Shambhala

A year ago this week, Ted Rose abandoned his New York City urban life and headed for the American West. He lives year-round at the Shambhala Mountain Center in the Colorado Rockies. In part three of a week-long series, he talks about how he sometimes needs a retreat from his retreat.

Announcer: This week we’ve been hearing from commentator Ted Rose. A year ago he traded life in New York for life at a Buddhist Retreat Center in the Colorado Rockies. There he planned on spending a lot of time in meditation and contemplation. He never expected to have to make an escape.

Ted Rose: People come up here to Shambhala Mountain Center, they’re usually looking for a break from the regular world. Up here there’s no Walmart, no cellphone service, and no television — just aspen trees, tall wheatgrass, and lots of talk about meditation. This, as the catalogue says, is a place to be renewed and refreshed. This is a special place.

Sharing my breakfast table with a blissed-out urbanite, over our bowls of granola and yogurt, I sometimes am asked that inevitable question: So, what’s it like to live here all the time? I mention the contemplative camaraderie, and the access to teachers, but I rarely discuss my furtive visits to Motel 6.

When I lived in New York City, however socially I spent my days and nights, I could always wake up and enjoy breakfast in the sanctuary of my apartment. I assumed I’d get more of these moments when I moved to a Buddhist retreat in the middle of the Colorado Rockies. In fact, as a staff member at a public Center, I’d signed on to be a permanent host.

And up here, I don’t really have a functioning sanctuary. My home is a beat-up old trailer, and it lacks a kitchen and running water. My neighbors, the mice and the bears, keep me from storing much food there. Any time I want to do something social, like eat or take a shower, I’m on duty. My once sacred breakfast time is now open to anyone who sidles up to my table in the commons dining hall

I’ve learned to be much more gregarious, but sometimes I need some space. And earning just a few hundred dollars a month, I don’t have a lot of money to buy it. That’s how Motel 6 has become my retreat for my retreat.

Attached to the off-ramp of the local Interstate, displaying the cost of a single room occupancy in red lights for all motorists to see, Motel 6 is deliciously banal.

I normally speak to only one person when I visit Motel 6 — the check-in clerk behind the plexiglass screen. The only thing I bring into my room is food — normally three slices of pizza: two for dinner and one for breakfast. My Motel 6 room is equipped with the mundane efficiencies that my picturesque home manages to lack: a sink, a shower, and most important, a cable television.

I’ve been meditating for 3 years, but I’ve been watching TV for decades, and following my breath rarely provides the feeling of simple relaxation, of ease and contentment, that I get quite reliably by spending the night alone on a cheap motel bed.

When it’s time to leave Motel 6 I’m usually ready to go. I leave the plastic key on the dresser and say goodbye to no one and then get in my car and head back up to the mountains, ready to return to my special place.

Witness to a cremation (National Public Radio)

August 4, 2004

Announcer: When commentator Ted Rose moved from New York City to the Shambhala Mountain Center, a Buddhist retreat in the Colorado Rockies, people talked about the meditation schedules and the communal eating. No one mentioned the center’s open-air crematorium.

Ted Rose: The invitation I received to watch a corpse burn on a funeral pyre came as a complete surprise. I wasn’t in a foreign country and had no connection to the deceased. I had assumed the unusual ceremony was just for family and friends. In fact, I was told it was open to the public.

I walked by Shambhala Mountain Center’s funeral pyre often. It is located just a few hundred yards away from the beat-up old trailer I’ve lived in for the past year, since trading my New York life for one at this Buddhist retreat in the Colorado Rockies.

The pyre is a simple structure: a concrete slab with room at the bottom for wood and a grate near the top for a body. It looks like an oversized barbecue pit, which is precisely what it is. Despite our religious diversity, we Americans tend to treat our dead bodies quite similarly. When my grandfather died, my family left the details to professionals. I took only about five seconds to commune with my father’s father, lying in his casket at a home. And within a couple hours, I was standing on some AstroTurf at the cemetery, watching a shiny wood box descent into darkness.

The whole idea of an open pyre ceremony made me uncomfortable, so I begged off attending that first one. Then a pioneering Buddhist psychologist and teacher named Ed Podvol succumbed to cancer and his cremation was scheduled. This time I did not have an easy out. The center employed me as its resident shrine keeper. I would witness this cremation on the clock.

