About a quarter of a mile off NM Highway 522, which stretches from Taos toward the Colorado border, stands Kagyu Mila Guru Stupa, 38 feet tall and clearly visible, an unexpected architectural jewel set close to the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. About a quarter of a mile off NM Highway 522, which stretches from Taos toward the Colorado border, stands Kagyu Mila Guru Stupa, 38 feet tall an
d clearly visible, an unexpected architectural jewel set close to the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the Questa neighborhood of El Rito. At an altitude of 8,ooo feet, work is possible only from April to November. And almost every Saturday during these months, Lama Dorje and a few Santa Fe students made the two-and-a-half-hour drive, bringing plans for the next phase of construction, strong arms, and a generous supply of doughnuts and Gatorade. Land, donations, and volunteer labor came primarily from students of the late meditation teacher Herman Rednick, whose teachings blended Eastern and Western meditation concepts, and whose memory the stupa honors. Lama Karma Dorje, of the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhsim, provided inspiration, guidance, and constant supervision of the project,
At the suggestion of children in the community, an inside shrine room was included in the plans for Kagyu Mila Guru Stupa. Cynthia Moku, art professor at Naropa Institute in Boulder, who had helped direct painting of the deities in the shrine room at the stupa in Santa Fe, designed and oversaw the painting of the Kagyu Mila Guru shrine room. In the small chamber, nearly human-size representations of Chenrezig and Tara rise before the meditator with a sense of immediacy. Every detail seems to enliven the walls with a tangible spiritual presence. In June 1995, students finished details on the stupa before the arrival of the six-year-old Tsogya Gyaltso Rinpoche and V. Bokar Rinpoche for the consecration. The following year, Lama Karma Chodrak, an associate and friend of Lama Dorje, arrived from India to join the community as its resident lama. At present the resident lama is Lama Karma Chopal. Currently there is an active sangha. Contact earthjourney.org for details. (excerpt from an article written by Anna Racicot, with amended information, https://tricycle.org/magazine/stupas-along-rio-grande/)
