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Showing posts from July, 2005

Buddhist Nunnery in Vermont

BUDDHIST NUNNERY AT PEACE VILLAGE China's Maoists destroyed Tibetan Buddhist relics, texts and buildings during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Yet, in the end, that destruction had a boomerang effect. BY SUSHMA JOSHI On July 28, 2005, I attended the consecration of a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery at Lincoln--a small town in rural Vermont, USA. The town is so small that you could miss it, as we did--we drove right past it. The general store, in the middle of the town, had a sign so quaint that we had to drive around several times before we found it. The houses, with sloping gabled roofs, were scattered amongst fields of summer wildflowers. Children's tricycles rested on the overgrown grass outside red, dilapidated barns. The friend who drove me to the event was a young American woman who had experienced the effects of war first-hand: her husband, who she had been married to for eight years, was psychologically traumatized after being posted to Iraq. Their marriage had ended so