The day of the event was windy and cold. The crowd gathered on a meadow. A truck pulled up and six pallbearers reached inside. They emerged with a body wrapped in a white shroud. Ed Podvols’ hips dropped slightly and his knees rose as they moved him. He looked less like a corpse and more like a newborn baby. I wasn’t witnessing as much as gawking.

The scene felt a little like a civil ceremony, but it was also like a car crash where some guilty curiosity was being sated. A teacher introduced the ceremony and led the assembly in some chanting. Five minutes into the service Shambhala‘s head fireman lit the dry wood. The pyre erupted. There was no avoiding the scene. If I closed my eyes I still heard the wood crackling. If I plugged my ears I still smelt the condensed butter fat used to fuel the fire. If I pinched my nose, the cold dry air still pounded my bones.

The scene felt undeniably foreign but I couldn’t figure out why. Americans have plenty of opportunities to see dead bodies. And these days corpses are cremated all the time. I suspect it was the unusually blunt combination: an import from the Indian subcontinent designed to acknowledge the finality of the situation — the end of this human life.

At one point a white stick jutted out from the pyre. It was a remnant of Ed Podvol’s right arm. I experienced a minor freak-out. I was watching a human body burn, I told myself, so of course it is a little messy, just as a human birth is messy. This neat rationalization made some sense, at the time.

I don’t know whether I’ll attend the next cremation. I’m no longer the shrine-keeper so I’ll be free of that obligation. On the other hand I recently joined Shambhala’s fire crew. The next time the center has a body to burn, if the head firefighter needs help, he may end up asking me.

Awareness in every sip (Beliefnet)

August 3, 2004

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When I want a convenient break from Shambhala Mountain Center, the Buddhist retreat where I live and work, I head to a dark, smoky bar called the Red Feather Café. The Café isn’t the only dive bar in western Larimer County, Colorado, but it is the only one with two pool tables, good service, and great pub food. Half of the regulars are the local ranchers while the other half are fellow Buddhists from Shambhala Mountain. Almost any night of the week, I can find both ranchers and Buddhists shooting pool at one of the two tables or sitting at the bar, matching each other drink for drink.

Check your Sutras and you’ll see that the basic Buddhist teachings on alcohol consumption are quite clear. Alcohol, the Buddha taught more than 2,000 years ago, is a poison that clouds the inherent clarity of the mind. That timeless logic would explain why, if you visit a typical American Buddhist community or meditation center, you are likely to be entering an alcohol-free zone.

Yet there is no prohibition on frequenting the Café or even on drinking alcohol here at Shambhala Mountain. While public consumption of hard liquor is verboten, wine and beer are regularly offered at private parties, public events and special dinners–most of the places you might see alcohol in regular American life. It wasn’t long before I started wondering: Why isn’t my Buddhist retreat center on the wagon?

The answer, like most involving Buddhist practices, lies in the particular lineage of teachings represented here at Shambhala Mountain. Acharya Bill McKeever, Shambhala Mountain’s resident teacher, explained how drinking alcohol in certain contexts is considered one of the many advanced practices offered in Shambhala’s Tibetan Vajrayana tradition. It is called “mindful drinking.”…

Here’s the basic idea: Once a meditator has developed basic Buddhist discipline (known as Hinayana training) and adopted the intention to dedicate his or her life to benefit others (the Mahayana view) the practitioner is ready to incorporate Vajrayana teachings, where the simple prohibitions outlined in the Sutras are re-evaluated. When a meditator reaches this point, which often takes a number years in the Shambhala tradition, a dangerous substance like alcohol is viewed as a potential aide for the practitioner. Within the context of strong discipline and clear intention, alcohol holds the possibility of no longer acting as a conventional escape, but instead being a tool for loosening the subtle clinging of ego.

“Imagine you are enjoying a picnic in a beautiful spot with your lover,” says McKeever. “You want for nothing in this situation.” If you choose to drink at this moment, theoretically, you have no reason to overdo it. You’ll drink just enough to relax, to appreciate your situation and, as McKeever puts it, “to help your ego go to sleep.”

That is why for centuries in the Kagyü monasteries scattered across the high plains of Tibet, monks incorporated alcohol into their esoteric Vajrayana practices. (These Tantric rituals have historically been viewed skeptically by more straitlaced Buddhists around the world.) When one of those Vajrayana lamas, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, fled Tibet during the Chinese invasion of the country, he brought his teachings, including those on the use of alcohol, to the West.

