KAPAA — Lama Tashi Dundrup is the resident lama and director of the Kauai Dharma Center in Kapaa. The mission is to enable people to find emotional balance and inner peace through Buddhism in order to effectively benefit themselves, others
KAPAA — Lama Tashi Dundrup is the resident lama and director of the Kauai Dharma Center in Kapaa. The mission is to enable people to find emotional balance and inner peace through Buddhism in order to effectively benefit themselves, others and the environment. Lama is the Tibetan name for a high priest in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
The Kauai Dharma Center “Kagyu Thubten Choling” was founded by Lama Karma Rinchen in 1990 and has been operated by resident Lama Tashi Dundrup since 1991. It is a nonprofit church organization supported by tax deductible donations.
TGI: How did you come to Hawaii?
Tashi: I sailed here from Panama in 1973. I had a boat in the Atlantic and retired to Costa Rica when I was 35. When I came to the Pacific side, a friend of mine wanted to have his boat delivered to Hawaii. It was a beautiful two-masted, mizenrigged fiberglass boat that was made for running the Pacific, and so I sailed it here for him.
TGI: How did you come to Buddhism?
Tashi: I have probably been a shaman for my whole life. My father was a doctor and my mother was a nurse in Seattle. My grandfather was a horse rancher and my parents raised me in close connection to nature. A lot of my father’s patients were American Indians and I was introduced to that culture at a young age.
When I came to Hawaii, I practiced meditation and lived on Oahu for about six months. I was living on Maui in 1974, and it all kind of gelled after I met a Tibetan lama named Lama Gyaltrul Rinpoche. This was before I knew anything about Buddhism. I was on my farm watching this monk build a stupa next door on a student’s land in Huelo.
Lama Gyaltrul Rinpoche came over to me and asked why I was laughing. I said it seemed so funny. He says, ‘Yes, it is kind of humorous, especially to your culture. Someday you are going to understand what this means, this thing that we are building. When you do understand, I am asking you to make yourself available to explain it to others.’
Three years later he came back to the same place to give a two-day teaching. My friend from Berkeley came to attend and when I dropped him off at the stupa, Lama Gyaltrul Rinpoche came over and said, ‘You can’t go home.’ I parked the truck and I said, ‘OK, I will check it out for two days. The rest is history.’
My teacher is now 83 and in perfect health. He and others have taught me and now I am 75 and I think I am a little nicer and a more human person than when I started. I can see the progress here and it has definitely worked. I don’t mind being that example. What I am doing is making myself available and there is nothing more than that which keeps it real simple.
TGI: How did you become a lama?
Tashi: I attended a 40-month retreat in Marcola, Ore., in 1985. You could say it is similar to getting a college education in Buddhism. I trained in this tradition to discipline my mind using various methods. We practiced daily from 3 a.m. until 9 p.m. No one comes in, and no one leaves except the cooks and the teacher.
I could have used the experience for my own personal development but I continued on to become a lama. I finished my training in 1989 and returned to Maui.
TGI: How did the Kauai Center come to be?
Tashi: The other lamas in Hawaii helped me to get established in a way that is of benefit to the tradition and I was sent to Kauai. There was no lama here and my first teaching was at Kauai Community College as part of Dana Beckharts’ comparative religion class. I moved here permanently in 1991.
Our first center was on Moloa Road in Kilauea. There were people here practicing already when we arrived. We continued informally until incorporating as a nonprofit in 1995.
The Kauai Center took off and this group helped to complete a five-year project to build the healing stupa in Kilauea around three years ago. It is on private property owned by two individuals who acquired pre-cut marble pieces and shipped it here.
We do two-day retreats at the stupa from 9 a.m. to noon on the fourth weekend of every month. It is a very powerful session and we explain in detail what the stupa is about and how it works in relation to meditation and yoga.
The centers teach unconditional love and altruistic compassion. Those are the two qualities of Tibetan Buddhism.
The centers are not formatted on the monastery structure and the lamas are mixing traditions as householders.
People train to become a yogi or yogini which is highest form accomplishment. Meditation and yoga practice takes place on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level. All humans beings have a natural aspect to consciousness. They don’t always know how to connect with it and that is where Buddhism can help.
The basic introduction is Mahayana Buddhism, and the basic practice is to generate a form of focus on your own tendencies — of how to think, speak, act, and be mindful through focusing in formal sessions on these things. The teacher points out how and where to start and how to develop.
True change takes place in the heart. You start to come from the heart when you extend kindness to yourself, and can drive a wedge into your 24-hour schedule with a 15 to 30 minute practice. Then you will start to realize the results.
TGI: Who seeks out the center?
Tashi: People that I recognize as having really good karma. You have to have good karma to get here. I consider them fortunate and we start right there. It is a good situation and now let’s use it.
TGI: What is new at the center?
Tashi: Former students have kept in contact using Skype and now we are using the Web to reconnect with people who studied here and have moved on to someplace else. It started after I met a teacher in Maui named Kaora Rimpoche. His online teachings streamed all over the world to thousands of people.
I Skype twice a week from the Dharma Center all over the place. It helps to stay connected to a transient population that comes to Kauai to learn and leave. Some of them started their own centers and some are continuing on their own. Social media has helped but you really do need a teacher to do these practices. It is a way for people who learn to keep power from inflating the ego.
The Kauai Dharma Center, 5184 Kome Street in Kapaa. Info: 652-0551.
