The founder of Ukraine's only Buddhist temple fights myths, officials to obtain official recognition
For a decade , Dorje Jambo says that the state`s political and religious prejudices have prevented him from obtaining official recognition of his church, the nation’s only Buddhist temple.
Officials have alleged that the Buddhist priest engages in mind control, and that he wants to recruit locals for a guerilla war with Russia.
Jambo blames what he calls the government’s religious xenophobia, and says that local officials simply want him to leave the region. He has filed suit to assert what he believes is his right to registration.
If the dispute remains unresolved, Ukraine’s 38 Buddhist communities will be left without a single temple, he said. Authorities ordered a Kharkiv temple shut down in 2000, he said.
“This is a violation of the right to religious freedom of the more than 10,000 ethnic minorities who live in Ukraine and whose traditional religion is Buddhism,” Jambo said.
Jambo, born Oleh Muzhchill, converted to Buddhism in the mid-1980’s when he went to the Ivolginsky Datsan monastery in Buryatia, Russia. It was one of only two monasteries in the former Soviet Union. Since Soviet law forbade teaching Buddhism, Jambo studied secretly. He left the monastery an ordained Buddhist priest.
He received a house from a parishioner in the Donetsk Oblast village of Olhynka, and in 1993 the property was consecrated as a temple. That was when he first tried to register his church.
Local religious-affairs officials, though, repeatedly lost and required the resubmission of registration paperwork. While Jambo pursued the elusive registration, the Sheychen-ling Temple began to hold daily services, occasional retreats and lectures in Buddhism. Believers and the curious came from across Ukraine to learn and listen to the preaching.
Because it is unregistered, the temple is considered a private religious practice. It must receive state registration before it can conduct religious processions, invite teachers from abroad or open a religious school.
Though Jambo began the application process in 1993, he failed to receive an official response from the government until April, when registration was refused without explanation.
The rationale for the state’s denial arrived only in mid-August. Local authorities claimed the temple had a harmful influence on adherents, who “quit universities and ran away from home with large amounts of money” to join the church. Jambo used “methods of transforming consciousness and inner energies that are not known in Ukraine” to influence converts, the document said.
Jambo says the argument that Buddhism is a form of mind control simply demonstrates that local religious official don’t understand the religious precepts. Besides, he said, if he could control minds, the church would have a four-story temple on Khreshchatyk in Kyiv rather than a remodeled house in Donetsk Oblast.
Officials also linked the religious community to Tryzub (“Trident”), a nationalist political movement.
Hennady Kostenko, who heads Donetsk’s religious affairs office, said that his office received two letters complaining about Jambo’s group during summer, 2001.
In the letters, the families of Bogdan Kovalyov, aged 20, and Yulia Los, aged 18, said the youths ran away to the temple and were kept there by force. Los, however, told the Post that she stayed in the temple for two weeks and then left of her own accord. Kovalyov’s mother said he stayed in the temple from March through November 2001, then left when he became disappointed with the teacher, Jambo.
Jambo argued that the temple accepts only adults who are responsible for their actions and able to make their own decisions. “Would the state complain if someone’s adult son or daughter became an Orthodox monk or nun?” he asked.
Five to seven people live in the temple on a regular basis and up to 50 youths gather each summer to study Buddhism and help remodel the temple. Construction work is ongoing, the temple’s only financing comes from donations and sales of homemade Tibetan folk medicine, he said.
“We are not a sect,” he said. “The Nyingma School is the oldest school of Buddhism, and by calling it ‘not quite known’ you prove your own ignorance.”
Jambo believes the real reason behind the officials’ unwillingness to register the temple is his relationship with Tryzub. Jambo, who acts as Tryzub’s regional coordinator, said that the group is officially registered with the Ukrainian government and cannot be considered illegal.
Founded in Western Ukraine in the early 1990’s, Tryzub is designed to imbue Ukrainian youths with a patriotic spirit. The organization acquired a controversial reputation when its members appeared at the forefront of the opposition’s violent clashes with police during anti-presidential protests in 2001.
An official with the Donetsk regional branch of the State Security Service (SBU) who asked that his name be withheld, said persons affiliated with Tryzub aren’t welcome in the oblast.
“Tryzub creates military unions trained to fight a guerrilla war in case Ukraine’s relationships with Russia improves,” he said. “Tryzub is not registered in Donetsk oblast, and is not welcome.”
At the same time, the SBU officer said that “as long as [Jambo] is not involved in any illegal activities in his temple, we don’t have any problems with him.”
Jambo maintains that he has a right to combine his religious and political activities, and said that his Buddhist order has taken part in several political actions, including an expedition to Chechnya in 1994, where it gathered information about the war, especially from the Chechen side.
Jambo said a melee on Sofiyska Square during Patriarch Volodymyr’s funeral in 1996 prompted him to join Tryzub.
Jambo’s interests are as political as they are religious. He believes that if Ukraine is to be prosperous, it must sever its dependence on Russia.
“I’m interested as a priest that Ukraine becomes a free, independent and flourishing state,” he said. “But so long as the people don’t have enough to eat and a safe environment to live in, they are deaf to spiritual teaching.”
