Geshe Wangyal: America's First Lama

David Urubshurow and Joel McCleary speak to Tricycle associate editor Alex Caring-Lobel about their teacher Geshe Wangyal, America's first lama. Politicized at a young age in Soviet Russia, Geshe Wangyal immigrated to New Jersey to develop the telecode for the CIA that would aid the Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet, work to lift political proscriptions on US visits by the Dalai Lama, and train the first generation of Tibetan Buddhist scholars in America.

Transcript

Welcome to Tricycle Talks. I'm Alex Kering-Lobel, Associate Editor of Tricycle of a Buddhist Review. Our topic today is how Tibetan Buddhism first came to the United States. Contrary to most popular accounts, It was a group of Kalmic Mongols, Ethnic Mongols from Western Russia, That first brought Tibetan Buddhism here. One teacher in particular, The Kalmic Lama Geshe Wangyo, Did much to establish the tradition. Geshe Wangyo was the first Lama in the United States to take on American students, Training eminent scholars like Bob Thurman and Jeffrey Hopkins. He also devised, With the CIA, The telecode that made it possible for the Dalai Lama to escape from Tibet in 1959. He then spearheaded a decades-long diplomatic battle to allow the Dalai Lama to visit the U. S. , Which he did for the first time in 1979. Joining me to talk about this is David Uribe-Shiro and Joel McCleary. David is the author of From Russia with Love and the current issue of Tricycle. He grew up around Geshe Wangyo and the same Kalmic community in New Jersey. Joel McCleary came to Geshe Wangyo in the 70s. He's a Washington-based international political consultant who served in the Carter administration and as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, Almost certainly the first Buddhist to hold either position. David, Let's start with how you became Geshe Wangyo's first disciple in America. Our community of ethnic Mongolian immigrants had just settled in the town of Freewood Acres, New Jersey, In the winter of 1951-52. That community eventually established a Tibetan Buddhist temple according to the faith that we followed. The news of that establishment of the temple eventually reached India where Geshe Wangyo heard of it and came to America three years later through bureaucratic and other levels and came to the community. I missed his introduction to the community at our small temple there, But he came to my first grade class just a week afterward, Maybe a week later after his arrival, And had a small gathering there with other Kalmic students and that's when I first met him and I understood right away that this was not an ordinary Kalmic from my experience and I was immediately taken with him. But the main thing I think there was because he spoke English to me. So right away there was some kind of visceral connection but also the fact that he could speak English which was a pretty novel thing. Joel, You came to LBMA to study with Geshe Wangyo in 1971. What brought you to study with Geshe Wangyo specifically? Well I'd been at Harvard from 67 to 71 and during that time period I got very interested in Zen. Elsie Mitchell then had the Cambridge Zen Center which was an amazing organization. And then I met through Josh Cutler who's now with Geshe Wangyo's center. I met Bob Thurman and Bob was an amazing character during that time period, Alive, Dynamic, And I used to go to classes of his over at one of these centers and he was great and then I took some courses with him at Harvard because he was a graduate student there. And then my roommate Josh Cutler went down to study with Geshe Wangyo. He was a class ahead of me and then I tried to go down a year afterwards but I was never really accepted. I got down here and Geshe Wangyo didn't want to talk Buddhism with me at all. He wanted to play chess and talk politics. So while everybody went to bed studying Tibetan things and being very scholarly, I'd be kept up all night in the most ferocious chess games with much swearing and cheating going on I have to admit. And we would then late at night talk a lot about politics. And he was insistent that given the error that we were in and given what he'd seen, The Holocaust basically for the Karmic people, He'd seen the Japanese invasion of China, And he had seen the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Having witnessed all these things, He felt that now was not the time to go to monasteries. You know Geshe Wangyo was the most liberated person I ever met. I don't think it would have mattered if he'd been a Buddhist or a shaman or a Catholic or a Daoist or an atheist. He was just an amazingly dynamic, Liberated human being. He once said to me, I've never been anybody's slave. And he wasn't. He wasn't anybody's slave intellectually or physically. He was a shaman. He was a power. And he convinced me that really given this time and this age that I really need to get my ass down to Washington and get involved in politics and that that was religious practice. And he had done the same now over a decade