Tatamagouche
When I ask Patrick Lawler about the Buddhist militia near Tatamagouche, he bursts out laughing. That’s been the standard response, but you can understand my confusion: a small group of Buddhists dressed in British military uniforms marching to drill-instructor commands in an open field, charged with being the “indestructible command protectors.”
Plus, he’s called sergeant, comes from British military family and he’s wearing camouflage pants and what I would describe as combat Crocs on a fine Saturday morning at the Dorje Denma Ling centre.
“To some people, any military form just screams aggression, but that’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” he explains. “The idea is that no form is in itself evil. The military form is a very powerful form because it touches into deep human response to aggression, violence and arrogance.
But at the same time, because those emotions are so deep and powerful, the Vidyadhara wanted to use them.”
The “Vidyadhara” was Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the controversial U.S.-based Tibetan Buddhist leader who searched the world for a new home for his Shambhala community in the late 1970s.
“The kingdom of Shambhala can be thought of metaphorically, but (Rinpoche) also intended it to be a place. One day, he had a map of North America spread out and put his hand on Nova Scotia and said: ‘This is it; this is the place,’” Lawler tells me. “He felt that in Nova Scotia, there was something that had either already been lost, or was almost lost, in most other Western countries. It was a sense of family and community, co-independence: neighbours helping neighbours.”
And the uniforms? The marching? That’s the Dorje Kasung, Lawler says, and their job is to protect the sacred command of Buddhism. “The command is to wake up; to realize the brilliance and the wisdom that is the fundamental birthright of every human being.”
The Dorje Kasung is tasked with providing a safe, stable environment in which that teaching can be sought at Shambhala centres across the world. It’s a bit like a Buddhist Jedi, only without the lightsabers.
“The inner level is a practice path all by itself,” the Rusung, or sergeant, says. “The action of a bodhisattva is to work for the benefit of others. It’s very easy to say and very hard to do; being a kasung gives you a very concrete way of doing that.”
Rinpoche, who died in Halifax in 1987, designed the uniforms based on what he’d seen in his years in England and the marching is “meditation in action.”
“There’s a lot to be unlearned. When you come to a place like this, one of the first things you learn is you help people,” says Lawler, who has lived at the retreat centre with his wife Tracey for two year. “You just do it because that’s what decent people do. It’s not a big moral conundrum; that’s what a community is.”
Annette Hunziker was similarly drawn to that community. Born in Poland and raised in California, she came to Tatamagouche after meeting her husband, Chuck. They run the Village Florist, Hanna’s Books and Fables, a literary pub. We’re sitting in the elegant, art deco club, waiting for the Sunday movie to start. It’s Triage this week, a documentary about a humanitarian doctor in Rwanda. Chuck, a big, boisterous American, is polishing the bar and hoping the sunny evening doesn’t deter too many of the regulars.
He retired from his job in Saudi Arabia and wanted to move somewhere he could “surf to his heart’s content.” Unknowingly following the path of the Vidyadhara, he searched the world before finding Tatamagouche.
“He came; he fell in love. Not me. Not yet,” explains Hunziker with a smile. “A year later, we met in the States and I came up to visit. I fell in love and moved on up. It’s in the water, you know.”
Jimmie LeFrense has a good idea what draws people to the obscure north shore village. Born and bred in this miniature Halifax, he famously bought the town’s train station to save it from the wrecker’s ball when he was 18.
Eventually, he pulled off a miraculous reversal. The trains don’t move anymore, but the people do: 10,000 a year come to “step back in time” at his Train Station Inn.
“You mention a sense of place? Tatamagouche has been that for a long time,” he tells me on a quiet afternoon at the station. He’s travelled plenty, but he and his wife never felt the urge to leave.
“You stop and think, what’s really here? How come everyone’s coming from totally different backgrounds? I think it’s the connection to nature – and I don’t mean as in walking trails, but as in your connection to whoever you feel your greater spirit is. A sense of well-being is found here,” he says, smiling as a wind blows through the sheltering trees.
First published in the Chronicle-Herald June 28