: Now, in my introduction I made it sound as if you’re some sort of fish out of water, but when I think about it, probably not. You were born in Switzerland, lived in Germany and Morocco and New York. Your father was a diplomat. Your mother was a poet, and fashionistas will certainly know that your late grandmother was the longtime editor of Vogue magazine.

So I wanted to ask if, in a way, all this was preparation for your life now.

VREELAND: Well, I don’t know that it was preparation. I suppose that living in a lot of countries prepared me for living in a Tibetan refugee settlement where the monastery that I belong to was reestablished, but I’ve been here now – I’ve been a member of this monastery for over 27 years, and so it’s sort of home.

MARTIN: How did you first learn about Buddhism? And if you can describe it, what do you think it was that appealed to you?

VREELAND: I was in a French school in Germany and I began reading Tintin books when I was about six or seven, so Tintin and Tibet was my first introduction to Tibetan culture, to Tibetan Buddhism. Then I went to – I should say I came to India in 1972 to visit my godfather, who was the political officer in a little then country, now part of India, called Sikkim. It was a Tibetan culture that Sikkim had with Tibetan Buddhism as their religion. That was my introduction.

MARTIN: What is it that you think appealed to you, if you can even describe it?

VREELAND: It puts the responsibility for where you are on your shoulders. We, by our past actions, determine where we are today. How wealthy I am, how healthy I am, the opportunities that I have – all of those things are determined by my own past virtuous or non-virtuous actions.

MARTIN: Can you remember when you decided to become a monk? And I am assuming that that’s kind of a complex process and decision, but to the degree that you can, can you tell us why you think you chose this path?

VREELAND: I was working as the picture editor for the Vanity Fair that was being reestablished. We were working on the dummy issue and I was studying with my teacher, a Tibetan Lama in New York, and my mother had been discovered to have cancer, and all these different influences made me realize that to devote my life to a spiritual path was the most valuable thing I could do.

MARTIN: If you’re just joining us, this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. We’re have a Faith Matters conversation with the venerable abbot Nicholas Vreeland. He is abbot of one of the most important monasteries in Tibetan Buddhism, the Rato Monastery in Southern India, and he’s telling us about his journey to that place.

And you know I want to ask you your family reacted when you told them that you were becoming a monk. I can imagine that Diana Vreeland, who was so committed to style and fashion, was not as enthusiastic as one might think about your shaving your head and committing to a life of saffron and red robes.

VREELAND: No. She wasn’t very enthusiastic, but she understood it. She had seen me become more serious about my study of Buddhism, my practice of Buddhism. We were very close. The years before I came here to become a monk, I spent a few of those years actually living with her. My parents were both very supportive and understanding and have remained supportive, as has my brother.

MARTIN: Now, could you tell us about how you reacted when his holiness, the Dalai Lama, selected you to become the abbot of this important place in Tibetan Buddhism? How do you – how did you react to that?

VREELAND: Well, it was really a surprise. I must say that I’m sitting in the abbot’s chambers in the monastery here in the south of India. I helped design and rebuild the campus of the monastery recently and never would I have imagined that I would be inhabiting these quarters. I mean, it’s just – I might have designed it rather differently had I thought that I would end up here. It came as a big surprise.

MARTIN: Could you tell us about the ceremony when you were officially enthroned?

VREELAND: Initial ceremony was the investiture, which took place in California, actually. His holiness, the Dalai Lama, proclaimed me the abbot and I made three prostrations and made an offering to him and he then offered me a scarf and said congratulations to the new abbot of Rato Monastery and then advised me on just what he wished me to do.

I then came to India to assume my position. It was a sort of formal procedure. Early in the morning, at 5:00, I was led from my room in the monastery to the abbot’s chambers and I was told to sit on the throne and then the administrators made three prostrations before me and made symbolic offerings. And then, after prayers were said in my room, I was led to the temple and there in the temple were all the monks of Rato seated and they all bowed when I came in and I made my three prostrations to the throne of his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and assumed my position on the throne of the abbot.

And then each of the monks in the monastery came and offered me a symbolic white scarf, which is a sort of Tibetan way of showing one’s respect. And that was it. I was the abbot.