earlier. He had worked for the CIA, Though for obvious reasons was very private about his work. Well he had been politicized. He grew up as a Kalmukh Mongolian. And the Kalmukhs were under Russian occupation, We could say. And of course Stalin turned on them, First somewhat in the 30s and then after the war, And basically wiped them out and sent them out of their country. So he'd witnessed that. And his teacher, Dorjev, Who was perhaps the reason the English invaded Tibet with a young husband, Was his teacher. And he was an extremely political, Religious scholar. He'd been very close to the Tsar, Then was close to Lenin, Not close to Stalin, And was purged in the 30s with many people. So Geshe-la, There was no differentiation between politics and religion. And I think Geshe-la felt that people who thought there was a division between the two, When he first came to this country, He had quite right wing, And by that I mean right wing, Anti-communist, He was a libertarian in many ways, But I think he was sort of taken back by a lot of the politicization that went around Vietnam and didn't totally understand it at first. But he didn't see any difference between politics and religion. I think his work with the Central Intelligence Agency had to do mostly with developing a code. I think he believed that trying to counter the occupation of Tibet was important, And he was absolutely instrumental in getting the Dalai Lama out of Tibet. If it hadn't been for him, I don't know, There are many factors, But he was one factor in getting his holiness out of Tibet. Joel, What was the atmosphere at LBMA when you arrived in 71? Well, I arrived a macrobiotic, Bearded refugee from Cambridge, And probably after I'd been there a few months, I was back to my same form of being a weight and diet of being a tackle football player. We went quickly from brown rice to lamb fat, You know, The main Mongolian diet, Which the only vegetable he ever saw was if you painted green on the side of a lamb, You know. And he was convinced that vegetarians got too airy-fairy and it was actually very bad for you. You weren't very grounded. So after hundreds of pounds of lamb fat and buttered tea with salt and I think three vegetables, I fit in pretty well. And it was an exciting environment. I mean, You know, It was very communal. We got up in the morning and there were prayers. Of course, No one had any idea what was being said because no one understood any Tibetan, We were just learning Tibetan. And then when I was there, It was a little more Chinese slave labor camp than it was a monastery. We were recruited to help build maybe architecturally the most ugly building that's ever been built known to man. Was this the LBMA? Yeah, We built a wing on and of course. . . This is after it moved to Washington, New Jersey, Not from Freewood Acres. And so, You know, Geshe-la was not at all enslaved by notions of Western aesthetics. So the idea of putting outdoor aluminum siding on a ceiling inside was very beautiful. Or, You know, I mean, There's just no. . . He hadn't gone to architectural school and he obviously didn't understand material sciences as Westerners understood it. So I found it quite in this Chinese labor camp that we were in while we were building these structures was very entertaining and actually quite a good teaching because if you look at it from a psychological point of view, You couldn't romanticize what you were doing. And you got very irritated and hot and nothing seemed very rational. The idea of straight lines seemed to be considered, You know, A Western bourgeois concept. But it was dynamic and the people there were dynamic. And I guess there were 10, 15 people when I was there. They were all smart as hell and they were devoted and most of them went on and actually learned a lot. One thing Geshe-la produced was the most amazing scholars. I came after Jeffrey Hopkins, Bob Thurman, And others. But, You know, This is what I think His Holiness the Dalai Lama had such respect for Geshe-la. He wasn't trying to produce. . . It wasn't a factory. It wasn't a Chinese labor camp to produce Mao worshippers or the cult personalities. He was there to turn out individualized individualistic scholars who had their own minds and their own sense of things and they've gone on to be really the backbone of scholastic Tibetan Buddhism. You always can judge a teacher by the product and by that, Even though he was dynamic and in a way he drove people off that were overly attracted. I mean, He was so dynamic and he was. . . So, You know, I've been around charisma all my life. I've been in politics, Right? But he was one of the most charismatic people I've ever met. But he wouldn't let you glom on to that, You know. He'd kind of show it to you a little bit but then he wanted to see how you're doing in those studies and he got you off into the university and he got you out or he got you down to Washington like myself. He got you into a useful lifestyle. So, It was hardcore and hardcore in a wonderful sense. And that's his. . . Don't you