This month, more than 100 people have gathered at Shambhala Mountain Center to become full-fledged Vajrayana practitioners. In the seventies and eighties, long before the Dalai Lama visited Central Park, Chögyam Trungpa taught Vajrayana Buddhism in North America, establishing hundreds of Shambhala meditation centers including this rustic retreat in the Rockies. For many people, this Vajrayana Seminary is the culminating event after years of study and practice. The Vajrayana students meet every morning in a large white tent in the center of campus, spending their days mixing meditation, talks, and study groups. At some point, they will be given a lesson in mindful drinking.

As a relatively new student who has not yet attended Vajrayana seminary, I’ve never experienced this lesson, but I’ve been told that it is much different than a normal night at the bar. Imagine people seated in lotus position with cups of sake (rice wine) in front of them. McKeever recalled the lessons Trungpa Rinpoche offered him decades ago. “He had us take three sips and then look at the effect on our mind. ‘Have you relaxed?’ he’d ask. ‘Is your mind extending into space?’ If so, stop there.” The goal of drinking mindfully is to bring full awareness to every sip.

Once instructed in this setting, Vajrayana students begin incorporating the practice into regular ritual feasts, which are not unlike Jewish Passover seders, where alcohol is served. “If you’re really paying attention to alcohol’s effect on your mind, those feasts can be very illuminating,” one Vajrayana student told me. “Literally, everything is brighter.” The practice acknowledges an intuitive truth: a little alcohol can be a useful thing.

The problem out in the real world is that it is hard to know where the line between utility and abuse lies. It turns out that, despite their mindful drinking lessons, it is hard for the people in Shambhala, too.

“When the formal feasts work, they can be great, but sometimes people drink too much and it can be a disaster,” says John Ohm, a resident at Shambhala Mountain center, a Vajrayana practitioner and a recovering alcoholic.

That’s in a formal setting. The issue gets even muddier in plain old social contexts. While few fellow Buddhists claim to be practicing “mindful drinking” when I see them out at the Café, the community is remarkably tolerant of alcohol. Drunkenness is about as prevalent up here as it was when I lived in New York. When a visitor or a new arrival inevitably questions all the drinking, it is common for an old hand to justify the excessive behavior by explaining that Shambhala Mountain is a “Vajrayana practice community.”

People sometimes invoke the personal example of Chögyam Trungpa, who was by all accounts a prolific drinker who died in 1987. McKeever says that Trungpa Rinpoche implored his students to follow his teachings, not his personal embodiment of them, but it was a distinction that many of his students missed. “We just didn’t get it,” he says. “Because we’re Buddhists we think we’re special, but drunkenness is drunkenness.”

Ohm points out that mindful drinking should be seen as one valid tool for practice within a tradition remarkable for its wide variety of effective tools. And a dangerous one for people with an alcohol problem. “It is suicide for some people,” he says. ” ‘Mindful drinking’ can be such an easy excuse.”

Vajrayana practitioners need only remember the context of the mindful drinking lesson in order to use it correctly. Ohm recalls a comment made by a fellow recovering alcoholic Buddhist: “When I get to the point where I can walk through fire or fly through the air, then I’m ready to try drinking again.”

Without the formal Vajrayana lessons, most of us are left to get the gist on our own. But the heart of this teaching, like so many of the Buddhist instructions, is easily accessible for any individual willing to maintain an open, honest perspective.

So I’ve turned a few visits to the Café into my own mindful drinking laboratory. On the nights when I order one or two beers, I’ve noticed that I feel relaxed and open. If I pick up a pool cue on those nights, I can even hang in a game with the local ranchers. Then there are nights when I order that third beer. When that happens, my mood gets a little more erratic. I become either giddy or sullen. And my pool game? Don’t ask.

Rare show of Bhutanese Buddhist culture in US (New Kerala, India)

July 27, 2004

Perhaps for the first time, New York is getting a glimpse of the Buddhist traditions of Bhutan. Asia Society and the Shambhala Meditation Centre are co-hosting a series on the Buddhist traditions of Bhutan, including a performance of sacred dance, sand mandala painting, lectures and teachings by a group of Bhutanese monks from the Thimphu Tashi Chodzong monastery in the capital of Bhutan.

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Yoga, more popular than ever, flexes body and mind (Seattle Times)

April 28, 2004

Tyrone Beason, Seattle Times: Ever since Oprah featured a segment on yoga and Madonna beat back her nasty side with namastes, Americans can’t get enough of the ancient Indian practice.

