Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje attracted 2,000 people, paying 200 each, to hear him speak at an event (Lobsang Wangyal/EPA).
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The Guardian
Here we are stuck in an economic downturn, with the threat of a financial tsunami gathering momentum in the eurozone, with pundits telling us it can only get worse.
One might expect people to be careful about their budget priorities - and that nonessential expenditures like spiritual teachings would be put on hold.
Evidence suggests, however, that the opposite is true - especially if one happens to be Buddhist.
"Spiritual materialism" has been a problem in Tibetan Buddhism at least since Chogyam Trungpa coined the term in 1973 while himself living the high life in the West.
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It seems that during this period of acute financial stress, Buddhists are still willing to part with their dollars, pounds, rubles, and rupees in order to sustain their meditation practice.
Because meditation calms the mind and generates insight, this is an understandable response - but what does come as a surprise is the amounts of money involved.
Take the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje, for example. He is a young, high-profile Tibetan Buddhist lama with a romantic history of escape from Tibet after escaping Chinese "security" forces.
Confined for several years under conditions resembling house arrest in India, he eventually managed to visit the United States for the first time in 2008. About 2,000 people gathered at a monastery in Woodstock to catch a glimpse of him. They paid 200 each.Roughly 400,000 (lb250,000) hit the registers. And after expenses, the monastery had enough left over to embark on an extensive building project.
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Then there's Sogyal Rinpoche - credited as author of the bestseller The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. A recent feature in the French news magazine Marianne revealed that the cheapest fee for a week's teachings with him at his center Lerab Ling in France was 665 (EUR500, lb425) - which entitled participants to pitch a tent and eat vegetarian food.
Five hundred people attended the retreat, including reporter Elodie Emery, which means that Sogyal attracted more than 337,375 (EUR250,000) on one occasion. More
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