Our individual beliefs ground us, guide us and inform the way we view the world in which we live. For most people, their beliefs (or lack thereof) are inherited through family and are rarely strayed from. For others, like Leon Pettiway (or Lobzang Dorje), the audacious choice to follow a road less traveled, though daunting, has revealed a life unlike anything they could’ve imagined.
Dorje, a Black Buddhist monk living in Indianapolis’s Herron-Morton neighborhood, discovered the Buddhist faith in a special way. He was raised a Southern Baptist and in his 20s decided to convert to Catholicism.
“I was a devout Catholic,” he said. “I liked the ritual, and for some reason or another, it seemed less restrictive. I found an affinity with it — the pageantry, the liturgy. Christmas wasn’t a big deal for me, but the high season for me was Easter. I loved Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.”
His background in academia found him living and teaching all over the country in the studies of geography, crime, race, gender and drug use. He came to Indiana from Philadelphia in the mid ’90s. Shortly after arriving, he wondered if he had made a huge mistake. The summer of his move, Dorje lost his mother to a sudden terminal illness.
“I sat on the edge of my bed and I thought, ‘What were you thinking? You must have been out of your mind. Why did you come to this place?’ It took me a while to find out that the reason I came here is because I was supposed to do this,” he said, motioning to his maroon and gold Buddha vestments.
Before converting, Dorje had passing encounters with the Buddhist faith. The first happened in Philadelphia while he was walking on South Street; he ran into a young man who mentioned Dharma teachings being offered in a building nearby. While in Bloomington, Indiana, a friend drove him near a Tibetan cultural center. In another instance, he purchased a book on the faith, though he admits he put it on a shelf somewhere and never read it. In 1995, he moved from Bloomington to Indianapolis and befriended the contractor who was working on his newly purchased home. He learned she was a Buddhist, and he mentioned to her that he didn’t know very much about the faith. One day while visiting Broad Ripple, she saw two monks posting fliers about classes to be held. She snagged one and gave it to Dorje. In January of 1999, while on sabbatical, he went to his first Dharma teaching.
He shared that he was quite content in his current faith system. “I didn’t see Buddhism as a panacea for my problems, because I didn’t have any problems; everyone else did,” he said with a laugh. His curiosity — or as he would put it, his karma — led him to the classes anyway. “I took my shoes off and there was this little monk sitting on the floor with his back against the wall … I looked at him and saw him, and something in me said, ‘I’m here.’ And the monk just smiled at me. I sat there and listened and thought it was absolutely fascinating.”
He described the first class as being like a scene from “The Matrix.”
“You know when they say do you want the red pill or the blue one, and you take it and you see how far the bunny hole goes? I felt like that, and it has always felt like that. It’s so intellectually satisfying and so deep; it’s this constant peeling back. It made that kind of impression on me,” he said.
He began attending teachings regularly and had a series of mystical experiences, including one with a high lama whom he met during a meet-and-greet in the airport. The man later became his guru, and when Dorje finally “took refuge” (converted to the faith), the lama ordained him with his Tibetan name, which loosely translates to “the indestructible diamond-like mind.”
“Buddhism is all about the transformation of the mind, and if you’re really lucky, which I feel like I was, you meet someone you have a karmic connection with. He blessed me, and as a consequence of that, he stirred up all my stuff,” said Dorje. “The root of a lot of my problem was fear, paranoia, suspicion and the lack of trust. So when you grow up in the household I grew up in, when you grow up Black in the South the way I grew up, there is a lot of fear.”
Dorje added that an additional source of anxiety stemmed from his uncertainty over the decision to convert.
“It wasn’t like any other decision that I would make. Those things were choices I could see myself recovering from, but when it comes to your spiritual life, in that whole Christian notion, it was your very soul that was at stake,” he noted. “If I chose Buddhism and it was wrong, I was going to go to hell. If I chose Christianity and it was wrong, I was going to go to hell. So no matter how I constructed it in my head, I was going to go to hell. Terrifying, right?”
Dorje, soon after converting and visiting Kathmandu, came back to the states and took the leap to become a monk.
When asked why, he pointed to a divine guiding force. “It was all karma. I can’t describe it. It was like out of my control. The whole thing.” In 2002, he took 35 novice ordination vows and, sometime after that process, another 256 to become a fully ordained monk.
It was while on a flight returning from an academic conference in Washington, D.C., that he had an epiphany that grounded his choice.
“The choice wasn’t important, but what was important was my motivation and the quality of my heart. If i made the decision out of that space, it didn’t matter what I chose,” he said.
“Now I look back on it and I go, the benefit of the Buddhist path is it provides a series of techniques and practices that turn the mind from a negative state into a positive state. And a dedication to dedicating one’s life to virtue.
“If you have the karma to be a Buddhist, the aim is to embody this Buddha within and to be a benefit to all beings; if you have the karma to be a Christian, the goal is to dive into it authentically and become the embodiment of Christ in the world,” said Dorje.
He added that he feels anyone, regardless of their particular faith, can benefit from a lot of what he has learned.
In 2012, he retired from Indiana University in Bloomington, and learned shortly thereafter that he had prostate cancer. Instead of allowing the diagnosis and two major surgeries to deter him, he set off to make sure he could use his life and experiences to benefit others.
While on a return trip from Kathmandu, he attempted to sell his home but was unable to find any sufficient offers. At the urging of his guru, he delayed those plans and instead decided to work on creating a new prayer space for himself at home. The project soon evolved into something greater.
“I thought it should really be open to anyone who wanted to come and study or meditate, and this home should turn into a monastic residence. I am turning 70 in August; I’m not going to be around much longer. This home is the result of me working as a professor for over 30 years; when I die, I want it to be a Buddhist community.”
In June of last year, he began planning and designing. In October of 2016, the Dagom Geden Kunyob Ling Dharma Center officially opened.
Beginning Jan. 7, the center will begin holding classes that are open to the public completely free of charge, though donations are welcome.
It is Dorje’s hope that the center can be a source of good not only for the larger Indianapolis community, but for the Black community, as well.
“When I go to dharma centers, they are predominantly white. Even when I go to other places, I always wonder, where are the Black people? I just think that given my experience with the dharma, I know how helpful it can be whether you’re Buddhist or not. If someone is a Christian or from some other faith tradition, I think they could benefit greatly from some of the practices,” he said.
“In terms of the Black community, we have so many problems, crime being one, but so many other issues. That was my specialty when I was teaching — looking at race and race relations, crime, gender, and I think that it would be wonderful if the Black community could become aware of this in a way where they don’t see it as an affront to their Christian beliefs or see it as conversion. We don’t proselytize. Nobody would ever have to worry about that, but I sincerely believe it could make for a more peaceful community.”
For more information on Dagom Geden Kunyob Ling, call (317) 283-6781.