MARTIN: And there it is. As we mentioned earlier, the Dalai Lama, his holiness, said that he felt that your mission is to unite the two or to be a bridge between the traditions and the Western world, so I hope that we will speak again, that maybe we could be part of that, you know, bridge.

But before we let you go, I wanted to mention that you’ve been the director of the Tibet Center in New York for some time now, and so I envision that you’d be going back and forth. What else do you think it means to be that bridge? Do you have any sense of how else you envision that role?

VREELAND: What I can bring as a Westerner, as someone born, raised and educated in the West, to this very, very traditional, ancient world – Tibet was a country that was totally closed off to the rest of the world until 1959 and the monastic traditions helped maintain a curriculum which was extraordinary – which is extraordinary, and I wouldn’t want to, in any way, tamper with that.

However, it is necessary that we bring modern day procedures to this society, so that’s one part of my responsibility. The other is helping to bring my knowledge and experience of this world, this Tibetan world, to the West as a Westerner.

But ultimately all I can really do is be myself wherever I am, and my self is a Tibetan Buddhist monk. My self is an American. And so wherever I go, just being myself as best I can is the way in which I might be actually bridging these two worlds.

MARTIN: The venerable Nicholas Vreeland is the abbot of the Rato Monastery. It’s in Southern India. He’s also the director of the Tibet Center in New York, but we were able to reach him in India.

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Ancient Buddhist temple found in China’s Taklimakan desert

Xinhua: The ruins of a Buddhist temple dating back 1,500 years ago have been discovered in China’s largest desert, offering valuable research material for historians studying Buddhism’s spread from India to China.

The temple’s main hall, with a rare structure based around three square-shaped corridors and a huge Buddha statue, has been uncovered after two months of hard work in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Dr. Wu Xinhua, the leading archaeologist of the excavation project, said Monday.

“The hall is the largest of its kind found in the Taklimakan Desert since the first archaeologist came to work in the area in the 20th century,” said Wu, also head of the Xinjiang archeological team of the Chinese Academy of Social Science.

The ruins are located in the south of the Taklimakan Desert, in the Tarim Basin, known as the Damago Oasis in the ancient kingdom of Khotan, a Buddhist civilization believed to date back to the 3rd century BC.

Temple halls with square-shaped corridors stemmed from early Buddhist architecture in India, and gradually disappeared after the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420AD-589AD), when Buddhist architecture in China began to pick up its own characteristics, according to Xiao Huaiyan, a member of the excavation team and a former researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Judging from the layout of the ruins, and the artifacts uncovered at the site, Wu and his colleagues believe the temple dates back to the Southern and Northern Dynasties.

It is so far the best Buddhist site for scholars to study how the religion arrived in China from India, and its early development in the country, said Wu.

Judging from the size of the pedestal on which it would have rested, the missing Buddha statue should be at least three meters tall, reaching the size limits of the hall when its roof was intact, he estimates.

The innermost corridor extends six meters from both south to north and from east to west, the second corridor is 10 meters long and 10 meters wide, while the hall’s wall surrounds an area of 256 square meters.

Still visible on corridor walls are mural paintings of items including the Buddha’s feet, Buddhists and auspicious animals. They are painted in a Greco-Buddhist artistic style, which was seldom seen after the 6th century.

Ruins of several residential structures were found to the southwest of the main hall, along with some pottery kilns and ancient coins.

There is still a scripture hall, a stupa and residential houses for Buddhists to be uncovered, Wu added.

The southern end of the ancient Silk Road, a major historical trade route, went across the 337,000-square-km Taklimakan Desert, and a wide variety of cultural heritage items have been buried in what is now known as the “sea of death.”

In 1901, British explorer Marc Aurel Stein trekked far out in the desert and into the ruins of Niya, an ancient Pompeii-like city with homes, Buddhist stupas, temples, pottery kilns, orchards, tombs, waterways and dams.

Since then, more than 10 Buddhist sites have been discovered by archaeologists from China and abroad in the Damago Oasis.

