Sravasti Monastery and WSU students create sacred mantra for new meditation hall
News article by Mary Feusner | FāVS News
After a day of learning Buddhist practices, a group of Washington State University students helped create a sacred mantra that will be sealed inside a Buddha statue for Sravasti Monastery’s new meditation hall.
Sravasti Monastery is the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery for nuns and monks established in the United States. Venerable Thubten Chodron founded the monastery in 2003 on approximately 300 acres of forest in Newport. The monastery is currently home to 23 monks and four cats.
Through WSU’s Religious Reporting class, nine students and three professors were able to spend the night at the monastery. The students, who arrived around noon on April 6 and left around 10:30 a.m. on April 7, were able to eat, sleep and meditate alongside the monks and nuns.
“I don’t feel like I’m outside of them. They don’t see themselves as separate from other people,” WSU student Elizabeth Stout said of her experience at the convent.
Learn the basics of meditation
During their stay, students were introduced to the basics of meditation and had the opportunity to participate in three separate meditation sessions.
The first meditation session was taught by Ven. Under the guidance of Thubten Choni, students learned the Buddhist mantra “Om Mani Padme, Ham,” which means “Praise to the Jewel and the Lotus.”
It was explained to the students that both the gemstone and the lotus represent compassion and wisdom, and chanting mantras can calm the mind.
“In Buddhism, the mind is the most important part, and only you can control your mind,” Choni said.
After meditation, the students were given a tour of the monastery by Ven. Thubten Samten. The students had to go into the current meditation room. There, she explained the reason for building a new Buddhist temple.
Growing beyond the old meditation hall
According to Samten, the current meditation hall is where many monks became ordained. They all have a connection to the universe, but unfortunately they have outgrown it. With 23 current members and visiting guests, we are running out of space.
The new Buddhist shrine, which the monks hope to complete by the summer, will be a two-story, 17,000-square-foot building. It consists of a main hall, Tara room, Posada room, library, several meeting rooms, and offices.
In addition to three Ganjira statues in the center of the roof, a Dharma wheel and two deer statues are displayed above the door. Samten explained that the decoration on the roof allows the Buddha hall to be linked to traditional Tibetan monasteries.
The main hall will feature three sculptures handmade in France by sculptors Peter and Dennis Griffin.
A 10-foot-tall seated statue of Shakyamuni Buddha will be placed in the center of the altar, the monastery said. Two small statues of Venerable Ananda and Venerable Mahaprajapati, who were closely associated with Buddha during his lifetime, are placed on either side.
The Shakyamuni Buddha has a cavity that passes through the center and heart of the statue. According to the monks, the mantras created by the students will be used here.
Roll the mantra in your hands
When it was time to chant the mantra, the students were taken back to the main hall and asked to cleanse their hands. After watching a demonstration of how to begin rolling a mantra, the students sat among the monks and began the mantra themselves.
The students chanted mantras in the names of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his teachers, His Holiness Ling Lippoche and His Holiness Ven Lama. Tenzin Tsepal said.
The process began with the students cutting out a piece of incense the same width as the mantra. The mantra, written in Sanskrit, was typed on a long, thin piece of yellow paper. The students then placed the incense on the edge of the paper and began rolling it around. As students neared the end of the first paper, they placed a new paper on top so they could continue rolling. This continued until the mantra paper ran out.
Stout explained that it felt strange at first when he started chanting mantras because he wasn’t a monk, but he was grateful for the experience.
“A part of me will remain in this temple forever.”
WSU student Elizabeth Stout
Samten explained why the students were invited to help chant the mantra.
“We like to share what we do, and your group came to learn,” she said.
She went on to talk about how she was able to contribute to a calming activity by allowing students to chant mantras.
She explained that this activity not only helped the students and monks, but would also benefit others who are in front of the sacred mantra now and in the future.
“It’s going to be really exciting when I go back and look at it. It’s going to have a piece of me and my work in it,” Stout said of the Sakyamuni Buddha statue at the monastery.
