Tibetan Monks Enjoy Some Southern Hospitality

Anne Lilburn

May 10, 2004

When Buddhists in Charleston, South Carolina and Birmingham, Alabama needed spiritual leaders, they turned to Tibetan monks to provide guidance and knowledge.

Geshe Dakpa Topgyal first came to Charleston, South Carolina and the Charleston Tibetan Society, seven years ago. In 1993, Topgyal toured the United States and Europe as part of the World Peace Tour. As part of the tour, the monks performed traditional Tibetan musidc and dance. Charleston was the 97th out of 120 American cities that the group visited.

A small group of Charleston residents, including five local Tibetans, were so inspired by the monks' performance that they founded the Charleston Tibetan Society one year later with a distinct set of goals. They sought to raise awareness of Tibet, to fundraise to send money to Tibetan refugee children, and to sponsor events that would allow Americans to help Tibetans. The small core group then got in contact with a Tibetan monastery in India, which sent Topgyal to Charleston.

By 1998, the Charleston Tibetan Society had finally raised enough money to buy the two-story house that became the Society's Dharma Center. The Dharma Center teaches both Buddhism and Tibetan culture. It looks like any other house on a residential block -- except, that is, for the Tibetan flag and traditional prayer flags that hang on the porch. Four Society members sit in lounge chairs under the flags, talking and enjoying a pleasant spring day.

Upstairs, a library holds books on Tibet and Buddhism. Downstairs, one room is a meditation space, with floor mats, an ornate altar and traditional Tibetan decorations in deep red and golden orange.

The Society holds discussion groups and Buddhism classes here, and they also host traditional Tibetan dinners and cultural events. The Dharma Center also serves as Topgyal's home.

Topgyal was born in Tibet in 1962, but he doesn't remember his birthplace. He fled with his family to India when he was six. When he was all of ten years old, he became a monk. For twenty years at Drepung Losling monastery in India, he studied Buddhism to earn the title of "Geshe", a sort of doctorate in Buddhism for Tibetan monks.

Topgyal, who is respectfully referred to as "Geshe-la" by the Society members. says he sees many new faces each week at his Sunday morning classes.

"Some come out of curiosity," he says, "to find out what Buddhism teaches. Some come here saying, 'I'm searching.' They went to the Hindu temple, did yoga for a while. They come here and they're still searching. They're looking for whatever is missing in themselves. Money is not missing in them, love is not missing, but something is. They feel fragmented, not complete."

Topgyal estimates that, for every ten of them, only two or three are willing to change their perspective and become Buddhists.

"If they really feel that [voic] can only be filled by the Dharma -- by compassion, loving wisdom, compassion for life -- then they must study, change their physical view of the world, and change that view. Material alone is not going to make them happy."

In Charleston, known as the Holy City, churches dot the palm-filled streets. Some have predominantly black congregations, while others are mostly white. Many were there almost 200 years before the Charleston Tibetan Society formed.

As a part of the Charleston religious community, Topgyal meets with local ministers and rabbis. He has given a few talks at the local Unitarian church and also at a meeting of a local atheist group. St. Phillips Episcopal Church, the oldest in Charleston, has also hosted him as a guest speaker. Other churches and pastors, he says, have not always been as accepting.

"They have some feeling of disdain for the non-believer, says Topgyal. He concedes that he sometimes takes issue with the way some Christians practice their religion.

"When I listen to a priest talking in a church, from beginning to end it's almost like they are teaching how to be fearful instead of how to do good things and how to move and advance evolution in the generation."

Sandy Palumbo became a Buddhist after attending the 1993 World Peace Tour. The 51-year-old artist and single mother of two boys ran into the touring monks while selling her paintings at an art show. She later came across a flier from the Charleston Tibetan Society.

"It said Geshe-la was going to be teaching, and I was just so tickled," she says. Palumbo says she has been interested in Buddhism for years, ever since finding an old book. Before meeting Topgyal, though, she says she had never found the opportunity to explore it thoroughly and to share the experience with others. Now, Palumbo spends her free time at the Dharma Center, often with her children. She maintains the Web site, helps out around the house, and plans events like the Tibetan weddings Topgyal may be performing.

The two sit together on a couch in the library and talk like family members. They tell stories about organizing dinners and Buddhist weddings and laugh as they talk about everything from U.S. foreign policy to a Tibetan New Year Celebration (this is the year of the wood monkey). Palumbo says she enjoys the personal relationship she has with her spiritual advisor. Geshe-la, she says, has become one of her closest friends.

In Birmingham, Alabama, 40-year-old Adam Pierce has also found a friend in a Tibetan monk. Tenzin Deshek, known here as Deshek-la, only came to Birmingham's Losel Maitri Tibetan Buddhist Center a year and a half ago.

