Kumbum Chamtse Ling Monastery

"Our escape route was long and hard for people more used to the sheltered life of Lhasa." My Land and My People by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Tenzin Gyatso, as he is customarily named, more often called the 'Dalai Lama,' especially in the West,approves and supports  the Tibetan Mongolian Cultural Center, the Kumbum Chamtse Ling monastery located in Bloomington, Indian; it celebrates and enjoys a degree of autonomy unknown in its original homeland. Today, while Tibet remains embroiled in relations with China, Mongolia enjoys a large measure of autonomy.

The establishment of this monastery on American soil is an important moment in American Buddhism. Not to be overlooked, it is an active monastery devoted to Mahayanan principles with its resident abbot, Arjia Rinpoche; this pivotal development, is a source of pride to the growing U.S. population of Mongolians and the few of Tibetan ancestry. The community now forming around the monastery in Bloomington, Indiana is decidedly an interfaith community, as Buddhism itself was once a persecuted and repressed faith, there has been a flowering of compassion regarding the beliefs of others. Still true today, in some parts of the world, Buddhism, like other faith communities, remains suppressed and scarcely tolerated.

Westerners, who through simple unfamiliarity with one of the great faiths of the world, have over the course of the past 50 years regarded this Eastern philosophy with varying degrees of suspicion. Others not comprehending that its message is one of peace, faith and salvation, have taken to Buddhism due to a notion of the exotic. Yet Buddhism in its forms, shares much with other faiths, far more familiar in the west, especially to Orthodox Christians and Jews whose traditions of scholarship, teaching and monastic activities in several respects mirror those of their Buddhist brothers and sisters.

Due to political events occurring more than 50 years ago, Tenzin Gyatso was forced to flee his homeland as a young man. The majority of his life has been lived in exile. Due to China's claims to Tibetan and Mongolian territories, as well as areas of Himalaya, the traditions of this part of the world especially its religious foundations, have been severely tested by forced rule. 

In his book, My Land and My People, first published in English in 1962, the thoughts and impressions of Tenzin Gyatso are made available to general English readership for the first time. He writes, "If you hit a man on the skull and break his skull, you can hardly expect him to be friendly. This [thought] thoroughly angered the Chinese.... [In regards to political skill] I could only apply my religious training to these problems... But religious training, I believed and still believe, was a very reliable guide... Non-violence was the only moral course."

Later in this same book, he writes of the preparations and realization of his exile, "My journey through the border areas reminded me of two of my observations of China itself... The first was of Chinese monasteries... I had found all of the temples and monasteries neglected and almost empty... I was told that there were still learned Llamas in Inner Mongolia  ... several hundred people came from Inner Mongolia to ask for my blessing... This was the fate I could see hanging over the Tibetan monks and monasteries already in Chinese hands... I believe boys from Mongolia and East Turkestan clung equally stubbornly to their faith."

Now today in America, Tenzin Gyatso comes to share his faith with all; the establishment of the Tibetan Mongolian Cultural Center is one of the keys to this effort, and further evidence that Mahayana has a life not only within its historic boundaries, but in the wider world as well.

Love and Betrayal in Community

Fellow thinker of Maritain, French theologian, Emmanuel Mounier wrote in his book, Personalist Manifesto that "Capitalism reduces a person to a state of servitude irreconcilable with the dignity of a man; it orients all classes and the whole personality towards the possession of money; the single desire of which chokes the soul." He advocated for the idea 'incarnation,' that persons are necessarily composed of both body and spirit, that the spirit lives both within and without, that it finds its expression in community with others; vocation, that which fulfills ones' deepest spiritual longings.

It is this idea of community that strikes the heart of most
persons in their daily lives. While many easily think of community as their town or city, there are many more communities to which one associates: the school, the gym, the prayer hall, the job, the family and the home are a few examples. Taking the family, the smallest unit of community experienced by most on a day to day basis as an example, there is indeed a strong and central community existing in family whether it includes a marital relationship and children, or any such constitution with or without child.

Recalling the biblical writing John 21:15-19 where the Christ asks his disciple, Simon Peter, "Do you love me?" To which Peter replies, "Yes Lord, I love you." Jesus answers him saying, "feed my sheep... follow me." As part of the community of the Christ, Simon Peter affirms his love and devotion to the way of the Christ in this exchange. Later it is he who betrays the one he loves.

How can this happen? How does this happen in any of our lives? When is it a betrayal? When I say so, or when another in the community says so? Is betrayal a lack of everyday use of a person's help and labor in the ways that Personalist thinkers decry? Is this then betrayal as the Christ might see it? All these questions may arise in a community relationship, even one so small in size as two persons, and it isn't always so easy to sort it out and discern the truths for each individual.

Is betrayal between a community as small as two persons something like, "you didn't walk the dog, like you promised!" Or is the idea of betrayal something like, "you failed to tell me something and now I'm humiliated. I don't trust you!" Is trust necessarily a part of betrayal? Did the Christ place trust in his disciple? Was there an acceptance of one another at the level of the incarnation, as Mounier calls it? Are communities indeed composed of individuals who are both body and spirit, and if so, what if the persons themselves are not clearly aware of their (bodily-spirit) incarnateness? What then of betrayal; what could it possibly be based upon?

For example, if, in my community, we are agreed to conduct ourselves in a simple way without ostentation, and one of the parties goes out and buys electronic gadgets which then are used to distract or emotionally remove themselves from the community, but do not clearly recognize the effect of their actions, is this a betrayal? What if one, for their well being and for the truth which lies in their own heart, takes actions which affect the other(s) in the community negatively, is this betrayal? What is the other(s) responsibility to the common good of the community, even one deemed an offender?

In love, is not the common good served through the effort to understand and accept each and all? In this community, is there a place for forgiveness, the charity of love? May we, when we think our life is the worst, find one possible example, be it the Christ on the cross, Martin Luther King or Gandhi, perhaps? They were killed by those who disliked them or their message. Who betrayed them?