Scotland’s Buddhist Monastery: David Bowie

Bradley Jardine and Sakshi Rai for The Diplomat (thediplomat.com, April 4, 2016); Kagyu Samye Ling (samyeling.org); Telgraph.co.uk; Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

David Bowie told the Buddhist master: "I want to become a Buddhist monk" (Telegraph).

The main Tibetan temple at Kagyu Samye Ling, Scotland (Bradley Jardine/The Diplomat)

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Kagyu Samye Ling, Scotland

In 1967 Choje Akong Rinpoche helped found the first Tibetan temple in the West.

I studied to become a monk in London (Sivana).

The rolling hills of Scotland’s southern lowlands are an unlikely venue for a flourishing Buddhist culture, and yet rows of multicolored Tibetan prayer flags – red, white, yellow, blue, and green – flutter in Eskdalemuir’s breeze, their prayers slowly fading as they become entwined with the elements.

Indeed, the popularity of Tibetan culture in the West is a surprising phenomenon, especially considering that Tibet had little contact with the outside world until the twilight years of the 18th century. Its spread, much like the prayers on Tibetan flags, is an extraordinary story of cultural export.

Lisa Simpson at Kagyu Samye Ling (Dune)

Scotland’s engagement with Buddhism emerged through its imperial networks across Asia, particularly the Theravada traditions of Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. This engagement culminated in the founding of the Pāli Text Society in 1881, which undertook the ambitious task of translating the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhist texts into English.

Pāli is the [exclusively Buddhist] language in which the oldest scriptures of Theravada Buddhism were written.

Engagement with Tibetan [Vajrayana] Buddhism occurred much later, following an ambitious espionage campaign by Captain Montgomerie to infiltrate the secretive Lhasa at the peak (literally) of the Great Game [British spying campaign]. His spies hid secretive materials inside Tibetan prayer wheels.

The Mani Korlo or “Prayer Wheel House” has 45 wheels containing millions of prayers. The wheels are run by electric motors and “transmit prayers day and night” (Bradley Jardine).

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Following this, the growth of Scotland’s Buddhist community was slow but steady, culminating in the foundation of the Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery and Tibetan Center (samyeling.org) in 1967.

The monastery practices the Karma Kagyu school of thought – an offshoot of the Kagyu tradition, one of the four major sects of Tibetan Buddhism – is believed to have been founded in the 10th century by Tilopo, a Buddhist yogi. Its main distinctions are its emphasis on orally imparting knowledge, and respect for lineage.

The Settlement Experiment

The Himalayan stupa (burial mound reliquary) at Samye Ling, Scotland (Bradley Jardine).

Ven. Bowie: What are you looking at? I've worn much stranger outfits (pinterest.com)

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It was cool to be Buddhist back then. Ask Leo.

Samye Ling, meaning “the place beyond conception,” was the first monastery to be founded in the West. Its co-founder, Choje Akong Rinpoche, was recognized as an incarnate lama as a young child (tulku) and became the abbot of the Dolma Lhakhang Monastery.

It was the 1960s and cool (Leonard Cohen).

Following a [CIA-sponsored] failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, Choje Akong fled to India by foot in a perilous journey of horrendous suffering, in which thousands of refugees starved to death or simply died of exhaustion. Four years later, he was working as a hospital orderly in Oxford. His immense monastic prestige had rapidly unraveled, leaving him scrubbing toilets in a foreign land.

The hardship he experienced during these years had a profound impact on his world outlook. Importantly, Choje arrived in the UK during the emergence of the swinging 1960s, with its radical politics and counterculture movements, sparking widespread enthusiasm for Tibetan Buddhism.

It’s within this context that Choje Akong Rinpoche and Trungpa Rinpoche took over a retreat center in the south of Scotland, which became Samye Ling in 1967.

David Bowie, Buddhist monk

I was young (19) and earnestly reading Buddhist translations thinking I want to be a monk.

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I studied their exams. I was about to shave.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Choje Akong Rinpoche invited many prominent lamas to teach at the monastery. Students studied the Kagyu system of meditation there, with famous faces among their ranks such as Leonard Cohen and David Bowie (religion and spirituality).

In fact, he not only studied at Samye Ling, David Bowie almost became a Buddhist monk there, stating in an interview that:

• "I was a terribly earnest Buddhist at the time…I had stayed in their monastery and was going through their exams, and yet I had this feeling that it is not right for me. I suddenly realized how close it all was: another month and my head would have been shaved."

It would have been good to do.

Local legend has it that monks at Samye Ling recognized something special in Bowie as an artist and encouraged him to leave the monastery and focus on his music.

The Samye Ling Community

Anyone visiting Samye Ling can’t help but admire the sheer scale of the ambition it embodies. The volunteer grassroots community building by a refugee community are hard to match, and it gives a sense of hope... More

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