The monks from Gaden Shartse Monastery have departed northwest Ohio after educating many area residents about Buddhist traditions.

The spokesman and translator for the Tibetan monks, Jangchub Chophel, described a typical day at Gaden Shartse Monastery recently.Monasteries are home to men older than 90 and children as young as age 6. Chophel said the children live at the monastery and have lessons in grammar, math and art, as well as philosophy and religion. Although most children come by choice, others are orphans or their families send them to the monastery to get a better education.

Six days a week, monastery residents rise at 5 a.m. for a breakfast of flatbread and tea and report for prayer at 6 a.m. Chophel said the monastery is a noisy place in the morning as the monks chant their prayers. Each monastery has its own cadences for worship. Singers use low tones and produce two or three tones simultaneously.

On their U.S. tour, the monks demonstrated the sound and technique of their poly

phonic throat singing. For public audiences, the chants are sacred with the words disguised to conceal the secret teachings they contain.Chophel said the person praying visualizes paradise while chanting. The monks pray in various postures and use hand movements that imitate those Buddha once used. Vibrations fill the room and affect more than the individual chanter.

During prayers, monks also ring bells, which represent wisdom, and hold a dorje. The latter is a metal implement in the shape of a thunderbolt and represents method. Buddhists believe bringing wisdom and method together promotes enlightenment. More ceremonial rituals incorporate horns, cymbals and gongs and require special garb.

On most days in the monastery, educational activities based on the level of knowledge a person has reached occupy many hours.

Chophel said Buddhist monasteries are the equivalent of universities. Students of all ages are expected to memorize pages of texts and give recitations for “tests.”

As they get older, they meet in smaller groups with teachers. They usually sit on cushions or directly on the floor.

“When you visit the monastery, you don’t see a chair, so we don’t have a word for chair,” Chophel said.

They had to invent a word, which translates to “butt lift.” After lunch, the monks allow time for a nap.

In the evening, a gong summons the men to the debate yard. For three to six hours, they engage in animated debate.

A lunge, stomp of the foot and slap of the hands is used to “send” a question.

Chophel said clapping symbolizes the hand of wisdom meeting the hand of method to summon sentient beings.

After a response, gestures from questioners indicate their opinion of its quality.

“The key to our whole educational system is the debate system,” Chophel said. “It’s not like you can skip your homework. When they debate, they start off one-on-one with another person in your class for about an hour. Then they bring the classes together and your classmates sit around you and you debate.”

Some scholarly monks study a specific topic and debate it for two to five years before reaching the next level. Those who want to be teachers may go to study at other monasteries. A geshe, or doctor of Buddhist theology, must have 20 years of training.

Chophel said knowledge and enlightenment require hard work.

“There are prayers to remove obstacles but they can’t give you knowledge,” he said.

Oral exams take place yearly to determine whether a student can advance to the next level.

At the end of exams, the monks take a week off for picnics and field games.

The Tibetan new year also is a holiday.

Chophel said Monday is their usual day off. Most of the men use that day to do laundry by hand.

During the summer, the temperature can reach 100 degrees during the day and drop to freezing at night. The monasteries have no air conditioning.

Chophel said the monks’ diet varies by region. The Tibetan monasteries, situated on mountainsides, tend to be isolated, so food choices are limited. In Tibet, barley flour and yak products are nutritional staples. Some groups depend on alms or donations for their food. In India, most are

vegetarian, but others do eat meat.

Typically, they do not eat anything after the mid-day meal.

Buddhist women can enter monastic life in a nunnery. Chophel said the women get the same haircut and garments as the men and are educated in the same manner to follow the same “spiritual path.”

Monks and nuns are allowed to have contact with their families, unless the monastery or nunnery is too far away.

Many monasteries accept visitors, but obtaining a permit may take a month.

