The Kopan Experience as Transformative Experience: An Exploration of Participant Responses to the...

The Kopan Experience as Transformative

Experience: An Exploration of Participant

Responses to the Ten-Day Introduction to

Buddhism Course at Kopan Monastery, Nepal

Glenys Eddy

Recent decades have witnessed a growth in the amount of scholarly

literature available about the relationship between contemporary spiritual

life and travel motivated by spiritual or religious concerns.1 In recent

decades also, the number of meditation retreat centres has increased

worldwide, and according to Stausberg, the international spiritual retreat

business has been growing since the 1980s.2 Stausberg also lists retreat

participation as one of the common purposes of religious tourism,3 itself

one of the various forms of contemporary spiritual life that are a result of

the increased leisure time available to us in our modern life.4 Many

western tourists and backpackers travelling through Asia have included a

Buddhist meditation retreat in their list of things to do, and as Stausberg

notes, some tourists who do not travel for religious reasons, develop an

interest in religion, spirituality, or meditation after exposure to religious

locations or activity.5 Many Buddhist centres and monasteries in Asia

cater for the needs of Western travellers by offering courses in Buddhism,

a variety of meditation retreats, or both. Kopan Monastery on the outskirts

of Kathmandu, Nepal, affiliated with the worldwide Foundation for the

Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), runs a variety of courses

and retreats to cater for the religious needs of its affiliates and interested

travellers. The ten-day Introduction to Buddhism course, held several

times a year, provides individuals with the opportunity to learn about the

foundational Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhist teachings and practices, in a semi-

1 For instance, see Boris Vukonic, Tourism and Religion (Oxford: Pergamon,

1996); Alex Norman, Spiritual Tourism: Travel and Religious Practice in Western

Society (London and New York: Continuum, 2011); Michael Stausberg, Religion

and Tourism: Crossroads, Destinations and Encounters, (London and New York:

Routledge, 2011). 2 Stausberg, Religion and Tourism, 133. 3 Stausberg, Religion and Tourism, 14. 4 Vukonic, Tourism and Religion, 4. 5 Stausberg, Religion and Tourism, 15; 88.

2 The Kopan Experience as Transformative Experience

retreat setting. As part of research conducted for my doctoral thesis, I

attended the course held between September and October in 2004, as a

participant observer. My decision to undertake this was prompted by the

positive responses to Kopan Monastery and its activities, from several of

my interview respondents from Vajrayana Institute, an FPMT centre in

Sydney, Australia.6

In this paper I describe the ten-day introductory course in order to

convey both the participant’s experience of such ‘sampling’ of a religious

tradition’s offerings in this context, and how the FPMT facilitates

experimental participation in its beliefs and practices in order to access the

worldview underlying its curriculum. Accordingly, the concern of this

paper is not with those aspects of travel that are more typically the focus of

religious and leisure tourism studies, such as the nature of place or the

experience of journeying per se, but with the nature of the introductory

course as an example of the religious activities on offer to travellers in

Asia. Discussion of the responses of course participants in conjunction

with the consideration of what it is possible to gain from these courses,

will aid understanding of the religious tourist’s experience of sampling

such activities, designed to meet a variety of needs that scholars have

identified with both contemporary travel and contemporary Western

spiritual practice, including: knowledge and meaning-acquisition,

authenticity/authentic experience, pragmatic self-help and well-being, and

self-knowledge and self-transformation.7

Kopan Monastery is one of many FPMT centres and monasteries in

Asia under the directorship of Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche. The FPMT

belongs to the school of Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhism, which bases its

scriptural authority in the writings of Lama Tsong-kha-pa, the founder of

the Gelugpa Order, who drew on the work of Lama Atisha8 and the earlier

Kadampa Order. Kopan Monastery is about three kilometres northeast of

Boudhanath, and situated on a hill overlooking the outskirts of

Kathmandu, with Boudhanath Stupa and its surrounds clearly visible.

Kopan is a teaching and retreat centre, and held to be a special place by

6 See Glenys Eddy, Becoming Buddhist: Experiences of Socialization and Self-

Transformation in Two Australian Buddhist Centres (London and New York:

Continuum International Publishing, 2012), 128. 7 Norman, Spiritual Tourism, 57, 104, 112. Ellen Badone and Sharon Roseman,

“Aproaches to the Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism,” in Intersecting

Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism, eds Ellen Badone and

Sharon R. Roseman (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 2, 5. 8 See John Powers, Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism (New York: Snow Lion

Publications, 1995), 418.

