An American monk in Charleston Buddhist went from hippie life to spiritual awakening
Bill Lynch
1045 words
4 April 2008
Charleston Gazette
P1D
English
(Copyright 2008)
lynch@wvgazette.com
Over the telephone, Buddhist monk Bhante Yogavacara Rahula sounds a little like a stranger in a strange land. There's a faint accent that suggests he learned English later in life and, of course, there's his name.
Bhante means "venerable sir," and is the polite way to address a Theravedan Buddhist monk. Rahula is a common name in India and Nepal and refers to the historical Buddha's only son. He is not, however, a stranger in a strange land.
Bhante Rahula was born Scott Joseph Duprez in 1948. He grew up in California, attending a Methodist church with his parents. His first Buddha statue decorated the top of an old television set. He used to hang a hat on it.
He went to junior college, smoked marijuana, then joined the military. After his tour in Vietnam, he wore his hair long, grew a beard, chased girls and did just about any drug he could get his hands on.
"Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," said the monk, who visits Charleston today through Sunday to give several public presentations.
Bhante Rahula's story of how he went from typical hippie to clear-headed Buddhist monk is chronicled in his book, "One Night's Shelter: Autobiography of an American Monk." Two versions of the book exist. There's the "green" version, which catalogs his extensive drug use and sexual escapades. It details his time as a drug dealer, mentions his time in the Army stockade for being AWOL, as well as his arrest and detainment in an Afghan prison after trying to smuggle drugs into India.
"That's the toned-down version," said the 59 year-old monk, laughing. "The other version is much juicier. More sex, more drugs, more rock 'n' roll."
Bhante Rahula doesn't celebrate who he was in the 1960s, but he's not afraid of it. He's at peace with it. If not for the constant craving for chemically induced experiences, he might not have found his way to the dharma, the teachings of the Buddha. Wishing now to have been different then is pointless.
"It's all just grist for the mill," he said. "Taking all of those drugs. I didn't know any alternative."
He acknowledges that he got off pretty easy. He made it out alive.
Becoming a Buddhist, then a monk started with his craving. He was always on the lookout for the next high, the next profound experience. While he was traveling in the mountains of Asia, he heard about a meditation course in Katmandu. He went looking for another experience, but stayed for the enlightenment.
"That was the turnaround for me," he said. "I had this very deep insight, and I just wanted to pursue meditation and the dharma."
It didn't happen overnight, but in 1975, he was ordained as a monk in Sri Lanka. He lived in caves and huts, avoiding wild animals and poisonous snakes. He meditated to train his mind to shed fears and to focus his attention.
In 1985, Bhante Rahula heard about another monk's plans to build a Therevadan Buddhist monastery in the hills of West Virginia. He saw it as an opportunity to come back to the United States and bring some of what he'd learned.
He wrote to the monk, an internationally known meditation teacher named Bhante Gunaratana, who told him he should come. Rahula began to help build the monastery in 1987 on a plot of land in the Hampshire County backwoods.
Life at the Bhavana Society Forest Monastery near Wardensville is not entirely different from the simple life he lived in Sri Lanka. He continues to live in a small hut - called a 'kuti' - without electricity or running water (the main hall does have both).
He meditates, studies the Buddhist Sutras and books related to Buddhist thought and helps lead meditation retreats to people who come from around the world to Bhavana.
"We study and read some of the contemporary readings," Bhante Rahula said. "How science is relating to dharma teachings and Buddhism. We could read other things, I suppose, but I do not. We don't want to fill our minds with anything not on the dharma."
Occasionally, he does read a little about hiking in the Himalayas. He's been to Mount Everest several times with friends and gotten as far as the Everest base camp. "I do it mainly for the exercise, but also to push the envelope of discomfort."
He hikes some in the United States and usually takes a camping trip to Dolly Sods about once a year.
Bhante Rahula isn't the only American-born Buddhist monk. He wasn't even the first. Although he stops short of calling the vocation rare in this country, he agrees there aren't many.
"There are perhaps several hundred," he said. "Some stay with it, as I have. Others dabble with it for a few years."