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Penn class teaches students how to live like monks

Associate professor Justin McDaniel’s religious studies class on monastic life and asceticism gives students at the University of Pennsylvania a firsthand experience of what it’s like to be a monk.

Students participating in the class are required to observe disciplines drawn from various monastic traditions, including refraining from using any technology other than electric lighting, quitting coffee and alcohol, avoiding physical contact and prolonged eye contact, and eating only unprocessed foods.

Students also have to follow a dress code, with males wearing black shirts and females wearing white shirts, and males and females have to sit on opposite sides of the classroom.

That’s not all.

No makeup, jewelry or hair products. Laptops are prohibited; notes can be taken only with paper and pen. And don’t even think of checking your cellphone for texts or email.

The disciplines are introduced gradually, but there is a full month of intensive restrictions that begins in mid-March:

Students can only eat food in its natural form; nothing processed. They can’t eat when it’s dark, nor speak to anyone while they eat. They must be celibate, foregoing even hugs, handshakes and extended eye contact. No technology except for electric light. They can read for other classes, but news from the outside world is forbidden.

Students are required to confess and acknowledge any transgressions of the rules in their class journals.

There are no exams for the class, which is graded entirely on the basis of participation and personal integrity.

Students see many personal benefits flowing from participation in the class.

As a nursing major at the Ivy League school in Philadelphia, [sophomore Madelyn] Keyser [20, of Castro Valley, California] said she hopes the class will help her become more observant and a better listener to her patients.

Students also have to write in a journal every 30 minutes during their waking hours. And required course research cannot be done online — students must consult books and librarians, or have conversations with religious leaders.

Freshman Rachel Eisenberg said she enrolled because it’s important “to figure out yourself before you can really help other people.”

“It would give me a chance to really listen to myself and focus on my needs and feelings,” said Eisenberg, 18, of Miami.

There were 100 applicants for the course, but this was whittled down to 17 students.

McDaniel’s course sounds like a fascinating way for students to learn about themselves.

via the Houston Chronicle

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Forest monks portrayed in photo exhibition

Venerable Ajahn Cagino, 43, lives in a cave with two snakes and eight bats. The cave is 2km from the nearest village in Mae Hong Son in northern Thailand. Nestled in a deep valley hemmed in by high mountain ranges that border Myanmar, Mae Hong Son is isolated from the outside world and is covered with mist throughout the year.

“I’ve had enough of wandering,” says the Malaysian monk of Thai Forest Tradition, which is a branch of Theravada Buddhism.

For 12 years, Cagino had been walking through the remotest jungles of Thailand, before settling…

Read the rest of this article…

See also a slideshow of the exhibition below.

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Monks in their midst

In a stretch of suburban Raynham, a community of ascetics is planning what may be the largest Thai Buddhist temple in the hemisphere

A quiet neighborhood along Raynham’s South Street East is slated to have an unlikely addition soon to its mix of modest homes and small businesses: an ornate Thai Buddhist wat, or temple, the likes of which won’t be found anywhere outside of Thailand, according to its principal designing architect.

The temple, to be called Wat Nawamintararachutis, or NMR Center, will celebrate the life of Thailand’s current monarch, who was born in a Cambridge hospital in 1927. Because of the Boston area’s connection to the king, the project has generated great interest both in the Buddhist community and within the government of Thailand. The Thai government has, in fact, agreed to bear the $16 million cost of construction, set to begin next spring, according to Eang Tan, a member of the temple’s board of directors.

Read the rest of this article…

The temple’s design is the fruit of a team of Thai and American architects that worked for five years to create a meditation center that would contain distinctly Thai Buddhist elements as well as some New England style. For example, while the temple will feature the stacked gables common to Thai Buddhist temples, the gables will be shaped more like those found in the region.“We needed to consider the weather conditions as well as the culture,’’ said the project’s lead designing architect, Been Wang, a principal of Architectural Resources Cambridge. “Thai gables have a curved roof shape and an overhang. These are more like New England gables.’’

The result will be a 109,000-square-foot complex with a four-story museum and temple building, sleeping quarters, and a large conference center, all clustered around a spacious courtyard filled with lotus-shaped fountains and fountains with lotuses. Wang said it will be the largest such meditation center outside Thailand.

