Lobsang Tenpa performing a prayer for peace with a vajra and a bell at PS1, a contemporary art museum in Queens. PHOTO: Alexandra Alter

The Tibetan diaspora, previously limited for the most part to South Asia, entered a new phase in 1992 when the State Department made a controversial decision to grant political asylum in the United States to 1,000 Tibetans living in exile in India.With intense competition to be among the thousand, many of the most promising Tibetan intellectuals were chosen, draining the Tibetan community of much of its intelligentsia. The policy also spawned a frenzy among Tibetans, who suddenly felt they needed to immigrate to the West.

New York is a popular point of entry for Tibetans because it is easier to find housing and get work here. Each year, about 500 Tibetans seek political asylum in New York. Monks and nuns, who enjoy high visa success rates because they are so frequently persecuted politically, do not apply for asylum as regularly.

"Someday, we may look back on that decision and say, this destroyed the Tibetan community," Columbia University Barnett said. The most dangerous side effect of the immigration policy, Barnett said, was that it changed the Tibetan perspective by making immigration to the West seem like something highly desirable; even a pre-requisite for success. It also further fractured the exile community, creating a rift between those who remain in Tibet and those who have fled.

Two girls practicing for a cultural show outside the New York Office of Tibet PHOTO: Pema Norbu

Many Tibetans in the second wave of diaspora have moved to the largest U.S. city because its economic incentives and political freedom cannot be matched in Nepal or India, where they are granted refugee status but few rights as citizens.

"For Tibetans, it is much easier politically and economically to live in America than in India or Nepal, but it is much more difficult socially," said Thinley Kalsang, who moved to New York from an exile community in India three years ago and now serves on the board of the Tibetan Alliance of New York. Tibetans, who maintain remarkably cohesive satellite communities in India and Nepal, are less cohesive in New York in part because the Tibetan community in New York is so transient, Kalsang said. Many Tibetans who move to New York do so only until they get enough money to move to Minnesota or Wisconsin, which also have a large Tibetan community and is preceived a more suitable environment for their families.

Today, there are roughly 4,000 Tibetan exiles in New York. Though they remain a relatively small immigrant group, their numerous stores and restaurants ensure them a high profile in New York. Tibetans here are brought together by their religion and their politics, Kalsang said, but despite their common purpose, it is difficult to maintain a close, active community when there are no temples or religious centers for Tibetans.

"For special religious holidays or the New Year, we have to rent out an Armenian Church in Queens," he said, adding that the Tibetan Alliance was looking into acquiring a Tibetan community center, but has not moved on the motion because of the prohibitive expense.Temples are not as central to the practice of Buddhism as churches and synagogues are to Christianity and Judaism, but they have provided a way for the Tibetan exiles in India and Nepal to stay connected to their religious tradition through communal ceremonies.

However, some Tibetans' experience in New York indicates that many have found a way to incorporate religious practices into their daily lives without the external structure of a religious community. For daily practices, most Tibetans keep an altar in their apartment where they light incense and offer water to statues or pictures of different buddhas and religious leaders. Kalsang keeps an altar with a photograph of the Dalai Lama and statues of Tibetan Buddhist deities like Shakyamuni Buddha, Tara, and Guru Rinpoche in his home office for the Tibetan Outreach Center.

For other Tibetans, spirituality is something that is cultivated internally and therefore does not require a community base.

"For outsiders, the practice of religion may look like circumambulating stupas and saying mantras, but in fact it is not. You have to change your own mind," said Dorje Kunthup, of the Office of Tibet, the official representative of the Dalai Lama to the North America. Dorje has taken high Tantric initiations, including the Kalacakra initiation. The initiation into the mandala of a tantric deity is reserved for the most advanced level of practitioner within Tibetan Buddhism, and it necessitates a firm commitment to recite prayers and meditate on that deity every day.

"I have a commitment to do my prayers every day. For Tantric initiates, we are supposed to do the meditation six times a day. But because I work in an office, I can only manage to do it twice," Kunthup said.