Though 5,000 years old, yoga has boomed in recent years, with private instructors, gyms, community centers, even churches offering classes to help people wind down, focus, get limber and stay fit.

Yoga Journal magazine estimates that 15 million people in the United States practice yoga, twice as many as five years ago.

The nationally recognized instructor Aadil Palkhivala said when he opened Yoga Centers in Bellevue, Wash., 12 years ago, his was the only such facility in the area. Today there are dozens of yoga studios – “within walking distance,” he joked.

So what’s behind the yoga craze?

For starters, Americans are more passionate about fitness in general, instructors say. At the same time, yoga’s exotic image has transformed into one that appeals to mainstream, Western tastes.

More important, yoga seems to work.

Yoga emphasizes stretching, building core body strength, controlled breathing, enhanced circulation and deep relaxation.

For these reasons, doctors in this country have started to recommend yoga for their patients based on its value as a fitness routine alone. Coupled with meditation, it is also used to reduce stress and high blood pressure, bolster the immune system and even treat depression. Many cancer and AIDS patients, as well as pregnant women, practice yoga. More vigorous types of yoga – which induce increased heart rates and sweating – have become popular among people who want to lose weight.

“There are very few people, from kids on up to seniors, who wouldn’t benefit from it,” said Dr. Peter McGough, chief of the University of Washington Medicine Factoria Clinic.

McGough noted yoga’s positive effects on musculoskeletal disorders – such as arthritis – in particular.

But while studies in India, Europe and the United States point to yoga’s potential benefits in a number of areas, even some yoga supporters concede more research is needed to track its long-term effects.

Yoga has become so commonplace that it’s easy to lose sight of its roots and original purpose. The word itself is a Sanskrit expression that refers to a “yoke” or “union.” As both a philosophy for living and a physical exercise, yoga unites the mind, body and spirit, bringing mental clarity, health and balance, its adherents say.

The ultimate goal of a yoga student is to reach a state of enlightenment, or ecstasy, through disciplined meditation.

But most Americans practice some form of hatha yoga, which focuses on breathing exercises and striking complex poses, or “asanas,” that encourage flexibility, balance, strength and good energy flow through the body. Traditionally, hatha yoga serves as a foundation for other, more cerebral types.

“Hatha yoga is just the bait,” Palkhivala said in his soothing, breathy delivery. “The mind is much more subtle and the emotions even more subtle.” As students learn the physical techniques and begin to feel the benefits, he said, some may want to venture deeper.

Palkhivala says yoga has become popular as more and more people grapple to find a real purpose in their lives, something to aspire to. They’re seeking spiritual fitness, as well as elastic hamstrings. He believes it’s important for people to shop around for an instructor who can teach not just physical techniques but yoga’s deeper principles.

“There is an urge to find something greater than the humdrum repetition of an unfulfilling existence,” he insisted. “People are beginning to ask the question, ‘So what?’ ”

Whether or not people reach an end to spiritual suffering through yoga, its physical effects alone keep people coming back.

“What yoga does is it moves the body in all different directions,” without the repetitive motion of say, an aerobics routine, said Joseph Rodin, director of Northwest Yoga Festival, a four-day event featuring lectures, yoga classes and performances at Seattle Center that kicks off tomorrow. “It takes your body through its full range of motion.”

Doctors and physical therapists agree yoga benefits a variety of age groups, body types and physical conditions, but they are reluctant to rank it higher than other forms of exercise.

Some people get more pleasure from – and are therefore more likely to stick with – aerobics, pilates or sports, which also promote fitness and stress relief.

New yoga styles are springing up all the time to accommodate different needs, including some people’s desire for a routine that gets the blood pumping.

One of the hottest – literally and figuratively – is bikram yoga, which uses high room temperatures to loosen muscles and promote the release of toxins through sweat.

Whereas the iyengar style of yoga taught at Palkhivala’s studio emphasizes meditation and holding individual poses for long periods to perfect form, bikram yoga involves a set of 26 poses that flow from one to the other. The faster pace and saunalike conditions offer a stimulating cardiovascular workout.

At The Sweat Box on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, “Hot Yoga” instructors crank up the heat to 105-110 degrees Fahrenheit for each 90-minute class in the bikram style.

It may sound excruciating, but the studio’s co-founder, Frankie Oser, said more than 2,300 students have taken classes in 3 1/2 years of business, and many of those are repeat customers.

