Prayers for Ivolginsky

Russian Buddhism flowers in Buryatia

By Steve Nettleton
CNN Interactive Correspondent

CNN Interactive Correspondent Steve Nettleton is traveling east across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. His dispatches from towns and cities along the way will report on what ordinary Russians beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg are thinking and feeling during this uncertain time in their nation's history.

Daily prayers Click arrow to advance pictures Ivolginsky Datsan monks carry out their morning prayers

IVOLGINSKY, Russia (CNN) -- Rolling their fingers over chains of 108 beads, the 20 Buddhist monks offer their morning prayers in a monotone chorus.

They sit in two rows facing each other, the aisle between them pointing toward an altar bearing the image of the Dalai Lama. Above him, a smiling Buddha 2 meters (6.6 feet) tall gazes peacefully through a pane of glass across a cheerily painted temple awash in bright reds, golds, blues and greens.

As the monks rock slowly back and forth chanting their benedictions, pilgrims circle clockwise about the sanctuary with palms clasped in reverence.

The monotone rises in pitch. The prayers become more pronounced, voiced with more vigor. A monk blows through a shell, unleashing a hoarse wail punctuated by two sets of drums.

Then, in a flourish of cymbals, the prayers cease. The monks who keep a spiritual watch over Ivolginsky monastery, the Lhasa of Russia, stand and file out into the cold.

"I come from a family of lamas," says a 28-year-old monk named Sanal, explaining his determination to follow the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism nearly a continent away from his southern Russian homeland of Kalmykia.

"In Soviet times many lamas were executed, our datsans [monasteries] were knocked down and robbed of their treasures. In Kalmykia, Buddhism died. So it's very important for me to help bring Buddhism back to my nation," Sanal says.

Ivolginsky Datsan Click arrow to advance pictures Images from the monastery include: the main temple, built in 1972; a worshipper walking clockwise about the compound turning prayer wheels along the route; prayer rags among the hundreds tied to trees outside the compound walls.

Ivolginsky Datsan, built in 1946 on a grassy plain outside the city of Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Russian republic of Buryatia, was the only Buddhist monastery tolerated by the Communists. It was not, however, resistant to fire. Its main temple burned in 1971, the blaze taking with it a treasury of painted icons (called thangkas).

In its place is a gleaming three-story temple crowned with yellow eaves and guarded by stone tigers, caretaker of the heart of Buddhism in Russia.

A comeback from Stalinist repression

Brought to the steppes of central Asia by Mongolian and Tibetan missionaries, Buddhism was first recognized as a religion in Russia by Czarina Elizabeth in the 18th century.

Along with shamanism (in which healers pray to the spirits for protection or to cure illnesses), Buddhism flourished in the southern fringes of Siberia, especially among ethnic Buryats (descendants of Mongolians).

Ivolginsky Datsan is said to have more than 1,000 Buddha statues, from small ones to this figure at the front that is 2 meters high

But in the 1930s Buddhism was nearly purged from the Soviet Union by Stalin's repressive tactics. Dozens of monasteries were razed. Buddhist enclaves, such as Sanal's Kalmyks, were exiled to distant lands.

Russia's scattered Buddhist faithful saw a slight thaw in Soviet policy after Stalin died in 1953. Tough travel restrictions, however, made it impossible for many monks to go to Mongolia or elsewhere to receive their required formal Buddhist education.

"Before, we were only allowed to go to Mongolia with a lot of difficulty," said a senior Ivolginsky lama, named the Batodalai. "There was a selection process that went through the KGB, which decided who could go."

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The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought an end to decades of persecution of Russia's Buddhists. Travel policies were eased, allowing monks to travel abroad and Tibetan lamas to visit Ivolginsky.

Ivolginsky Datsan opened an institute of Buddhist learning on its grounds that has expanded to accommodate 110 students.

"We have many people from [the predominantly Buddhist regions of] Kalmykia, Tuva, Altai who come for knowledge of Buddhism. We also have Russians from Belarus, Ukraine and the Far East who are eager to learn and set up new communities. This is a good sign. It is inspiring," says Sayan, a young monk from Ulan-Ude.

Strength of faith questioned

New religious freedom also has enriched the development of traditional Buddhist art forms, especially thangka painting. These images provide a striking visualization of Buddhist philosophy.

Some thangkas depict Buddhist deities brandishing thunderbolts in a mane of fire. Others show them seated on lotus leaves holding in their hands the world's enlightened and its profane.

Nikolai Dudko Click arrow to advance pictures A Ukrainian who grew up in Ulan-Ude, Dudko is one of Russia's most famous painters of thangkas, which depict Buddhist deities performing their roles.

One of Russia's most famous thangka artists is Nikolai Dudko, a Ukrainian who grew up in Ulan-Ude and became fascinated with Oriental art. After training under a lama at Ivolginsky and spending a year in India studying in the method of thangkas, Dudko set up his own workshop in the Buryat capital.

Though his works have been sold to museums in Europe and North America, Dudko says he wants to focus on serving the local Buddhist population.

Like most followers of Buddhism, Dudko welcomes the recent rise in religious expression. But he fears that many believers are losing the deeper meaning.

"On one side [they are] good changes. Many Buddhist temples have opened. Many people pray and do their practice openly. But from another side, I feel that it is like a fashion now -- a fashion for Buddhism, a fashion for shamanism.

"Because if you are a Buryat, let's say, you have to belong to one [religion]: either Buddhism or shamanism. Then you have to pray to your own God. But how can you pray if you don't feel anything?"