Photo: Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, 93, is shown seated at the KTD Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Woodstock, N.Y., where he is the abbot. (Photos: Karen Michel)
Editor’s note: The Dalai Lama's 80th birthday has been a cause for celebration internationally, but nowhere more deeply than in the United States, where Tibetan Buddhism has taken root in the past two generations. Public radio producer Karen Michel recently visited a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in upstate New York to learn why Tibetan Buddhism has become appealing to so many Westerners, such as American baby boomer Kathy Wesley, who became a lama three decades ago. Michel produced this story for public radio’s America Abroad supported by the Journalists in Aging Fellows program of New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America with sponsorship from the Archstone Foundation. Listen to the original audio report at America Abroad Media.
WOODSTOCK, N.Y.--Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (KTD) is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery on a windy mountain road in Woodstock, N.Y. It's considered an auspicious site, protected by a mountain to the north and overlooking a reservoir with the same name as the first Buddhist king of India.
Founded in the mid-1970s as a place to keep and spread the authentic teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, KTD reminds its president, Khenpo Karma Tenkyong, age 36, of his Tibetan homeland. It looks so authentic that director Martin Scorcese used the main shrine room for scenes in his 1997 film Kundun.
Buddhism Moved, Morphed, Adapted
As in many religions, Buddhism has moved and morphed, adapting to the ways of its practitioners, as it has in America. In Zen Buddhism, there's austerity: The colors are subdued, decoration minimal, rituals simple and--quiet.
Tibetan Buddhism is nothing like that--no surface unembellished by primary colors and accents of gold; it's visually dense, and liturgically complex.
In Woodstock, Khenpo Tenkyong leads a ceremony punctuated by a drum and cymbals. The chanting is in Tibetan, although he is the only native speaker in the small shrine room, pungent with incense.
The ceremony, called a puja, honors Mahakala, a visual representation of anger, depicted in a painting as a dark-colored creature with fangs, surrounded by flames, although this fearsome
Photo: Lama Kathy Wesley
image is used as another aspect of key teachings of the Buddha: The importance of loving kindness toward and compassion for all beings.
Six practitioners sit on round cushions. Half wear traditional Tibetan Buddhist robes of deep red and mustard yellow, the rest, like Kay Larson, are in civilian clothes.
“I love the noisy expression. I love the always-something-going-on aspects, but I also miss the silence,” Larson said, referring to the silence of Zen, which she practiced for a decade before coming to KTD a dozen years ago.
Explaining that she finds the emotional experience at KTD more positive, Larson noted, “All the Buddhist practices at their core are identical. They all come out of the Buddhist teachings about mind and about how suffering is created and how I can change my suffering by understanding how to change my mind.”
One difference between Zen and Tibetan Buddhism is in how they relate to death. Larson observed, “Zen people say if you're going to die just die. Don't make a fuss about it just die. And then you'll find out on the other side what's going to happen to you.”
But Tibetan Buddhists think about and prepare for death all the time. KDT’s president and resident teacher Khenpo Tenkyong said the death teachings really appeal to westerners, who like an element of control of their own destiny, or what's known as karma--and they want it fast.
Khenpo Tenkyong continued, “Because most laypeople--they just want short and sweet--and before they're dead you know? When we die, nobody's there, so most students recognize this. So that's why they want to practice the death.”
The Oldest Teacher in the West
Westerners may have seen copies of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in gift shops and online purveyors of enlightenment. But that’s just the deep tip of a very deep journey. There are specific, wildly less obtainable teachings about preparing oneself and helping others on their passage through death and toward an auspicious human rebirth.
For that, you need a qualified guide, a teacher. Perhaps no one is more qualified than the still robust, abbot of KDT, Tibetan-born Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, age 93. Khenpo means “precious one” and indicates great learning.
In the large shrine room at KTD, the walls and ceiling are painted a deep yellow; brocade banners in bright colors wrap around the pillars and crossbeams; paintings of revered teachers with silk cloth borders hang near the top of the walls. In front of a huge golden statue of the Buddha sits Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche and his translator.
Perhaps, 80 others are here, including lay people and lamas in robes of red and yellow; Tibetans, Chinese and western visitors from this and other countries, attending a week-long teaching for advanced students about the ejection of consciousness at the time of death, or phowa.
Karthar Rinpoche was a founder of KTD, sent by the Karmapa, who--like the Dalai Lama--is a leader of one of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. KTD wasn't the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the United States; that was in Colorado. Rinpoche is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, teachers in the West, who was born in Tibet and trained by Tibetan masters.
KTD is a flourishing center, where hundreds of people come to learn, and to worship. But a very small subset takes the training to become a lama, a teacher. It's an intense commitment, a literal retreat from friends and family, studying and meditating.
13 Graduating Lamas
On one Saturday morning at KTD, 13 students --seven women and six men--are officially graduating from the three-year retreat. They haven't seen their friends or loved ones for all this time. KTD’s Lama Karma Drodul says that most western students aren't willing to put in the work.
”Westerners are hungry for realization. And patience is extremely important and learning very good, but sometimes we tend to leave everything on paper, write down: ‘Weekend teaching, had wonderful time, teaching brilliant.’ But simply having wonderful feeling doesn't capture the meaning of dharma. Practice is extremely important,” he said.
Kathy Wesley completed her three-year retreat to become a lama in 1976. Now she leads a Tibetan Buddhist center in Columbus, Ohio.
“What I really find moving about the Tibetan path is it is so pragmatic,” she said. “And it also talks about dealing with your everyday mental afflictions: How to deal with your anger, how to deal with your sadness, how to deal with jealousy and competitiveness, how to deal with impatience and resentments and all of these things. Learning all of these techniques of meditation and putting them together, I feel--this is to me what is the richness of Tibetan Buddhism.”
Lama Kathy and other western lamas are instrumental in adapting Tibetan and other forms of Buddhism for the West. The teachings are shorter and questions are encouraged. KTD President Khenpo Karma Tenkyang has only been in the U.S. for a year and a half. But he feels that, just as Buddhism has always adapted to different cultures, it won't be much longer before Tibetan Buddhism becomes--American Buddhism.