Garden of One Thousand Buddhas

This past weekend, Rob and I had to make one final trip down to our storage area near Yellowstone to pick up his motorcycle, the last of our remaining toys in storage. It’s about a five-hour drive, no matter which way you go, and we try to go a slightly different way each time to make it interesting. I typically just find a route by looking at my GPS and plugging in something a hundred miles or so up ahead so it will give us the best route in that direction. On this particular occasion, we were delighted to see something crop up along the route that we’d never seen before: the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas just outside the tiny town of Arlee, Montana! And of course, being Buddhists (although not in the Tibetan tradition) we had to stop!

The Garden was founded by Gochen Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche (1953- ) and serves as a Buddhist meditation center in the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. That’s a mouthful to digest, but I’ll just say that a Tulku is a person who has been recognized as a reincarnation of a past lama, or spiritual leader. Typically, as a lama is about to pass away, they will provide some clues about where they will be reborn in their next lifetime. Some time after their passing, other lamas will go on a pilgrimage to this location to try and identify a young child who is the reincarnation of their beloved teacher and colleague. Typically, this will involve giving the child some tests using objects that were of great importance to the former incarnation, or asking him (as far as I know, it is always a male child) some questions that only the former incarnation would have been able to answer. This “unmistaken” child is then given special spiritual education and mentoring as they grow up to become the next spiritual leader within their school, in this case, the Nyingma School. And this particular garden is the result of a prophetic vision that Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche had as a child and its location was discovered while Rinpoche was on a trip to teach the Dharma in the United States. For those who may be wondering, the Zen lineage in which I practice does not put much, if any, emphasis on reincarnation, and we do not recognize reincarnations of spiritual teachers. Our focus is primarily on the here-and-now manifestations of waking up to one’s interconnected life in this world. But I do have great respect for other traditions, and this garden really was quite a magical place!

The Garden is laid out following the design of a Dharma Wheel, a visual manifestation of the Buddha’s teachings. The eight spokes of the wheel symbolize the aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path, a group of purifying practices consisting of Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Samadhi (meditative awareness or absorption). The Noble Eightfold Path is common across all sects of Buddhism, and arose from Shakyamuni Buddha’s original teachings about the origins of human suffering, and how we can end suffering in our lives. Each “spoke” of the wheel in this garden, as well as the circumference, is made up of numerous sitting Buddha figures, each one donated or sponsored by an individual or family. At the center of the wheel is a colorful statue of Yum Chenmo (Great Mother, orPrajnaparamita in the Zen tradition), who represents the culmination of great compassion and transcendent wisdom that results from meditation and contemplation. And each spoke in this particular wheel terminates at a statue or mandala that individuals walking the wheel can use for contemplation on the Buddhist path of awakening. Much of the symbolism here is primarily familiar to individuals practicing within the Nyingma School, but all of it is beautiful and will arouse a sense of awe in any visitor.

One of my favorite mandalas in the Garden was the Magnetizing Mandala, also known as a Prayer Wheel. Common throughout Tibet, prayer wheels typically contain rolled-up scrolls of prayers–often Om Mani Padme Hum, or The Jewel in the Lotus–which are chanted as a means of accumulating good karma, purifying negative energy, and spreading spiritual blessings. People sometimes carry handheld prayer wheels, which they turn continuously. Each time the wheel turns one full revolution, the prayer is considered to manifest in the world. And modern technology has brought to the world the advantages of mechanical prayer wheels that turn continuously using solar electricity or wind power, so that prayers can be manifest perpetually. The prayer wheel in this garden has a little bell near the top. A nail at one point of the wheel rings the bell with every revolution, so you can hear the prayer going out into the world.

My other favorite stop on the wheel of this garden was a small lake representing the Vajrayana School of Buddhism. Buddhism consists of three major sects or schools: Theravada (The Way of the Elders, focusing on personal awakening), Mahayana (The Great Vehicle, focusing on Bodhisattva practices that help bring everyone in the world to awakening–this school includes Zen Buddhism, which is the tradition in which I practice), and Vajrayana (The Diamond Vehicle, focused on mystical and esoteric practices that quickly lead to liberation). Tibetan Buddhism is part Mahayana and part Vajrayana, and the lake contains statues representing the main figures within the Vajrayana tradition, including Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava), the 8th century Indian mystic who introduced tantric Buddhism to Tibet, and my personal favorite, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

Khyentse Rinpoche (1910-1991) was the leader of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism from 1988 until his passing in 1991, and is considered by many to be a modern realized Buddhist master, due to his lifelong embodiment of compassion and enlightened wisdom. Following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950’s, Khyentse Rinpoche’s personal, dedicated effort was crucial in the preservation of Tibetan Buddhism, as the communist Chinese sought to wipe out the entire religion and culture from the territory they now occupied. He received numerous empowerments and teachings from both the Nyingma and Rime lineages, particularly those he thought were on the verge of disappearing, and wrote volumes of texts that revitalized the teachings from all four Tibetan Buddhist schools so that they could be understood and practiced by modern practitioners. Despite his exalted status within the Buddhist religion, Khyentse Rinpoche was also known for his diligence, humility, and courage throughout his life. It was lovely to encounter a statue of him unexpectedly during our spontaneous visit to the garden!

Of course, no pilgrimage would be complete without a visit to the well-stocked Gift Shop! Filled with books, Buddhist statues, malas, incense, and more, the gift shop held an untold wealth of temptation for us. In the end, we settled on t-shirts featuring calligraphy from the Garden’s founder depicting the sacred symbols of Hung (emptiness, or the nature of reality) and Hrih (self-respect or conscientiousness). I’ll leave it to you to decide which of us chose which syllable!

After an hour or so, we headed back to the car and continued our own pilgrimage to the storage unit. And yeah, we got the bike!