Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Treasure Mountain, the podcast that guides and inspires to find the treasure within human experience. Our guest today on Treasure Mountain is Ian Green, who is chairman of the Great Stupor of Universal Compassion and founder of the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace, along with his wife Judy, he's been a Buddhist now for over 40 years and a vegetarian for over 25 years. Ian's connection to Budhism began with a visit to India in 1971. He has had the good fortune to meet many Buddhist teachers, including Geshi Loden Saseptulku, llama Tabdan yeshi. Llama Zopa, Rinch Crochet and ayakama in 1979, Ian completed the month long course at Copan Monastery in Kathmandu. Ian has continued his studies under many Buddhist masters to this day.
In 1980, Ian's father, Ed Green, offered over 50 acres of land to set up a Buddhist center near Bendigo. The original 50 acres was later added to with further land from Ian's mother and himself, so that the Buddhist center in Bendigo is now 200 acres.
Ian was founding Director of the Atisha Center and he has served as board members of the Tara Institute and foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition. He is currently chairman of the Great Stupor of Universal Compassion and the founder of the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace. Ian has received various awards for his international work for peace and is a recipient of the Order of Australia Medal. It is the Great Stupor of Universal Compassion that is Ian Green's inspired project that we are going to focus on in this episode and as you'll find out in this interview and what the real meaning and purpose of the Great Stupor really is. So join us as we seek for the treasure within Treasure Mountain. Ian, how are you today?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Oh, very well, Phil, thank you very much.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: I really appreciate that you've taken the time to come in and talk to us, and I'm really excited to find out about the Great Stupor of Universal Compassion, which I know a little bit about, but I'm hoping to find out much more. I'd like to start first of all, Ian, with let's talk about your personal story and your path into the practice. How did your early life experiences lead you into Buddhist practice?
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Well, I think so. From a very young age, I was asking myself the sort of big questions of life, like, why are we here and why do so many people suffer? And why are some people seem to be born lucky and others seem to be born with all sorts of problems?
And I wasn't sure how to find the answers to this. Originally, my parents sent me along to Sunday school. They said, you must go there until you're the age of twelve and then you can make up your own mind. So I went along there, but I was really not very impressed by what I saw. I saw people acting very sanctimoniously, but in fact, I knew these people from the way they behaved in their normal environment. And so I could see there was a bit of a disconnect between what they were saying on one level and the way they were actually behaving. So at the age of twelve, I went into my parents bedroom and I said, mum and dad, I've decided I'm not going back to Sunday school. All Christians are hypocrites. Now, this was with the arrogance of a twelve year old who thinks he knows everything.
But it was one of the first journeys down a spiritual path that I explored. And it was always trying to find something that made sense to me on a heart level, but also on a head level. And I kept looking from that day on, always trying to find something. So that was the start of the journey. Later on I was to meet many other spiritual guides, particularly Hindu or Yogi teachers. And I also explored spiritualism for a while and read many things at the Theosophical Bookshop, which is an institution in Melbourne. But again, I could never find anything that really made sense to me at the heart and at the head level.
So in a way then, I almost gave up on the spiritual search. And after I graduated from university, I then decided that look, I just needed to just start enjoying life. So I then leapt into hedonism headlong. I got a job in advertising, which I loved, and from there I started to explore all sorts of ways of living an exciting life. So I had lots of girlfriends, lots of drinking, lots of long lunches, lots of gambling at poker and so forth. And in a way it was very, very enjoyable because I really love meeting all these people who are a very exciting bunch of people to work with.
But somehow or another, the longer it went on, the more disillusioned I became. And I could see those around me really suffering as well.
And I sort of came to the realization, unless I do something about this, I'm going to end up in a very early grave. Because I really felt like I was burning the candle at both ends, as the expression goes.
So, not with much forethought, I decided that I would go to India and maybe I would find some answers there. Now this is a little bit unusual because when you think back on, because I'd already met a couple of swamis in Melbourne and explored their teachings and I was impressed by them, but I never really made that connection. But anyway, for some reason or another, a voice inside said I should go to India. So I did. And so as soon as I landed in India, I realized two things. I realized, first of all, how materialistic Australia was, and secondly, I realized that spirituality was still the thing that was missing from my life. What I mean by that is every tree that we drove by seemed to have a little altar under it. Every shop you went into had a little shrine to one deity or another. Every taxi you were in had on the dashboard a it just I realized how significant spirituality was to India, or it certainly was in those days anyway.
And it just underlined again and again the thing that was really still lacking in my life.
But having said that, somehow or another, I could never connect with the Hindu deities.