think, David, That's his real legacy? Well, It must have been 1981 preparing for His Holiness' second visit and there were a bunch of us up there. We'd work during the day and then, You know, Do what we had to do. I was studying for the bar exam in the morning and then cutting trees and moving piles of dirt in the afternoon. And every night we had a ritual where we'd go in and everybody would say a Tibetan prayer written by another Lama for Gisela's long life and some could repeat it in English and he would just spend a few minutes talking and asking things. And one woman who was there to help us prepare but not a regular, She said something like, Oh, You're such a bodhisattva. And Gisela turned on her like faster than you could imagine. He was like, Don't you ever say that, You know. Don't you ever say that. He said, Correctly, You should say, I am friends with bodhisattvas. Basically, Don't play me, You know. Like that's the adoration and none of that, You know, Like Joe said, He wanted to see the proof at the end of the day. He didn't care what the excuse was or anything like that. So that was a pretty good lesson to me about, You know, Don't believe the hype, You know. And I think a lot of that would help with a lot of, You know, American students, Especially when they're trying to deal with the cultural reality of a Buddhist society. Because there's so much valuable stuff there but, You know, You don't have to get into the personalities, You know. The message is, Transcends whatever the messenger is. And his Holiness says that all the time too, You know. He's just transmitting a tradition, A legacy that stretches back more than 2500 years and passes through some great intellectual institutions. And this is a human kind of legacy. And Geshe-la never lost sight of that fact to replace himself in it. He wasn't trying to create a false paradise. Right. I mean, And what was wonderful about him, I found, Was he made real the notion of what is the object of negation. And as you know from your own studies, I'm sure that one of the first things that you begin to work on in the Lam Rim is to understand what it is that's being rejected. And so that you either don't over reject it or you don't reify things. But a lot of us just look at that intellectually rather than emotionally. Geshe-la had the basic ability to kind of reach on into your psyche and pull out that thing, You know, I am, You know, I, How can you say that about me, You know, I am wonderful or I'm. Did chess help with this? Yes, It always helped. And also the Chinese labor camp helped a little bit. And the food, You know, But it was a renaissance. It was an amazing, Amazing scene. But it wasn't flowery. It was a combination of a marine boot camp with having dinner with Wittgenstein at night, I mean, Some place in between. Well, You know, At seven years old, It's hard to do the Wittgenstein stuff, You know, But he would enforce, With me, If I was screwing around, Not doing stuff, He would enforce what I call the lightning tringa effect. And he would just, If I had been horsing around, He would take his mala's and just quickly like snap and it'd be always across my, You know, And I've been beaten, You know, By my adult, You know, Caretakers and stuff. So, And it wasn't a culturally embarrassing thing at the time. Everybody, You know, If you were a kid, You got, You know, Beat if you screwed up, You know, And, But he never, It wasn't ever that sustained kind of thing. He just kind of woke you up, You know, Like flash at the tringa. So, But the Chinese labor camp thing, I got to admit, That was a given with me, You know, I mean, It never was like walking into something you weren't expecting, Because that's how the existence was at the time. But his kind of approach to discipline at that to keep your focus to me was enlightening as well as, You know, Limited kind of personal pain, Which I liked. I mean, That part was great. But I think also that at seven years old, I wasn't able to appreciate some of the things that he was, Like one thing that, Whenever I get angry or something, Because I was, I was also after the summer of 52, We had an older comic boy come and study for a while and, And he was like to tease me and, And I was susceptible to being teased and it would always end up with me being out of temper wise and I'd, And this love would come over, What's when I'd go, Leave me alone, Leave me alone, You know? And he say, Okay, But where are you? Who are you? You know, And you're a kid, You're like, I'm over here, You're going to be a Chester. And he said, Oh, That's just meat and bones, You know, Just like, Where's the real Dawa? You know, That was my call, McNamry. Where's the real Dawa? You know? And I always thought this was like a trick question, You know, Like maybe somewhere you're not like the sole of your foot or something like that. And, And I didn't realize what, You know, The ontological implications of that or trying to, The worldview is coming from. And, And I didn't actually, I didn't totally appreciate, I didn't get into