Journeys and Destinations 3

FPMT members. The monastery is inhabited by sangha members, teachers

and administration personnel, kitchen and cleaning staff, visitors and

Buddhist practitioners, but plays host to them as two virtually separate

cultures: the Nepalese and Tibetan sangha, and the Western visitors,

practitioners and adherents of the FPMT. The monastery runs several

types of course to cater for the differing needs of western travellers and

western Tibetan Buddhists.9 The ten-day Introduction to Buddhism course,

which is held several times a year, between March and October, is the

activity for the tourist or individual new to Buddhism. The one month Lam

Rim meditation course held every November, follows the Tibetan Gelugpa

tradition of Buddhism and is based on Lama Tsong-kha-pa’s ‘Graduated

Path to Enlightenment’,10

which is the foundational text for the FPMT’s

entire teaching program, in both its sutric and tantric aspects. This includes

teachings and meditation. The annual three-month Vajrasattva retreat

beginning in mid January, which follows a strict schedule of four

meditation sessions a day (no teachings). The retreat is open to students

who have previously attended the one month Lam Rim course at Kopan,

or have done a similar course, such as the FPMT Discovering Buddhism

course, and have received the Vajrasattva Initiation with a commitment to

do the retreat. This is a tantric initiation, for which the initiate must have

previously ‘taken refuge’, the formal Buddhist commitment ceremony.

Another type of course is between nine days and two weeks’ duration, and

focuses on a specific topic or practice, for instance, the Medicine Buddha

Sadhana.

My interest in the ten-day introductory course arose from the research I

undertook for my doctoral thesis in Studies in Religion at the University of

Sydney.11

The purpose of the thesis was to explore and articulate the

nature of religious change and commitment undergone by Westerners

committing to the Buddhist path. This involved fieldwork with two local

Buddhist centres: the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre, a

Vipassana centre, and Vajrayana Institute, affiliated with the FPMT. After

a few months of participant observation and interview, it was evident that

a number of theoretical approaches were applicable to the interpretation of

my data, namely, religious conversion conceived as religious

9 See Kopan’s website at http://kopanmonastery.com/program.html, for

information about Kopan’s courses. 10 Tsong-kha-pa, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment,

ed. Guy Newland (New York: Snow Lion Publications, volume 1, 2000; volume 3,

2002; volume 2, 2004). 11 See Eddy, Becoming Buddhist.


resocialization,12

as a self-transformation or change in the self-concept,13

and as a trend toward treating religions ‘less as systems of truth than as

efforts to discover a ground of being that orients and orders experience

more generally’.14

Chief among these was the experimental motif, one of

Lofland and Skonovd’s six conversion motifs—intellectual, mystical,

experimental, affectional, revivalist, and coercive—which are conceived

as salient thematic elements and key experiences combined with objective

situations. Lofland and Skonovd define motif experience as ‘those aspects

of a conversion which are most memorable and orienting to the person

undergoing personal transformation’. The experimental motif consists of

‘a pragmatic, show me attitude’, learning to act like a convert, withholding

judgment for a considerable length of time after taking up the life style of

the fully-committed participant. There is a relatively low level of social

pressure and transformation of identity, behaviour, and worldview takes

place over a relatively prolonged period, from months to years. They hold

the experimental motif to operate in new age-type or alternative groups,

where the prospective convert is encouraged to take an experimental

attitude toward the group’s ritual and organizational activities.15

Data

obtained from fieldwork strongly indicated the experimental motif to be a

viable interpretive tool for the experiences of affiliates of both centres,

who began their exploration as religious seekers, willingly undergoing a

process of trying out and evaluating belief structures and practices.16

Most

of my respondents had reached the point of commitment to Buddhism, and

had either made the commitment privately, or stated it publicly by taking

refuge.17

12 Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: a

Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Doubleday & Company,

1966), 144; T. Pilarzyk, “Conversion and Alternation Processes in the Youth

Culture: A Comparative Analysis of Religious Traditions,” Pacific Sociological

Review 21, no. 4 (1978): 379-405. 13 C Staples & A Mauss, “Conversion or Commitment? A Reassessment of the

Snow and Machalek Approach to the Study of Conversion,” Journal for the

Scientific Study of Religion 26, no. 2 (1987): 137; Peter Stromberg, Language and

Self-transformation: A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1993), 18. 14 Max Heirich, “Change of Heart: A Test of Some Widely Held Theories about

Religious Conversion,” American Journal of Sociology 83, no. 3 (1977): 674. 15 John Lofland & Norman Skonovd, “Conversion Motifs,” Journal for the

Scientific Study of Religion 20, no. 4 (1981): 373-385. 16 See Eddy, Becoming Buddhist, 18-20. 17 See Christopher Lamb, “Conversion as a Process Leading to Enlightenment: The