September 14, 2010 – By MaryAnn Kromer, mkromer@advertiser-tribune.com

Tibetan monks from the Gaden Shartse Monastery meditate in a Maumee home where they are staying. Front row from left are Geshe Jampa Norbu, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, and Jang Chub Chophel. Back row from left: Lobsang Phuntzok, Tenzin Lobsang, Lobsang Yeshe, and Lobsang Wangchuk.  ( THE BLADE/ANDY MORRISON )

By DAVID YONKE

Article published Saturday, September 13, 2008

Seven Tibetan Buddhist monks from India’s Gaden Shartse Monastery have been touring the nation, including a stop in northwest Ohio this week, and say they keep running into the same problem everywhere they go: “No one wants us to leave. They say, ‘Stay here, we’ll find a house for you to live in. Stay in our city,’” Lobsang Wangchuk said. “We’ve had this happen over and over again.”

The reason, he said, is that Americans are intrigued by the monks’ peaceful countenance and want to experience the same kind of tranquility and happiness.

Teaching Westerners how to find peace, harmony, and understanding is one of the reasons the Buddhist monks have been trekking across the United States since November, with another eight months scheduled on their current tour.

The two other primary reasons for the U.S. tour, Lobsang Wangchuk said, are to demonstrate Buddhist art and to raise funds for a newly opened hospital the monks built in southern India.

In an interview at a spacious Maumee home where the group has been staying, Lobsang Wangchuk said one thing the monks do not try to do is convert people to Buddhism.

“We see all religions as having the same purpose. We always try to harmonize with other religions. We never try to convert anybody,” said Lobsang Wangchuk, wearing the monks’ familiar maroon-and-saffron robes. 

Geshe Jampa Norbu, one of the tour’s two main teachers, sat cross-legged on a wooden dining room chair during the Wednesday morning interview, offering comments in Tibetan that were translated by Lobsang Wangchuk or another monk, Tenzin Lobsang. 

Several other monks milled about, eating breakfasts of cereal and jam-covered toast or heading out for walks along the Maumee River.

“Geshe says over and over again that maybe it’s better that you stay with your own religion,” Lobsang Wangchuk said, “and if Buddhism helps you understand your religion, then integrate some of the principles into your religion to help you understand it better.

“It’s almost like we’re a shopping mall: Whatever you like, you take with you. And what you don’t like, leave behind. If we can help you, wonderful. But we don’t try to convert people to Buddhism.”

The Gaden Shartse Monastery was founded in Lhasa, Tibet, in 1416 and at one time housed 5,000 monks. The monastery was destroyed during the Chinese takeover of Tibet in the 1950s, when many Tibetans fled to India.

The Shartse monks built a monastery in exile in 1969 and now have more than 1,000 monks at their facility in Karnataka State, in southern India.

“India has been very kind to us,” said Lobsang Wangchuk, a native of Southern California. “The Indians have given us a place to stay until maybe, perhaps someday, Tibet is free.”

The 66-year-old monk, with shaved head and light brown eyes, said he began studying with Shartse monks in 1979. He saw a Buddhist teacher appear to him in a dream, he said, and the teacher later knocked on his door. 

The monks are grateful to the Indians for letting them practice their religion freely, Lobsang Wangchuk said, and that is why they built a hospital. While the facility recently opened, the monks are looking for more doctors and nurses to staff it and more funds to equip it.

“We want to return the kindness to India as much as possible, so we hope to provide free medical care. There are numerous poor villages around us where people have no money to ever see a doctor,” Lobsang Wangchuk said.

Interest and awareness in Buddhism in the United States has been growing since he first began heading up the Tibetan monks’ tours nearly 20 years, he said.

Americans note that monks own only the most basic essentials, such as their robes, tea cups, spoons, and books, yet they appear to have inner peace and harmony. Meanwhile, he said, the material wealth of most Americans rarely leads to fulfillment.

“In our travels, we see that in India it is very difficult,” Lobsang Wangchuk said. “But here, we have all the facilities — hospitals, good roads, easy access to food, supermarkets. But there seems to be a lack of happiness in the West, a lack of peace. So we feel that we can help with this.

He said Geshe Jampa Norbu, who is making his first U.S. tour, is a highly respected Tibetan Buddhist teacher and a two-time valedictorian. The other primary teacher on the U.S. tour is Geshe Kalsang Gyatso, a chanting master.

