On a barren patch of land outside Mongolia’s capital, a former herder guards a half-finished pedestal and abandoned golden Buddha’s head — testament to the money problems keeping Buddhism from flourishing in the country.
When 68-year-old Tsegmid Lunduv, a long-time nomad, was hired to patrol the spot in 2013, the project seemed full of promise: a proposed sprawling complex of meditation centers and spiritual retreats, tucked into the rolling steppes outside Ulan Bator and under the spiritual guidance of the Dalai Lama.
However, two years ago construction was suspended pending additional funding, leaving two partially built legs, the unattached head and a hand with fingers curled into the gesture for teaching and understanding.
Photo: AFP
Only Lunduv, his wife, grandson and their puppy were standing sentry on a recent visit to the holy site-to-be.
“Once the project comes to fruition, all of Mongolia’s troubles will go away,” said Lunduv, a portly man with a tattered white tunic and a gap-toothed smile. “It will usher in a new era.”
One of the project’s main financial backers, Genco Group, is owned by Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga, who took office in July and must now navigate the country out of its maze of debt with a US$5.5 billion IMF-led bailout.
Buddhism has returned to prominence after being quashed over years of Soviet control, with more than half of the population now identifying as Buddhist, official figures showed.
However, the debt-laden country’s money troubles have severely limited the infrastructure needed for the religion to fully flourish, with monasteries lacking proper residential facilities for monks.
Buddhist traditions in Mongolia predate the rule of Genghis Khan, who established close ties with a Tibetan Buddhist school.
Khan’s grandson Kublai Khan even commissioned his spiritual guru to create an easier form of the Tibetan script to be used in the territories under his command.
However, even under Tibetan Buddhism’s heavy influence, Mongolians gave the religion their own cultural touch inspired by shamanistic invocations using vodka; Mongolian Buddhists consider the Russian liquor sacred, just as wine is to Christians.
Additionally, as the Mongolian Empire suffered from a population shortage, the Dalai Lama at the time permitted Mongolian monks to marry and have children — although mistresses remained strictly forbidden.
The biggest challenge to Mongolian Buddhism came during the country’s years as a Soviet satellite state, from 1924 to the early 1990s, when the Arts Council of Mongolia estimates that more than 1,250 monasteries and temples were demolished and countless religious artifacts lost.
Monks, if they were not killed, were forced to marry.
“After 60 years of oppression, [Mongolia’s] monkhood was pretty much destroyed,” said Glen Mullin, an expert on Tibetan Buddhism.
Only one monastery, Ulan Bator’s Gandantegchinlen Monastery, was permitted to stay open during that period to support the Soviets’ claims of religious tolerance.
In 1996, in a newly democratic Mongolia, 18-year-old Batchunuun Munkhbaatar left his countryside home in central Tuv Province to join the monastery in the capital.
It was home to just 25 monks then, but Munkhbaatar stayed and immersed himself in the Buddhist practice. Now 800 monks belong to the monastery, the country’s largest.
“During the [Soviet era], the party controlled the faith of the people, but they couldn’t control their inner devotion,” Munkhbaatar said, adding that his grandfather “didn’t quit his chanting or prayers, even during the communist time.”
“He would do all these things behind locked doors. If someone approached the house, the dog would bark and he’d put away his scriptures and images of Buddha,” he added.
The revival of Buddhism has been a sticky issue for the Mongolian government, which pledged not to extend any more invitations to the Dalai Lama after his visit to Ulan Bator in November last year angered China, its neighbor and biggest trade partner.
There are now 3,500 monks across the country, said Munkhbaatar, who handles Gandantegchinlen’s foreign relations.
Mullin expects these numbers to swell as the first wave of young Mongolian Buddhists return from studying in India and Tibet.
Back in their homeland, they will face a tough financial reality.
“Most Mongolian monasteries do not offer the proper conditions for monks to actually live in them,” said Vesna Wallace, a religious studies scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Monasteries receive funding only when they are building something, not for their day-to-day operations. They rely on donations, so many monks are quite poor and have had to marry, because they can’t live off their own income.”
At the site of the Grand Maitreya project, Lunduv has faith the money will come.
The project’s official Facebook page said in March that the first building phase would be completed by the end of this summer if US$25,000 in donations was raised.
Every morning, Lunduv pours a freshly brewed cup of tea out onto the field around the construction area as a prayer to the gods.
“It will be finished,” Lunduv said. “The government will support us, because our country is a Buddhist country.”
“Our history is tied to our religion,” he added.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort