Every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, ten to fifteen students meet at the base of Harkness Tower. In Yale Chaplain’s Office parlance, the room is officially called the “Buddhist Shrine,” but for most of us it is simply the “Shrine.” A few feet away from the cars whizzing past High Street in New Haven, the Shrine’s drab door abuts Branford College’s ornate Memorial Gate, with its cast-iron fashioned into little soldiers and vines creeping on them. During my first week at Yale, my pre-orientation counselor had advised, “the prettier gate, the less likely it is to open.” Indeed, visitors to the Shrine have to pass Branford’s courtyard to get to the door, which usually agitates in response to attempts to swipe in, conveying its displeasure through high staccato beeps. The Shrine is only open to visitors from Sunday to Thursday, 4pm to 10pm when a Chaplain’s Office A-frame propped up in the courtyard points to the entrance and the card reader relaxes its rein.
At the small foyer through the main door, barely eight feet high and wide, patrons take off their shoes and shed the layers of New Haven winter. There is a single chair where a student attendant sits — doing homework while watching over the space. To the right, a spiral staircase leads to the top, where the Guild of Carillonneurs plays 54 bells of the carillon, twice a day. In front lies the door to the Shrine.
Across the tiny threshold, the Shrine is cavernous. It is, or at least feels, two times as tall as it is long. The ceiling, proclaimed at construction in 1921 as the ‘first real English Gothic fan vaulting executed in the past two centuries,’ extends over the room. Its ribs, embellished with quatrefoils akin to a bed of flowers, ensconce the space. A silver, urn-like object hangs from the vertex where the fans meet. Michael Chang, a student attendant who was once a Catholic altar boy, compared the urn to a thurible, like the ones he was entrusted with burning incense in. But, like much else in the Shrine, no one knows what the item does, or how it got there. It does not hold incense and is not a lighting fixture. There is no overhead lighting in the Shrine at all. Only four IKEA floor lamps and five naked bulbs provide illumination. This dimness accentuates the drama of the ceiling, as the shadows render every shield carved into the Kasota limestone visible in high contrast. A small balcony hangs as a dark void over the entrance — eerie, cobwebbed, and easily missed. The grey slate floor, at once cold and comforting, feels robust, in contrast to the fragile wooden floors of my dorm, chipped away from years of students’ use and misuse. The stone’s coolness contrasts with the warmth of the purple cushions, zafus from Zen Buddhism, that line the tatami mat. Neatly arranged in four rows of four, they lead up to a statue of the Buddha, perched on a table covered with maroon cloth. The Buddha is standing, with his hands held in abhaya mudra, right palm upright and facing outwards, the gesture of fearlessness. On the left, a stand holds up a diaphanous scroll, lettered and gifted by a student’s father. Four columns of Chinese calligraphy note Mahayana Bodhisattva vows on crisp parchment — to save needy beings, abandon hatred, awaken to dharma, and embody the Buddha. A Tibetan thangka hangs on the right and across the room, a scroll portrays Guanyin, the Chinese embodiment of the Bodhisattva of compassion.
Behind her, the walls of the Shrine are covered with oak panels and pew-like chairs. The panels are engraved with images from the university’s founding, portraying the builders of Connecticut Hall, fathers of the Divinity School, and tree-planters of Hillhouse Avenue. Also watching over the space are the philosophers of Logic, Oratory, and History, who I had not noticed till early one morning, when I met Sumi Kim, the Buddhist Chaplain, in the Shrine. Sumi manages Buddhist life for the Chaplain’s Office, including maintaining the Shrine and organizing dharma discussions and meditations in it. Most of the programming happens in the evening and till this day in October during senior year, I had only been in the space after sunset. But that morning, the light drifted in through the south-east facing stained glass, illuminating these men dressed in medieval garb. The imagery was religiously secular but deified the intellectual hubris of high academia. The light illuminated the Shrine’s intriguing paradoxes — the cathedral-esque architecture that forms the backdrop for a faith that was little-known in America at the time of its construction in 1921. The men looking down upon probably never imagined that their institution would one day house such rooms.
Behind the Buddha, a paper Shoji room divider hides from plain view the names of thirty six students of Branford College who gave up their lives while fighting in World War II and the Korean War. High on the northern wall, barely visible in the dim light, a long inscription in intricate calligraphy begins, “This Tower was erected in the memory of Charles William Harkness.” In a corner below, a simple inkjet sign proclaims in capitalized Arial font, “Buddhist Lending Library.” A shelf is lined with books by Thich Nhat Hanh and Sharon Salzberg and foot-risers to aid meditation in chairs designed for chapel-service. Before the Buddha, two electric candles flicker in perpetual devotion, unfazed by gushes of wind from the closing and opening door. Kazemi Adachi, a senior and President of the Yale Buddhist Sangha, told me that they once lit real incense and candles in the Shrine. However, smoke easily accumulated in the room, whose only ventilation is the front door. Complaints followed, prompting a switch to electric candles. Two pots of orchids and a bamboo plant also adorn the front of the room. When I touched them, I realised they too were fake.
I didn’t find the Shrine until I was far along my meditation journey, which started at age fourteen. That year my parents moved countries thrice and I completed ninth grade in schools scattered across Singapore, Massachusetts and Delhi. I was an anxious teenager, the annoying kind that never got past the “why?” phase from toddlerhood. My existential angsts compounded anxieties concerning academic mediocrity and social ineptitude. I have few vivid memories of this year when an unceasing dialogue in my mind clouded my days. From the moment I swung my feet out of bed, I found myself planning out every minute, recapping week-old conversations, and preparing for imaginary scenarios that rarely materialized.
I sought refuge in books — mostly mainstream YA novels, their protagonists invariably white suburban kids seeking the sense of adventure their environments were built to quell. John Green, Rick Riordan and Steven Chbosky lined my suitcase. But this was 2012 and soon each new book started feeling like elaborate fanfiction for something I had already read. Having run out of YA, I forayed into non-fiction, scavenging at second-hand book sales to wade off my anxiety. I chanced upon an eclectic mix of works that referenced meditation — from a white woman experiencing her quarter-life crisis in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love to an Indian ascetic on his spiritual journey in Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. Soon, I found myself sitting on the floor, timing my first meditation with my iPod Nano. I was raised Hindu and the exercise felt culturally familiar. I had no trouble crossing my legs and interlacing my hands into dhyan mudra, right palm over the left, thumbs lightly touching. However, I couldn’t build a consistent practice at the time. Meditation was readily abandoned as college applications loomed. I became too busy to spend 10 minutes of my day doing ‘nothing’.
The start of college disrupted the school-home routine I had perfected over the prior three years in Delhi. I was exhilarated by the prospect of a new start and commemorated it on Instagram by tracking by growth against the days since I set foot in New Haven with two suitcases and the heaving weight of expectation. I was the first person in my family to go abroad for college and had to prove its worth. I applied to more clubs than I had interests, packed my calendar from 9am to 9pm everyday, and spent each waking hour thinking about where I had to be next.
As the semesters progressed, life events began take their cumulative toll. A grandparent’s death, a friend’s parent’s cancer-affliction, my own family’s stories carrying on 7,000 miles away, without me — mortality was rendered in sharp focus. I found myself spiralling into now-distant, but familiar, patterns of thought. The static returned, blurring my days.
Meditation resurfaced at some point during winter break one year ago. I came across Headspace, an app that creates themed guided meditations on ‘stress,’ ‘generosity,’ and ‘depression.’ I was wary at first — it felt like a Silicon Valley-esque take on meditation, another in the lineage of self-optimizing fads like Soylent, Fitbit and microdosing. But a student discount lured me in — $10 for a year-long subscription, $180 value. Headspace gamified my meditation. When I completed a session, I felt content not only for having recentered myself by focussing on the present, but also because my meditation ‘streak’ increased. One day closer to receiving a worthless virtual badge at the 3, 15, 30, 90, 180 and 365 day marks. Yet slowly, over several weeks, I built a habit.
