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I recently spent six months living at a Tibetan Buddhist temple.
I had hoped to stay for at least a year and perhaps gain a little realization along the way. Instead, I left indignant and in tears.
My father was a fully ordained bhikshu under Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. After 10 years of formal practice, he disrobed and became a family man, but he never left his practice. Instead, he remained devoted to the Dharma and found creative ways to share his practice and integrate it into our family life.
Every morning, he would carry me on his shoulders and my sister on his back as we climbed the awesome and daunting stone stairs leading up to Swayambhunath. When we reached the top, we would circumambulate the temple and spin the mani wheels, reciting Om Mani Padme Hum, the mantra of compassion.
There was rarely a moment when we weren’t in the company of monks and lamas. In our family photo album, there are dozens of photographs of them sitting in our living room, performing various rituals and prayers, while my sister and I watched from the sidelines. As we grew older, my father took us to lectures, teachings, and empowerment sessions, including a 10-day Kalachakra initiation given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Washington, D.C.
He also introduced us to extraordinary teachers such as Trulshik Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and we even had the good fortune to meet his own master, Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, before he passed away. I consider these encounters enormous blessings and feel deeply fortunate to have been exposed to the Dharma from such an early age.
But undoubtedly, it was my father who had the greatest influence on my understanding of Buddhism. I will forever be grateful for the patience and care he took in explaining basic Buddhist concepts—how we experience happiness and suffering—as well as more elusive teachings on interdependence, impermanence, and relative and ultimate truth.
When I was 16, he sat me down to meditate, and I had a profound experience that was never to be repeated but was enough to set the course for much of my life.
In my early 20s, I experienced another profound shift when I embarked on a silent seven-day retreat in the forests of Oregon. The retreat came at a critical time in my life and catapulted me toward a deeper commitment to the path.
I relocated to the Bay Area to be closer to the retreat participants and began attending the monastery where the monks who had led the retreat lived. I went to their Saturday evening Avatamsaka Sutra lessons and became involved in temple activities and the sangha. I was happy. I felt as though I was progressing along the path.
But, as karma would have it, I met someone.
We eventually married and had a child. We shared a beautiful marriage, but as life changed, so did our relationship. After 15 years of committing to one another, we evolved into a new kind of dynamic. Almost instinctively, my attention turned back to my practice. I was ready to devote myself deeply to the path again, and eventually found myself living at the Tibetan Buddhist temple where I had been practicing for the previous two years.
The spiritual potency of the place was palpable the moment I spun the mani wheel and stepped inside. The temple carried an authentic lineage and a deep sense of history through its prayers, texts, statues, and the blessings left behind by lamas who had lived there or visited over the years. I believe the 16th Karmapa visited the center, as did His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the previous Kalu Rinpoche.
There was something genuinely special about the spiritual atmosphere of the place, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
During the early days, before I began living there, there was one particularly memorable occasion when my thoughts came to a complete halt.
My mind had been racing all day as I adjusted to motherhood and struggled postpartum. But the moment I stepped into the Buddha Hall and sat cross-legged on the meditation cushion, my thoughts vanished completely—and remained quiet for the rest of my meditation.
During my first encounter with the Lama, I shared some of my struggles as a new mother. He listened intently and looked at me with such care and compassion that I was deeply moved. His genuine concern carried me past the initial awe I felt for the center and began to deepen my faith and trust in the place.
I began attending more frequently.
On Saturdays, I sat in silent meditation. During the rest of the week, I attended various pujas. It was an exciting period of growth and learning. The Tibetan style of Buddhism was new to me. Until then, I had been mostly a bare-bones meditator, accustomed to a simple, object-focused practice of shamatha.
At the center, I chanted mantras, learned mudras, and began visualization practices. I especially dedicated myself to learning the Twenty-One Praises to Tara, an exquisitely beautiful and lengthy prayer.
During services, I would chant her praises like a horse at a gallop, my energy rising and my Dantean filling with a sense of strength and power. I felt like a rock star.
But I didn’t always feel that way.
There were days when my energy was low, and I wasn’t feeling particularly enthusiastic. Other days, I was overcome with emotion and would burst into tears, with the Lama as my silent witness.