Buddhist Perspective,” in Religious Conversion: Contemporary Practices and


Scholars have observed the emphasis on personal experience and self-

transformation in the phenomena of spiritual tourism and religious

seekerhood, which having its historical roots in the counterculture of the

1960s,18

began to be studied in the 1970s. Lofland and Skonovd drew on

Balch and Taylor’s research in the 1970s, with the Human Individual

Metamorphosis group (later to be known as Heaven’s Gate).19

The

recognition of the active role played by the religious seeker in their own

process of exploration and change20

is reflected in definitions of religious

conversion to be employed in scholarly research during the 1970s and

1980s, for instance, Travisano’s definition of conversion as a ‘radical

reorganization of identity, meaning, and life’,21

and Heirich’s as ‘the

process of changing a sense of root reality’.22

The view of the active

participant, the religious seeker who experiments with religious beliefs and

practices in order to effect identity change, can be seen to be part of a

broader cultural trend, ‘a new spirituality in postmodernity that values

personal experience as a key to religious meaningfulness’.23

This new

spirituality extends to spiritually-oriented travel.24

Many scholars have

observed the potential of travel to effect transformation in the individual

Controversies, eds C. Lamb and M. D. Bryant (London and New York: Cassell,

1999), 75-88; See Eddy, Becoming Buddhist, 184-185, for a discussion of the

significance of the refuge ceremony for affiliates of Vajrayana Institute, an FPMT

centre in Sydney, Australia. 18 Paul Heelas, Spiritualities of Life: New Age Romanticism and Consumptive

Capitalism (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 61. 19 Robert Balch & David Taylor, “Seekers and Saucers: The Role of the Cultic

Milieu in Joining a UFO Cult,” in Conversion Careers: In and Out of the New

Religions, ed. James. T. Richardson (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1978), 43-

64. 20 James T. Richardson, “Conversion Careers,” Society 17, no. 3 (1980): 49. 21 Richard Travisano, “Alternation and Conversion as Qualitatively Different

Transformations,” in Social Psychology Through Symbolic Interaction (Xerox

College Publishing, 1970), 600-601. 22 Heirich, Change of Heart, 673-674. 23 William H. Swatos & Luigi Tomasi, “Epilogue: Pilgrimage for a New

Millenium,” in From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and

Cultural Economics of Piety, eds William H. Swatos and Luigi Tomasi (Westport

and London: Greenwood, 2002), 208. 24 Luigi Tomasi, “Homo Viator: From Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism Via the

Journey,” in From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and

Cultural Economics of Piety, eds William H. Swatos and Luigi Tomasi (Westport

and London: Greenwood, 2002), 14; Norman, Spiritual Tourism.


through engagement with new experiences,25

and knowledge-acquisition

and enhancement.26

In accordance with the observation that people travel for a combination

of motivations,27

the religious or spiritual tourist is generally conceived as

the mid-point, on a continuum of travel type, between the extremes of

pilgrimage and tourism.28

Although Frey suggests that the categories of

pilgrimage and tourism are better seen as similar forms of human mobility

as opposed to a binary opposition,29

a general consensus appears to exist

about the definition of the spiritual tourist as someone who travels to

places out of their usual environment, with the intention of acquiring

spiritual meaning and growth, and for a combination of religious and

secular concerns.30

Some of my interview respondents recounted their

experiences at other FPMT centres in Australia and overseas, chief among

25 J. Harrison, “A Personalized Journey: Tourism and Individuality,” in Claiming

Individuality: The Cultural Politics of Distinction, eds Vered Amit and Noel Dyck

(London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2006), 110; Bob Hodge, “The Goddess Tour:

Spiritual Tourism/Post-Modern Pilgrimage in Search of Atlantis,” in Popular

Spiritualities: The Politics of Contemporary Enchantment, eds Lynne Hume and

Kathleen McPhillips (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), 27, 31; Jill

Dubisch and Michael Winkelman, “Introduction: the Anthropology of Pilgrimage,”

in Pilgrimage and Healing, eds Jill Dubisch and Michael Winkelman (Tucson:

University of Arizona Press, 2005), xxxvi. 26 Valene Smith, “Introduction: The Quest in Guest,” Annals of Tourism Research

19, no. 1 (1992): 5; Tomasi, “Homo Viator,” 14. Also see Dubisch and

Winkelman, The Anthropology of Pilgrimage, xxxvi, who note that cross-cultural

comparisons of pilgrimage illustrate the transformational element of pilgrimage as

a phenomenon. 27 H. Robinson, A Geography of Tourism (London: MacDonald and Evans, 1976),

28-34; Ellen Badone, “Crossing Boundaries: Exploring the Borderlands of

Ethnography, Tourism and Pilgrimage,” in Intersecting Journeys: The

Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism, eds Ellen Badone and Sharon R.

Roseman (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 180. 28 Smith, “Introduction: The Quest in Guest,” 5. Farooq Haq, Ho Yin Wong and

John Jackson, Applying Ansoff’s Growth Strategy Matrix to Consumer Segments

and Typologies in Spiritual Tourism (2008), p. 3. Online article, accessed 28

September, 2011, http://www.wbiconpro.com/Marketing/509-

Haq,F%20%26%20Others.pdf. 29 Nancy L. Frey, “Stories of the Return: Pilgrimage and Its Aftermaths,” in

Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism, eds Ellen

Badone and Sharon R. Roseman (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,

2004), 89-90. 30 See Haq et al, Applying Ansoff’s Growth Strategy Matrix, 2-3; Norman, Spiritual

Tourism.

http://www.wbiconpro.com/Marketing/509-Haq,F%20%26%20Others.pdf



them was Kopan. Of especial interest to me were reports about the ten-day

introductory course, which attracted a lot of travellers and allowed them to

explore Buddhism, and to ‘ask a lot of questions’. It was clear that the

introductory course at Kopan could be a fruitful source of data on the early

stage of engagement with the FPMT worldview for many westerners.