Oser said Hot Yoga helps deliver more blood to muscles, speeds the breakdown of glucose and fatty acids, improves coordination, makes muscles less prone to injury, reduces heart irregularities and burns fat.

It’s a total body experience, Oser said, “from head to toe, inside and out. … Your whole body is worked out every time you come in.”

McGough advises people with pre-existing medical conditions or who are on certain types of medication – blood-pressure drugs, for example – to consult a doctor before joining a particular yoga class, just to make sure the style is appropriate for them.

While yoga instructors usually ask students about medical concerns before classes begin, most are not equipped to do in-depth screenings. It’s up to the student to bring up any issues.

A person who has especially tight hamstrings, for example, may want to avoid yoga routines that call for strenuous forward bends, because this might lead to injury.

Another aspect of yoga classes that may attract people is the lack of competitiveness.

While yoga students strive to be more self-aware, they also work at being less self-conscious in relation to those around them.

But to eliminate the social pressure altogether, some yoga students prefer one-on-one sessions.

Many instructors offer classes in studios built onto their homes or in neighborhood storefronts. In settings like these, the feeling is more intimate and the embarrassment of making a mistake is minimal, since nobody’s watching.

Jo Leffingwell, a former Seattle theater actress, exercised patience and grace as she coached this reporter through a series of warm-up stretches, breathing exercises and iyengar poses, followed by 10 minutes of meditation and a lesson in yoga teachings, at her studio in Seattle.

Leffingwell explained that just as a person’s mind has tendencies and cravings that lead to an imbalanced life, that person’s body has tendencies that can lead to physical imbalance, discomfort and pain. It could be shortness of breath, an inability to twist in one direction, or simple tightness in the back or legs resulting from a lack of exercise, stress or a previous injury. Yoga, she said, “shows you what the tendencies are in your body and brings you back to a more balanced state.”

She encourages her students, as they bend and flex into position, to take their time and truly “experience the posture.” If you can’t bend over and touch your ankles on the first few visits, or balance your body on one leg, that’s fine.

“What you’re trying to do is be present in your body, moment by moment,” she said.

Leffingwell explained that an essential part of yoga study is learning sutras, or words of wisdom about yoga, the self and the universe, many of which have been passed along for thousands of years.

One prominent idea embodied in both the physical and mental aspects of yoga is the belief that inside each person is a being that “sees” everything clearly. Some might think of it as the conscience, or intuition.

The problem for many people, Leffingwell said, is that they make decisions that contradict their own higher instincts. They get swept away by a jumble of thoughts, memories, fears, frustrations, expectations and desires, and life loses focus and meaning.

While many experts are pleased that people are introducing themselves to more physical types of yoga, they say the greatest path to a healthy life is connecting with that inner being.

“Yoga helps bring out what you are,” Palkhivala said. “You have to face it, and sometimes it’s not pleasant.”

But if mastering yoga poses and getting a good workout are all you’re looking for, that’s OK, too, he said.

“The house is huge,” Palkhivala said, referring to all the yoga choices people have available to them. “Where you want to live in it is your choice.”

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YOGA TIPS FROM THE EXPERTS

– Shop around and find an instructor whose technique and teaching style suit you. This is very important, instructors say. Many yoga teachers are poorly trained or don’t work well with clients. If you don’t have a good feeling about the first class or two, move on.

-Take it easy. Yoga is about self-awareness, but also patience. You shouldn’t expect to be able to perform every asana, or yoga pose, after a couple of tries. Some require a high level of flexibility, so you may have to work your way up to them. Trying too hard at the beginning also may lead to muscle and joint injury. Focus instead on breathing deeply and understanding how your body moves and where the most tension occurs. Let the instructor know about any past injuries and health concerns before the class begins.

-Don’t worry about your neighbors. Yoga is not a competitive sport, so if the student next to you can fold himself in half while standing, don’t be discouraged. Focus on your own ability level and progress.

-Go with your emotions. Yoga is ultimately about transcendence and liberation – from pain, memories, anxiety, this month’s household budget, everything that keeps you from being at peace with yourself. Think of yoga as a way of identifying obstacles in the mind and body and working through them.

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YOGA GLOSSARY

-Yoga (YOH ga) – Sanskrit for “yoke” or “union,” in this case, a union of mind, body and spirit. There are eight progressive “limbs” in yoga ranging from moral discipline, self-restraint, posture, breath control, sensory inhibition, concentration and meditation to ecstasy, all leading to “liberation.”

-Asana (AH suh nuh) – A physical posture, or yoga pose.

