Monk to speak about Buddhism in America, experiences abroad

An American-born Buddhist monk will visit Marshall University on Friday and speak about "Buddhism in America" and his encounter with the Dalai Lama.

Bhante Yagavacara Rahula recently completed a six-month-long trek and teaching tour through the Himalayan mountains and northern India.

According to a news release, Rahula helped found the Ther-evadan forest monastery and retreat center, The Bhavana Society, begun in 1988 by Bhante Gunaratana in the backwoods of Hampshire County, W.Va.

He is now the second-senior monk there.

Douglas Imbrogno, an American Buddhist and the feature editor for the Charleston Gazette, said he invited Rahula to come to Marshall for a talk so people could meet a real American-born Buddhist monk.

"Often people think of Buddhism and monks as being represented by people from the East," said Imbrogno. "Yet, Buddhist teachings have really have taken root in America and the number of American teachers is growing."

Imbrogno said Marshall is a good place for a visit because of the work Dr. Alan Altany, professor of religious studies, has done in his teaching and writing about religious traditions and inter-faith dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism.

Altany said he advocates "serious interreligious dialogue. "He said vision and beliefs should be "genuinely listened to and taken seriously."

Altany said interreligious dialogue may be one of the most significant events occurring today. As the decades pass, more and more people are coming into contact with people of religious traditions to which they do not belong, he said.

"Bhante Rahula's visit gives people an opportunity to hear and to discuss the intellectual content of religions, an area often woefully ignored," Altany said.

It has been said that college students are religiously illiterate in that few know much about the intellectual heritage of the world religions, he added.

"To be exposed to people of different perspectives, cultures and religions not only help to learn what was not known or understood previously, but to learn more about oneself and ones own religious tradition or world view, to see it from a new angle, freshly, to ask questions not thought to have been asked earlier," Altany said.

Imbrogno said Rahula will talk about meditation and what Buddhism teaches about how one should live one's life. He will also talk about his own colorful life, as a wandering hippie in the 70's, staying high and at one point even being jailed in Afghanistan for trying to smuggle drugs out of the country to sell to finance his further travels, and how he met the Dalai Lama and other spiritual teachers.

Rahula will speak Friday at noon in Harris Hall 134. It is free and open to public.