The ten-day introductory course gives an introduction to Tibetan

Buddhism by way of an overview of the Lam Rim, teaches meditation

skills and includes a two day single pointed and analytical meditation

retreat. The courses are led by a Swedish nun, Ani Karin, a senior sangha

member, and include daily teachings given by a Tibetan lama with the aid

of a translator. As a result of my own participation in the course in

September and October 2004, I gained insight into the way in which the

course structure and content facilitated the experimental approach to

learning, by allowing the participant to ‘experience being Buddhist’, to

‘try it out’. The course is structured so that participants are active, not

passive recipients of information; one can have the experience of being

Buddhist. The course combines teachings, discussion, meditation and

ritual. All teachings are explained and all action is performed from the

perspective of the Tibetan Buddhist worldview, which facilitates the

mutual reinforcement of conceptual, practical and experiential dimensions

of religious activity.

There were twenty six course participants: ten women and sixteen men.

Ages ranged from twenty to thirty four years, with the exception of

myself, at forty seven. Seven were from the United States, two were from

Australia (of which I was one), one from Denmark, three from England,

four from Germany, three from Holland, one from Italy, one from Israel,

two from Russia, one from Slovenia, and one from Switzerland. Most

were university educated. Of the twenty five participants (excluding

myself), I conducted interviews with eight. This small number was due to

the limitations imposed by the semi-retreat style setting. While we were

free to socially engage, except for the prescribed periods of silence, we

had undertaken not to enter the rooms of members of the opposite sex, and

accordingly, I did not interview any men during the course itself. On the

last day, people dispersed quickly after lunch and departed for other

activities. While I had obtained participant consent forms from thirteen

course participants, eight interviews were conducted, two were

incomplete, and three who had undertaken to answer my questions by

email, never did. I therefore relied heavily on my participant observation

notes. I also interviewed three resident Western nuns. Because they had

taken ordination and had therefore made their commitment, I considered

their data appropriate for inclusion in the set of data I had collected at


Vajrayana Institute, for use in my expansion of Lofland and Skonovd’s

experimental model.

The course officially began on the evening of Sunday the 19th

of

September, with an introductory session, which included a discussion of

why people were doing the course, and what they hoped to gain from it. A

passage from my participant observation notes, dated Monday 20

September 2004, later proved to be significant.

The course began last night. There was a general introduction to

the course at 5.30 after tea, followed by a session after dinner

where everybody introduced themselves. Many people had read

books on Buddhism, some had tried or practised other forms of

meditation, but it appeared that most were new to Tibetan

Buddhism. Two had tried Zen, maybe three Vipassana. Most had

been travelling through India and Nepal for some time. When

asked why they were doing the course, some said “to find out

more about myself and Buddhism”. Their conversation conveyed

the sense that finding themselves and Buddhism were taken to be

interconnected, that learning about Buddhism would help them to

learn something about themselves, that Buddhism might be the

vehicle for their self-exploration. It struck me at the time that

some participants were hoping that ‘something’ would open up for

them, while others were looking for a more definite sense of

direction.

The introductory session continued with an introduction to Kopan

Monastery and its founders, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa, and their

journey out of Tibet and into India. Ani Karin outlined some basics of

Buddhism, and a few preliminary facts about the mind, the main point of

which was that ‘what stops the mind from being calm is attachment to

things’. The purpose of meditation was explained as to develop positive

qualities of the mind and to let go of negative qualities; Ani Karin

expanded on this. Dharma was explained as the method for doing this. We

were given an outline of the five lay precepts that were to be kept on the

retreat, and an explanation of the reason for maintaining periods of silence:

that introspection was not possible without it as the mind is easily

distracted by other things. The evening finished with an introduction to

meditation, consisting of an outline of concentration and analytical

meditation—maintaining a focus on one object and contemplating an

aspect of wisdom such as impermanence or the nature of mind

respectively—as the two types of meditation, an outline of meditation

technique, and finally some breathing meditation.


Image 1: Some of the course participants in front of the stupa at Kopan

Monastery (photo courtesy of Glenys Eddy)

The daily programme, which was to begin at 6.30 am and finish at 9

pm, consisted of sessions of meditation, teachings and discussion groups.

Our day seemed to begin and end at the same time as that of the resident

monks, which began at sunrise and ended at about 9.30 pm with evening

prayer.31

However, for the period of the course, apart from some

interaction with the monks at mealtimes and with those who had

administrative roles, the two groups were virtually independent of each

other. The participants were expected to attend all sessions. Half of each

day, from 10 pm until after lunch the next day, was to be in silence as a

course discipline. For the first seven days, the program consisted of

teachings and meditation practice, and the last two days were to be a two-

day meditation retreat, with seven meditation sessions a day. The schedule

was placed up on the gompa door so that everyone had access to it.

