Gyurmed Dorjee was only 5 years old when he first entered the monastery in Bir, India. Almost two decades later, after continuous years of study and practice, a religious community from the University of Virginia invited him to the United States, where he began his journey as a Buddhist teacher in the western world.
After a series of visits, Dorjee gained fame and recognition in the West, but even so, he was determined to go back to his monastery in India after every session. After losing his fake passport in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, California, Dorjee figured he would be staying in the U.S. longer than expected. Currently located in Boulder, he is now the owner of a meditation center called Mipham Shedra.
The Buddhist community of Boulder has been growing for the last 40 years, especially since Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche established the Boulder Shambhala Center in 1973. The Buddhist culture has planted its seed in the occidental world, especially in Boulder, mainly because of the immigration of Buddhist teachers.
For many Boulder visitors, Buddhism is a noticeable presence in the city. The prevalence of Buddhist stores and temples is clear in places like Pearl Street Mall or anywhere in the downtown area — but why would these businesses come here in the first place?
“I think the Rocky Mountains had a lot to do with it. Rinpoche felt very much at home with this mountain range,” said Melanie Klein, executive director of the Boulder Shambhala Center.
Klein explains how Rinpoche was a respected figure in a large Tibetan monastery, but after the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, he and his 300 followers, along with the Dalai Lama, crossed the Himalayan Mountains and sought refuge in India. After some years, he moved to England, and later on to the U.S. Even though he already had an established retreat center in Vermont, he decided to move to Boulder with many of his students to start a Buddhist community.
“He began to invite really brilliant teachers from the Tibetan exile community to come teach here,” Klein said.
Rinpoche might not have been the first Buddhist teacher to come to Boulder, but he was the first one to create and expand the Buddhist culture. Rinpoche has influenced people like Dorjee to come to Colorado and stay here to continue their teachings.
“My main reason was Shambhala,” Dorjee said when asked why he came to Boulder. “It’s kind of like if you look at it from a business point of view. If you want to sell a mala [Tibetan prayer beads], you have to sell where your customers are available, where more people are interested in that.”
After he lost his passport in San Francisco, Dorjee traveled within the U.S. with his American ID, but decided to stay in Colorado because he knew about the growing Buddhist communities in Boulder. He said this city is doing a good job at promoting and keeping the practice vibrant by bringing in great masters like the the Dalai Lama.
Tenzin T. Passang, owner of the Tibet Gallery on 13th Street, said his main reason for coming here was the mountains.
“For me as a Tibetan, it is home away from home,” he said.
Although Boulder’s Buddhist community has been growing since the establishment of the Shambhala Center 40 years ago, its prosperity in a community that has been heavily identified as non-religious may seem strange.
According to The Denver Post, Boulder was the second-least religious city in the U.S. as of 2013. About 61 percent of Boulder residents polled by Gallup identified as non-religious.
“There is this notion that Buddhism is a philosophy as opposed to a religion,” Klein said.
She said that people feel more comfortable with the Buddhist practice as opposed to Christianity because Buddhism does not require a serious commitment or a set of beliefs. Klein also said even though spiritual work does to a certain extent follow those looser premises, Buddhism is most definitely religious.
“The notion of working with one unseen world, magnificent deities … is not a secular idea,” she said.
Boulder residents have largely been labeled as secularists, but shop owner Passang said it’s that same human love, oneness, inner connectivity and connection with nature that attracts Buddhist communities to Boulder and enables Buddhism to persist and continue to spread in the city. And although religious affiliation is hard to measure, Buddhism’s cultural presence in the city is apparent.
Passang said that people in Boulder are receptive, appreciating, respectful and non-critical. These qualities, along with many others, are what makes him and the rest of the Tibetan community of Boulder feel at home.
“When you feel home, you feel safe. When you feel safe, there’s freedom” he said.
There is however, a challenge the Boulder Buddhist community is facing.
“A big part of the Buddhist community in Boulder are people who came here 40 years ago to relate to [Buddhism], and certainly others have been attracted to it since, but I’ll just tell you that something like 70 percent of our membership are over 60,” Klein said about the current demographic interested in Buddhism.
Klein worries that in a few years the Buddhist population of Boulder will decline dramatically, mostly because of millennials’ declining interest in religion and politics.
“Millennials aren’t belongers — they don’t belong to churches, they don’t belong to political parties. They just don’t like to belong,” Klein said.
The Boulder Shambhala Center is trying to deal with this problem by encouraging younger generations to join their meditations and form part of their monthly programs.
As Tibetan Buddhists who have been exiled from their homelands, Dorjee, Rinpoche and Passang have come to know Boulder as their refuge. They have all found a home in this small city in the Rocky Mountains, which they say reminds them of the Himalayas.
Dorjee said he will remain in Boulder because of his admiration towards the enthusiasm Westerners have demonstrated toward Buddhism. He wants to help practitioners continue with their religious process by staying here and continuing the teachings of all the masters who come to Boulder.
“I want to help all these people. I want to remain here; that’s why I’m different […] I cannot become like Dalai Lama; Dalai Lama cannot do what I am doing. We are also, together, actually helping the community,” he said.
Contact CU Independent News Staff Writer Amanda Trejos at Amanda.Trejos@colorado.edu.