I thought Ganesh and Hanuman and so forth were really funky looking and I loved the T shirts and the posters with them on. But somehow or another it was not really something that I could personally connect with. Anyway, I continued my journeys in India until towards the end of that visit where I went to Banaras or Varanasi on the Ganges.
And I was there and it was so hot and so smelly and there were all those burning bodies on the gaps and just so much noise and so forth. I just felt, look, I've got to find some sort of some refuge from this place, maybe a park or something. So I asked in the hotel and they said, oh, there's a park nearby. So I caught a taxi there. It was about 10 km away. And when I got there, it was a very barren looking place and it seemed to be not much shade and not many people around. But anyway, I said, oh, well, I'll go here while I made this trip here. So I went into this park. It was surrounded by a fence. As soon as I went into the park, I had this incredible feeling that somehow, I don't know, I felt like I'd suddenly entered a new reality. Somehow I felt completely peace, peaceful, and a total calm came over me.
It's something I'd never experienced before, and it felt very strange. In fact, I even looked around me back at the taxi to see whether maybe the world had changed or something like that. But then I realized, no, it was just I was feeling completely different to any way I'd ever felt before.
And I thought I sort of sat down on a rock, as I recall, and just thought, what's happening to me? And I looked around for a clue to what have made the difference. Anyway, I saw a sign that I'd walked straight by as I came through the door in the fence, the gate in the fence. And I went back there and I read that this was Sanath, or Deer Park, which is the place where the Buddha first taught.
And so I realized that I'd come to a very significant Buddhist pilgrimage place a little bit later.
Shortly after that, I came across this enormous big I describe it as a big lump. I couldn't work out whether it was manmade or whether it was natural. It was covered with all these little ferns and bushes and so forth. Anyway, I saw a sign that this was the Damak stupa, which is the stupa built at the site of the Buddha's first teaching, which happened at Sanath. And somehow, almost the power of this stupa almost was so strong, I almost felt like I was knocking me off my feet.
So it was a very profound experience going to that park, and it really completely changed my life.
I'd say from that day, with my understanding later acquired, that I'd made that Karmic connection with my previous lifetimes as a Buddhist. And by going there, somehow this had reconnected or rekindled that connection.
Later on, before I left the park, there was a little shop there, and I went in there. There was a man dozing away on a seat. I'm sure I was his first customer today.
And I bought a little book, what is Budhism?
And on the plane coming back to Australia, I actually flicked the book open and started to read it. And I had quite a very strange feeling that I knew everything that this book was saying, but I'd never seen the words before.
So it was talking about things like karma and rebirth and the Four Noble Truths, et cetera, et cetera. And suddenly I had this great feeling of affinity, as if, yeah, I'm completely familiar with this, but I don't remember seeing any of these words written like this.
Later on, I came back, and it was sort of coincidental, I suppose, or it seemed that way, that when I came back, there was a Buddhist monk. He was a Melbourne doctor who'd become one of the first monks ordained in the Tibetan tradition, dr. Nick Re Bush. And I went along to I heard him on the radio, actually, initially, and again, I had that same feeling, oh, I know exactly what he's talking about, but I haven't heard those words before. And that same experience, which I guess in a Western term you might describe as something like deja vu, I kept having that feeling over the first few months as I encountered more and more of the Buddhist teachings.
So that's really how I became a Buddhist.
I was on a spiritual search. It was taking a long time to try and find out exactly what path I was on, but suddenly when I met it at Sanath, at this holy pilgrimage place, then the conditions and the causes were right, and it just instantly became a rekindled my connection with Buddhism.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's really amazing story, because it does sound like a lot of things started to fall into place after you went to Sanath.
Now, I did want to ask you, who were some of the teachers that inspired you early on?
[00:14:19] Speaker B: I know.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: You mentioned Nick Rebush.
Were there any other teachers that really inspired you in that early stage to get started?
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Yes, well, I very soon discovered Tara House, which was, I think Nick was giving a course there or giving a lecture. So I went along there. And then at Tara House, they actually had a visiting a teacher come to them, Geshilodan. And Geshilodan had a translator who was Zatap Tulku, and the two of them were amazing teachers. And they certainly, along with Nick, were the early teachers.
I also met a Tibetan nun at that stage, or actually, she was an American from the Bronx, so she spoke with a very American Jewish accent. And she was the director of Tara House at that stage. So she was also a teacher. And I learned a lot from her, but particularly from Geshi, Lodan and Zalaptuku in the early stages.
