East Richmond Buddhist monastery offers a place to slow down and seek internal peace

In this age of instant gratification, immediacy, efficiency, and overall productivity are touted as necessary to a fulfilling and successful life. 

However, in East Richmond Heights, time stands still while prayer wheels spin clockwise. The Gyuto Foundation, the Bay Area’s largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery, is teaching principles its members see as far more human. Their philosophy revolves around qualities with no next-day delivery option: kindness, compassion, generosity, integrity and discipline. 

Walk into the bookstore and gift shop on any day of the week and there won’t be anyone working there. Visitors are trusted to take what they’d like and leave cash in the donation box.

“We want people to change their behavior. Become kind, generous, loving,” said founder and Director Thupten Donyo, who grew up in Nepal near the foothills of Mount Everest.

The foundation is supported by donations and volunteerism. There is no membership or registration program. Classes, such as blessings called pujas, meditations, retreats, and path to enlightenment teachings, are offered for free.

“As soon as you walk on our property, you are a member,” Donyo told Richmondside.

With a commitment to helping the Richmond community, the foundation donates food to local food pantries. And more broadly, it consistently performs pujas for people who have died from natural disasters around the world, collecting donations to support recovery from devastation.

“The foundation welcomes all people from the Richmond community or from other communities to benefit from the center however they fit in the community,” said Richmond resident and Buddhist Sujata Lama.

Most participants are from the Tibetan and Nepalese communities, but all are welcome. Many Americans seek refuge there.

Donyo believes that many Americans are drawn to Buddhism because they feel a sense of dissatisfaction and instability in their lives. Despite having abundant opportunities, people often move from one pursuit to another, searching for something better. This constant shifting, Donyo suggests, leads to wasted time and a lack of fulfillment.

“Make a strong decision with whatever you choose. Don’t just change around,” Donyo said.  

Donyo said the best way to get involved at the foundation is simply to show up — a tip Lama takes seriously. She has been practicing Buddhism since age 13 and is a regular there.

Born to a Buddhist family, Lama’s first name is a nod to a village woman from ancient India who is said to have given the once-emaciated Buddha a bowl of milk-rice pudding, leading to his fortified strength and enlightenment, the most profound form of spiritual awakening in the Buddhist tradition. It’s also no coincidence that she shares a last name with the Dalai Lama. 

Lama practices introspection, self-control and restraint regularly. She believes in making sacrifices in this life and views being able to endure discomfort as the key to a pleasant and rewarding next life. For example, Buddhists at the Foundation abstain from eating, drinking, and even speaking, for days.

“We believe in reincarnation. You don’t want to be hungry in your next life. So now you are hungry,” Lama said. Through this, Buddhists maintain a distinct gratitude for all things large and small.

How meeting the Grateful Dead led to a Richmond monastery

Donyo still return to Nepal, where he hands out shoes to barefoot villagers, as he was once one of them as a boy.

When Donyo was 12, his parents asked if he’d like to be a monk. Without a second thought, he responded with a “yes.” He knew nothing of a monk’s lifestyle but felt in his bones that it was right. Shortly after, Donyo’s father dropped him and his brother off at the Gyuto Monastery in Dalhousie, India, where he lived from 1973 to 1997. 

“When I was in the monastery, I always wanted to go to the West,” Donyo said. “We’d see airplanes, comics, books, movies, and wonder where those places were.” 

Donyo’s introduction to the western world came in the form of a postcard from Hawaii. 

“It looked like heaven,” Donyo said.

Donyo first experienced the Bay Area in 1988, when he joined a group of Gyuto monks on a U.S. tour with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, whose support became key in establishing the monastery in America. Today, a plaque at the foundation recognizes the band as founding supporters.

“Because of my connection with the Grateful Dead in San Francisco, I wanted to come to America,” Donyo said. 

In 1997 he moved to San Jose, in hopes of enriching Tibetan culture and Buddhist practice in the East Bay. Donyo knew that the East Bay was home to many Tibetans, a result of the U.S. Tibetan Resettlement Project in the early 1990s, which brought 1,000 displaced Tibetans from India and Nepal to the United States.

“I want to preserve our culture, tradition, language, and Dharma,” Donyo said, referring to a core concept in Indian religions that provides a framework for living a virtuous life, upholding social order, and achieving spiritual enlightenment.

With the help of his Grateful Dead contacts, Donyo found a lawyer who assisted in establishing the nonprofit foundation, named after his home monastery. After founding the nonprofit in 1997, Donyo began hustling to find a location for his monastery. 

It wasn’t until 2013 that he stumbled across a property in East Richmond Heights. It was built in the 1960s and was originally a Baptist church. Up a meandering driveway and tucked in the hills adjacent to Wildcat Canyon Regional Park, Donyo was certain he’d uncovered the perfect spot for his monastery.

Through community donations and personal loans, he was able to buy the building and open the doors in April of 2014. 

The grounds are peaceful, scenic and adorned with spiritually significant decor

Dragon statues made of stone greet visitors at the entrance. Blue, white, red, green, and yellow Tibetan prayer flags, representing the five elements, blow in the breeze, and art with spiritually significant symbols is abundantly displayed throughout the grounds. Detailed murals, done by Gelek Sherpa, an artist from Santa Cruz, line the exterior walls. The inner sanctum, where blessings take place, is home to a large golden Buddha statue. 

The rose garden is shaded by coast live oaks and California bay laurels, birdhouses, wind chimes, and swinging benches inviting one to sit and think. A large wooden bear Donyo carved himself stands guard, protecting the land. 

Scattered across the property are quotes from the Dalai Lama. One by the rose garden reads, “If every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world, within one generation.” 

On the roof of the foundation sit two copper-coated deer bookmarking a Dharma Wheel, symbolizing the Buddha’s first teaching at Deer Park in India. A nearly identical sculpture can be found on the roof of Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, Tibet. 

As a branch of the 600-year-old Gyuto Monastery in India, the foundation serves as a spiritual and cultural connector for the East Bay’s Tibetan community. And it is Donyo’s home. At its core is Donyo, whose responsibilities stretch beyond the temple walls. He guides meditation, leads sacred prayers, shops for groceries, tends to the gardens, and even troubleshoots laundry machines for newly arrived monks. 

“We monks are not looking for a luxury life. We build the community, sustain ourselves,” Donyo said.

And building community is what Donyo does best. 

One integral facet of building community, from Donyo’s perspective, is leaving politics outside the monastery. The foundation has become a place of respite for those seeking peace from all the noise. 

“Political line, separately. Spiritual world, separately,” Donyo said. “It cannot be mixed. If you mix, there is no harmony in the society or in the communities.” 

The foundation makes Richmond feel like home for Lama. Pujas performed at the monastery are an essential part of her daily life, so having the temple nearby is a game changer. 

“We are very lucky to have the foundation close to us as we have an opportunity to come to the monastery for practice,” she said.