“There’s some saying in Tibetan Buddhism that you want your teacher to live two valleys away,” says Milan. When Sang-ngag left Montana, she remembers feeling both abandonment and relief.
I
n October 2010, The New York Times ran a story with the headline “On an Indian Reservation, a Garden of Buddhas.” The story concluded that “a potential cultural clash has become cultural reconciliation.” Julie Cajune, executive director of The Center for American Indian Policy and Applied Research, remembers when she first visited the garden for one of Ewam’s annual peace festivals. She was skeptical. “I guess sometimes gatherings like that, they seem like they don’t accomplish a lot,” she says. “I think it’s good that people raise their voice, but working for peace requires a lot more than getting together and having fun.” She also remembers talking to other tribal members who were unhappy that “another religious group was buying land on the reservation.” But, she says, Sang-ngag met with the tribal council several times in the early phases of construction and his efforts to reach out to tribal leaders went far to assuage Native concerns. Cajune, a Salish woman, feels a connection with Sang-ngag. “There’s a familiar history that we share with Tibetan people, so there’s this affinity that you feel for someone that has experienced dispossession and cultural oppression,” she says. “[Sang-ngag] always brings around the conversation to compassion and forgiveness … I have deep admiration for people whose lives exemplify what they say they believe. I really see that with him.” But to say this unlikely cultural nexus doesn’t invite complication is misleading. Even Milan, who used to work as a physician on reservations, remembers feeling conflicted when she heard about the garden’s location. “Certainly this is a magical place … When [Sangngag] built that garden, he felt it had to be this place in the universe,” she says. “From a very personal perspective, I was kind of dismayed. I thought, ‘Oh no, not on reservation land!’” The majority of the reservation’s population is already non-Native. Since statutes passed in 1904, nontribal members have been able to buy land. Though most tribal members seem to agree that anyone could have bought the land on White Coyote Road, and a
neighbor dedicated to peace and compassion is better than many, shards of discomfort remain. Since 2005, Ewam has hosted annual peace festivals that feature musicians, Buddhists, environmentalists and a general hodgepodge of people sympathetic to Buddhist ideals. Portions of each festival are dedicated to tribal issues, and representatives from the Confederated Salish and Kooenai Tribes are given time to speak. In 2011, Pat Pierre, a CSKT tribal leader and Salish language teacher, spoke on a low stage with a flapping canopy tent behind him. His enthusiasm was tempered. “We have land on our reservation right here that is lost to our people,” he said. “That monument sitting over there [pointing at the statue of Yum Chenmo], I don’t know how many of our people are going to worship that … We got grounds up in St. Ignatius that are lost to our people, Ronan, different areas, where they build and say, ‘This is it, I was called here to build this.’ I didn’t call them. Somebody called them.” Pierre, who could not be reached for comment, ended his speech with tolerance and disdain. “But we got it so let’s take care of it. Let’s make it something we can be thankful for. I’m not thankful for losing earth ground,” he said. “This whole reservation used to be Indian Country.” Cajune remembers the speech well. While she thinks more good than bad will come from the garden, she understands Pierre’s perspective. “I think for people in Pat’s generation, all of the change is sorrowful, even if it’s benign. That place will have an impact on this small community, because it will become a pilgrimage site … I think it would be hard to have witnessed so much change that you can’t recognize a place anymore.” The garden is not going away. The change is permanent and the two communities are now inextricably linked—sometimes even in unexpected ways. When Utne Reader published its “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” in 2009, Cajune made the list for her advocacy of American Indian education issues. On the cover was His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama.
Deanna Johnson has been Buddhist for more than 40 years. She says the practice helped her cope with the unexpected death of her son.
god). In the 1950s and ’60s, Buddhist teachers from Tibet led the dissemination of Buddhist ideas throughout the West (other types of Buddhism, like Zen, were also growing in popularity). It became a trend among the high-profile set. Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder wrote about Buddhism, folding Eastern philosophy into the zeitgeist of the Beat Generation. In 1973, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who had previously taught David Bowie in Scotland, opened Vajradhatu in Boulder, Colo., which acted as headquarters for his dozens of meditation centers around the country and world. His students included Allen Ginsberg and Joni Mitchell. In 2010, after allegations of Tiger Woods’ proliferative infidelity emerged, he invoked his Buddhist upbringing in a public apology: “Buddhism teaches that a craving of things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security,” he said. “It teaches me to stop following every oday, with around 1.3 million practitioners in impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously, I lost track America, Buddhism is regarded as among the of what I was taught.” Today, it is difficult to determine how many Monfastest growing religions in the United States (many hesitate to call it a “religion” since Buddha was not a tanans consider themselves students of Sang-ngag. Ewam does not keep an official membership tally. At a recent class on compassion, taught by Namchack Khenpo at the Third Street dharma center, there were about 20 people in attendance. Of that, Hicks guesses about half were regular practitioners, while the other half she did not recognize (she adds that “anyone is welcome anytime”). She also reports, though, that of the more than $900,000 donated for the construction of the garden, only a few have been sizable sums, while more than a 1,000 individuals have made smaller contributions. But Ewam is just one piece—albeit large—of Missoula’s Buddhist community. Today there are nine official groups of Buddhist practitioners in town and each offers a different experience to its practitioners. Some, like Big Sky Mind, offer a fairly relaxed opportunity to try and practice meditation. Others, like Ewam, are more dogmatic, and observe rituals and ceremony. Still others, like the A ritualized approach to Buddha’s teachings distinguishes Tibetan Buddhism from other sects. Open Way Mindfulness Center, fall someAbove, Ewam member Charlie Pearl sits next to a ceremonial shrine. where in the middle.
T
[16] Missoula Independent • April 11 – April 18, 2013
Despite differences in approach, all of these Buddhist groups form around a central tenant: the human mind is cluttered and needs clearing. David Curtis, founder of the Tibetan Language Institute in Hamilton and Missoula’s Big Sky Mind group, calls the benefits of meditation profound. “The mind is a little bit like a glass of water with sand and we’re constantly stirring the sand with the spoon,” he says. “The first thing we do when we meditate is that we stop stirring.” Rowan Conrad, a director with Open Way and a Zen Buddhist practitioner for four decades, says there are differences between Zen and other sects of Buddhism. (“Like if you had the pile of money that’s gone into the Buddha garden and gave it to us,” he says, “we’d probably use it for a social welfare project.”) But the core principals are the same, and they have less to do with religion than with science. He points out that medical professionals like Jon Kabat-Zinn extol the benefits of meditation on the mind. “Modern psychology is so excited because it’s discovering Buddhist psychology,” Conrad says, a coy smile creeping onto his face. “They think they’ve found something new.” The leader of Tibetan Buddhism shares Conrad’s sentiment. In a 2005 New York Times op-ed, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, wrote, “If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality … By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.” Perhaps because it has so often been publicly coopted by the rich and famous, Buddhism has a reputation as the spirituality of dilettantes. David Curtis, who used to teach Tibetan in Los Angeles before moving to Montana, says that perception is finally changing. “Twenty years ago, the Tibetan thing was quite exotic, and people would say, ‘Wow, this is kind of cool.’ But there’s been a maturation,” he says. “Where once people thought that it would be hip to adopt a Tibetan name and wear a Tibetan vest, now people are genuinely interested in transformation.” Deanna Johnson, who was a practitioner when she arrived in Missoula in 1973, doesn’t know how she would cope without Buddhism. On Oct.17, Johnson’s son Bodhi died from complications with seizures while sleeping in the Missoula bedroom in which he was born. He was 31.