Later on, I was to meet Lama. Yeshi. And I guess the thing that really transformed my Buddhist practice as well, because suddenly I was very slow to or reluctant, I guess you'd say, to get too deeply involved in Buddhism because I still had a bit of skepticism about me, about various things. And the idea of prostrating didn't come very naturally to me. I remember in the early days, every time I'd get down on my hands and knees well, others around me were getting down on my hands and knees. I would find it very difficult to actually get down and prostrate myself because it seemed like I was somehow demeaning to me. But in a way that, of course, as I came to realize after a while, that, in a way, was the whole point of prostration, is to actually lower yourself and to show that there are others and to acknowledge there are others who know a lot more than you do.
And anyway, eventually I slowly, slowly got involved involved in the whole process. But really, when Lamiishi came to Melbourne in 1979, that's when my practice really transformed. And I think when I discovered with him was that I certainly had found the path for me. I'd found a path that made total sense to my head but also to my heart. And then when I actually met him, I met him a few times on that particular visit, I had the incredible feeling that when I actually looked into his eyes that he could look straight into my eyes and see everything inside me, good and bad.
And it was one of those things that it felt a bit like the closest feeling I could have was a bit like falling in love, in a way that I had this incredible connection that somehow when I looked into Lama's eyes, I could see that he completely accepted me and that I was willing to do anything I could to try and help him in whatever way he wanted.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Well, as I understand it, though, lamieshi is going to have a tremendous impact upon your life, but also is going to be instrumental in putting forth the idea of the great Stupa. In fact, he had a vision for starting a small Buddhist village in Australia. And you became involved with that from an early stage. Could you tell us about that?
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Yes, indeed.
In 1979, after meeting him in Melbourne, I then went to Copenhagen and did a month long course. And at that particular course, llama said to me, it's very, very important we find a regional center in Victoria where we can establish a retreat center, but also a place where people can get away from the busyness of Melbourne and the big city energy.
So I then started with some others going around everywhere around Victoria, searching for somewhere know was met our needs, but also our budget. Couldn't find anywhere. And one weekend I was going home to Bendigo and I said to my dad, look, you can't find anywhere that's going to be suitable to set up this Buddhist center.
My father, Ed, said, well, maybe I can give you 50 acres to begin with.
So he'd actually bought 700 acres of land not only 1520 minutes from Bendigo, and he bought it, I think almost on a bit of a whim, because it was a large piece of land. It had a real connection to the sort of area that he was born in and brought up. So maybe there was an emotional connection as well.
Anyway, from his offer of 50 acres, I then contacted Lamieshi and said, Look, Lama, my dad's offered this land would do you think this would be suitable?
Now, llama, like most Tibetan llamas, actually rely on divination for important decisions such as this. So he asked a couple of high llamas if they could give some divination on whether this land in Bendigo would be appropriate or would be very suitable.
So he initially got back some responses from them that would be of moderate benefit. But of course, Lama was never willing to accept the obvious. He was a bit of a radical teacher, so he went out for a second opinion. So he went to some other llamas and said, look, I want to know if this land would be suitable and from these other llamas divinations, he got back the response that it would be incredibly beneficial.
So he then wrote to me very enthusiastically and said, yes, we will accept your father's offer. And this is in 1980, and I'll come there when I'm next coming to Australia, around about August 1981, and I'll give a course at Bendigo on the land.
So that was the cause for a whole lot of development and a lot, know, a change of career for me, actually giving up my job, moving to Bendigo with my new partner Judy, and with one or two others as well, to actually set up the course for Falama's visit, which was we went there in early 1981. It was to be set up and to be held actually in August, so it was not very long to do it all. Anyway, the course did come. The paint was barely dry by the time llama arrived and after he'd been there for a few days, he asked myself and another fellow, Gary folks, to come on a walk with me. And on this walk he described the vision he had for the whole site.
So, first of all, we went for a walk along near the Kuan Yin pond that we have there at the moment. And he stopped and he grabbed a stick and drew in the ground, and pointing up to his left, he said, that's where we will build a big stupor. And in that big stupor will be a big gompa. Gompa is the Tibetan word for a temple, and there'll be a library. And then pointing over to the right, he said, over there will be a lay village, and there'll be a hospice, and there'll also be other developments around here as well. Then afterwards, we walked up to the monastery hill, up to the stupor hill. First of all, the vegetation was very thick and we had to actually almost peel it back to get through the vegetation to get first of all to the stupor hill. And you could see that there was quite a nicely rounded hill there. We then said, and up here, he said, and he walked off for another must have been like 600, 700 meters, sort of climbing up to the next hill. And he said, this is where the monastery will be. It will start here. And then he kept walking and walking and walking and walking, and it will go until eventually, he said, it will go to here. So that was about four or 500 meters that he walked. And all during that walk I kept thinking, how big is this monastery going to be anyway? It has all come about exactly as he had envisaged. The monastery is on that hill. It's exactly in the dimensions that he laid out versus tupa has been developed on the first hill.
