IT WAS in 1974 that two highly qualified Tibetan Buddhist teachers, Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche conducted a month-long meditation course in a large circus tent at Diamond Valley near Mooloolah. More than 200 people attended and one of those was Garrey Foulkes and his partner Krissie. Four of the students at that course kindly offered the lamas 160 acres of their land that is now Chenrezig Institute. “When we first came up here, we were children of the 60s”, reveals Garrey. “Krissie had already been to Nepal and had done meditation courses with the lamas.
We were a serious item and the only way I could see to keep our relationship together was to go and do one of those courses, to prove to my partner that it was a load of rubbish, and that she was being completely deceived. “I am very pleased to say that I had the wind knocked out of my sails and realised that what these people had to say was not only enormously interesting but not at all out of line with where I and a lot of my friends were heading. We were asking the same questions … where have we come from, where are we going, what are we supposed to be doing while we’re here? And the lamas basically blew me out of the water, and by the end of the course I had pencilled through all of the questions I had intended to ask because they were silly questions.
The lamas had answered them without me having to even ask them. Garrey lived at Chenrezig for ten years while his children were young, then when they were teenagers he and Krissie moved to Palmwoods where they live today. He has been a part of building the Chenrezig infrastructure since the Institute was first established. He has left and come back during that time but for the past 17 years he has been steadily focused on the tranquil, Garden of Enlightenment.
“Back then, if someone had said to me that you’re going to spend 17 years of your life building things called stupas in a cow paddock in south-east Queensland,” says Garrey, “ I would have thought that was about as impossible as anything could be. But that’s what’s happened, “adds Garrey with a bemused smile. “My partner is a very good cook and when you’re involved with an organisation that needs to be developed from scratch and your partnership is a cook and a builder, it’s pretty clear that you’re going to be very physically involved. “Stupas are certainly the most interesting aspect of my building career. When we built the first stupa here (which was about 20 years ago), it was very difficult to gather information. Now, I can send an email to someone in Nepal and get a series of colour photographs within an hour with exactly the information that I want. So, it was very challenging in the early days.
“Stupas represent the enlightened mind of the Buddha. We have three principal tools to work with to achieve full awareness. We have a body that has to be in pretty good shape, we have a mind that has to be in good shape and we have speech. The Buddha’s body is represented by statues and scroll paintings (thankas) - any images of the Buddha. Speech is represented by texts and the written word, and the mind is represented by the stupa. So the stupa represents the full package if you like of the enlightened mind. “The stupa from the base to the very top represents all aspects of the path that leads to full enlightenment. Inside the stupa there are thousands of deity images and millions of mantras.
There are also the two major texts that represent the entire teachings of the Buddha. “In the Garden there’s one big stupa and seven smaller ones around it. Within the Buddhist memorial garden there are many small stupas that have people’s ashes in them. It’s an opportunity to sponsor a holy object for yourself or for a loved one, and this generates incredible merit.
Also, we have tried to make the Garden as attractive as possible and the building to involve traditional Tibetan architecture to attract people to come and visit out of curiosity.” Tibetan Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in the world, and Chenrezig is one of the largest Buddhist centres in the West. It provides a comprehensive program in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for beginners through to advanced practitioners. Resident lamas run courses throughout the year along with western monks, nuns and lay teachers. “Buddhist philosophy challenges (and usually agrees with), the most sophisticated aspects of modern science”, explains Garrey, “ and it’s been around for thousands of years. I really feel a lot more comfortable discussing Buddhism as a philosophy rather than a religion, because it’s about what we know as karma … cause and effect. A positive action cannot possibly bring about a negative result. So if you are doing beneficial things to help people the result can’t be anything else but beneficial. It’s not possible.”
While acknowledging that at 65 he’s getting a little weary of pushing wheel barrows full of concrete, Garrey Foulkes is clearly proud of the work he has done himself or supervised, to create the Chenrezig Garden of Enlightenment. “If it wasn’t for countless numbers of helpers there’s no way this project would have happened. It’s not my trip. I have simply been the coordinator of it. The valuable learning aspect of it is sticking at something that has required determination and support, not from sponsorship or fundraising, but from selfless volunteers, pitching in from time to time.”
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