Living in the United States again, Bhante Rahula is better able to keep in contact with his family and a few old friends. He visits his mother in California, where he also sees his brother and sister. His sister is a fundamentalist Christian, he says, and visits with her used to be tense.
"She's mellowed out, and I think she accepts what I am and what I do."
Living at the monastery affords him more opportunities to travel. Groups from different parts of the country and around the world sometimes invite him to visit with them and lead retreats.
The Meditation Circle of Charleston has been host for Bhante Rahula's visits in Charleston a few times, including a visit this weekend at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Building. The visit will include talks about meditation, Buddhism and a slideshow of his spiritual trekking in the Himalayans.
He believes meditation is helpful for anyone, regardless of their particular spiritual path. Meditation helps people draw on resources they aren't even aware they have.
"It's a way to develop the mind," he said. "It can help you develop acceptance, patience, loving kindness toward others and deal with life on a more even keel."
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Deepak on spiritual healing
Religion
Deepak Chopra provides different take on Jesus ; Best-selling author looks at Jesus as a spiritual guide whose teachings embraces all humanity
Tania Fuentez / The Associated Press
803 words
5 April 2008
The Grand Rapids Press
All Editions
C6
English
© 2008 Grand Rapids Press. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights reserved.
NEW YORK -- Before he became known for promoting holistic health and spirituality, Deepak Chopra adhered to traditional Western medicine as an endocrinologist in Boston. He eventually questioned this approach, returning to the centuries-old Indian system of Ayurveda to find a balance between faith and science.
"I wanted to extend my idea of healing," Chopra said in a recent interview. "If you don't understand spiritual experience, you'll never understand healing."
Now, at 61, the physician and best-selling author hopes to extend conventional thought again -- even more controversially -- in "The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore" (Harmony Books). Chopra challenges Christian doctrine while presenting an alternative: Jesus as a state of mind, rather than the historical rabbi of Nazareth or son of God.
The third perspective -- which Chopra calls "a cosmic Christ" -- looks at Jesus as a spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the church built in his name. Chopra argues that Christ speaks to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience.
"I said to myself, 'Why not write a book that takes Jesus' teachings -- and it doesn't matter if you're Christian or not -- and learn from this and improve your life,"' he said at the Chopra Center and Spa in midtown Manhattan.
Fascinated with Jesus' life
Considered a pioneer of mind-body alternative medicine, Chopra is president of the Alliance for a New Humanity and he has been listed among Time magazine's top 100 heroes and icons of the 20th century. His books have been translated into dozens of languages, with topics that range from aging and sexuality to golf and Buddha's path to enlightenment. In 1995, he co-founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing with Dr. David Simon, which officially opened the following year.
Fascination with Jesus' life began during his lessons while attending a Roman Catholic school in India, Chopra said. Though his parents were from Hindu and Sikh families, "if you were relatively affluent, education was always in the Christian school because of the missionaries."
He moved to the United States in 1970 after graduating from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Chopra did his internship in New Jersey, and residency and fellowship at various institutions including Boston, Tufts and Harvard universities. He also was chief of staff at Boston Regional Medical Center for two years.
His interest in Hinduism and medicine evolved while observing a mind-body connection in his research, and an encounter in 1985 with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at a conference in Washington, D.C.
"I first leaned toward Ayurveda medicine and then actually went on to study other wisdom traditions of the world ... this happened during my training in neuro endocrinology where I saw what happened in consciousness in biology," Chopra explained.
"I was just extending my understanding of healing from physical to mental to social to environmental," he said. "That's what the 'Alliance' is all about ... healing the body politic, healing the world."
Chopra devotes substantial time to his own spiritual development. He meditates and exercises daily, though he occasionally enjoys a triple hazelnut latte.
25 years in the making
During the interview, Chopra switches his Blackberry, covered in an orange case, to vibrate as he speaks on faith, politics and a list of projects like a new comic book launched with his son and Sir Richard Branson. The in-demand speaker is at ease quoting Scripture or talking quantum physics. He has studied the Bible closely, reading it hundreds of times.
Though "The Third Jesus" was on his mind for 25 years, it took him six months to complete once he began writing. The next book will be a fictional account of Jesus' missing years.