Tibetan Buddhism until 1981 when I read Jeffrey Hopkins and Kenza, No one liked him, Compassion in Tibetan Buddhism. And then it was like something, A switch went off, You know, Like, Oh, This is what my teacher was about. So, So I came to it very late. You know, He had very strong political insight, I thought. And when I think back over those long nights of chess and when we got talking about politics, He actually was quite prescient. He felt that the Russians we could handle, He wasn't any fan of the Russians by any means, But he felt that they were not so tricky. But he always used to say to me that poor Americans, He'd say, When, When China begins to emerge, He said, It's going to be very difficult. He said, Because they are so tricky, So much more intricate and so much more subtle that we would have a very difficult time. And he thought that China would emerge. And he was always very worried about the base for the Tibetans in India because he felt that eventually the Chinese would find a way to maybe isolate the Dalai Lama in India or that India itself would have questions about it. I think he worried a little too about, He worried a lot about Vietnam. He never really said he was for one side or the other. And we talked a lot about it at times. He kind of, I'd push him on it, You know, Push my pawns and try to get him to say something about it, But he wouldn't. But he worried about our fortitude. And he said, Because we were so naive, He said, You know, Americans don't know anything about history, Which of course turned out to be true. I mean, The people that we were, Especially at that time period, There was very little. . . Or the region. Or the region, Right. And very few people knew about what had happened to the Kalmaks or what had occurred. And of course, Many of the people that first came to Buddhism came either from a sort of social democratic side in New York or a leftist point of view. And he talked about that. You know, He said, You know, He once said, You know, He said, Oh, I'm surrounded by all these, You know, People who have very strange views. And I said, Well, What do you think of that? And he said, I don't like to talk about it. You know, I don't. . . He said, They'll change, He said, They'll change when they understand a little bit. Poor and naive, He'd say, Very naive. And one of the things that changed me was he got me to. . . Because I was obviously generationally very opposed to what had happened in Vietnam. And even though he'd get me to go down and see people in Washington, You know, I was very leery of that world at that time period. But you know, During that time period, I also got to see another perspective through him. And of course, Then I began to change my views a little bit and understood a little more what he was saying. But he was nobody's fool. He knew who Churchill was. He understood the politics of England. You know, He'd been there. He understood the Indian liberation movement. He knew his Tibetan Buddhism, But he knew his contemporary history very well. He loved to talk about it. He loved Walter Cronkite. You know, He did. In the gong show. In the gong show. Right? I mean, You know. Tell him what he said once about the woman on the television. He had this thing for variety shows, Like Ed Sullivan and then. . . Lawrence Will. When this act comes out, There was something right in there. You know, And they're basically scantily clad and singing and dancing. And he said, Why? Why just take it off? Take everything off? It's like your grandfather saying, You know, Yeah, Take it off. You know, Or something. But I understood what he meant. There's some kind of pretension going on. You know, If you're going to sing the song, Fine. You know, If you're going to be, You know, Like soft porn, Then, You know, Like get to it or something, You know. But he liked Lawrence. Well, He would love. . . He was a sucker for those, The gong show and any kind of variety show. And he loved wrestling. Professional wrestling. Yeah, Right. On TV, You know. And he would just, He'd just get worked up. Because back then, It's not like now. You don't know who the good guy is or the bad guy. Because my kids grew up watching it. But back then, It was clearly marked who the bad guy. And he'd be up there for the good guys whenever they put a beating on a bad guy. I mean, You could just see him just get physically into it. And I try to tell him, Like, This is really not true, You know. He wouldn't buy it, You know, Because you couldn't get bounced off the floor like that. So, Yeah, There was this other side to him, You know, That was very down to earth, You know. Well, Most of it was down to earth. Springs up how this story, While it's about the coming of Tibetan Buddhism to America, It's also a nice little slice of Americana. It's absolutely. This is the American story. I mean, This is quintessentially, You know. You know, You have these three guys, These Americans, Right, Basically from the pilgrims time, Right, Who could trace their ancestry right to the start of America. Bob