I had the distinct feeling as I walked around there with Lamiyeshi that he could see the whole thing in his mind. Now, I don't even think that he'd ever been on those particular pieces of land at all before.
No one was aware that he was walking or no one had ever seen him walking in the bush, so I don't think he had. And yet, somehow or another, as he walked around, there was, if he knew, walked with exact precision, knew exactly where he was going.
It was quite a profound experience.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: That's incredible. It also is incredible, because that set off a chain of events that is going to lead to all of these things have come to pass, is that correct? So we've now got the stupor, there's a retreat center, there's a monastery of all those things that were talked about by lama yeshi, 40 OD years ago.
Those things have now come to fruition, is that correct?
[00:25:38] Speaker B: That's basically correct. Certainly the retreat center atisha center has been operating basically from the day llama came there. So for 42 years, the monastery is complete.
It's got rooms for about 24 monks. There are currently six monks living there.
The Lay village is well into the planning stages and we expect that to be underway soon. The hospice and a primary school will happen in the future.
And we've also started on a nunnery as well, so it's started construction as well. So essentially that master plan that llama had in his head and he walked around with us in 1981 has come to fruition exactly as he said, with a few other things added in as we've come to develop it, things have gone naturally that this should be here or that should be there. But basically, we followed Lami Yashi's master plan to the exact t. Really?
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Well, I have to say it's one thing to have a plan that's kind of like Einstein said it's 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration the last 40 OD years, this has been a project that has been, I guess, your baby. You've really focused on it to make it, to bring it fruition. It must have been surely some tremendous challenges and obstacles along the way. Could you perhaps relate what it was like going through that period where there must have been some really difficult patches?
[00:27:20] Speaker B: Yes, well, just existing in those early days was difficult because with my current wife Judy sorry, I'm currently married to Judy, but at that stage we weren't married, but she came with three boys, who the youngest was three.
There was no electricity, there was no running water on the site, so somehow I had to look after this instant family.
There was an old railway carriage there that we converted into, as best we could, into a bit of a home.
As I said, there was no running water, so we had to carry the water there. There was no electricity, so at night we could only make things see where we were going by a tilly lamp. So even just existing was difficult. But then around a T shirt center was extremely difficult as well, because there were very few people to help us initially. And those people who came when Lama Yeshi who was there in 1981, sort of drifted away one after another afterwards because there wasn't an active teaching program there, so we could understand why they would leave us. They'd go to their own homes, and it just left us with a hardcore of Judy, myself and Ken Haughter, who was another fellow I'd met at that Copain course in 1979. So the three of us struggled on and then one or two other local people came to help us as well. And the first few years at a teacher center were really just a survival case where we would just try and get the message out. There was a Buddhist center in Bendigo. We would often do a lot of the teaching ourselves because we couldn't get visiting teachers to come financially it was incredibly difficult as well. So we put a lot of our own savings into actually making it happen as best we could. It took ten years for that, really to be solid enough for us to hand it over to the first new directors of the whole place.
And then it was able to stand on its own 2ft. So that gave me a chance, really, then, to ease my way out of it, although I was still very involved for several years more.
But then to start thinking about the big project of my life, the main purpose of my life, I think, which is to build the great stupa.
Of course, even at this planning stage, this was very difficult because the idea of building something like this in the middle of the Australian bush, nowhere near a capital city, not even near in adjoining a regional city, was quite a sort of radical idea and very few people believe could ever happen.
Most of my friends in Bendigo would say, look, it'll never happen. How could you build something way out there?
Even some Buddhist monks would just shake their heads and say, it's just too big to try and build the original. One of them said, Why don't you just make a scale model of it?
But somehow, because I had this connection with Lama yeshi, I had complete devotion to him, so I knew it would always happen.
The only thing I didn't know was whether I had the karma to actually be that person to make it happen.
And of course, I didn't know when it would happen. I thought, maybe it'll happen after I'm gone, but at least I know it will happen. And I also felt, well, if I can't make it happen, then maybe no one else can. So I'll just have to do my best to make it happen. So initially, I had no idea what was involved in making a multi story high, ten story high building.
And it was stressed that this building had to last for 1000 years. So even trying to find architects and engineers who were willing to take on a project like this, where you had that longevity as one of the key factors, that was an enormous challenge as well. Also like the design of the stupor, all we knew from Yeshua was the stupor was to be big. So what does that mean? Where do we start?
Judy and I had a friend who was an architect, and we asked him to come up with some ideas that I could put to Lama Zopa.
And he came up with sort of hybrid designs which combined like a Sri Lankan stupor or an Indian stupor with an Aussie homestead. So you had a bit of a mixture of the two.
