Tibetan Buddhists find a home away from home with Canadian Jesuits
Visiting Tibetan monks are staying at Loyola House Retreat and Training Centre, at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre of Guelph, from July 21 - August 1. The monks are sleeping and eating at the retreat centre while performing at Hillside Festival, the annual arts and entertainment fair in Guelph.
Visiting Buddhist monk, Lobsang Tshultrim, is finding Loyola House "very homey, very quiet and very spiritual." Father Jim Profit, Director of the Ignatius Jesuit Centre, says of his guests, "We are happy to share our home with our religious brothers."
The long friendship between Canadian Jesuits and Tibetan monks began in 1959 and 1960 during the Communist takeover of Tibet. Then Tibetans fled their homeland to neighbouring countries. Many arrived at St. Joseph's College School, a 19th century Jesuit-run educational facility, in Darjeeling, India. Then Father Maurice Stanford, a Canadian Jesuit now deceased, was instrumental in assisting the Tibetans, welcoming the refugees, and obtaining land for them in Darjeeling. Today that same land is still used as a refugee camp for Tibetan refugees.
Father Bill Mackey, another Canadian Jesuit, had a strong connection to the Tantric Buddhist monks in both India and Bhutan. Father Mackey set up an educational system in eastern Bhutan in collaboration with the residents and the monks living in the area.
Although the education of both religious orders is quite different, there are a number of similarities between the two. Their families present young Tibetan monks for entrance, while Canadian men normally enter in their early 20's. Both orders offer a residential training program and spend a great deal of time with educational studies and travel.
The Ignatius Jesuit Centre of Guelph is home to Loyola House, several agriculture and ecology projects, and the Plant An Old Growth Forest Project.
Photo Credit Moussa Faddoul, S.J.
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