Thurman and Jeffrey Hopkins. Yeah, Bob Thurman, Chris George and Jeffrey Hopkins. And to be able to study here, Right, With the newest immigrants, The newest settlers, Right, That's kind of a historical synapse or something. In New Jersey. Yeah, In New Jersey. Which is at least funny to the New Yorkers. Right. Right. You know, I mean, It all had to be New Jersey, Right? But, You know, I'm fascinated. I could never talk politics with him. But it's amazing that he would give that kind of encouragement to Joel, You know, Like half a generation later. So that brings out the other side. The chess player. Yeah. And that he would pick you to refer you to contacts and things like that. That's. . . Well, He wasn't perfect. He made mistakes. Well, Of course, You know. I mean, I've had to fix some of the architecturally that you have to talk about. But, You know. And of course, I think some people certainly disappointed him. But, You know, He was amazingly resilient. One of the best pictures I remember is he's 74 years old. And he's on a ladder doing the siding on one of the main buildings, You know. And people are handing stuff up to him. So, Yeah, He was pretty hands on. But he wasn't arbitrary either. But other than the aluminum siding on the ceiling. I mean, That was a stroke I must say. You have to realize that he came from a pastoral society, Came from the steps. And look at how this man adapted. I mean, He became a student of Dorgiev's who was such a powerhouse of that time period, Particularly out of Leningrad. He got selected to leave one of the last trains that left Leningrad before the purges to, You know, Get to Mongolia and then go down to Tibet. He had just lived in Drabung and he lived in La Hasa. And then he met Sir Charles Bell from British Intelligence and made friends with him. And then he went up and lived in Beijing and he adapted there. And then he came back down. I mean, Here's a man who was the ultimate adapter and ended up watching Lawrence Wilk in New Jersey and hobnobbing with the powers to be. I'll never forget the day he came down here and I was in the White House and he wanted to go see the White House. I was there. Yeah, I know you were. We were old. And so we went over to see the West Wing of the White House and he ran into Mrs. Carter, The mother. And they got along famously. But he was like he was floating on a cloud as he went around the White House. And you could tell he understood. He was grounded in it. He understood its meaning and he understood the implications of him being there. And I remember when we left, He grabbed my hand. And when we went out front, Do you remember that? And we went out front of the West Wing and we came out the gate and he looked up at the White House and he grabbed my hand. And he said, This is really very important. This place is really very important. And you could just feel the enormity of what he was realizing all within the Dharma. And I think that's what I would like to close with. Here's a man who lived all this, All these transitions. But his faith in the Dharma, Not as some blind faith, But as some process that he went through, Through his liberation, Which you could feel. It liberated, Individualized human being, A powerful individual who digested this Dharma that he had. A Dharma that wasn't for sissies, You know. It was a Dharma that was for powerhouses. And he lived it and he adapted it and he believed in it. And he, Most importantly, Outside of any tradition, Right, He didn't become encompassed by the kamut community. He became as a gift. He didn't come encompassed by any, Even any other tradition. He came and he gave it in its full power and his interpretation of it. And that is the real electrical current that came through the kamuk power line. Yeah, It's a conduit. There's no question. As Joel was saying, He wasn't encompassed by the kamuk, Although he had a special regard for them. Not only that, He was able to influence them in a positive way, To get out of this tribal, Jingoistic mentality. Because he, You know, Before Bob and Jeffrey and Chris George showed up, He had lots of Americans come through. And he would give them, You know, Like they'd come once a week or once a month and either give lessons or he'd meet with them privately and talk about Buddhism. And one of the first was the artist Ted Seth Jacobs, Who's quite well known now and they met through the Zen Center. But he was always attracting these people from the outside. And for which his detractors always said, Oh, Look, You know, He's giving away the secret or something, You know, The petty mind. And that never affected him. He, You know, It was his own place, You know. They weren't paying his bills. And he had all of these very unusual people, Like I said before, George Zornos and his partner who published theater arts book. They were very helpful in the early years, Bringing the lamas from Tibet. Mr. Kimball, Who was a mortician, Basically, A funeral parlor director from Princeton, He'd come. And the presence of these outsiders inside of Freewood Acres