I think once you're amongst everybody everything will be very very clear how
special this place is and how it really sprung up from just a barn and now it's
a thriving dharma centre. It's really amazing what's taken place here.
well it's a kind of long, almost shaggy dog story you could say,
originally Rinpoche had wanted to make Sakya centers to express his kind
of devotion to His Holiness, after all he's a Sakya tulku himself, and so after we founded
you know, the Sakya centre in Bristol and so on Rinpoche mentioned to us well we
should try to make something in France or Germany. And then it really kind of
by happenstance came about that we had a chance to make something here.
Why here specifically? Well because actually in the mid-70s dharma came to the Dordogne
in a big way with the extraordinarily generous gift of essentially an entire
hillside to His Holiness the 16th Karmapa, Dujom Rinpoche and Dingo
Kyentse Rinpoche. And so they made their Kagyu and Nyingma centres up there and a
kind of flourishing Buddhist culture grew up over there on the Cote Du Jord
and so I knew that was there and I thought 'well, the Dordorgne has got that, it's got some
Buddhist culture and it's much cheaper to buy property there than it is in
England.' You see we had a little bit of extra money very generously offered
to us but far too small to buy anything in England in terms of retreat center
or countryside center but just enough maybe for the Dordogne. So David and Carl
came here as scouts and on the last day of their actual scouting
visit they found a barn, in a field, here! And I said 'let's buy it'. Now, I told Rinpoche
Rinpoche was in Nepal at the time and they said 'oh that's that's kind of very
auspicious because his lama Chobje Tri Rinpoche the great Tsarpa master, guru to
his Holiness as well, had asked Rinpoche/given Rinpoche this name,
Sakya Changlochen Ling for a retreat center that he thought Rinpoche should
make. So Rinpoche then passed the name to me and said that will be Sakya Changlochen Ling
Changlochen of course is the name of the of the Pure Land of
Vajrapani, the great Bodhisattva and guardian of the tantras. So we had
the land, we had the barn, we had the name. We didn't have any money to do anything
more, but anyway we started. We started coming here each summer and
gradually trying to build it up. So it was Rinpoche's blessing, I guess really
Chobje Tri's blessing that kind of was from the dharma side the nutrition, and
from our side just knowing that the Dordogne is a good place for Dharma,
beautiful place, tourist place, and also with a strong English connection. So all
those circumstances came together and out of that Changlochen was
born. You know our dharma centers . . . Sakya center in Bristol, Sakya centre in London
centers in Bristol, in England and elsewhere in the world, they are
essentially kind of urban dharma centres where we follow the
traditional dharma that I studied with my own lamas, we invite the great lamas of our
tradition like his Holiness Sakya Trizin to come and teach but it's essentially
people receiving the teachings you know right in the middle of their busy lives
so here Changlochen provides that opportunity to to move for
some time out of the busyness of their lives and
study the Dharma, listen to the dharma more intensively, study the dharma and practice
the Dharma more intensively, so the curriculum of course like the
you know the curriculum in our urban centers, is essentially
following the pattern of what was studied in Tibet before us. We're not
changing the Dharma. But we've had to of course you know make the dharma accessible
to people in this kind of modern Western background as other Western Tibetan Buddhist
organizations do. So here's a chance for people to come together and be a
community together for a few weeks and and there is a wonderful
difference in kind of taking people's understanding and practice of the Dharma to a
deeper level which then nourishes the roots of their growth in Dharma and allows
them to go back to their urban busyness and families and responsibilities
and the rest of it, you know refreshed and invigorated in their dharma practice. People go
from here with a sharper and deeper understanding of the dharma they've
been studying back in their local centers. And also a sharper
sense of what it is to be in a Sangha and what it is to be part of a
practicing Dharma community. So now
it's become a kind of indispensable part of our wider activities so
that that's why you know we have people here from from all corners of our
Dharma community from Mexico through to Bulgaria, through Germany,
Portugal, France, England, you name it. A nd now His Holiness has been, his Holiness Sakya Trizin,
our Dharma master has been, you know we fully expect to welcome
many more people both from within our dharma community and from outside our dharma
community because it is for the Sakya tradition as a whole that we made
this centre here in this part of France. Another thing I say of course is that one
dimension of the center we are going to be developing more in years to come is the
retreat side of it. You know we do run the retreats here every summer but we anticipate
running more retreats both kind of group retreats, we've already started with one
or two extra ones each year, but also in the longer term to have individual
retreats for serious for serious practitioners. You know that's very much
on our agenda for the coming years . . . . . I was sitting there today
and I was thinking I do hope, you know that we can come next year again. There's so much
to learn and each year I learn so much.