31 Ann M. Heubner & Andrew C. Garrod, “Moral Reasoning Among Tibetan

Monks: A Study of Buddhist Adolescents and Young Adults in Nepal,” Journal of

Cross-Cultural Psychology 24, no. 2 (1993): 173.


Schedule for Sunday 19-Sunday 26 September

5.45 Morning bell

6.00-6.30 Tea

6.30-7.30 Meditation

7.30 Breakfast

9.15-11.30 Teachings

12.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-3.00 Discussion Groups

3.00-3.30 Break

3.30-5.00 Teachings with Geshe

5.00-6.00 Tea


6.45-8.00 Dinner

8.00-9.00 Question and Answer, Mantra recitation and meditation

Retreat Schedule: Monday 27 to Wednesday 29 September

5.45 am Morning bell

6.00-6.30 Tea

6.30-7.30 Meditation Session

7.30 Breakfast

9.15-9.30 Mental Preparation and Walking Meditation



11.30 Lunch



5.00 Tea


6.45 Dinner

8.00-9.00 Day 1: Light-offerings; Day 2: Loving-kindness

Meditation

For the next week we followed the schedule above, with each day

beginning with breathing meditation and ending with analytical

meditations,32

and teachings and discussion groups during the middle of

the day. Teachings introduced us to key Buddhist concepts, for instance,

the nature of mind and mental states, including the nature of negative

mental states (the three poisons: attachment, anger and delusion); the

cause of desire as ego-grasping; how and why we purify the mind; the four

powers of purification: regret, reliance, remedy, determination not to

repeat the negative action; the mental factors and the aggregates; karma

32 See Kathleen McDonald, How to Meditate: A Practical Guide, ed. Robina

Courtin (Massachusets: Wisdom Publications, 1984), for an outline of the

meditations practised at FPMT centres.


and merit accrual including an explanation of the wheel of life and the

realms; the doctrine of dependent origination; the notion of emptiness as

no inherent characteristic or identity; the Buddha-nature as our potential

for complete liberation; the Bodhisattva and the six perfections.33

There

was also some discussion of the subtle body as it is understood in Tibetan

Buddhism.

The content of teachings was reinforced by the nature of the

meditations and contemplative ritual practices such as prayers and

prostrations; using body, speech and mind, the purpose of their

performance was to overcome negative states of mind such as pride.34

Breathing meditations were practised as both traditional concentration or

calm-abiding meditation, involving focussing on the in-and-out movement

of the breath, and as analytical meditation, in this instance the purpose of

which was to note periods of distraction in order to become more aware of

one’s mental state. Most often the concentration was used to settle the

mind in preparation for analytical meditation, which would involve

contemplation of some aspect of samsaric existence such as the nature of

mind, cast in the form of questions such as ‘where does the mind exist?’

‘inside or outside the body?’. Other meditations took the form of

visualizations of the Buddha, Chenrezig or Tara. All sessions were

accompanied by traditional prayers, for instance, the Refuge and

Bodhicitta prayer, and the prayer in praise of the Buddha. The expectation

that participants would behave as if they had taken the five lay precepts, to

abstain from killing or harming living beings, stealing, false speech, taking

intoxicants and sexual misconduct, was to introduce us to the purpose and

practice of ethical training of body, speech and mind. In this way, we were

introduced to the doctrinal, practical, ethical and experiential dimensions

of Tibetan Buddhist activity.

Nearly all participants’ comments and questions during the course, and

responses to the question of what they gained from the course, involved

responses to the Buddhist concepts and doctrines as opposed to the

meditations and rituals. No-one reported to me any significant meditation

experience, or shifts of awareness or perspective resulting in any

transformative experience. By comparison, most Vajrayana Institute

affiliates reported having strong responses to a teaching on first encounter,

where they could connect the import of the teaching to their life

experience in a deeply personal way. With time, they learned how the

33 See Tsong-kha-pa, Graduated Path to Enlightenment, all three volumes, for

discussion of these doctrines. 34 See Kopan’s website at http://kopanmonastery.com/pujas.html, for an

explanation of the FPMT’s prayers and pujas.


meditation practices related to the teachings, began to organize key

doctrinal concepts into an interpretive framework, and to develop a deeper

and more committed orientation towards internalization of the meaning

system. During the course, I noticed that the style of questioning was

analytical and from the third-person perspective, as opposed to the

deductive reasoning style and the first-person perspective adopted by the

Vajrayana Institute affiliate. This is exemplified by the nature of

responses, expressed in the afternoon discussion group, to the teachings

about karma, given earlier that morning (Tuesday, 21 September 2004). I

had recorded in my participant observation notes:

Today’s topic was karma, which followed on from this morning’s

teaching. This generated a lot of discussion, mainly in the form of

questions. Many of the questions and comments, both in the

discussion group and in the earlier morning teachings, reflected a

desire for an explanation of karma that was “concrete”, infallible,

and to do with action rather than the nature of mind; to do with

physical events rather than with mental phenomena. Some of the

questions were posed as scenarios. For example, “if someone tells

me to kill 100 people or else he will kill my family and friends,

what should I do?”, and, “If we do something with the best of

intention, say giving medicine to people believing it to be

beneficial, and we later find out that the medicine was harmful,

will the karma be positive or negative? What will the nature of the

karma be?”