At the Shrine, I was confused by the church-like pews, fake plants and representation from at least four Buddhist traditions that concurrently inhabit the space. I visited Manuscripts and Archives to understand the room’s history. Having sheathed my hands in latex, I flipped through a 1923 calendar, “Compliments of J. Rosenberg & Co.” cleaners then located at 135 Bristol Street, long replaced by a container shed. They called the Memorial Quadrangle, the “most beautiful college dormitories in the country, if not the world,” and noted that a Mrs. Stephen V. Harkness had donated money to build the Tower in memory of her son Charles Harkness, inheritor of his father’s millions in Standard Oil stock. Other folders contained hundreds of images of meticulously documented stone carvings and documented the journey of the first “chime” of ten Harkness bells, transported to the Tower in 1921 over ship and horse carriage from Loughborough, England.
However, the documents were jarringly quiet on the century since the Quandrangle’s completion. These gaps in my knowledge were filled by the Shrine’s present-day caretakers. I met Sharon Kugler, the University Chaplain, in her office in the basement of Bingham Hall, a first-year dormitory on Old Campus salvaged by the Chaplain’s Office to run its activities. Sharon has been the University Chaplain since 2007. Her job description is vague — the Chaplain oversees the work of the Chaplain’s Office. I deduced this entails ensuring all faiths feel at home in the University. She told me that before the Shrine, the Buddhist community floated around, occupying the array of liminal spaces that the Office oversees — Battell Chapel, Breathing Space, Dwight Chapel. In 2012, then Master of Branford, Betsy Bradley offered up Memorial Chapel, where the Shrine now lives. Till then, the space had been used for initiations for Yale Political Union parties, as a place of worship for the Jewish community, a chapel for Skull and Bones, and a meeting room for some cult that dabbled in yoga and New Age practices. I was not able to verify any of these claims, each made by a different person I spoke to. This messy history says something about the room that is now the Shrine. A century from its construction, it stands largely unchanged. Yet, over its lifetime has welcomed all sorts of groups that make this campus their home.
Several communities also came together to welcome the Shrine to campus. When I met Debra Rohr in her office, across the hall from Sharon’s, she was panting, having just completed a run to buy ice cream for the Chaplain’s Office coolers. A book on Hindu philosophy rested on her cramped desk, which was full of materials for the spaces she oversees as Building Manager. Debra has cared for the Shrine since its consecration. She talked about how the tatami mats were donated by Pierson College, after plans for taekwondo classes fell through. The cushions were purchased by a former Chaplain’s Office fellow and other artefacts accumulated over the years — a fake plant acquired for Buddha Purnima celebrations, scrolls, books and statues left behind by students.
The Shrine, as it stands today, was created through an iterative process to arrive at a version of the 200 square feet space that can cater to a diverse student body whilst standing in as representative to 500 million Buddhists around the world. And so, we are left with a 100 year old Chapel that embodies the Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, as a backdrop to a sanitized, secular 21st century practice. Not all students are fans of this set up. “I find the space chaotic,” said Lucy Liu, a junior and Shrine-regular herself. “There are so many different Buddhist traditions in it as well as centuries-old white men staring down at you from the walls,” she said. Lucy, who was born in China but moved to Canada at six, was raised Buddhist. Her experience of the faith was shaped by visiting Buddhist temples in China that rarely mix symbols from Buddhism’s different branches. Sumi spoke of the difficulties she faces while planning formal worship and rituals. Students who seek Buddhism after being raised in other faiths are put-off by ritualism, some raised Buddhist find the rituals in the Shrine ‘watered-down’ and others are confused by practices that may not strictly adhere to their own sect.
Kazemi said that the Sangha is considering changing its name to dispel students preconceptions about it being an overtly religious organization. “American Buddhism has become its own distinct branch at this point,” he said, noting that most of the Sangha’s practices are non-denominational and accessible to non-Buddhists. I met Kazemi in Silliman College’s Acorn, a student-run café across the hall from the Good Life Center (GLC). GLC was established in 2018 after the popularity of Silliman Head of College and psychology professor Laurie Santos’ course, “Psychology and the Good Life.” In addition to self-care and well-being workshops, the center conducts mindfulness courses, offering a science-backed and sanitized means of learning meditation. This is where I had attended my first organized meditation on campus in the spring semester of my junior year, after a few weeks of using Headspace. Our instructor, Molly, was a psychology professor whose voice exuded calm in every intonation. While our class exchanged few words beyond “hello” and the logistics of passing along cushions, we developed a sense of community over the semester. However, my practice at GLC was scientific and structured like the academic classes I attended in the morning. Each week we covered a new breathing technique, practiced it for a few minutes and went home. I don’t recall much discussion about the implications or importance of our collective enterprise. Our practice felt sanitized, more focussed on the method than the madness motivating it.