made Freewood Acres less insular and closed, I think. Because, You know, You've got to remember who's there. Everybody that lied about how they got into America, You know, Including the Russians, The Russians even more so. So if you stop and examine the hearings and things that went on. So this insular community, And that's an apt metaphor, Geshe-la comes through there and just opens things up. And what are you worried about, You know? You know, We're all going to die soon. Well, In a way, He wanted them to be Mongolians. Otherwise, He didn't want them to be insular. And Geshe-la was, In essence, A Mongol. And you're seeing it today in modern Mongolia is there after this huge holocaust that occurred there where the Russians tried to completely crush Buddhism. It's beginning to flourish. And you see the power of the great Mongol scholars in the past, Great Mongol Buddhist leaders. And I think it's going to happen again. And to a certain extent, Given the repression that's going on in Tibet, Which I don't think will be successful, I don't think they'll ever crush the Dharma in Tibet no matter what they do unless they were to exterminate all Tibetans. But I think that in Mongolia, There's going to be a huge renaissance. And there is a renaissance going on. And it is that spirit of the Mongols. And I think it's going to have a big impact in China. And you know, People who think that this is over, There's been a setback. But I think that it's going to be very powerful tradition that's going to go forward. And Geshe-la really encompassed that. And really, He was a Mongol to heart. And the way I look at it, And also what I'd like to express, Is that the Mongol Empire, As great as it was, Was really the penultimate accomplishment. Because what happened eventually, That most martial of societies, That most militaristic of cultures, Became in effect followers of the path of wisdom and compassion. It just did a total reverse in several, I mean it's not complete, And I don't know if it was ever complete, But to change the fiber, The timber of that culture that produced the greatest fighting machine of their time into the pacifist followers of the Dalai Lama, At least from the 16th century on. This is also quite a sociological accomplishment. Speaking of the Dalai Lama, Geshe Wangya found it very important to bring the Dalai Lama to the United States where, And many might not know this, He wasn't welcome. Why did Geshe-la find it so important to bring the Dalai Lama to America? Well, I think he understood the power of the Dalai Lama and the power of his personality. I think he found it very contradictory that America wouldn't have the Dalai Lama here. And he saw the fact that there were people who fought his coming as being a great travesty in many ways. From the time I got there in 1971 until we finally got his Holiness in in 1979, It was his drumbeat of trying to get his Holiness here. And people often say, Well, Who's responsible for bringing the Dalai Lama to America? When you really think about it, A lot of people were very involved in it and nobody more involved than Geshe-la because it was just such a. . . He was convinced it could happen and he drove to have it happen. And as soon as it did happen, As David has articulated in his article, It had a dynamic impact and no place did it have a more dynamic impact than on the hill where important congressional leaders from the right and the left spectrum, From Teddy Kennedy to Jesse Helms, Charlie Rose to Ben Gilman, Many people that no one's heard of today, But they really stepped out and worked. Nancy Pelosi is another one. So it was very important. And I had no idea that it was so important when we all worked to get it done. And I have to say also, It wouldn't have happened except in the Carter administration. Carter was so much for human rights. He wasn't necessarily. . . He hadn't thought it through in terms of the Dalai Lama, But once it was posed to the administration, How can you be for human rights and not let the Dalai Lama in? It was completely logical. Many of the people who went on to become his great friends actually weren't very helpful at that time period. It's just like many presidents who aren't. . . When they're in office, They tend to be a little less helpful than when they're out of office. But it was a big step. And I think David's article from Russia with love, I love that title, Is that it just shows you in human affairs how to work on something that seems so small, To move the pebble can have such a big impact and how these poor people that went through so much, David's relatives, They did go through so much suffering to get here and how they came with the Dharma and an American flag and how they stayed true to that and how they bought Geshe-la. These were all the cause and effect relationships that created the situation where the Dalai Lama today is really one of the most known political leaders in the world and I would imagine a hell of a lot more popular than Mao Zedong in the world, Which is the supreme irony. What Joel