Nov 6, 2023 3 min read stupa

Why Build a Stupa?

The main reason my wife and I built this stupa is because we have so many deer here.

We empty out of my car at the stupa, and Nam, who walks with a cane, immediately begins talking to us as if he has given this talk before.

“We bought 200 acres about 20 years old. I used to live in Louisville. I worked for Ford Motor Company and retired from there in 2002. I worked 30 years there as an engineer, and so I came here and donated forty acres to a Tibetan Buddhist group, His Holiness [the Drikung Kyabgön Chetsang]. One of the Tibetan monks and I built this one; it’s called a stupa. It looks like a temple, but it’s solid with nothing inside. We buried buddhas and books with sutras in there and closed it. It’s a stupa. The Stupa of Enlightenment.”

Clearly, he recognizes that we do not encounter stupas every day. But I’m too busy thinking about how Ford paid for this monument.

“People can come here and visit and pray. It’s very nice around here. Peaceful…I donate forty acres. They are going to build a big Tibetan temple here. For me I am retired, and I cannot do any more. I am 76 years old. I am ready to donate the rest for them.
Any questions?”

Questions? Where do I start? Who builds a Buddhist shrine in the middle of nowhere?

At this point, his wife, who has been circumambulating the stupa on an inside, shorter circle path, walks over to us and says hello. She also walks with a cane and wears a conical nón lá hat to protect her from the sun. She has waterproofed the hat by encasing it in plastic, perhaps using a shower cap, and placed a return address label under the plastic in case it is ever lost. While the land around us contains woods, the stupa is in the middle of a high clearing, and the sun is bearing down on us.

“The main reason my wife and I built this stupa is because we have so many deer here. We talked to a Tibetan monk and asked him if we could help the deer. I feel sorry for them. Any animal can eat them and kill them. Is there any way we can help them so that in their next life, they don’t have to be a deer anymore? And he said there is a thing you can do. Build a stupa, and if the deer make one or two circles during their lives, when they die, they will come back not as a deer anymore but one level higher which is people.”

Without knowing it, the dear man may have just delivered the most inspiring testimony I have ever heard, and I grew up Baptist. This structure is not about him or his legacy. It’s not about us, his guests this morning.

One of my students says with delight, “You did it all for the deer?!”

His wife quickly interjects, “No, no, that’s one of the reasons. The people benefit more. And some sentient beings around here that we don’t see. That’s why we have the prayer flags….Each flag has a sutra on it, and the wind blows, and it goes everywhere. That’s for sentient beings.”

Perhaps she thinks his deer story is too sentimental or too limiting in vision. I’m not sure. But I choose to believe that this retired Buddhist engineer built this elaborate holy object in the middle of a Kentucky field just for the deer.