Geshe Jampa Norbu said through an interpreter that the current economic problems in the United States are making many Americans re-evaluate their priorities, which could bring positive results.

“If a recession or a depression comes, then either there will be anarchy, or people will turn inward,” Geshe Jampa Norbu said. “People will seek some sort of teaching, which all religions hold, that there are ways of transforming the mind and showing them that happiness is an internal event. It is not an external thing based on possession and objects.”

The 42-year-old Buddhist teacher was born in Tibet, where he studied for almost 22 years in Lhasa before fleeing to India in the 1980s during a brief period when China relaxed travel restrictions. 

Geshe Jampa Norbu studied for a total of 25 years before receiving his Geshe degree, then studied further at the Gyuto Tantric College in northeast India. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama gave him full ordination vows in 1988.

“To be given permission to teach, it takes about 30 years of study” Lobsang Wangchuck said, “and that’s six days a week, from 5 a.m. to midnight. So it’s a real intense program and it produces a very unusual type of human being.”

The monks’ Toledo visit has included personal and group spiritual healings, empowerments, and house and business blessings; a public lecture Thursday night on “World Peace and the Unity of All Religions,” and a Chenrezig 
Empowerment blessing, intended to help people become more peaceful and compassionate, at a local yoga center last night.

The monks will create a sand mandala today to honor the Medicine Buddha starting at 10 a.m. at St. Ann Mercy Hospital’s Cancer Center, 3404 West Sylvania Ave. The event is free and open to the public.

The monks will be in Findlay from Wednesday to Friday. More information is available online at www.gadenshartsetour.org.

Contact David Yonke at:dyonke@theblade.comor 419-724-6154.

Original Article

LIMA – Tapping a sand-filled metal cone, the Tibetan monks created what some would consider a masterpiece worthy of keeping forever.

But that’s not their way. In most cases, even those creations taking weeks to make, are swept away; a reminder of Buddha’s last words that nothing is permanent.

“We forget that every single moment that we live, even in a snap of a finger things can change,” Jangchub Chophel said Wednesday. “We are very precious to have this moment in time and this life and to make good use of it.”

Jangchub Chophel and other Tibetan monks and lamas from Gaden Shartse Monastery in southern India spent time at Bluffton University on Wednesday, introducing people to sand mandalas, or monastic sand painting.

Seen as a pathway to inner peace and compassion, mandalas are used for healing purposes. Some can be as large as nine feet in diameter and take up to 26 days to complete. Working on one can be a very powerful and spiritual experience, Jangchub Chophel said.

“It can actually remove negativities, heal the area and environment and bring the blessings of Buddha to the area,” he said. “We sweep it up and usually put the sand in a body of water so that blessings and purifications continue to heal.”

The monks’ tour in the United States is twofold. One is to raise money to furnish a hospital at the monastery. The last tour helped pay for the hospital, which cares for and offers free medicine to 6,000 monks, 300 nuns, 6,000 Tibetan laypeople and whoever else needs it.

“Free medicine and checkups to anyone. We get no international aid. We have to take care of ourselves,” said Lobsang Wangchuk, whose mother lives in Findlay.

The second purpose, Tenzin Lobsang said, is to teach people “how to control their minds from negativities.” The negativities might be desire, ignorance, anger and doubt.

“Here in United States, everything is not perfect,” he said. “Many people have mind problems. We are teaching them what causes suffering and what causes happiness.”

The monks say the most important of their teachings is kindness, compassion and tolerance. Jangchub Chophel, who became a monk three years ago, reminds that “we are all in this together,” saying that it benefits him when others are happy.

The monastery houses Tibetan refugees and works to rebuild Tibet through education and acts of nonviolent resistance. New monks arrive often in exile from Communist Chinese-controlled Tibet. Despite the Chinese occupation, Tenzin Lobsang said Tibetans wish no harm on China.

“From our side, we never harm other human beings,” he said. “The Chinese are always one of the living beings. We are never taught to harm the Chinese people. … The Dalai Lama wants to have a dialogue for the truth.”

Original Article