just said is absolutely true in terms of everybody helping and coming together. But if you take just the reception he received on the hill, I think Joel has to admit that that was by the legwork of the people who first even entertained the idea, People like Charlie Rose, Who really, I mean, Here comes this tobacco congressman, Right, He was from a farm area in North Carolina, Becoming the champion of his holiness up on the hill. And this was not a time when he got all the limousines and the secret service or none of that. This was all done by legwork. And I think that kind of initial reception where everybody saw who they were dealing with, The rest of course his holiness took care of. But the legwork for that and the contacts for that and the currency of the hill, Right, Who you know, And that was all led by Joel also because, And as we all know, And anybody that was there at the time knew that Joel and Congressman Rose who shared the stage at the D. A. R. Constitution Hall when his holiness made his first speech in Washington, I think people should not lose sight of that. Not for any accolades or recognition beyond the personal satisfaction, But you know, It's important to understand how things came about. And the hill, It's still just a coup d'etat in terms of his holiness, The way he conquered it, And the groundwork was led by. . . And it's important for the future. I mean, At this time period with China, The Chinese Communist Party, Actually not to say China, Seemed so strong. And you have the British camera and saying, Oh, Don't worry, You know, We're not going to meet the Dalai Lama here, Just give us your currency. There are a lot of people who get negative about things and about the future of Tibet, But I don't think there's any reason to be negative about it. And I think this great spirit that's a human spirit and transcends all religions, This is just one example of what can be done and the need for everybody to combine politics and religion. You know, Obviously, Church and state need to be separated. I believe that very firmly. But you can't be political without having ethics and views and supporting this country, Supporting religious freedom or non-religious freedom, Right? And that's what we're about, About the freedom of ideas, The freedom to worship, The freedom to not worship. And if we lose that, I wonder what we're about. And so I think for people to be political, Whether it's protecting a Muslim community in Michigan that wants to worship or a Sikh community or a Buddhist community or a Christian fundamentalist community or a Catholic liberation movement or a hopus Dei, You know, All these ideas or atheists is very important. One reason I respect His Holiness so much is that, You know, He is very much of that school. The important thing is to be alive and to be thinking, But to wall off politics from religion in the sense that you think it's something unbecoming. And at the beginning of the Buddhist movement, There was a lot of that because there was this fear that there had been this association of the Tibetans with the agency, With the CIA and with right-wing elements in the United States government. There were a lot of people who ran. A lot of the early religious people in Tibetan Buddhism really tried to say, Oh, We're not part of that, You know, Or we don't support that or, You know, That kind of thing. And that's a big mistake. I think that's a big mistake. And I think Geshe-la thought that was a huge mistake. I think he thought that was extremely naive, Especially in Mahayana Buddhism where, You know, You're not just working for your own liberation, Where the idea is that we're all, If one person is going to get liberated, We'll all get liberated together, The great Mahayana, The great vehicle. So how can you separate politics and religion if you believe that? And I don't think there's a better example than the story told about this little community in New Jersey and these people who came. All they had left was their faith. That's all they had. And it led to great things and we were enriched by it, Which again shows why immigration handled correctly, You know, Is such a gift. The one thing I would add is that it's important to look forward, Not just backwards. And this story is going to become very important not just because of old history. It's going to be very important to retell this story and the history of what happened in St. Petersburg before the Russian Revolution and during the Russian Revolution and what happened in Mongolia because there's going to be a renaissance, There is a renaissance of Buddhism in Mongolia and there is a renaissance of Buddhism in White Russia, Not just in Mongolian Russia. And you know, It's not hard to find pictures even of Putin and Medvedev with monks, Not that I think that they're necessarily endorsing all that, You know, Their political side, But still they're not afraid of it. And it's very important to go back and read two, I think two interesting books. One is quite academically good and the other one is not so academically