"Where else do you read a story of the Son of God being executed by their own?" he said. "It is dramatic. It's three years of his teaching and it has shaped the world for 2000 years."
In a review, Harvey Cox, Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard, said "The Third Christ" is "bound to provoke both admiration and condemnation." Chopra references the New Testament and Gnostic Gospels to deconstruct church doctrine and conservative Christianity on issues such as war, abortion and homophobia.
"I see blogs every day that are negative and very nasty because this is not a literalist interpretation of Jesus," Chopra said. "My book is about Jesus as a state of consciousness. If I can aspire -- maybe not achieve -- but aspire to be in that state of mind and if a lot of people were aspiring to be in that state of mind this would be a better world."
Deepak Chopra provides different take on Jesus ; Best-selling author looks at Jesus as a spiritual guide whose teachings embraces all humanity
Tania Fuentez / The Associated Press
803 words
5 April 2008
The Grand Rapids Press
All Editions
C6
English
© 2008 Grand Rapids Press. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights reserved.
NEW YORK -- Before he became known for promoting holistic health and spirituality, Deepak Chopra adhered to traditional Western medicine as an endocrinologist in Boston. He eventually questioned this approach, returning to the centuries-old Indian system of Ayurveda to find a balance between faith and science.
"I wanted to extend my idea of healing," Chopra said in a recent interview. "If you don't understand spiritual experience, you'll never understand healing."
Now, at 61, the physician and best-selling author hopes to extend conventional thought again -- even more controversially -- in "The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore" (Harmony Books). Chopra challenges Christian doctrine while presenting an alternative: Jesus as a state of mind, rather than the historical rabbi of Nazareth or son of God.
The third perspective -- which Chopra calls "a cosmic Christ" -- looks at Jesus as a spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the church built in his name. Chopra argues that Christ speaks to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience.
"I said to myself, 'Why not write a book that takes Jesus' teachings -- and it doesn't matter if you're Christian or not -- and learn from this and improve your life,"' he said at the Chopra Center and Spa in midtown Manhattan.
Fascinated with Jesus' life
Considered a pioneer of mind-body alternative medicine, Chopra is president of the Alliance for a New Humanity and he has been listed among Time magazine's top 100 heroes and icons of the 20th century. His books have been translated into dozens of languages, with topics that range from aging and sexuality to golf and Buddha's path to enlightenment. In 1995, he co-founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing with Dr. David Simon, which officially opened the following year.
Fascination with Jesus' life began during his lessons while attending a Roman Catholic school in India, Chopra said. Though his parents were from Hindu and Sikh families, "if you were relatively affluent, education was always in the Christian school because of the missionaries."
He moved to the United States in 1970 after graduating from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Chopra did his internship in New Jersey, and residency and fellowship at various institutions including Boston, Tufts and Harvard universities. He also was chief of staff at Boston Regional Medical Center for two years.
His interest in Hinduism and medicine evolved while observing a mind-body connection in his research, and an encounter in 1985 with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at a conference in Washington, D.C.
"I first leaned toward Ayurveda medicine and then actually went on to study other wisdom traditions of the world ... this happened during my training in neuro endocrinology where I saw what happened in consciousness in biology," Chopra explained.
"I was just extending my understanding of healing from physical to mental to social to environmental," he said. "That's what the 'Alliance' is all about ... healing the body politic, healing the world."
Chopra devotes substantial time to his own spiritual development. He meditates and exercises daily, though he occasionally enjoys a triple hazelnut latte.
25 years in the making
During the interview, Chopra switches his Blackberry, covered in an orange case, to vibrate as he speaks on faith, politics and a list of projects like a new comic book launched with his son and Sir Richard Branson. The in-demand speaker is at ease quoting Scripture or talking quantum physics. He has studied the Bible closely, reading it hundreds of times.
Though "The Third Jesus" was on his mind for 25 years, it took him six months to complete once he began writing. The next book will be a fictional account of Jesus' missing years.
"Where else do you read a story of the Son of God being executed by their own?" he said. "It is dramatic. It's three years of his teaching and it has shaped the world for 2000 years."