Richard Cook, a temple member and an adviser for the project as it obtains the necessary permits, said the center will be notable for its size.

“There are recent temples built in New York City and Washington, D.C.,’’ Cook said. “This will be basically twice their size.’’

The only other Thai Buddhist temple in Massachusetts is the Boston Buddha Vararam Temple in Bedford, a small center situated on about 2 acres. There are about 4,000 Thais in the state, according to Laura Medrano, a US Census Bureau official.

The Raynham temple will boast such typical Thai elements as a 180-foot spire, cast in bronze and covered in golf leaf. The spire will be made in Thailand and shipped here.

Thai Buddhists are not new to Raynham’s South Street East neighborhood. A thriving community of devotees, from all over Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, has gathered on weekends for the past four years at a modest farmhouse on the street. They chant and meditate in a small temple room and are counseled by a half-dozen saffron-clad monks. Meanwhile, younger members are schooled in Thai culture and the 2,500-year-old Theravada Buddhist tradition.

That tradition is one of two principal branches of Buddhism. Theravada, which means “way of the elders,’’ is most prominent today in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, according to resources at the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. Its beliefs are drawn from the earliest Pali writings, which are considered the most accurate source of teachings of the historical Buddha, who lived in India 2,500 years ago. The ideal spiritual model of Theravada Buddhism is attaining nirvana, where all obstacles and desires are extinguished.

Mahayana Buddhism, the other principal branch, was the first to be practiced in the United States, brought by Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the 19th century. The traditions of this branch of Buddhism are more flexible, drawn from a number of later teachings not related to the historic Buddha. In the Mahayana tradition, the ideal is a fully enlightened being who is engaged in helping others to become free of their suffering.

About 50 devotees gather at the Raynham farmhouse on a typical weekend, but during major celebrations that number can soar to 500.

The dream of this tightly knit religious community has been to one day construct an expansive Thai Buddhist meditation center in the Boston area.

The members had decided the complex would celebrate King Rama IX, Bhumibol Adulyadej, of Thailand, who was born in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge and has been king since 1946.

“When we were looking for land, we looked in Boston, but we needed more space,’’ said Natthapat Saisena, a member of the Thai architect team. In 2006, a Thai Buddhist abbot who had helped develop a number of other temples in the United States bought the 50-acre Raynham property.

Abbot Phra Promwachirayan then traveled the world studying the elements of various Thai Buddhist temples.

“He then told me his vision,’’ said Wang. “This will be East meets West.’’

The complex will sit about 150 feet from the street, with the lot’s natural downward slope making the size of the buildings less obtrusive. Neighboring properties will be at least 100 feet away. About 6 of the 50 acres will be developed.

With the exception of the local building permit, which is pending, all approvals for the project are in hand, temple officials said.

One recent Sunday, 80 or so members of the temple community turned out at the farmhouse to get a look at a three-dimensional model of the NMR Center. Architects were on hand to talk about the project, scheduled for completion in 2012.

Newton resident Sue Sihatrai, a member of the Thai Buddhist community since 2002, said she looks forward to the groundbreaking.

“I was here when they first started wanting to build a Buddhist center,’’ she said. “I think it will be one of the most beautiful temples in the world. It will be perfect.’’

The Thai Buddhist tradition includes visiting the temple and bringing offerings to monks, who have few possessions of their own. In Thailand, the monks also go into the village for offerings each day, something that’s not possible in Raynham. At the recent gathering, community members organized baskets of gifts for them, like fruit and vegetables, packets of sticky rice and bananas neatly wrapped in banana leaves, and dry goods such as paper towels, toothpaste, and soap.

It’s likely to be a much busier scene in the future.

Once the new center is complete, 15 to 20 monks will reside on the Raynham property. Its dormitory will have room for 100, more than large enough to accommodate visiting monks and those staying for weekend meditation and cultural instruction.

As it is, the Raynham farmhouse already attracts people who come because they are interested in meditation, whether they are Buddhist or not.

“I came from secular meditation that evolved out of Thai Buddhist meditation,’’ said Ken Pitts, who moved to North Attleborough a year ago.