-Hatha (HAH thuh) – The method of yoga most practiced in the United States, focusing on asanas and breathing skills. Many styles of yoga fit under this umbrella, from slower-paced iyengar yoga to flowing ashtanga yoga to bikram or “Hot Yoga.”

-Ashtanga (Ahsh TONG guh) – A type of yoga that uses a fast-paced series of postures in a nonstop sequence, providing a solid workout. A variation is called “Power Yoga.”

-Bikram (BEE krum) – Another flowing style of yoga that incorporates temperatures over 100 degrees to help loosen muscles and cleanse the body through sweat. Also called “Hot Yoga.”

-Viniyoga (VEN ee yo guh) – A milder category of yoga that is tailored to the emotional and physical needs of the student.

-Iyengar (I YEN gar) – This popular yoga features a slower pace, focusing on precision and proper alignment. Students breathe methodically and hold each posture for extended periods, working to refine them over time. Students can use props, such as blocks and straps, to help achieve their postures.

-Ananda (Ah NAHN da) – A more spiritual form of hatha yoga that uses breathing, postures, silent affirmations and meditation.

-Namaste (Nah mas TAY) – A traditional yoga salutation meaning, “I bow to you.” It’s one person’s humble recognition of another’s soul. To give the greeting, press the hands together at the chest, as in prayer, close your eyes, and bow your head. It’s OK, but not customary, to say the word aloud.

-Pranayama (Prah nah YA ma) – Breath-control exercise.

-Mantra (MAHN trah) – A sacred sound that has a transforming effect on the person saying it.

-Om – A common mantra, just one syllable but spoken in a deep, resonant, elongated breath.

-Sources: Yoga Journal, Joseph Rodin, Aadil Palkhivala and Jo Leffingwell

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RESOURCES

-Yoga Journal has an online site with interviews and practical information on various types of yoga, as well a directory of yoga studios at www.yogajournal.com.

Buddhist monk’s big Inland plans (Press Enterprise, California)

March 8, 2004

Original article no longer available…

Henri Brickey, Press Enterprise, California: Nguyen Dat wants Warner Springs meditation center to become one of the largest monasteries in California.

Just finding the Lieu Quan Meditation Center is an exercise in patience. The 10-acre retreat, where one monk has erected some of the largest Buddhist statues in the country, is on a dead-end road about 30 miles southeast of Temecula.

“Some people get overly curious when they find this place and start walking around … looking into windows,” said Arnold Bowman, who has lived on the property behind the temple for the past four years.

Ornately carved statues – three weighing more than 100 tons each – are visible from the front of the temple. Roughly a dozen smaller statues are scattered throughout the center.

Toward the back of the meditation center sits an unadorned brick house. Inside, Master Nguyen Dat, who came to the Chihuahua Valley more than 20 years ago from Los Angeles, spends many of his days at the center meditating.

Meditation, Dat says, is the key to cleansing and opening the mind.

“If your mind’s clean, everything’s OK,” Dat said.

Richard Cary, a tow truck driver who lives about 45 minutes south of the temple in Julian, found the Lieu Quan temple five years ago and is one of about 25 people who visit the meditation center regularly. Cary says meditation is a way of escaping from the “constant bombardment of stimulus” so common in American culture.

Dat said he hopes more Americans like Cary will come to the meditation center, which Dat said is open to anyone wanting to learn meditation. A few times each year, a large group of Buddhists from the Los Angeles area travels to the temple for holiday festivals. Other than those times, the center is nearly empty. But Dat wants to change that and is hoping to turn the center into one of the state’s largest Buddhist monasteries within the next decade.

On a recent winter afternoon, Dat, 62, talked about his hopes for the meditation center, where the monk spends much of his time when not teaching at a Buddhist temple in Gardena.

Humble beginnings

Dat arrived in the United States by way of Japan in 1978 with the clothes on his back and $1,000.

After living as a monk at a Buddhist temple in Los Angeles for a few years, Dat wanted to find a place where he could meditate in peace.

“I needed quiet. I needed to leave the city,” said Dat, who studies a sect of Buddhism that stresses quiet meditation.

In 1981, Dat bought five acres in the Chihuahua Valley with money he borrowed from friends along with some savings from money he earned as a landscaper. When he bought the property, the meditation center was home to nothing but dirt and trees.

“Sometimes I stayed here a weekend, five days, one week, one month. I looked like a country man.”