The look on Lama Zopa's face when I showed him these design was enough to say we're not on the right track at all.
But in fact, it was Lama Zopa who himself who gave the final direction on which way we were to go with the stupa, because someone in Melbourne had shown him a coffee table book. And across this coffee table book in the center, spread over a photograph of the guillance stupor. He'd Scrawled this is my idea for the stupa in Bendigo. So when I saw this book, opened it up and saw that message in fact, I had never seen a photo of Gansi STUP beforehand, but I instantly fell in love with it. I just loved the size of it.
It was big, but at the same time, same stage, you could sort of relate to it on a human level. It had a harmony about it that was to do with its sort of shape, but also it had a complete decorations phase about it as well, which I just found to be beautiful.
So then I realized that, well, all of a sudden, the idea of we're just going to make a stupor was no longer just an idea. We knew exactly where it was going to be and what it was going to look like. And so we then had to get seriously into the process of getting planning, approvals, getting architecture, getting engineering, and then talking about the construction, and then most importantly, thinking about how on earth we're ever going to fund something.
Because even in those early days, the first quantity surveyor who looked at it said, well, it's at least $20 million to build something like this. That's just the structure alone.
So, yeah, there were lots of sleepless nights, I guess, just trying to get my head around all these issues.
I was supported through this whole process by this devotion I had in Mama. Yeshi, that he had seen this as a vision, that he knew how important it was and he'd asked me to make it. So somehow or another, I just had to do my best. That's all I could do.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: Well, that's an inspiring story because, wow, to spend 40 years of your life and you're still going, of course, to achieve such what must have seemed like virtually impossible to begin with, and now it's a reality. I do want to say that the great stupid of universe, compassion and the complex around it is much more than just a stupa. And you've mentioned already that there's a gompa or a temple inside as well as a library, but there are other projects associated with it and one of those projects is the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
[00:36:20] Speaker B: Yes, indeed. So this all started in 2003. I had a phone call from America and there was a young guy on the other end of the line. He introduced himself as Cheyenne Sunhill and he spoke know someone out of one of those American movies.
And I can this, we found this big boulder of jade and I really want to make it. Into a big Buddha. And I'm thinking, Is this guy for real? He just didn't come across as it was a strange, very strange phone call. Anyway, the more I listened to him, he explained that he was a Buddhist but also a jade jeweler. And this big boulder of jade had been discovered in the year 2003, years before the phone call. And in those three years they'd been trying to find I say they the jade Company. And Cheyenne had been trying to find someone to make this boulder into a giant, monumental piece.
Hadn't had no luck at all.
Cheyenne had run Buddhist projects around the world but no one wanted to take on something that big either because they couldn't afford it or too busy with their own projects or they thought it was a bit of a distraction from their main mission, if you like. Anyway, almost out of desperation, cheyenne gave me a call in Australia because he'd heard about this great stupor that was being built there.
It was Fortuitous Coincidental, or whatever. The word was that Cheyenne lived in Santa Cruz. In California. And only three weeks from the date of that phone call I was actually planned to go to Santa Cruz.
I was a member of the FPMT Inc. Board, which is the international body of the FPMT organization.
And the board meeting was due to be in Santa Cruz, of all places, in three months time.
So I said, Look, I'm going to be there in your place. I'll come a day or two early and we can talk about it in person. So he was very happy with that. So it came about. I flew into Santa Cruz and he came to meet me.
He was sort of what I would picture over the phone, I suppose. A shortish guy, completely bald, head and tattoos everywhere and enormous lumps of jade in his ear like he had ear plugs which are things about the size of a bottle cap in his earlobes which were big plugs that were in there. These are pieces that he'd made himself but a very gentle and sweet guy at the same time. So he took me around Santa Cruz and showed me some of the Santa Cruz lifestyle. He bought me a vegan taco. And then we actually went to a South Pacific island nudist club where we both got naked and hopped into hot tubs with various other people.
So this was my introduction to Cheyenne and to Santa Cruz.
After that, things settled down a bit and we went somewhere and we talked about jade. And he explained to me about the significance of this boulder which had already been described as the find of the millennium had been written up in books and so forth because of the size of it, but also because of the gem quality.
Anyway, I thought something that I had to explore this idea. So I arranged after the board meeting that I would fly to Canada with Cheyenne. So we went off to Canada and eventually got to meet Kirk Makepeace, who was the chairman of the Jade Company. And eventually he showed me this big jade boulder. It was the size of, like maybe the size of a reasonable size car.
And it just looked like a brown rock because jade is very strange. It's got this brown color about it. But in fact, that's a very thin rind, only maybe one or 2 mm thick. But if you polish that surface, suddenly you find this beautiful translucent green jade coming color coming out.