The nature of the questions being asked by course participants, where they

appear to be trying to reconcile the tenets of the Buddhist worldview with

their own understandings of and responses to the world, and appear to be

responding to perceived contradictions in Ani Karin’s teachings and

explanations, was more direct than the style of response I had encountered

in dharma centres in Sydney. At Vajrayana Institute the style of

participants’ vocalized reasoning is more deductive as already indicated,

and the style of interchange with sangha members more deferential, quite

likely due to the potential to cultivate relationships within a more familiar

social and authority structure. These differences may be simply attributed

to the amount of time available—ten days as opposed to several months or

longer—for familiarization with the ideas and expected behaviours. The

aim of my research was to extend the experimental motif beyond

modelling the means of approach to religious change, to delineate the

stages involved in the entire process of engagement and commitment to


Buddhism as a potential end-point.35

Based on my data analysis, I

proposed a model of commitment consisting of three cumulative stages: 1)

engagement and apprehension, 2) comprehension, and 3) commitment.36

The first two stages, apprehension and comprehension, refer to the process

of turning acquired knowledge into meaning, but whereas the former is

concerned with learning the meanings of Buddhist terms, comprehension

is the stage of organizing these meanings into an interpretive framework,

to come to understand the interrelationships between a set of discrete

concepts. As practitioners become more familiar with the meaning-system,

and more convinced of its validity, their exploratory orientation becomes

more intense, until for most, they reach a decision either that they will

commit to Buddhism, or that they already have. Instrumental in reaching

the commitment phase, is the recognition that one has changed as a result

of one’s personal application of the Buddhist principles and practices.

Although one respondent had entered the commitment phase and took

refuge at the end of the course, there was variation among participants in

terms of both the level of prior knowledge of Buddhism and the approach

to learning: from ‘collecting’ experiences, to toe-dipping, to the pre-

conversion confirmation of this respondent. For the most part, participants

were sampling the experiences on offer, in the process of engaging with

the material and apprehending the meanings of Buddhist ideas, and

required more time for the assimilation of the material. In a general sense,

the approach of the course participants fits the profile of Lofland and

Skonovd’s experimental motif. Many of the questions about Buddhist

doctrines and concepts exhibited the ‘show me’, ‘prove to me’ approach as

originally identified by Lofland and Skonovd.37

However, the profile of

the religious tourist, as described by Haq, Wong and Jackson, as one who

combines sacred and secular concerns and enjoys a knowledge-based

decision making position, 38

appears to correspond to the orientation of the

majority of course participants. This becomes clearer on consideration of

the way in which their participation in the course related to their previous

travel experience and future travel plans, and to their reason for being in

Kathmandu. On this basis, I categorized the participants into three groups.

Two of my respondents, who had come straight from their home

country in Europe in order to attend the course, had a specific purpose for

35 See Lofland and Skonovd, “Conversion Motifs,” 383. They note that their motifs

do not elucidate stages of change, only how change is approached by the potential

convert. 36 Eddy, Becoming Buddhist, 18-20. 37 Lofland and Skonovd, “Conversion Motifs”; Eddy, Becoming Buddhist, 10. 38 Haq et al, Applying Ansoff’s Growth Strategy Matrix, 3.


coming to Kopan Monastery. The first, a German from a Catholic

background, was trying out the FPMT framework for herself. Her partner

was already a devoted adherent of the FPMT, and in trying it for herself by

attending the introductory course, she intended to make sure that she

wanted to follow the Buddhist path for herself, and not just because of her

partner’s orientation. In so doing, she was also attempting to evaluate

whether her new Buddhist orientation would interfere or clash with her

Catholic affiliation. This participant was one of four to take refuge at the

end of the course. Another was a Christian by religious affiliation, and a

Religious Studies school teacher in her native Denmark. Her exploration

of Buddhism was to both learn more about another tradition, and to test

her commitment to Christianity. By the end of the course, she had made a

clear decision to stay with her Christian affiliation.

For several of the participants, the course was part of their backpacking

working holiday, which had included a stay of several months in

Kathmandu, working in schools or orphanages, working with Nepalese

children. Here, they were exposed to the Nepalese culture and in many

cases, the seeming poverty of the children’s families. Many people report

undergoing a culture shock on visiting countries such as India and Nepal,

part of which is their response to the poverty they encounter and compare

to the living standards of their own western country. By contrast with what

they had observed in Kathmandu and for many, in other Asian cities,

Kopan was a place of privileged comfort in the way Tomasi’s description

suggests, of hotels as ‘places of privileged comfort for the pilgrim’ near

pilgrim routes.39

Kopan is this for the Western traveller. Several blogs

about Kopan on the internet speak about the tranquillity and beautiful

views,40

and one writer spoke about coming away from the introductory

course feeling more peaceful.41

Many participants had been working in

Nepal, some in Kathmandhu in orphanages or schools, and had been

affected by the lower living standards. For these participants, coming to

Kopan Monastery evoked no culture shock as they had already

experienced one.

