For a sum of approximately $1 per day, anyone -- from the passing skeptic to the impassioned believer -- can sponsor the brethren of New Hampshire's newest arrivals, Buddhist monks whose origins lie in Tibet.
A new Tibetan center opened Aug. 3 on Park Street on the edge of the Lebanon, N.H., green, in a small-town atmosphere that is as far away from a traditional Buddhist setting as one can imagine.
The center, called Dolma Ling, represents the Gaden Jangtse Tibetan monastery in Southern India.
Dolma Ling presently houses four monks. It runs the Gaden Jangtse Tsawa Khangtsen Monk Sponsorship Program where people can donate $360 a year to take complete care of the few needs -- essentially food, shelter, clothes and education -- of a monk at the monastery.
Gaden Jangtse mean "north college" in Tibetan, and it refers to the educational wing of the monastery. The monks there live in 12 houses, or Khangtsen.
The center was established partly to serve the spiritual needs of people in the Upper Valley, and partly to raise funds for the monks, who live in impoverished conditions in their monastery in India.
It sells Tibetan handicrafts such as decorative pieces and jewelry, and all the proceeds from their sales that remain after the operating expenses of the center are covered go towards sustaining the monastery.
"It's like a church that has a bookshop," director Janie Dvorak Compton told the Connecticut Valley Spectator.
The monastery with which the center is affiliated was originally founded by Je Tsong Khapa in 1409 in Tibet. However, during the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, when more than a million Tibetans were killed, there was also a concerted effort toward destroying Tibetan culture, and the monastery was destroyed.
Numerous Tibetans were forced to flee, and they were granted refuge by neighboring India. The Indian government donated land to these refugees and a new monastery was established in Mungod, in the south Indian state of Karnataka.
The monastery was built originally for 300 monks but now serves over 3000, which is one of the reasons it is seeking donors.
According to the Office of Tibet, the New York-based foreign agency representing Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, there are 6 million Tibetans in the world, with 3,500 in the United States. Very few of them, however, live in the Upper Valley.
But this isn't the first time Tibetan monks have made their way here. Monks from Gaden Jangtse have been visiting Dartmouth and the Upper Valley since 1997.
The now-dormant student organization Students for a Free Tibet has also invited guest speakers in the past, including a photojournalist, a monk, and an alumnus who visited Tibet, to describe the horrors inflicted on the Tibetan people by the Chinese government.
Dartmouth has witnessed Tibetan art as well in the past. The monks made mandalas, small sand designs that are then destroyed to signify temporality, in Rollins Chapel during their past visits.
Earlier this year, Yungchen Lhamo, a singer and refugee from Tibet, also gave a performance of Tibetan music and chants there.