So anyway, after that trip, I then spoke to Lama Zopa about it, and I said, Look, I've seen this jade and there's something about it. I don't know, maybe we should do something about it. Anyway, he didn't say much that night, but the next morning he came back to me and he had this vision, and he said, you must make this boulder into a Buddha as an offering to peace and peace to the world. It will be so significant. You must do this.
So my initial thought know, I'm already building this enormous stupa. Do I really need another big project to get involved with? But somehow or another, I guess, because a bit like Lamieshi and his vision for the stupas, because Lama Zopa felt it was so important, and I had such devotion to Lama Zopa as well, then I thought, well, if he thinks it's that important, then I will have to find a way to make it happen.
So eventually, we negotiated a deal with the Kirk Makepiss and his company to purchase the jade boulder for a million US. Dollars, which we didn't have a million US. Dollars, but somehow or another, we negotiated an agreement that it would take us five years to pay this off. So then we had to just come up with down payments. First of all, $150,000. And again, we didn't have that money either. But somehow I just kept thinking, I will find it some way or another. And we explored many different options.
Many of them failed, most of them failed. But eventually we discovered one or two people who were very supportive of the whole idea.
And we also discovered a plan where we could almost pre sell some Buddhas made from offcuts of the Jae Buddha. So we had benefactors who were happy to make offerings for these Buddhas as long as it came from the. So for the combination of things like this and the generosity of many people, we were able to make our first down payment, which enabled us to get the boulder shipped to Thailand, where we started to carve it. The whole process, from when I saw the boulder to when it was finished, took five years.
So it was finished by the end of 2008. And then in 2009, we started a world tour.
That world tour went on for eight or nine years. It took in 130 cities around the world, in 22 countries. I think it was in Europe, America, Asia, India, Sri Lanka and so forth. And eventually over 12 million people came to see the Jade Buddha for universal peace. It was an incredible thing. And there were so many people received so much blessing from this Jade Buddha traveling the world.
It also helped us raise a lot of funds for the Great Stupor as well, because people would ask, Where is this Jade Buddha going? And I would say it's going to this great stupor we're building in Bendigo.
They would say, Where is this Bendingo? And I would say it's near Melbourne. It's near Melbourne. They say. Oh, Melbourne. That's good.
When the Jade Buddha comes back there, I'm coming to Bendingo and I'm going to come and see it for myself.
And then they would make offerings to the Great Stupor as well.
It wasn't intended to be that way, but the whole thing really had this incredible impetus where for nine years or so, we were able to generate these funds which would help us. Every time we'd get some more funds, we'd build a bit more of the stupor bit by bit by bit, like building a sort of wedding cake, but over a decade sort of thing.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: Really interesting to hear about how that has also inspired people's faith, but also contributed to the Great Stupor. So it's like different parts of it are mutually supportive.
I did want to ask about another exactly. Yeah. I did want to ask about another part of the project as well, which is one, I don't believe it was part of the original plan, but it's now a reality. And that's the Peace Park, which is aimed at fostering interfaith harmony. Could you tell us a bit about that?
[00:46:40] Speaker B: Yes, it wasn't part of Lama Yeshi's plan, but it's been something that I've really taken to heart from His Holiness Dalai Lama, because His Holiness has said so many times, know the fostering of interfaith harmony is sacred work, and it's something he really wanted everyone to encourage.
And certainly Lama Zopa has also stressed this as well. So I felt because we had such a public place with the Great Stupor that last year we had nearly 100,000 visitors. Of those visitors, about half were budhist, probably a bit less than half, and a bit over half were tourists. They were just general public.
So I realized that we can make a big impact on people by putting out this message of interfaith harmony. So I put this vision to Lama Zopa and he wholeheartedly agreed with it. And I've subsequently put the idea to His Holiness as well, who's given it his full support.
So in this Peace Park, which is a bit over 600 square meter park, we've got a statue of St. Francis from the Catholic faith. We have a symbol of Ikonka, which is a symbol from the Sikh faith, which means oneness with God, oneness of people, oneness of humanity. So it's a very symbolic universal faith.
We also have a Jewish Hanakiya, which is FICA Menorah, a candle which is lit as the Festival of Peace.
Right next to that we're building an Islamic Mirab, which is one way of describing this like a mini mosque. And I deliberately wanted the two of these side by side.
And actually behind them we've also set up what we call a biblical garden. So there are five or six fruits which are common to both the Bible, the Quran, and also the Jewish texts as well, things like pomegranates and grapes and dates and figs and olives.
So behind surrounding those is this biblical garden.
Right next to there is a Hindu temple, which is a Nepalese style temple to Ganesh.