At first, Dat slept on the ground and cooked his food over a campfire. Eventually, he bought an adjacent lot with a small home and started inviting other monks and Buddhist students to the center for meditation retreats.

Dat says he hopes to turn the Lieu Quan Meditation Center into one of the largest live-in Buddhist monasteries in the state, allowing up to 40 students to study at the temple full-time.

In Vietnam, Dat says, there are numerous temples dedicated to Lieu Quan — the monk who lived in the 1700s and founded the branch of Vietnamese Buddhism that Dat studies. Lieu Quan belongs to the Mahayana sect of Buddhism and is a school of Zen, which focuses heavily on meditation.

As a senior monk in the Lieu Quan sect of Buddhism, which only has one other temple in the United States in San Jose, Dat is solely responsible for every aspect of the Warner Springs temple.

“The plan is actually to build a large meditation hall, library and dormitory for monks to live in,” said Cary, who helps Dat with much of the center’s upkeep and maintenance.

Once complete, Dat says, the center will be able to accommodate about 40 full-time practitioners.

The plan for Lieu Quan is ambitious and expensive – somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million, according to Dat, who said he plans to pay for the center’s construction with donations from members of his congregation. The largest Buddhist monastery in the state is in the Los Angeles suburb of Hacienda Heights, where the 15-acre Hsi Lai Temple was built 15 years ago at a cost of $30 million.

While it’s nothing like Hsi Lai, Dat is making progress at the Warner Springs temple. Since 1998, Dat has been adorning the Lieu Quan Meditation Center with large Buddhist statues, which are delivered from Vietnam in pieces and then assembled by Dat and a small crew of helpers.

Impressive sight

At 45 feet long, the reclining Buddha statue at the rear of the temple is one of the largest reclining statues in United States, according to Dat. While other temples have larger statues, such as the 102-foot-tall Stupa of Dharmakaya at the Rocky Mountain Shambhala Center in Colorado, the statues in Warner Springs still inspire awe.

Another massive statue at Lieu Quan measures more than 20 feet in height. An even bigger one came from Vietnam five months ago and is 30 feet tall.

The statues, which are carved from stone, cost more than $100,000 each and are paid for through donations made by members of Dat’s congregation, Dat said.

Until the monastery can be built, the larger-than-life sculptures will continue to spend most of their time alone at the center with Master Dat.

Healing thoughts

December 1, 2003

Elizabeth Large, Baltimore Sun: A funny thing happened to meditation on the way to the 21st century. It got demystified, and in the process became acceptable to mainstream America.

You won’t hear people talking about Nirvana much with today’s Westernized meditation, and there’s hardly a crystal in sight. Instead scientists are studying Buddhist monks with electroencephalographs and magnetic resonance imaging. Health care professionals are recommending meditation when drugs and other therapies don’t work, and sometimes when they do — they may call it a “relaxation technique,” to avoid the m-word.

Meditation, a discipline nearly as old as human life and a mainstay of Eastern spirituality, has gained reluctant acceptance as a treatment for everything from high blood pressure to attention deficit disorder. By sitting quietly and concentrating on a word, breath or image, meditators can put themselves into a state of deep relaxation. Recent scientific studies have shown the process may boost the immune system, control pain and lower stress.

“Its effectiveness has been fairly well-established with controlled research,” says Glenn Schiraldi, who is on the stress management faculty of the University of Maryland, College Park Department of Public and Community Health. Schiraldi meditates 10 or 15 minutes every morning. “It creates changes in the body opposite in every way to stress, and it’s intrinsically pleasant to do.”

Several months ago, an unusual conference took place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tibetan Buddhist monks and their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, met with leading U.S. neuroscientists and behavioral researchers to plan future studies. The conference sold out to an audience of 1,200 (most of them scientists) and had a waiting list of 1,600.

“Meditation works,” a cover story in Time magazine proclaimed this summer, detailing the scientific research that shows it can profoundly affect the body and actually reshape the brain. Millions of Americans seem to agree. As alternative medical treatments go, meditation seems to have the most clear-cut benefits, the kind that can be demonstrated in the lab (although the article also poked fun at the process, expressing the ambivalence many Americans still feel about it).

While it’s true that meditation is being stripped of the mystical trappings that make Westerners uneasy — the chanting, incense and Sanskrit mantras (a repeated word or phrase to quiet the mind) — people who start practicing for health reasons often end up finding the spirituality of meditation on their own. Reaching Nirvana might be even better than, say, controlling migraines.

