Birthing Buddhas
Volunteers craft 1,000 statues for peace garden
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Outside, the world is frozen. The wooden buildings are blanketed in white, and icicles hang from stiff prayer flags. It’s winter, and in the outside world, life is suspended.
But inside, it’s just beginning.
At the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas outside Arlee, each day two or three new buddha statues join the ranks of the more than 700 figures already lined up in the Buddha Barn, as it’s affectionately named by the volunteers who spend their days crafting the statues.
“This is the birthing process, we call it,” said David Elliott, who’s been living and working at the Ewam Montana site since August.
Like fellow Buddha-crafter Luke Hanley, he was drawn to the peaceful, even meditative experience of working on the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas project. After volunteering off and on for a couple of months to help Hanley, who’s been managing the Buddha Barn for about a year, Elliott decided to devote himself to the project full-time.
“It’s been a pretty incredible time here,” he said.
He and Hanley spend around five hours a day mixing cement, filling molds, and after the statues sit in their molds for 24 hours, extricating the Buddhas and chipping off any excess cement. Hanley carefully inspects each statue and uses a rotary tool to smooth all the rough edges and lines, a process that takes about an hour. It’s simple work — no special skills are needed, Elliot said — and the two men say it’s therapeutic. Volunteers are encouraged to participate in the process on Wednesdays and Saturdays. According to Elliott, most people say helping make a Buddha statue is a transcendent experience.
When someone helps extricate a finished statue from its mold, “They say, ‘That’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,” Elliott said.
Not only is the work a meditative experience, but the Ewam center seems to radiate peace — one reason Ewam founder Gochen Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche chose the site for the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas. On a trip through the Jocko Valley, the monk recognized the surrounding hills from a series of dreams he had as a child, Hanley said. And the valley is shaped like a Lotus flower — a Buddhist symbol for enlightenment — with mountains as petals, Rinpoche noticed. His ideas are similar to tribal tradition, Hanley explained, which considers the Jocko Valley a sacred place. In fact, Rinpoche has emphasized the similarities between Tibetan and Native American traditions, and before starting to construct the garden, he visited the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council to ask for their blessing.
As founder of Ewam, Rinpoche has started several Buddhist centers around the United States, but the Arlee site is specifically designated a peace center. And when the garden is complete, the Dalai Lama, Tibetan spiritual leader, will visit it to consecrate the site and give his blessing. The famed visit is still a year or two away — it’ll probably happen in September 2013, Hanley said — but it’s part of the motivation for completing the garden, whose timeline for completion largely depends on fundraising. When it’s done, the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas will be a place of meditation for everyone, no matter their religious beliefs or spiritual beliefs or spiritual tradition, Hanley said.
“It’s like an international place of peace,” he explained. “I’m Buddhist, but I love cathedrals … there’s something transcendent about sacred spiritual places.”
The garden’s center point is already complete — a 24-foot figure of Yum Chenmo, the great divine mother in Buddhist tradition. Around her, an eight-spoked wheel, representing the Eightfold Path to enlightenment, will radiate out. The 1,000 Buddhas will sit along the spokes, and the wheel will be lined with 1,000 stupas, or forms that serve as inspirational support for meditation. Four lifesize Buddhas will sit at the four compass points of the garden, which will also contain 1,000 trees.
“1,000 trees, 1,000 stupas, 1,000 Buddhas,” Hanley said.
The Buddhas themselves are archetypal images that “transcend any dogma,” Hanley said.
The Buddha image is the physical symbol of complete spiritual awakening, and “it’s not at all an idol to be worshiped,” he explained.
Rather, it’s a symbolic image that is meant to bring peace to anyone who sees it, Rinpoche explained in an informational pamphlet about the garden.
“Some of you have asked why it is necessary to construct the 1,000 Buddhas. One reason is that the construction of these Buddha images really does benefit us,” he explained. “For example, just by viewing these images, our minds become happy; if we hear about them, that will benefit us; and if we think about them or reflect on them, that will also benefit us.”
Since the garden is for everyone, everyone is invited to invest in the project, whether it’s donating funds or spending an evening with Hanley and Elliott in the Buddha Barn.
“Part of the idea is to have as many people contribute in as many ways as possible,” Hanley said.
“So it’s a garden built by the masses,” Elliott added.
For more information on the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas or volunteering, call Ewam at 406-726-0555 or visit the website ewammontana.org
