MONKS AND NUNS OF THE FPMT

Helen Abadzi writes about French monk Ven. Thubten Shenphen, director of Do-ngag Zung-juk Ling, the center on Paros, an island in the Aegian Sea.

The Greek island of Paros is a far out-of-the-way place for an FPMT center. Situated four hours by boat from Athens, it’s not even a major tourist haunt, like Mykonos. The center was Ven. Ingrid Braun’s personal residence for many years. Then she became a nun and decided to offer it to Lama Zopa Rinpoche. It was an active center in earlier years, but recently it had been vacant with basically only caretakers.

Then came a new director.

Ven. Thubten Shenphen (born in Bretagne, the west part of France in 1979) heard the call of Buddhism while reading, at the age of 13, The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa. When 16, he attended a teaching by Gendun Rinpoche and realized that renunciation was his true mission in life. His parents did not want to let him go without finishing school, but eventually they relented. (His mother became a Buddhist a few years later.) He entered Nalanda, the FPMT monastery in France, in April 1985. He received his first ordination from Geshe Jampa Tegchog, then getsul ordination from Lama Zopa Rinpoche and eventually received full ordination from His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the age of 21.

Ven. Thubten Shenphen’s attention soon turned toward the poor and needy. By the age of 25 he had raised funds and organized four humanitarian missions to the Tibetan refugee camps in south India. He organized a small dispensary (which became a small hospital) and found funding to get medicines and equipment to it. For his humanitarian efforts, he was given the prize “Servir” by a Rotary Club of France, and French newspapers wrote articles about his work.

In order to deal with the lack of trained medical staff for the refugees, Ven. Shenphen became a paramedical surgeon. He got a first-aid diploma in France, learned much from books, and received practicums at the Hospital of Cahors, where enlightened doctors understood his mission and taught him the basics. In India, he performed surgery many times. For example, he had to fix a facial trauma of a Tibetan monk who fell on a broken window. He does general anesthesia as well as surgery. But for the past 15 years he has also been able to cure some sicknesses with only his hands and prayers.

Ven. Shenphen had stayed in India about five years when he met Lama Zopa again, who asked him to direct one of his centers. At first Lama Zopa thought about Nalanda Monastery, but then he advised him to look after the center on Paros.

He set about reopening it. He installed a solar water heater, pulled weeds, repainted, and made the place more comfortable for visitors. He had to rebuild a wall that collapsed and tend to the land that had been unkempt. He mainly used his own money, earned by teaching basic computer skills to the children of the island and donations received for his hand-healing. Though he does not know Greek, people know enough basic English for him to get around.

Directing a Buddhist center in Greece is somewhat sensitive. Greek Orthodoxy is the official religion, and there are laws prohibiting proselytizing of other dogmas or religions. Most people know very little about Buddhism and may confuse it with cults and sects that have created social problems. The center hosts a small group of people; some are foreigners, other are Greeks who have lived abroad.

Ven. Shenphen receives people for healing throughout the year. The number of patients is increasing, with people coming to the island from the rest of Europe. In April 1999, he received a 9-year-old German child named Toni. Toni has leukemia, which Ven. Shenphen is trying to cure by adding spiritual healing to standard therapy. The Paros forest warden has even brought in sick animals.

Buddhism knocked at the door of the Greeks very early, since Alexander’s generals established Indo-Greek kingdoms in Punjab and Afghanistan. Many Indo-Greeks accepted Buddhism, which historical documents refer to. The book Milinda Panha (The Questions of Milinda) details how the Indo-Greek King Menander received explanations about the Dharma from a monk called Dharmakshita (probably also Greek) and accepted Buddhism. The Indian emperor Ashoka (268-238 BC) also sent missionaries to the Hellenistic world. The Greco-Buddhist sculptors of Gandhara gave Apollo’s face to Buddha, which is still recognizable in statues today.

But Buddhism never prospered in the traditional Greek lands, mainland Greece or Asia Minor. In the Hellenistic and Roman years, Greeks worshipped many Eastern deities, but Buddha was not among them. Bishop Clemens of Alexandria mentions that missionaries came to Alexandria in the 2nd century AD, but no temples, writings or further references have ever been found. Even today, Greek Buddhists are very few. Perhaps it is because Greeks are a passionate and emotional people, for whom contemplation and silence don’t come easily. There is not even a word in Greek for detachment.

So, what will this monk bring to Greece? Being a Greek myself, I have the hope that perhaps enlightenment for the country will arise out of the healings taking place in Paros. Maybe King Menander wants to remind us of our ancestral insights and to show us how to deal constructively with our neighbors, the European Union, and the challenges of the 21st century.

The web page of the Do-ngag Zung-juk Ling center is http://users.otenet.gr/~dzl.

The AMCHI web site, a related philanthropic organization, is http://www.amchi.org.