In a review, Harvey Cox, Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard, said "The Third Christ" is "bound to provoke both admiration and condemnation." Chopra references the New Testament and Gnostic Gospels to deconstruct church doctrine and conservative Christianity on issues such as war, abortion and homophobia.
"I see blogs every day that are negative and very nasty because this is not a literalist interpretation of Jesus," Chopra said. "My book is about Jesus as a state of consciousness. If I can aspire -- maybe not achieve -- but aspire to be in that state of mind and if a lot of people were aspiring to be in that state of mind this would be a better world."
The next Dalai Lama?
Opinion
Tibetan Buddhism's next leader? After the Dalai Lama
By Barbara Crossette
The New York Times Media Group
776 words
8 April 2008
International Herald Tribune
1
6
English
© 2008 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
The recent outburst of Tibetan rage against the Chinese government not only demonstrated once again the fear and anger among Himalayan Buddhists living under the cultural insensitivity of Beijing, it also illuminated the crucial role of the Dalai Lama, navigating skillfully between restive Tibetan exiles and an Indian government under Chinese pressures to stifle their protests. What will happen when he is gone?
The West is about to get its first glimpse of that possible future.
In mid-May, a serious young man of 22 who is revered as the 17th Karmapa - now the second-most-important figure in Tibetan Buddhism - will make his first visit to the United States. The trip comes eight years after his dramatic flight to India from a monastery near Lhasa at the end of 1999, when he was just 14 years old. This is the first time that a skittish India has allowed him permission to travel abroad. His flight from Tibet was a considerable embarrassment to China.
The Karmapa Lama, spiritual head of the Kagyu order of Tibetan Buddhism, is now the only major Tibetan lama recognized as a reincarnation of his lineage by both the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government since it overran Tibet in the 1950s. The Panchen Lama, the third of a triumvirate and previously the second-highest ranking among the three lamas, vanished into Chinese custody as a boy in 1995 and has been replaced by Beijing's own political appointee.
In a thriller that is already a legend among Buddhists, the Karmapa and two fellow monks drove in secret from Tsurphu Monastery, north of Lhasa, to the remote and rugged border of Mustang, a former Buddhist kingdom now part of Nepal. From there he and his companions made a dash by horseback to the nearest Nepali airport, from which they were able to fly unnoticed via Katmandu to Delhi. The Karmapa, born Ogyen Trinley Dorji, arrived unannounced in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama's base, in January 2000, and has remained under the watchful eye of the Tibetan leader since.
Because of fears in the United States that India, bowing to Chinese pressure, will prevent this trip abroad at the last moment, the Karmapa's visit is expected to be low-keyed and not political. His comment on a pre-trip video that ''The United States is one of the world's most powerful countries'' has been excised from an online transcription of his remarks, which dwell instead on his hope of meeting ''many American friends.'' The trip was planned before the protests in Tibet.
This is a significant milestone for Tibetan Buddhists and a momentous one for Western practitioners. The young lama's predecessor, the 16th Karmapa, visited the United States on numerous occasions and had established in the 1980s a part-time American seat in Woodstock, New York, at the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra center. After the young Karmapa's flight from Tibet, the Woodstock monastery immediately geared up to welcome him, even designing furniture to match his sturdy frame. Then they waited, and waited and waited. He will now finally get to see their work. The Karmapa's American followers would like to have him establish his base in the United States, making him the first Asian religious leader of that magnitude to live in the West.
The Karmapa could serve as a possible unofficial, transitional successor to the Dalai Lama, who is now in his 70s. Because the Karmapa leads a different order of Tibetan Buddhism - the Dalai Lama is a Gelugpa monk - the young Karmapa cannot inherit his title. A future reincarnate to that position has yet to be born after the Dalai Lama's death.
The young Karmapa, who is described by those who have met him as a serious, even stern, young man, is also recognized as a compelling religious teacher and budding literary scholar, even without the Dalai Lama's magnetic charm and sense of humor. The Karmapa could well be the stopgap spiritual leader Tibetan exiles will someday need to hold together their fragmented diaspora, while at the same time assuming a larger role as a religious teacher for Buddhists of all nationalities and schools.