I took refuge in my practice, in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and over time, I began to experience what felt like genuine transformation.
I was so moved by the power of the practice to heal that I began teaching meditation at my friend’s media studio. My classes became popular, and eventually I was invited to teach at nonprofits working with extremely vulnerable populations, as well as at yoga studios and private gatherings.
I was successfully balancing the responsibilities of everyday life—including caring for my daughter—with my own practice and my desire to help others.
But as my practice deepened and I began to experience its benefits in the real world, I found myself increasingly questioning how my understanding of the Dharma aligned with the culture and dynamics of the temple, particularly when it came to authority and hierarchy. I began having encounters that left me feeling increasingly uncertain.
Small acts of kindness were sometimes met with criticism.
For example, I initially offered to organize the temple’s library. The idea was accepted, but when I invited another sangha member to help me, I was reprimanded and removed from the service. I was told the job had been given to someone else.
On another occasion, I donated a bowl of malas for students to use in their prayers. They were immediately removed.
I began to understand that the expectation was to follow assigned tasks precisely. Initiative was not welcomed, and permission was expected before making even small changes.
I took note of this and tried to adjust.
But sometimes things happened that couldn’t be helped. Once, after preparing the altar with water offerings, a strand of my hair fell onto the altar. I distinctly remember the Lama looking at it with disgust and reprimanding me.
These may sound like minor incidents. In isolation, perhaps they were. But over time, they accumulated.
What hurt was not simply being corrected. It was the way some corrections were delivered—the tone, the gestures, the looks—and the feeling that my genuine goodwill was perhaps being misinterpreted or not always being seen. Never mind the grocery shopping, errands, and hours of cleaning I did around the temple. It seemed those things were simply par for the course.
I also began noticing interactions between the Lama and other students that struck me as fearful or overly submissive. Of course, I cannot speak for what anyone else was experiencing internally, but the dynamic was noticeable to me. People often walked around hunched over, their heads bowed low. It felt different from the bowed heads I had seen in other teachers’ presence—gestures that seemed to arise from reverence and devotion. Here, the lowered heads seemed to carry some of that reverence, but also something else: a strong fear of being scolded or rejected.
I understand that highly hierarchical teacher-student relationships are deeply rooted in some traditional Buddhist settings. There are good reasons why discipline, respect, and deference to a teacher have historically been emphasized.
But I began wondering whether that model still resonates with everyone today.
I remember the Lama once casually describing his approach to me as the “Mahakala way.” I began to wonder whether this kind of approach works for modern Western students. Could there be a gentler way of teaching that still cultivates the same depth of practice?
I was not a monk entering a monastery with the explicit aim of attaining liberation. I was a hopeful and dedicated practitioner who wanted to live close to the Dharma.
Even so, I had to adjust to many aspects of daily life, from the mundane to the deeply personal.
Dishes were expected to be washed immediately after eating, even though I had my own sink. Food was not to be thrown away—not even a banana peel—without risking a strong scolding. Having guests over was strongly discouraged, and even something as simple as sitting down for a cup of tea after evening puja could become a source of tension.
On one occasion, a couple of sangha members and I were having tea in the designated entertaining room when it happened to overlap with the Lama’s dinner time in the kitchen. We were reprimanded, and the sangha members were told to go home.
I remember feeling frustrated and thinking, Come on. I’m going through a divorce. I have a small child. I’m trying to piece my life back together. Please cut me some slack.
At times, I genuinely couldn’t tell whether the Lama was being tough because he cared and wanted me to improve, or whether his standards were simply so different from mine that what felt like spiritual discipline to him felt intolerable to me.
That ambiguity was difficult. I struggled to decipher his intentions, and sometimes I pushed back. I didn’t always agree with what he said or follow his example. There was a growing tension between us, and I found myself increasingly questioning his methods—what he might have considered skillful means.
And yet, there were things I treasured deeply.
My morning water offerings, lighting the candle, and ninety minutes of meditation and prayers with the Lama were priceless. If there was one thing we connected on, one thing we could both agree upon, it was the actual practice itself. And on some level, that made everything else worth it.
