Articles About Shambhala Mountain Center
Blessed place awaits the Dalai Lama: Great Stupa a Buddhist jewel — in the middle of nowhere
Daily Camera - September 16, 2006
By Lisa Marshall, For the Camera
RED FEATHER LAKES — Envision a pristine white monument rising 108 feet high, and adorned with such colorful, ornate details it looks as if it were plucked straight out of ancient Tibet.
At its northern entrance, a bronze standing Buddha beckons visitors from high atop a steep white staircase. Above its southern door, a golden-four-armed Mahakala, or "protector," peers out from a tinted second-floor window in a hidden staircase. The pointed spire at the building's top is wrapped in gold, visible high above the treetops a quarter-mile away. And Tibetan prayer flags hang from each corner, rustling in the breeze.
Now take that grand image and plop it in the middle of utter nowhere, on a desolate northern Colorado road where vast fields of sagebrush and antelope herds give way to rocky pine forests.
It is in this mirage-like setting, at the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, that His Holiness the Dalai Lama will address an eager crowd of 2,500 people Sunday morning. The purpose of his visit: to personally bless this seemingly out-of-place monument to Buddhism and world peace, before a crowd of many of the people who helped build it.
The Dalai Lama is also participating in many events around the region all weekend — culminating with a sold-out talk at the Pepsi Center in Denver Sunday afternoon.
"It feels to me so precious to be able to show him how the goodness that he represents has taken hold in this country," says Lindy King, who, along with husband Bob King, was instrumental in the 17-year process of building the Great Stupa.
Nestled atop a hillside at the remote 600-acre
Shambhala Mountain Center (a meditation and yoga retreat northwest of Fort Collins), the Great Stupa is the largest of its kind in North America, offering tourists and spiritual devotees a chance to see, and feel, sacred Tibetan architecture up close.
The Shambhala Mountain Center, named after a mythical kingdom where many of the great spiritual traditions are practiced in harmony, was born in 1971, when a small group of Boulder idealists followed their teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (who also founded Naropa University), to the out-of-the-way mountain property. There, they settled on the land in makeshift buildings and tents and submerged themselves in contemplative practices.
When their teacher died in 1987, the students began to talk of building a Stupa, or monument, to commemorate his life, hold his remains, and preserve the Tibetan architectural tradition in North America. (Shortly before his passing 2,500 years ago, the Buddha instructed his students to cremate his body and place the remains in a Stupa. There are now thousands across Buddhist countries).
Construction began the next year, but it would be 2001 before the structure was complete.
"There was just a tremendous desire on the part of the students to acknowledge the brilliance of the teachings," says Joshua Mulder, 54, the artist who drew the original plans for the Great Stupa on a sheet of paper in 1988, and has been working on it ever since. "It's sort of the heart of the community, a monument to clarity and kindness."
In all, the Great Stupa cost more than $2.5 million to erect, with the money coming from more than 4,000 donors who offered anywhere from $5 to $100,000. While some professional contractors were brought in, the vast majority was built by volunteers, who have done everything from pour concrete to craft priceless ornate artwork. And many of them, Mulder points out, were not Buddhist.
"People want to be connected to something that is inconceivable," Mulder says.
Bob King retired from his business as a general contractor in Boulder to move on to the property with his wife and work on the Stupa for several years.
Mulder turned down a job with NASA nearly 20 years ago to instead design and artistically direct the Stupa's creation. He still lives on the property.
"I've been working on it for 20 years and it's still not done," says Mulder, standing beneath a 20-foot-tall seated Buddha inside the base of the Stupa, as he prepared to paint it gold.
From the inlaid granite and quartz floors to the detailed Tibetan ceiling paintings to the 110-foot-high "life force pole" inlaid with thousands of prayers inscribed with 24-karat gold, the interior is as extraordinary to behold as the exterior. And the Stupa's creators say it was crafted with such enduring materials that it should probably still be around in 1,000 years.
Already, more than 10,000 visitors, many of them not Buddhist, come to the Stupa annually.
"For our country, to have something that is going to last 1,000 years is just incredible," says Patricia Fosness, who made the two-hour-drive from Niwot Tuesday afternoon to show her parents — who were visiting from Ohio. "I just thought it was important to bring them here."
Mulder says it is no accident that the Great Stupa is located so far off the beaten path. It's a fitting reflection of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's teaching style.
"His style of teaching takes some commitment," Mulder says. "You have to work to get here. It's a pilgrimage."
And Buddhist or not, most everyone seems to walk away with something intangible that they didn't quite know they were looking for when they arrived.
"People have this longing for sanity and this is a monument that represents sanity," Mulder says.
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