good, But in a way is very important. And one is Snelling's book on Russian Buddhism, Which is really, Has a lot about Dorjev, Who's a very important historical figure. You can't understand Central Asian politics in the late 19th century and early 20th century if you don't understand Dorjev. And the second book is an interesting book that's come out called The Red Shambhala by a Russian author. Nomenkski. Nomenkski. And he gets into this whole dynamic that was occurring at the beginning of the revolution all the way until the purges of the 30s, How there were people in the Communist Party who felt that Buddha was the first communist and that they actually had tankas painted early on the revolution of Lenin as Buddha. And there's a wonderful picture in his book of one of these tankas in a Mongolian yurt or gir. So the Shambhala legend we know was used during the time of Dorjev around the Russian emperor. And this is what drove the English completely crazy was this notion that Dorjev came up with of an inner Asian Buddhist nation. They saw this as very challenging, It was one reason they invaded. But then also after the revolution there was this whole notion that Buddhism to a certain extent was a precursor of nativist communism. And Stalin who was very nationalistic, Very limited in his thinking of course cut all that out and had everybody shot including former heads of the president or the KGB who was into this thinking. So this is a whole part of history that has been swept under the rug and will re-emerge as our view of Buddhism becomes less primitive. We right now are because of the great holocaust that occurred, You have to remember 1945 Buddhism was the largest religion in the world. Millions and millions of monks and nuns and lay people were executed, Liquidated whether it be in North Korea or in China or from Manchuria or Mongolia or Tibet or Laos or Cambodia or Vietnam, All these areas in Russia. We haven't even began to categorize what occurred yet. We're focused today on what's happened in Tibet which is horrific but we have to understand that this is the tail end of a systematic holocaust that occurred of the Buddha Dharma. And so this article just is a doorway into a whole history that we don't understand and as our understanding of the Dharma increases we will go through this doorway and understand much more. These are concepts that we need to understand as we develop a more sophisticated view of Buddhism. Buddhism is not ahistorical, It's a historical religion as well as ahistorical and we need to understand these things and as we understand them our compassion and our wisdom will increase and that's what Mr. David's done is to help us on that pathway. This story demonstrates how politics in the Dharma can't be walled off and separated. Absolutely. Like I said, The Cold War plays a light motif throughout the whole thing. If it hadn't been for the Cold War which couldn't have happened without World War II or the emergence of these two opposing light and dark forces. So this is going on the whole time and it is a political situation. It just happened to serve, At least for the comics, Allowed them to reestablish their spiritual roots, Their traditions in a whole new seedbed. You just saw this advanced issue in print for the first time an hour or two ago. What's it like seeing it in print? This has been a story I've been trying to write for a while and there were a couple of false starts because I'm not a historian, I'm not even a diarist. But all of these connections kept happening and keep reminding me that something good came of this experience. The Cossack and Mongol community in New Jersey producing this kind of result was, I thought, Something that was worthwhile. Having lived there, I felt like telling the story because it was a unique upbringing even for that age. So the memoir that I'm writing is basically about the experience of growing up in that community and seeing Isla and then eventually how that led to His Holiness coming to America. The rest is history. That debut in 1979 really did change the arc of interest in Tibetan Buddhism because when that visit happened, You have to remember, There was already a layer of intellectual and scholarly work done on Tibetan Buddhism. Once His Holiness came and gave that incredible teaching tour, All of those things were firmed up, I think, And more and more interest grew. That's how it came about. I'm just thrilled to death that at least I can contribute just a small piece of the narrative. That's all the news that's fit to print. That's a wrap. Thank you, Johan and David, For your time today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank all your colleagues there that made this thing possible. It's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.

Reviews

I needed to know this.

Fascinating. Thank you for keeping this piece of history alive.

Keep the real history alive. This was very important for me to hear. He was right about the Chinese. They are cleaver and we are naive

Fascinating- thank you for sharing