From Hotel Suite to a Temple of Healing

Following the path of the Buddha has led Geshe Lobsang Chophel, a native of Tibet, into the practice of spiritual healing and years of mountain solitude. This week, it led him to the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Tennis Club.

There, he and two other Tibetan monks from the Geden Shartze Monastery in southern India were deluged with requests for a 1,600-year-old healing ritual by participants in Harmonia Mundi--a weeklong spiritual/psychological conference that has drawn nearly 2,000 participants.

“If we are able and we refuse, it wouldn’t be right,” said Chophel’s translator Cheme Tsering, 31.

Altogether, eight Shartze monks, robed in maroon and saffron and sporting the traditional buzz haircuts, came to the conference to perform their ritualistic healing dances, the first time they have been seen in the United States. But because about 150 people wanted individual healing services, they turned their mirrored luxury suite into a makeshift temple with all their ritual elements--the consecrated water, the rice pellets, the peacock feathers--arrayed on the glass coffee table.

They asked the hotel staff to please explain to the applicants that they could accept only the most serious and genuine cases.

In India, Chophel, 69, sees 40 patients a day, mostly seeking cures for skin ailments or strokes--his specialty.

In the resort hotel suite, eight people a day sought help with such problems as infertility or bitterness over a past court case.

Known as a successful healer, especially in cases of new stroke patients who had not taken any medicine, Chophel had spent five years meditating in solitude in the mountains until the Dalai Lama, the political and spiritual leader of Tibet who headlined the conference, suggested that it would be better if he came down and helped sick people, Tsering said.

It is believed that the intensive retreats strengthen monks spiritually and enable those possessing compassion and already trained in the healing arts to “overwhelm the power that causes sickness,” he said. Not uncommon in India, the ancient healing rituals are rarely performed in the United States.

But in half-hour sessions earlier this week, they were moved into the upscale Newport Beach hotel.

El Toro psychologist Cheryl Ann Malakoff came seeking closer alignment with God and help for a personal problem. A solemn monk who sometimes broke into a giggle, Chophel explained the ritual to her in Tibetan, then Tsering translated.

The elderly monk rolled three dice, fingered a rosary and consulted a schedule to determine the origins of her problem. He invoked the power of truth, of Buddha and the Bodhisattvas while she visualized light and feathers sweeping the negativity out of her body in a purification ritual. She held water in her mouth until told to spit into a bowl. “It was intense,” she said afterwards. “I felt a real presence of divine consciousness.”

Unlike most of the Indian patients, these patients offered healthy donations, the main reason the monks agreed to the U.S. tour with their spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama. They hope to build a modern school connected with their monastery to preserve Tibetan culture among refugees forced to flee Tibet 30 years ago.

“Tibetan people are in such a delicate situation that unless we do something, within this or the next generation, they may lose their cultural heritage,” Tsering said.

After the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1959, 120,000 Tibetans fled into exile, while 6 million remained in what the Chinese call an “autonomous region” about the size of Northern Europe. The Shartze monks operate one of about 300 Tibetan monasteries--built to partially replace the 6,256 monasteries said to have been destroyed during the Chinese occupation and subsequent diaspora.

Tsering said he needs 4.5 million rupees, or $280,000 to complete the new school complex for 600 students now residing at their monastery.

“If we did not present a performance, there’s no way we could do this. No way,” he said.

The monks will perform a more elaborate healing ritual at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Marriott. Tickets are $10 each.