Maybe I didn’t agree with his style or understand all of his methods, but the Dharma was there. It was palpable.
I will always deeply appreciate the opportunity to meditate and chant with him—to have a front-row seat to something so exquisite, deeply personal, and profound. It felt as though he had opened his diary to me. There was something vulnerable and intimate about it, and it was exactly the kind of experience I had imagined when I first came to the temple.
In those moments, I felt incredibly lucky, as though I had been handed a golden ticket to heaven. These were the moments when I felt profound gratitude for being there.
That is what made leaving so difficult.
The most difficult moment came toward the end of my stay.
I had entered a one-year lease, hoping to make the temple my home for that period. Ultimately, I was given one month to find another place to live because the center needed the room for activities connected with its upcoming 50th anniversary.
I understood that the needs of an organization can change, and I was willing to be flexible. What was difficult was how the situation unfolded and how it made me feel.
After investing so much of myself in the temple—and believing I had found a place where I could practice, grow, and perhaps finally settle into a spiritual home—I left feeling unexpectedly discarded.
It wasn’t simply about having to move. It was the feeling that the agreement we had made, and the circumstances of my life, had been given little consideration.
That final encounter brought the larger questions I had been wrestling with all along into laser-sharp focus: What happens when devotion becomes unquestioning submission? Where does one draw the line between honoring authority and abandoning one’s own discernment?
Later, after I pushed back, I was offered another room to stay. I debated for a while whether to remain, but by then I felt unwelcome. Something had shifted in me, and I felt the damage had already been done.
I have enormous respect for tradition. I believe discipline matters. I believe lineage matters. I believe teachers matter.
But I also believe that when adherence to tradition comes across as sharpness, dismissiveness, or an expectation of unquestioning submission to authority, we must be willing to examine what is happening.
The Buddha told us to investigate.
Investigate the systems. Investigate the teachers. Investigate the teachings. Investigate reality itself.
He did not encourage blind faith. Rather, Buddhist practice asks us to develop a confidence grounded in examination and experience.
This investigative and ultimately self-responsible quality of Buddhism has always been one of its greatest appeals to me.
Meditation, techniques, teachers, lamas, and guides are the finger pointing to the moon. They are not the moon itself.
That is why I fell in love with this practice in the first place.
And yet, during my time at the temple, I found myself constantly reconciling my understanding of the Dharma with the way I experienced it being expressed.
I entered the temple with enormous reverence and devotion. I wanted to learn. I wanted to serve. I wanted to practice. I wanted to become a better human being.
But I eventually realized that devotion alone was not enough for me.
Perhaps I could have overlooked some of these experiences. Maybe some of them were lessons I was meant to learn. It’s possible that, in some strange way, this entire experience was perfectly perfect.
As I write this, I find myself looking out at a beautiful stream, ducks gliding along the water. It is a much more suitable environment for my daughter and me. Maybe this is divine intervention. Maybe it is simply life unfolding as it does.
Either way, I feel compelled to share my story because I am still working through difficult feelings and unresolved questions. At the heart of them are a few that I keep returning to: What is the role of tradition, authority, and submission in today’s spiritual communities? Where is there room for the student’s own intelligence? How do we reconcile devotion with discernment? How do we distinguish between pure intention and skillful means, and a lack of compassion that creates unnecessary hardship and suffering?
I believe places like this temple have the potential to be profoundly transformative. I also believe there should be room for honest reflection about how tradition, authority, discipline, and leadership are expressed today.
My commitment to practice has not changed.
I still believe in teachers, lineage, devotion, discipline, and tradition. But I also believe spiritual communities must leave room for compassion, questions, dignity, discernment, and humanity.
Respecting tradition does not mean abandoning my own discernment.
I didn’t leave the temple because I stopped loving the Dharma.
I left because the human expression of it had become untenable for me.
I came hoping to gain realization.
Instead, I left with more questions.
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You can learn more about Mudra’s book, Monk’s Daughter, here.
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author: Mudra Love
Image: Author's Own
Editor: Lisa Erickson
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