Mark Your Calendars: Tibetan Monks Back at Louisville’s Cathedral for Mandala-Making

Are Christians duly persecuted and opposed by the monks of Drepung Gomang Monastery in South India or in Tibet? 

If so, I guess that’s what TEC has in common with these mandala makers.

They should just change the name of the National Cathedral to the International Interfaith Cathedral and be done with it! The UN would be so proud!

Do the Tibetan monks charge the church for these appearances? Or, who pays for them to come? Why not invite them to some appropriate neutral setting in Louisville?

I am a bit confused.  Does this mean that the monks are worshiping in the cathedral, or are they making a nice piece of art?

#1 - The Drepung monks don’t persecute anybody. The days of warring between monastic factions in Tibet are over, for the most part (excepting rare flareups of the issue of contenting Karmapas in Rumtek, Sikkim—which is a different Tibetan lineage). These guys are pretty peaceful, don’t have a beef against Christians anywhere. Plus, the pretty much believe in and follow the principles that come from belief in Natural Law (though for them it’s not God-given). Meaning, celibacy except in marriage, no homosexual anything, opposition to abortions, following the Buddhist version of the Golden Rule, etc.

#4 - The monks ARE worshipping in the Cathedral, though I don’t think they are actually committing sacrilege as it is properly defined. Perhaps the Dean, etc., are in inviting them, depending on how they frame the whole thing. Having a sanctified Buddhist sand mandala takes a bit more doing than just drawing it, rather like a High Church blessing, and that isn’t what’s being described. If that were what’s happening, then there would in my view be some serious culpability on the Dean and Chancery’s part.

#3 - The monks themselves live on offerings, which is to say, it costs bupkis (nothing, nada) to have them anywhere. Food and travel money, if that. However, these displays are usually intended to raise money for and goodwill for the “home” team, so there is a fundraising component. I don’t know how it applies to appearances at Episcopal cathedrals, however.

My own comment is that cathedrals were always somewhat “mixed use,” in that they served as community meeting places for other than worship back “in the day.” However, they were never designed to serve as interfaith gathering hot-spots.

I’ve met these monks, and they aren’t pushing any agenda besides raising money for their monastery and (they hope) doing what they can for world peace. The know about as much about Christianity as your average rock. Perhaps less…and there’s little chance of their learning anything about it at an Episcopal cathedral, is there! That’s probably the real crime, here.

For what it’s worth I fully believe they’re as appalled at the persecution of Christians in Orissa as we are. Perhaps more so, because they may be next.

Like I say, I’ve met these people and more like them, been to Nepal twice, etc. They aren’t the enemy. The nudniks at 815 and their allies, now, that’s another thing…

This is the disturbing part:

...the public is again invited join the monks in prayer as they work on this extraordinary creation.

I don’t think we, as Christians, ought to “join…in prayer” with those of another faith.  Who knows what they are praying for, and to whom?
On a reassuring note, the mandala is not being created in the cathedral proper, but in the Bishop’s Hall next door.

Oh, those wild and wacky monks are back!  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry…. they’ll become a part of you.

“they’ll become a part of you.” eeeuuuuuuuwwwwwww….

ears2hear, thanks for your info.

We have worked as short term missionaries in a Tibetan Tantric Buddhist part of India for years and have found the average Buddhist as ears-2-hear describes them.  The Buddhist Association (basically the heads of the monasteries and their political leaders) is another matter and does make life difficult for the Christians at times.  Our team has been thrown out of villages and the Buddhist Association tried to disrupt a tent meeting, but nothing like in Orissa.  Tantric Buddhism is very occult and quite scary, but all of the monks I have met have been kind, compassionate, and grateful.  815, on the other hand…

It’s still syncretism and God says He hates it therefore we should not do it. But there I go again being under the authority of the Bible and not leaning on my own understandings. My bad.

skramer, #11, you’ll not find a more vigorous opponent of syncretism in the house than me, though I suspect your comment was not aimed particularly in my direction. Whatever 815 and any similar pack of ill-educated modernists believe, religions don’t mooosh together, and as for Christianity and any of the others that 815 seems to want to add into the mix (wicca, Islam, Buddhism, New Age or what-have-you) it’s a serious no-go situation. What’s the verse? Is it John 3:16? I kinda think so. Nope. Evidence of syncretism (what I’m calling moosh) is evidence of an absence of Christian faith. So, no offense to the nice monks, but they shouldn’t be doing their thing at a supposedly Christian cathedral. But, hey, at least they weren’t in the sanctuary, eh?

Ears2hear, no not directed at you at all. Thanks for your faithfulness. I guess at this point it wouldn’t matter if they were making their sand castles on the altar, it just seems so far gone.

Personally I am much more disturbed by a clown mass in a cathedral than Buddhist monks drawing in the sand.  At least they can be forgiven for not understanding why it is an issue to use a Christian church for a non-Christian religious event.