“I and several other people who come here are affiliated with a group in Arlington. Some are recovering substance abusers, and the monks are trained in counseling. Others are Americans interested in meditation.’’

Pitts, a regular visitor, said he tutors the monks in English and provides transportation when they run errands; one of them teaches a class at a nearby community college. He said he expects interest in the temple from those outside the Thai community to grow when the new center is completed.

Most Raynham residents have welcomed the Thai Buddhists to town.

“I’ve gone over and walked the property and was invited to stay for lunch,’’ said Eric Hebert, who lives nearby with his wife, Jennifer.

“From the pictures and models they have, it looks like it’s going to be a nice place.’’

Christine Legere can be reached at christinelegere@yahoo.com.

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Act Normal: The making of…

Act Normal: A Documentary by Olaf de FleurRobert T. Edison was born and raised in Nottingham, England. When he was fourteen years old he began to practice Buddhism. At eighteen he became a monk and went to Thailand where, for a decade, he spent his time in monasteries as Bhikkhu Dhammanando.

He became the first Buddhist monk in Iceland when he moved there in 1994 and founded a Buddhist sect.

Here director Olaf de Fleur talks about the 10-year making of his documentary, Act Normal, as he followed the progress of Robert/Dhammanando from monasticism to lay life and back again.

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Act Normal: The cultural confusions of an English monk in Thailand

Act Normal: A Documentary by Olaf de FleurRobert T. Edison was born and raised in Nottingham, England. When he was fourteen years old he began to practice Buddhism. At eighteen he became a monk and went to Thailand where, for a decade, he spent his time in monasteries as Bhikkhu Dhammanando.

He became the first Buddhist monk in Iceland when he moved there in 1994 and founded a Buddhist sect.

In the title sequence from the documentary, Act Normal, directed by Olaf de Fleur, Dhammanando shares an amusing story about mistaking the Thai national anthem for an advertisement.

Act Normal can be purchased from Poppoli Pictures.

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Act Normal: The origin of suffering

Robert T. Edison was born and raised in Nottingham, England. When he was fourteen years old he began to practice Buddhism. At eighteen he became a monk and went to Thailand where, for a decade, he spent his time in monasteries.

He became the first Buddhist monk in Iceland when he moved there in 1994 and founded a Buddhist sect.

In this clip, from the documentary, Act Normal, directed by Olaf de Fleur, Edison, at that time a monk in Thailand, contrasts the Buddhist explanation of the cause of suffering with the explanations from theistic religion.

Act Normal can be purchased from Poppoli Pictures.

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Act Normal: Is Buddhist monasticism escapist?

Act Normal: A Documentary by Olaf de FleurRobert T. Edison was born and raised in Nottingham, England. When he was fourteen years old he began to practice Buddhism. At eighteen he became a monk and went to Thailand where, for a decade, he spent his time in monasteries.

He became the first Buddhist monk in Iceland when he moved there in 1994 and founded a Buddhist sect.

In this clip, from the documentary, Act Normal, directed by Olaf de Fleur, Edison, at that time a monk in Thailand, is asked whether his life is escapist.

Act Normal can be purchased from Poppoli Pictures.

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Act Normal: A Search For Love

Act Normal: A Documentary by Olaf de FleurA Buddhist monk decides to disrobe and get married after sixteen years of monkhood. This documentary, directed by Olaf de Fleur, took ten years to film.

Robert T. Edison was born and raised in Nottingham, England. When he was fourteen years old he began to practice Buddhism. At eighteen he became a monk and went to Thailand where, for a decade, he spent his time in monasteries.

He became the first Buddhist monk in Iceland when he moved there in 1994 and founded a Buddhist sect. Five years later Robert decided to “disrobe” and get married. After sixteen years of celibacy Robert had to deal with being “normal” – getting employment, paying his bills and dealing with the needs of his partner.

After four years in “the real world” Robert traveled back to Thailand to become a monk again.

Act Normal was filmed from 1994 to 2006 and is a unique exploration of one man’s twelve-year search for some kind of love.

Act Normal can be purchased from Poppoli Pictures.

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