July 22-28, 2004

naked city

From Kalmykia With Love

Illustration By: Jeffrey Bouchard

A Northeast Philadelphia native is both a religious beacon in southern Russia and a Colorado desk jockey.

by Simon Ostrovsky

If you ask the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of a small Buddhist republic in Russia's south is the reincarnation of an ancient Indian saint. But to his co-workers in the United States, he's just another office temp with a mortgage.

The current Telo Tulku Rinpoche, or "precious one," is something of a celebrity in the flat Caspian region known as Kalmykia. Local television airs extensive interviews with him together with the Dalai Lama's emissary in Russia or attending rituals and ceremonies. The 31-year-old Philadelphia native's photograph adorns Buddhist calendars in almost every Kalmyk home. People from across the republic come to his door seeking his advice and blessings.

"Most of them want to know what they should do about their drunk husband or where to get more money," the chief Kalmyk lama recently said on a quiet evening, standing in the dusty street where he lives in the capital, Elista.

But there is something most Kalmyks, a Mongolian people who migrated to the mouth of the Volga river in the early 17th century, don't know about him: When he runs out of money, the lama boards a plane to the United States to get a job answering phones, managing a restaurant or working as a shipping clerk for two weeks. He earns enough — about $1,800 — to pay his mortgage bills at the Colorado home where his wife and child live.

"What I do here is strictly voluntary, from the bottom of my heart," he explains, "so every two months or so I go back to get whatever job I can."

Draped in a cream-colored shawl, he speaks about a man's desire to escape suffering and pain. He has the air of a wise man. But still, it's easy to picture the slightly chubby fellow behind a desk sporting the slacks and button-up shirt that he wears under his shawl.

Born Erdne Ombadykow in Northeast Philadelphia, he briefly attended classes at Finletter Elementary. His time here was short, but he remembers it well and still has relatives in Philadelphia. "It was a good, black, working-class neighborhood," he recalls.

In 1979, when the Dalai Lama visited the Buddhist temple in India where Ombadykow had been studying, he recognized him as the reincarnation of Telo Tulku Rinpoche, a great master of meditation.

World War II refugees from Kalmykia, his parents were traditional Buddhists, so when their son said that he wanted to be a monk, they sent him to an Indian monastery. Ombadykow lived in the monastery until his early 20s, when he joined the Dalai Lama's entourage during his holiness' first visit to post-Soviet Russia and Kalmykia in 1992.

They found a bleak region whose once-rich cultural heritage was devastated by the ravages of Soviet collectivization. Not a single temple remained

of more than 100 from before the revolution. More important, nobody had the proper Buddhist training to resurrect this Asiatic peoples' religion. Sandwiched between often hostile regions, Kalmykia, population 300,000, has historically been at odds with its Slavic and Islamic neighbors.

"With Muslims to the south and Orthodox Christians to the north, we could have very easily lost the tradition," Ombadykow said. "As a Kalmyk, I felt I had a responsibility to help."

But at the age of 20, Ombadykow found that the responsibility he took upon himself was too great. He shed his monk's robes and started a new life as a layman. Married in 1995, a son and a mortgage followed.

"I was young and confused; dealing with a communist old-school mentality was very hard," he explains. Today he has more hope, and although Buddhist rules prevent him from becoming a full-fledged monk — families are considered distractions, which helps explain why his remains behind in Colorado — he is still considered to be Shaddin Lama, the equivalent of an archbishop.

"The Kalmyk still have the faith, they just don't have the knowledge of Buddhist tradition to go with it,"

Ombadykow

explains. "It didn't matter whether I'm a monk or not. I was the only choice."

He has accomplished much for Buddhism there. With the help of the local government and other donations, he has overseen the construction of 25 Buddhist temples and stupas since his arrival. Ombadykow has also helped send 25 Kalmyk boys to India for religious training. He hopes one of them might one day take his place as Shaddin Lama. But for now, he continues to live in a room at a relative's house in Elista, giving advice and attending ceremonies.

"It's not something you can change in five or 10 years," he says, "but when I look back, I see how much we have accomplished."