Home › Magazine › Summer 2003 › Desert Lotus: Tibetan Buddhism Blossoms in Southern Utah

Desert Lotus: Tibetan Buddhism Blossoms in Southern Utah

A Wal-Mart shopper finds the dharma, and a sangha is born in southern Utah.

Joanne Rideout

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The southern Utah community of LaVerkin, near Zion National Park, is a modest little town inhabited mostly by descendants of Mormon pioneers. It’s a place where “Democrat” is a bad word, and Pioneer Day is celebrated with perhaps more zeal than the Fourth of July.

One recent morning, however, the front door of a well-kept LaVerkin home opened, and out onto the tidy lawn spilled a radiant assemblage of a dozen or so maroon-robed Tibetan Buddhist monks. The traveling group hailed from the Drepung Loseling monastery in India, and they had come to give teachings to a small but dedicated sangha that has sprung up in this conservative desert region.

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