A few months ago, Bob Parrott, a 49-year-old car salesman who lives in Abingdon, Md., was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer. He started to meditate daily, using a bargain-table book he picked up at a Barnes & Noble as a guide. When he talks about the benefits of meditating, he doesn’t mention pain or stress, or the fact that he’s able to tolerate the radiation treatments better.

“The system has helped me live in the here and now,” he says. “I’m not wearing any of my hats. I’m not a car salesman. Not a husband. Not a father. The discovery of a deeper self erases a lot of the fear of mortality.”

The short-term positive effects of meditation on the nervous system have been generally accepted in the United States ever since the best seller “Relaxation Response” by a Harvard cardiologist, Herbert Benson, was published in 1975. The latest science suggests meditation can have long-term health benefits, maybe even life-extending ones. Sophisticated scans have shown it can actually rewire the brain.

You don’t need any special equipment to practice, although a whole industry has sprung up in the last few years selling cushions, clothes, audio and videotapes, books and focusing aids like meditation crystals. You don’t have to wait for an appointment or worry about whether your health insurance will pay for it. And you don’t have to be a New Age kook.

Lisa Sanders, a Towson, Md., graduate student whose field is human resources development, has been practicing for the last three years. Three or four evenings a week she goes into her bedroom, puts on a compact disc of meditation music she bought at Best Buy, sits with her legs crossed and meditates for 15 or 20 minutes.

“I relax, I get a new start on whatever I’m into, it calms me down,” she says.

If scientists were recording the 23-year-old’s EEGs as she focuses on her breathing, shuts out the outside world and enters a meditative state, they would find that the activity in the areas of her brain that process sensory information slows down. Conscious thought decreases and relaxation increases.

In a small but intriguing study, Richard Davidson, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found that “mindfulness meditation” — focusing on the present moment and appreciating it fully — seems to increase activity in the area of the brain associated with lower anxiety and a more optimistic outlook in general, a result that lasts after the meditation practice ends. His research team also studied immune function by giving participants in the study flu shots. Two months later those who meditated had developed significantly more antibodies to the vaccine than the control group.

So why isn’t everyone meditating? For one thing, it isn’t easy. Getting your mind to focus on the present and become quiet isn’t something Westerners are comfortable doing – oms or no oms. Meditating takes patience and perseverance. Buddhists call it “meditation practice” for a reason. To get good at it, you have to do it daily.

But meditation does have a major advantage over other alternative medicines. Doctors and hospitals are comfortable suggesting patients try it because the only downside is feeling foolish or getting bored. No one is sticking needles in patients or manipulating their spines. They aren’t taking herbal supplements not regulated by the FDA. Even the sickest patients don’t require supervision, just a little gentle instruction and an open mind.

“There are a thousand ways to meditate,” says stress management expert Glenn Schiraldi. You don’t have to sit cross-legged or empty your mind of conscious thought.

And there are a thousand different reasons to meditate. Tibetan Buddhists believe that you can connect with your “true, happy nature” by meditating — all the things that make humans good. Other schools of thought feel meditation can put you in touch with divine nature, or God. Most cultures have used meditation in some form, including Aborigines and American Indians.

You may want to try meditating simply as a relaxation technique, because you’re feeling stressed out or you’re not sleeping well. Whatever your reason, getting started is the easy part.

Here’s how:

Get some help. It might be a book or a tape or the Internet, but another person is best. “We all have misconceptions when we start out,” says Chris Kreeger, a meditation instructor at the Shambhala Center in Baltimore. For instance, he says, “It’s not about not having thoughts. It’s more about not being attached to them.”
Find a place to practice. It should be quiet, and you should be comfortable there. “Setting up a place cues us,” says Baltimore psychologist Elaine Yamada. “It tells our bodies this is the time to be in that quiet way.”
Make a commitment to practice on a daily basis, even if only for a few minutes.
Close or half close your eyes and pick a word or a phrase to say over and over. Its rhythm will help you focus. It could be in the form of a prayer if that appeals to you, such as one of Kreeger’s suggestions, “Be still and know that I am God.” Or it could be a syllable like “om.” “Any phrase that resonates with you will do,” says Yamada.
Or pay attention to your breath. Concentrate on the sensation of breathing to the exclusion of everything else.
Let any thoughts that intrude float away like a leaf on the river. With practice, distracting thoughts will subside.

Original article no longer available.

The Buddha of suburbia

September 14, 2003