We also have being established, a Baha'i garden is established. And we also have various budhist activities throughout here as well.
And finally, we have an aboriginal or indigenous symbol as well, being developed in the Peace Park. Now, as well as these different faiths, we also have different aspects of Buddhism as well. Because as a Buddhist, we know that not all Buddhists have always seen eye to eye.
Various traditions have seen that they are the true way or they're more important than another way.
But I wanted to embrace all forms of Buddhism here as well. So we've actually offered some land to the Sri Lankan Buddhist community which are based in Bendigo. And on that land they're actually establishing, which they call Bodhidharma Vihara. They're establishing their own area where they can do their own sacred practices. Within this site as well, there's also a Thai Buddhist and there's a Vietnamese pagoda planned as well.
So again, respecting all traditions of Buddhism, whether it be Terravadan or Mahayana or Vajriana, doesn't really matter.
And then beyond that, just respecting everyone who comes, no matter what faith they are, or even if they don't have a faith, we want everyone to come there, who comes there to feel that here they have a place where they are, where they're welcome, where they're respected and where they're inspired to find a peaceful and a spiritual solution for themselves.
[00:51:22] Speaker A: Wow, that is inspiring. Look, I feel like there's so much more to this project as well.
Maybe you could just mention some of the other things that are happening as part of the great stupa of universal compassion on that site, which I haven't yet mentioned.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: Yes, sure.
Well, on the interfaith area, we've also established a large library inside the stupa. And you might remember I mentioned that this was part of Lamiyeshi's original plan. So this library has now been established.
It's dedicated to the study of Buddhism, interfaith and science.
Again, taking our direction from his whole instinct, who really stressed that this should be a place for interfaith harmony and Buddhist science dialogue.
So we already have texts from eleven different faiths represented in the library and many science and faith collections as well. It will be a major repository as it continues to grow and a major resource for study and for readers. So currently we've got a bit over 2000 texts in the library. They're both ebooks as well as hardcover books as well. And we have a library staff there as well. So it's a great resource promoting interfaith harmony and also the study of faith and science.
The other important thing we do inside the Stupor is we promote something which is called what His Holiness Dalai Lama calls secular ethics.
Now, I think His Holiness as well as Lama Yeshi and Lama Zoba have been very strong proponents of the view that if you're going to try and change the world and make a major impact in the world, to try and convert everyone to Buddhism is really a path that will lead you nowhere.
At the moment, there are 2.1% of no less than 2% of Australians are Buddhists. So 1.4%, I think, to be exact, judging by the census figures, and that figure has plateaued. So Buddhism used to be a fast growing religion. Now at the moment, it's very stable. It's been overtaken recently by Hinduism and by Islam as well in Australia. So you can see that the appeal of Buddhism is going to be restricted by people's ability to make the connection.
So how to make a big influence on the world? This is where His Holiness is stressed. Secular ethics. And Lama Yeshi also came up with the idea of universal education, so an education for all beings, which is not particularly following a Buddhist terminology at all, but all the values of Buddhism are incorporated. So we have a program there which is called 16 Guidelines to a Healthy Life and that's available as a video to everyone who comes, but also handouts are available on that as well. And we also offer specialized training.
The other thing inside the Stupor that we do, and I won't go on forever because I hope people will come and see for themselves, but we have a museum in there actually. It's called the Unique Tibet Museum.
And the Unique Tibet Museum presents the historical aspect of the Tibetan people, their customs, their religion and their lifestyle. So it's an interesting collection. It's been set up with the assistance of His Holiness's office in Canberra, and we have a number of private collections which have all been donated to it.
And of course, there's an ongoing process of artwork. So building the Stupa is one thing, but the decoration of the artwork of the stupa is something that is going to go on much longer, long after I've gone and long after the stupor is completed. So not only do we have the big Gomper inside the Stupor, but we've also got shrine rooms on every level. And there may be up to 80 of those shrine rooms. We haven't even started on those yet.
[00:56:19] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:56:21] Speaker B: You have to think of the stupor as being like one of the medieval cathedrals that took two or three generations to complete. And it's taken me a while to come to look at it in these terms, but I can see this is the only way it's going to happen. So part of that decoration phase is ongoing.
We have a team of artists. There are eleven artists currently volunteering their time to actually prepare all the artwork for the stupa.
They are working currently on a very large statue of Siddhigaba.
This statue is over 5 meters tall, so everything inside the stupa is massive.
Once they've completed that statue, the next thing is the ceiling. Now, the ceiling of the main gompa is, in fact going to be a color chakra mandala. Incredibly ornate, but its size is the overwhelming thing. It is 20 meters by 20 meters square. So to hand paint that whole ceiling is an incredible project, which we expect will take close to two years. We've started work on that at the present moment. So we've given ourselves a deadline of 2025 to have that completed because we plan to have a color chakra initiation inside the stupa in that year.
