During the Dalai Lama's visit to the Wood River Valley in 2005, a young Tibetan lama by the name of Anam Thubten Rinpoche gave a lecture about Buddhism at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Sun Valley.
Thubten's "dharma talk" was attended by a small group of locals interested in the study of Tibetan Buddhism. His subsequent visits led to organization of a group, or sangha, of Buddhist practitioners in the Wood River Valley who gather to read, discuss and meditate on Thubten's teachings.
Two of Thubten's students, Cally Huttar and Mary Ann Chubb, were recently ordained as "dharma teachers" by Thubten in a ceremony that marks the completion of a three-year course in the study and practice of this fast-growing religion from the East.
Thubten is the founder of the Dharmata Foundation, based at Dakini Temple in Port Richmond, Calif. He is the author of "No Self, No Problem." He has trained 18 dharma teachers in the United States and travels extensively to establish other sanghas around the world.
"Ordination simply means we have the blessings and permission to convey the teachings and help others see their own true nature and become enlightened," said Chubb, who began practicing Buddhist meditation in 1996. She recently participated in two-month-long silent meditation retreats in Crestone, Colo. She was asked by Thubten to train as a dharma teacher three years ago.
"I asked him, 'Why me?' and he said, 'Because you have an open heart and you know the dharma,'" Chubb said.
Dharma can be translated from Sanskrit to mean work, duty or teachings. Huttar, who is a practitioner of Chinese medicine, said she and Chubb are prepared to teach the Buddha dharma, or teachings of Buddhism.
Huttar said Thubten comes from the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, which is based on the 7th-century teachings of Padmasambhava, a teacher who brought the Buddhist tradition from India to the Himalayas.
She said the Nyingma tradition emphasizes meditation practice and direct transmission of spiritual attainment from teacher to pupil, over intellectual study.
Huttar's first experience of Buddhist meditation consisted of a 45-minute sitting practice in 1986 in Vermont.
"It was brutal," she recalls. "I thought, 'What am I going to do with this mind?'"
After practicing meditation with Ketchum psychologist Diane Crist in Ketchum five years later, Huttar expanded her studies to retreats at Spirit Rock in the San Francisco Bay Area and at Insight Meditation Centers on the East and West coasts.
"I still had not found a heart teacher until I met Anam Thubten," Huttar said. "After meeting him, I knew that he was the one who was going to take me all the way."
Thubten, who came to the United States 14 years ago, writes in "No Self, No Problem" about his own devotion to a Tibetan hermit and dharma teacher named Lama Tsurlo, whose kindness and wisdom inspired him to deepen his practice and spread the dharma in the West.
"They say you will see the Buddha nature in your teacher when you meet him," Huttar said. "Buddha nature is perfect and pure, all love. Thubten says that all living beings have this nature. I have glimpses of it."
"In an ultimate sense, there is no such thing as enlightenment," Chubb said. "There is no Buddha, no teachers and no inherent existence or sense of self."
Thubten explores the process of releasing attachment to the self, or ego, in his book as a path to happiness.
"The question is, 'Can we wake up to this truth?'" he asks. "It might be much easier than we think. Remember, great ancient masters often said that we don't realize the truth because it is too simple and too close to us. When we finally realize it, we will be shocked by two things: how much time we wasted searching and how easy it was after all."
Huttar and Chubb will offer Buddhist study and meditation retreats in the Wood River Valley. For more information, call the Wood River Sangha at 720-5136 or go to Bluelotusdharma.com.
Tony Evans: tevans@mtexpress.com
Cally Huttar, a doctor of Chinese medicine, has studied Buddhism since the late 1980s. Photo by David N. Seelig