For others, the course was part of their tourist experience more

generally, which had included travel to several countries, sight-seeing,

trekking, mountain-climbing and other activities. Two in particular were

39 Tomasi, “Homo Viator,” 14. 40 For instance, see the entry for Kopan Monastery Kathmandu, accessed 7 May,

2012, http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Kathmandu/Boudhanath/blog-

526054.html. 41 See http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Kathmandu/blog-219337.html,

accessed, 7 May 2012.

http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Kathmandu/Boudhanath/blog-526054.html

http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Kathmandu/Boudhanath/blog-526054.html

http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Kathmandu/blog-219337.html


suggestive of a ‘new-age’ orientation to the course and the experience of

being at Kopan through their style of expression and preoccupation. One

in particular, constantly referred to his previous spiritual experiences and

past-life experiences. In interview, another talked about being on a journey

of self-exploration, employing metaphors for her experience of personal

change, such as ‘peeling the layers of an onion’. On being asked to, she

did not seem to be able to articulate her experience any more clearly than

this, and did not seem to feel the need to do so. Her responses expressed a

style of thought I have often associated with the New Age, where it is

assumed that one is constantly on a journey of self-discovery, in the same

way that, for this group generally, courses such as the ‘Introduction to

Buddhism’ seemed to be ‘part of what you do’ when travelling. They were

interested in the experience, but seemingly not engrossed in it. The

participants in this group also seemed to fit the profile of the spiritual

tourist, who while experiencing ‘the impulse of the desire to travel in order

to satisfy the need to know both mundane reality and celestial mystery’,42

also experiences a wavering engagement with the sacred, an oscillation

between the sacred and the secular/mundane.43

This was expressed in

conversations between course participants, who would frequently discuss

what food and drink they were going to consume in Kathmandu once the

course was over, as if such consumption was a reaction to the realization

that the course, and therefore the restraints placed upon their behaviour,

was coming to an end.

By these comments I do not mean to convey the sense that these

participants’ responses were in any way superficial or inauthentic

compared to those of the small number who were more definite in their

decision-making as an outcome of course-participation. In the earlier quote

from my field notes, I referred to my observation that all participants had

said that they were doing the course ‘to find out more about myself and

Buddhism’, and had seemed to express the desire for something to open up

for them. Tomasi’s reference to Cohen’s phenomenology of tourist

experiences, which ‘assumes that the modern individual seeks authenticity

in different ways’,44

suggests the search for authenticity to be an

influential motivator for travel. As Badone suggests, our notion of

authenticity and its identification with the ‘Other’ may be localized in

42 Tomasi, “Homo Viator,” 1. 43 Frey, “Stories of the Return,” 93. I refer to Frey’s comments about the travellers

on the pilgrim route to Santiago, whom she notes, “have moments of identifying

with” the pilgrim and then with the tourist. 44 Tomasi, “Homo Viator,” 17; Erik Cohen, “Pilgrimage Centers: Concentric and

Excentric”, Annals of Tourism Research, 19, no. 1 (1992): 33-50.


other places or historical periods. Badone sees authenticity as a culturally

and historically situated ideal, an ideal that is believed to exist by

individuals or groups of individuals in specific social settings.45

Another

source of this ideal may be the religious books and texts that inspire

people to travel, and to explore other religious traditions. This is suggested

by Quinney, who as a Western reader of Eastern religious texts such as the

Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, experiences the sense of ‘daily life’

being ‘infused with the wisdom from another place’.46

Pilgrimage has come to be seen as both a traditional practice and an

expression of contemporary spirituality,47

including as a style of travel

experience.48

Tomasi notes that pilgrimage as a journey undertaken for

religious purposes, is a journey toward an ‘elsewhere’ with utopian

features.49

MacCannell maintains that ‘for moderns, reality and

authenticity are thought to be elsewhere, in other historical periods and

other cultures’.50

This sense of authenticity located in the mystic East, may

indicate the source of the religious seekerhood exhibited by many of the

course participants, who had tried other Buddhist courses and retreats

during their travel in Asia, and spoke about future plans to do so. When I

responded to one participant who had expressed the desire to do a

Vipassana retreat while in Asia, “you could do one when you come to

Sydney, we have two Vipassana centres nearby”, she replied emphatically,

“but I want to do one in Asia”. I remember thinking at that time, that her

desire sprang from some sense that a Vipassana retreat in Asia as opposed

to in a western country, would provide a more authentic experience.

