Tibetan Buddhist monastery, once all nuns, makes room for monks

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Agnikan
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Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2017 5:22 pm

Tibetan Buddhist monastery, once all nuns, makes room for monks

Post by Agnikan »

For years, a group of women with clean-shaven heads wearing traditional Tibetan monastic red robes have been running a 240-acre abbey tucked in the woods just outside of Newport, a town of fewer than 3,000 near the Washington-Idaho border.

But Sravasti Abbey, among the first Tibetan Buddhist monasteries for Western adherents in the U.S., was never intended to be a women-only monastic training ground.

Over the past eight years, Sravasti Abbey has grown apace, ordaining six nuns and two monks and adding three previously ordained nuns to its community.

Most recently, Geshe Dadul Namgyal, an esteemed Buddhist scholar, joined the abbey as the first male resident teacher. He will lead the growing monk community at Sravasti.

He joins Sravasti’s founder and abbess, Venerable Thubten Chodron, and author Venerable Sangye Khadro as a senior teacher guiding and instructing the monastery’s now 20 monastics.


Namgyal, called “Geshe-la,” an honorific for a spiritual teacher, has been a monk in the Tibetan tradition for more than 40 years. He chose to reside at Sravasti after recently retiring from Emory University’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics.


Chonyi said that even though Geshe-la has taken on a leadership position at the abbey and the monk community is growing, balance is — and will continue to be — key at Sravasti.

“Don’t think girl power is going anywhere,” she said.
I would hope not.
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