Cape Breton monastery a haven for Buddhists

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/12/2006 (7041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GAMPO ABBEY, N.S. — A murmur moves through the quiet, like the fading song of a church bell. Echoes of the metal gong dissolve and incense smoke floats over a golden Buddha. Voices slowly rise, drifting as one into haunting hymns of an otherworldly air.

The monks and nuns of Gampo Abbey chant in perfect unison — for happiness, for freedom from suffering, for the spiritual leaders who paved the way to this isolated Buddhist monastery on the edge of Cape Breton’s craggy coast.

The voices fall away, and silence softly cloaks the meditating monastics sitting crossed-legged on large red pillows, on a hardwood floor inside their haven on this jagged island cliff.

Thirty minutes slip by in breaths. Then, men and women with bald heads, in bare feet or socks, file out into what will be a morning of muteness, accompanied by coughs, clinking breakfast dishes or the sounds of footsteps.

The chanting, the meditating and the silence have been morning rituals for the past 22 years among those who come past rainbow trees, up rugged roads to this place of higher calling.

A Tibetan llama — a former monk who later gave up his monastic vows — travelled along the winding Cabot Trail in the early 1980s, searching for the perfect place for a full-time Buddhist monastery in the West.

As the story goes, the late Chogyam Trunga Rinpoche, widely credited with bringing Tibetan Buddhism to North America after leading followers out of Communist-occupied Tibet in 1959, saw a double rainbow on the way.

And rainbows, says Jerry Chapman, the monastery’s lay meditation instructor and sometime interim director, are “a good sign.”

“Something is here that draws people,” says Chapman, head of practice and study for the monastery, which includes the main monastic residence, a school and solitary or group retreat cabins on more than 80 hectares just past Pleasant Bay.

Eighty-two-year-old Ani Migme, a small woman who speaks softly and smiles often, felt something when she first visited the newly opened abbey 22 years ago.

“I realized this is the right place for me but it took me about four years in order to (say) this is where I’m going,” says the nun, sitting on her bed surrounded by Buddhist books, pictures of Buddhist teachers and a miniature shrine to Siddhartha Gautama, or Buddha.

“There’s something… spiritual here. Very palpable. I can’t put it into words,” she says.

Walking through the mountains when he came to Gampo Abbey five years ago, Karma Jinpa, who’s made a commitment to be a lifelong monk, sensed a rugged peace in the land above a lush, cavernous valley almost hidden from the world.

“There is just something very inviting — rough, difficult, but inviting — about the place… I really felt at ease,” says Karma, a 29-year-old Quebec native who turned to Buddhism after becoming inspired by a Tibetan monk living in his home province.

There is no hunting or killing on the grounds, which are home to moose, eagles and families of foxes.

The rules for all who stay here also include no stealing, no sex, no alcohol or drugs, no harsh words or deeds.

Taming the mind, they say, is the core of Buddhism.

“One has to be healthy in order to be of benefit to others… I don’t mean just in body, I mean in mind,” says Ani Migme.

“The problem is that if you don’t have a healthy clear mind, you may do harm… intentionally or unintentionally to others,” says the elderly nun, who has laid out candy kisses, little cloth flowers, incense and other tiny offerings before a small Buddha statue on her private shrine.

“So what taming the mind means is that you begin to… get rid of these unwholesome, habitual (thought) patterns, then you can see the world more clearly.”

That’s why the lifelong monks and nuns, as well as the temporary monastics — they usually stay for nine months to a year but must follow all the same abbey rules — practise 4 1/2 hours of meditation daily.

And that’s why there’s as much silence here as sound.

Except for chants and a place on upper floors for talking between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., silence reigns here from 6 p.m. until noon the following day on weekdays. And voices are still all day on Sundays.

“You discover, because you can’t just blurt out everything that comes to mind, that most of what you’d like to blurt out is unnecessary,” says Chapman.

— Canadian Press