Badone and Tomasi see the transformative aspect of travel as a modern

phenomenon.51

Conversely, it seems that authenticity is sought in the

premodern, capable of being accessed by visiting historical sites, or by

journeying to the mystic East. While visits to historical sites can provide a

sense of historical connection with past events, in the way that Tomasi

suggests in his description of “lay pilgrims following ancient routes of

45 Badone, “Crossing Boundaries,” 182. 46 Richard Quinney, “Kathmandu and Home Again: A Cautionary Tale,” in From

Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of

Piety, eds William H. Swatos and Luigi Tomasi (Westport and London:

Greenwood, 2002), 195. 47 Dubisch and Winkelman, “Introduction,” ix. 48 Swatos and Tomasi, “Epilogue,” 208. 49 Tomasi, “Homo Viator,” 3. 50 Dean MacCannell. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York:

Schocken Books, 1989), 3. 51 Tomasi, “Homo Viator,” 14; Badone, “Crossing Boundaries,” 181.


knowledge”,52

and Hodge in his description of the experience of spiritual

tourism as one which “allows knowledge, emotion, and spirituality to meet

and interact”, and where “the premodern can be felt as a powerful

presence”,53

it seems for these Western tourists, that the authentic and the

premodern are sought via a journey to the cultural other. Quinney notes

that as westerners, we are drawn to the exotic, to the otherness of the Third

World.54

This involves a journey away from the westerner’s homeland, to

the societal centre of the cultural other, as a symbol of Eastern spirituality.

While not as well-known, nor as significant a site as Bodhghaya which is

home to the Mahabodhi Temple, and the bodhi tree held to mark the

location of Buddha’s enlightenment,55

both Kopan Monastery and

Boudhanath Stupa on the outskirts of Kathmandu are popular tourist

destinations.

Religious centres such as Kopan Monastery fulfil a variety of

traveller’s needs in that they provide both touristic elements, such as the

beautiful views and snapshots of ‘the everyday life’ of another culture.

MacCannell refers to the idea of authenticity of a tourist attraction.56

Both

he and Urry refer to the way in which windows into the lives of others, the

observed, can be constructed for ‘the tourist gaze’.57

My encounter with

the ‘other’ at Kopan Monastery involved brief periods of contact with the

monks, and with the nuns from the nearby Kachoe Ghakyil Nunnery. This

occurred through observing pujas and listening to the monks chanting in

the main gompa before the course began, hearing the younger monks chant

the scriptures as part of their daily lessons, observing the older monks

debate in the traditional Tibetan style of making a doctrinal point and then

clapping loudly for emphasis, and observing the nuns being taught a dance

in praise of Tara by some American women. These events were engaging

and enjoyable, but aspects of a Buddhist other available to me only as

sounds and images, as I had virtually no interaction with the Kopan

residents. On several occasions during the course I reflected that the

teachings, practices, the symbols and colours in the thankas decorating the

walls of the gompa, the colours, were the same as at Vajrayana Institute.

52 Tomasi, “Homo Viator,” 15. 53 Hodge, “The Goddess Tour,” 31. 54 Quinney, “Kathmandu and Home Again,” 195. 55 See David Geary, “Destination Enlightenment: Branding Buddhism and

Spiritual Tourism in Bodhgaya, Bihar,” Anthropology Today 24, no. 3 (2008): 11. 56 MacCannell, The Tourist, 14. 57 MacCannell, The Tourist, ch. 5; John Urry. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and

Travel in Contemporary Societies (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage

Publications, 1990), 9.


Only the sounds and images particular to the location were different.

Because of my association with Vajrayana Institute, I was aware that in

terms of ‘new’ religious knowledge, one could find at home what one was

seeking overseas. However, for most of the course participants, these

windows into the lives of the Kopan residents, and the knowledge of

Buddhism gained from the course, were the expressions of the authentic

available to them.

I have suggested two theoretical approaches to understanding the

orientation of individuals who participate in courses such as Introduction

to Buddhism. The first is that of the participant-experimenter in the first

stage of socialization into a belief-system, that of apprehension wherein

the student begins to organize the learnt meaning of Buddhist concepts

into an interpretive framework as part of the ‘trying-it-out to see’ process.

The second is that of the spiritual tourist as defined by many scholars of

travel and tourism. Each of the courses on offer at Kopan Monastery,

including the annual one-month Lam Rim and the three-month Vajrasattva

retreat, have the potential to lead the participant to a threshold, to the

beginning of a deeper level of religious participation, in that they facilitate

deeper engagement with the beliefs, practices and experiences of the

FPMT’s worldview. From this they can be seen to possess the initiatory

quality as ‘to a threshold’, that Victor and Edith Turner ascribe to

pilgrimage,58

and the characteristic of hardship associated with

pilgrimages59

insofar as restrictions are placed upon behaviour, social

interaction and food consumption, in terms of the type of food eaten

(vegetarian) and the set meal times. As such, they represent a different

type of travel experience from secular tourism. A strong characteristic

shared by these two positions is their means of acquisition of a knowledge

base. For the affiliates of both Vajrayana Institute and Kopan Monastery,

this happens in the same way in that they are taught the same doctrines and

practices, but the environments are different in terms of the level of social

engagement possible given the short time of the course at Kopan.

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