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Dear Friends, After Buddhism disappeared in India, the Buddha’s teachings were carefully guarded and maintained in Tibet. In the quiet isolation of our mountainous country, great scholars and yogis kept Buddha’s teachings alive through their study, meditation and practice—for over ten centuries, right up until the communist Chinese invasion in 1959. After many Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns, including myself, were forced to flee our homeland, we found that many Westerners welcomed our message of peace, compassion and lovingkindness. Today, Buddhism has lost its stable home in Tibet, where the very Tibetan way of life is also facing extinction. To ensure that this valuable element of our common human heritage can continue to offer its unique contribution to human culture and wisdom, we at Deer Park are now undertaking a major initiative to secure a firm and lasting spiritual home for Tibetan culture and Buddhist teachings on American soil. Since Deer Park began offering Buddhist teachings and hosting Tibetan cultural events in 1975, our principal aim has been to make the pure teachings of the Buddha available to anyone who might be interested. We have been doing so by offering instruction in Buddhist philosophy and meditation to the public, faithfully reproducing the traditions of study and practice preserved in Tibet. All are most welcome to visit and observe or share in our spiritual activities. Over the years, we have invited great spiritual masters, such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to teach at our facilities, and we have also hosted interreligious conferences and retreats. Thousands of schoolchildren have visited our grounds and have met our monks and nuns through our community outreach program. At the same time, our small community of resident monks has quietly preserved the ancient monastic lifestyle that has been followed since the time of the Buddha over 2,500 years ago. Our current facilities have tremendous historic significance as the site of the first Kalachakra ceremony for world peace ever performed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the West. However, our main temple was built in 1981 as a temporary open-air pavilion, and is now well past its prime. It is also far too small to serve either the expanding base of interested students or the growing Tibetan refugee community in the Midwest. A much larger facility is needed as well to display the rare collection of Tibetan art and cultural artifacts that has been bequeathed to Deer Park over the years. Our new building will also be adequate to house the extensive archive of rare teachings that have been transmitted at Deer Park by living masters as well as by others now passed away, such as Lama Yeshe and Zong Rinpoche. But merely creating a storage facility for the material remnants of Tibetan and Buddhist culture is not our goal. Most importantly, we consider the Buddha’s teachings to be a form of medicine that can ease suffering and transform ordinary human beings into perfectly compassionate and wise beings. For that, what is required is a place where people can gather to receive spiritual instruction and guidance from qualified teachers, and where those interested can actively practice, continuing the Buddhist contemplative tradition and lifestyle. This is what our new project will create – an enduring home for the preservation and transmission of the Buddha’s teachings, and a landmark of Tibetan culture in the middle of America.In Tibet, the very architecture of our buildings is designed to embody the Buddhist teachings. From the doors to the rooftops, each aspect of Tibetan Buddhist buildings has a symbolic significance, allowing visitors to encounter the Buddha’s teachings in a powerful visual form. In keeping with our vision of creating a home where Tibetan Buddhism lives in harmony with American culture, our new temple will blend Tibetan architectural principles with modern, sustainable design. Our design principles reflect our commitment to maintaining a respectful balance with our natural environment. When a community in Tibet needed a center for its spiritual and cultural activities, people came and offered their labor, and constructed the building together with the monks, using ancient methods familiar to all involved. In that context, active fundraising was not necessary. Support from the community was offered voluntarily and spontaneously, out of a deep appreciation for the value of the Buddha’s teachings and a firm faith in the principles of karma, which teaches that those who give, also receive. For that reason, I was initially very hesitant to actively seek outside funding, but it is now clear that we cannot secure a future for Buddhism and Tibetan culture on our own using our old methods. I hope that you will recognize some value in supporting our efforts to ensure that Buddha’s contribution to global human culture and wisdom remains part of the inheritance we leave to future generations of our shared human family. Thank you so much.
Geshe Lhundub Sopa |