The two sit cross-legged in an the airy 3rd floor office of a holistic health center whose modern cement building seems appropriate, given its location in Birmingham's medical district. One office suite serves as the meeting place for the Losel Maitri community.

At Losel Maitri, brightly-colored Tibetan prayer flags hang from the ceiling and light coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows that line one wall shine through the thin cotton squares. Cushions sit stacked against the wall. A small altar, decorated with candles traditional silk Buddhist hangings brought from India, holds crackers and non-perishable foods. Deshek tosses rice into the flame as an offering.

Before Deshek arrived, the Losel Maitri Center relied on an American monk who occasionally commuted from an hour away to give talks and guidance. Members of the Center needed a monk, so they looked around for someone willing to move to Birmingham and found Deshek, who had been assigned by his monastery in India to teach at the Namgyal Institute in Ithaca, New York.

In Deshek, the Center has found not just a spiritual advisor, but an attractive draw for new members. Deshek is a skilled artist, trained in making traditional sand mandalas, a Tibetan Buddhist art form in which the artist creates detailed circular drawings in colored sand, only to sweep them away shortly after. The art form is meant as a symbol of the cycle of life and death and emphasizes the Buddhist belief in the impermanence of existence. Hundred come to see Deshek's mandalas during the Center's annual "Ten Days of Tibet" celebration in December.

Deshek was born in Tibet in 1956 and, like, Topgyal, fled to India with his family as a child. The trek, over mountains through Nepal and into India, took 3 months. At the age of 14, the Tibetan government-in-exile nominated him for a monastery that was far from his parents. His parents pleaded with a nearer monastery to accept him. Eventually, the Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, India, which was the personal monastery of the Dalai Lama, did. After 15 years of study there, Deshek became a full-fledged monk. He now lives in a small two-bedroom apartment in a suburb. Before the Energy Pointe Institute donated its space, the Losel Maitri Center used to meet in that apartment.

"It is amazing," says Deshek, "how many people you can fit in one place."

Eventually, a lack of parking and sitting space led members to look for a new home. One of the owners of the Energy Pointe Institute happened to be a friend of Adam Pierce and offered up the space.

The Losel Maitri Buddhist Center participates in interfaith groups and has found a surprising amount of acceptance in predominantly Christian Birmingham. Pierce himself was raised Presbyterian, and from the parking lot of the Energy Pointe Institute, he can point to the Presbyterian church his parents still attend each Sunday. Many who go to the meditation sessions and Buddhist events still consider themselves Christians, say both Deshek and Pierce.

"People who would say, 'I'm a Christian' come to hear Deshek-la speak about compassion,"says Pierce.

Perhaps that's why Deshek's accepting view of all religions makes him so effective.

"I am a Buddhist," he says, "but I respect all religions, all major religions, like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, because all major religions teach almost the same teachings: love and compassion."

Each Tuesday night, Losel Maitri draws 25 to 40 people, but Pierce estimates that only 60 to 75 percent are really interested in fully delving into Buddhism. Deshek doesn't see that as a problem. His focus is not on converting people to Buddhism, but on teaching them how to develop compassion through Buddhist techniques, including meditation. Of those who come to learn, some actually do become Buddhists, but Deshek believes that truly changing religions requires more time and effort than most people think.

"Changing to a different religion is a change from the heart," he says. "But study, practice five years, ten years, you can discover, 'this is really perfect for me,' and you can change."

Neither Topgyal nor Deshek expected to live in the South. Both have come to appreciate their new homes, though both say they miss the mountains and the snow that they knew in both Tibet and in India.

Nationwide, according to Dorji Kunthup, 2nd Secretary to the Office of Tibet, some 300 monks live in the United States, though he admits the exact number is difficult to estimate. Most, unlike Deshek and Topgyal, just came to the United States on their own. They usually from India or Nepal, says Kunthup.

For both men, their surroundings seem less important than their work. For them, spreading Buddhism and the Dalai Lama's message of compassion is the most important part of their lives. A close second is sharing the culture and the story of the homeland that they only remember in distant childhood memories. In Charleston, one of Topgyal's main tasks is sending money to Tibet and to India to help Tibetan refugee children. The Charleston community sends clothing and money for food. They even finance college educations for Tibetan youth.

Preserving the memory of his culture is important for Topgyal. He worries that young Tibetans, who were either raised either under the cultural repression of the Chinese government or far away from their homeland, will forget their culture and it will be lost forever. He compares the cultural traditions to a handful of rice thrown on the floor.

"Who knows where it goes?" he asks.

For now, both Topgyal and Deshek are working to preserve that heritage and the religion that is such an integral part of it. In Birmingham, Deshek dreams of one day opening a real Tibetan temple to showcase his culture and his religion, and he's been in the United States long enough to have become a believer in one fundamentally American idea.

"If you do not give up," he says, "someday dreams come true."

(Updated May 10, 2004)