So there's a lot going on all the time.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: That's incredible. And it is inspiring in the sense, I think, that parallel to a medieval cathedral.
The amount of work that goes in, but also the inspiration and the devotion, it stands out. It's unusual in the modern world. That brings me to my next question. Could you tell me what was and is the meaning and purpose of the great stupor of universe compassion.
[00:58:24] Speaker B: Well, as many of your listeners may know, a stupor itself has many different purposes, many different functions. First of all, it's a symbol of the enlightened mind. So it's called sacred geometry or sacred architecture because it's built on a mandala shape which symbolizes the enlightened mind. Secondly, it's a place where relics are kept, relics of the Buddha and other holy teachers as well.
So our stupa is going to perform all of those purposes. But beyond that, the reason why this stupa is so large is not just to make a special offering to the Buddha or to Buddhism or something like this. It's actually to bring people there to actually make a to inspire.
You know, the way I look at it is there are many symbols in the outside world that affect our inner world. So in the west, we look around and I remember my trip to India. I realized how spirituality was everywhere. So in the west, we look around and we see symbols of commerce with big office towers, or expenditure with shopping malls, or we see consumerism or we see individuality in all our suburban houses or whatever, we see competition in sporting arenas. But the actual symbols of faith themselves are quite rare in our sort of world.
Sometimes we might love the stained glass windows or whatever of the symbols we do have. But quite often those symbols are seen as maybe something from another generation.
To me, what the Stupor is doing is actually creating this symbol, that spirituality is something here and something now that we really need to incorporate in our own reality as well. And like, every day that I'm at the Stupa, I get people who come to me and say, it's so peaceful, it's so inspiring to come here. So you can see that this whole vision that Lama Yashi and Zopa have had for the Stupa, that it be a place which will well, in Lama Zopa's word, will plant the Seed of Enlightenment is actually coming to reality, because people do come there and they leave much more inspired and much more positive than before they came.
[01:01:15] Speaker A: That's a really great answer, I have to say, and thank you for that and thanks for all your efforts to make this, what must have seemed like an impossible project, a reality now. And obviously it's still a working project, work underway, but I think that that in itself means that people will continue to engage and contribute to this project for quite a long time to come. Look, there's going to be people out there who are going to want to find out more and hopefully even go and see the great stupid of Universe Compassion. Could you tell them how can they find out more information about visiting or just about the project in general?
[01:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
So the easiest way is just to connect through our website, which is www.stupa.org au. So that's stupa. Stupa.org O-R-G au. And I'd like to also that's the simple way if we've got an office staff there who are happy to take any inquiries as well. So if you want to send an email that's simple to info@stupa.org au, I'll.
[01:02:39] Speaker A: Make sure that those details are in the description below the podcast. So if you want to click on the link, you can do so. Quite conveniently. Is there anything that I've forgotten to mention or you've forgotten to mention that we would like to include before we wrap the interview up?
[01:02:56] Speaker B: Well, Sol, I'd like to thank you and everyday Dharma Network for the efforts you do as well. I think it's a wonderful thing. And thank you for reaching out to me to actually provide the opportunity for this interview. Thank you very much.
[01:03:12] Speaker A: It has been such a pleasure. And to be honest, quite frankly, for me it's a privilege. And look, thank you for all the work you're doing and just best wishes. I really hope that it all comes to fruition over time. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us.
[01:03:27] Speaker B: Thank you very much indeed. Bye.
[01:03:30] Speaker A: And thank you to all our listeners for joining us for this inspiring episode of Treasure Mound, in which Ian Green, the chairman of the Great Stupor of Universal Compassion and founder of the j. Buddha for Universal Peace shared the story of the Great Stupor in Bendigo, Australia. If you are headed to that part of world, I strongly recommend that you check it out. You'd be missing out if you don't go. If you enjoy this podcast, I'd appreciate if you could share this episode with your friends or other people who could benefit from this inspiring story. And don't forget to click on the follow button so that you get the latest episodes turning up in your stream on your podcast app. Treasure Mountain is part of the everyday Dharma Network. You can find out more about Treasure Mountain podcast by going to the link in the description below this episode. Or you can do a web search for Everyday Dharma Network. You can also find us on the Treasure Mountain Podcast website, information all previous episodes, as well as guests and transcriptions of interviews. And you can also tell me what you think by contacting me via the contact page. And I'd really appreciate your feedback too. I hope you'll join us again for our next episode of Treasure Mount Podcast as we seek for the treasure within.