In the Shrine, less than a third of our time is spent in actual meditation. Often, we just talk in small groups on topics chosen by Sumi. As sound waves from our conversations cascade off the high walls, the hall is filled with a low meditative murmur. During my first meditation at the Shrine, in the early fall of senior year, we were sitting cross-legged on the zafus when Sumi placed a giant glass jar in front of us. It was filled to the brim with water but its bottom fourth was crowded with dregs reminiscent of coagulated cream — baking soda. She shook the jar, turning the water opaque. The fizz of soda bubbles was barely perceptible. Sumi told us to focus on the vessel and breathe. I was skeptical. I had only signed up for an hour-long meditation and had no idea how long the exercise would last. The second hand slowed down further, as if facing resistance from the baking soda itself. My spine started to hunch. My left foot fell asleep. My eyes felt dry. My nose itched. As my monkey mind was getting caught up in these discomforts, I noticed that the powder had started to settle. Slowly the opacity receded, painting the water gradients of white. Eventually, all the powder settled, leaving the water above clear. I could once again see through the jar and see Sumi’s hands on the other side, pressed against her knees. “Your mind is the water and your thoughts are the soda,” she said, “Through meditation we aren’t getting rid of the thoughts. The thoughts, like the soda, are still there, but settled. The mind is cleared to attain insight.”
For a place situated right below 43 tons of cast bronze bells, the Shrine is not deafened by the sounds of the carillon that otherwise punctuate life and disrupt naps near central campus. On one Monday evening, I found myself in the Shrine with three strangers. Our individual presences were marked only by the monotone of deep breathing. The respect and personal space we gave each other was reminiscent of the atmosphere in a therapist’s waiting room. The carillon started tolling promptly at 5:30pm but sounded muffled, like a phone trying to ring in the reaches of a in a slept-in bed. I closed my eyes, felt the coolness of my mala against my wrist, and focussed on the breath that coursed through my nostrils, lungs, blood and back.
Over the last year I have meditated sitting in packed classrooms, crying in stressful libraries, hunched in the middle seat of 16 hour long flights and prostrate on my bed. At once, meditation entails an escape from and an intense tuning into my surroundings. When I step across the threshold from Branford courtyard, I am enveloped in the Shrine’s stillness and calm. The century-old limestone weighs down on the space, as if protecting it from the world. Inside, everything is still — sounds muffled and movement softened, tiniest rustles and creaks amplified.
The Shrine’s sacrality was a common theme in my conversations with Sumi, Debra and Sharon. Upon its opening in 2012, the Shrine was consecrated by Lama Tsondru, who fled the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s and settled in New Haven. It was also blessed by Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa — head of Karma Kagyu, the largest school of Tibetan Buddhism. Sharon recounted an anecdote about her otherwise hyperactive dog bowing before the Karmapa during his visit. “There was just something there,” she said, “I can’t describe it.”
Like many students at an institution that proclaims itself to be a “world-class research university,” my worldview has been shaped by discourse that equates science and modernism, while neglecting the realm of the spiritual. I am skeptical of the real value of rituals and consecration — what is unseeable, unquantifiable and entirely subjective cannot be real. Yet, being in the Shrine has made me doubtful of my own steadfast skepticism of everything non-material. I want to write that this change was brought about by some blinding vision of sorts. But unlike what much good writing purports to assert, perspective-shifts rarely emanate from cathartic climaxes. Instead, over several weeks, as my meditative practice grew stronger, I started noticing how my body reacts to minute changes in the environment — tensing vocal chords while passing friends-turned-acquaintances, sagging eyelids after a long night, contracting core muscles on windy walks. When I enter the Shrine, my nervousness decreases and tensions fall away. As I sit, the creases around my eyes disappear and for a few short minutes, the world feels like it can wait.