For the moment, these two Tibetan leaders are a complementary pair, the wise older man and the vigorous young lama who now has the chance to show the wider world if he can muster a universal appeal.
Barbara Crossette, a former New York Times correspondent in Asia, is the author of ''So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas.''
Tibetan Buddhism's next leader? After the Dalai Lama
By Barbara Crossette
The New York Times Media Group
776 words
8 April 2008
International Herald Tribune
1
6
English
© 2008 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
The recent outburst of Tibetan rage against the Chinese government not only demonstrated once again the fear and anger among Himalayan Buddhists living under the cultural insensitivity of Beijing, it also illuminated the crucial role of the Dalai Lama, navigating skillfully between restive Tibetan exiles and an Indian government under Chinese pressures to stifle their protests. What will happen when he is gone?
The West is about to get its first glimpse of that possible future.
In mid-May, a serious young man of 22 who is revered as the 17th Karmapa - now the second-most-important figure in Tibetan Buddhism - will make his first visit to the United States. The trip comes eight years after his dramatic flight to India from a monastery near Lhasa at the end of 1999, when he was just 14 years old. This is the first time that a skittish India has allowed him permission to travel abroad. His flight from Tibet was a considerable embarrassment to China.
The Karmapa Lama, spiritual head of the Kagyu order of Tibetan Buddhism, is now the only major Tibetan lama recognized as a reincarnation of his lineage by both the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government since it overran Tibet in the 1950s. The Panchen Lama, the third of a triumvirate and previously the second-highest ranking among the three lamas, vanished into Chinese custody as a boy in 1995 and has been replaced by Beijing's own political appointee.
In a thriller that is already a legend among Buddhists, the Karmapa and two fellow monks drove in secret from Tsurphu Monastery, north of Lhasa, to the remote and rugged border of Mustang, a former Buddhist kingdom now part of Nepal. From there he and his companions made a dash by horseback to the nearest Nepali airport, from which they were able to fly unnoticed via Katmandu to Delhi. The Karmapa, born Ogyen Trinley Dorji, arrived unannounced in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama's base, in January 2000, and has remained under the watchful eye of the Tibetan leader since.
Because of fears in the United States that India, bowing to Chinese pressure, will prevent this trip abroad at the last moment, the Karmapa's visit is expected to be low-keyed and not political. His comment on a pre-trip video that ''The United States is one of the world's most powerful countries'' has been excised from an online transcription of his remarks, which dwell instead on his hope of meeting ''many American friends.'' The trip was planned before the protests in Tibet.
This is a significant milestone for Tibetan Buddhists and a momentous one for Western practitioners. The young lama's predecessor, the 16th Karmapa, visited the United States on numerous occasions and had established in the 1980s a part-time American seat in Woodstock, New York, at the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra center. After the young Karmapa's flight from Tibet, the Woodstock monastery immediately geared up to welcome him, even designing furniture to match his sturdy frame. Then they waited, and waited and waited. He will now finally get to see their work. The Karmapa's American followers would like to have him establish his base in the United States, making him the first Asian religious leader of that magnitude to live in the West.
The Karmapa could serve as a possible unofficial, transitional successor to the Dalai Lama, who is now in his 70s. Because the Karmapa leads a different order of Tibetan Buddhism - the Dalai Lama is a Gelugpa monk - the young Karmapa cannot inherit his title. A future reincarnate to that position has yet to be born after the Dalai Lama's death.
The young Karmapa, who is described by those who have met him as a serious, even stern, young man, is also recognized as a compelling religious teacher and budding literary scholar, even without the Dalai Lama's magnetic charm and sense of humor. The Karmapa could well be the stopgap spiritual leader Tibetan exiles will someday need to hold together their fragmented diaspora, while at the same time assuming a larger role as a religious teacher for Buddhists of all nationalities and schools.
For the moment, these two Tibetan leaders are a complementary pair, the wise older man and the vigorous young lama who now has the chance to show the wider world if he can muster a universal appeal.
Barbara Crossette, a former New York Times correspondent in Asia, is the author of ''So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas.''
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