Mongolia’s Mahayana Mania

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While Chinghis Khan looks down from his newly-burnished pedestal, a Buddhist renaissance gains momentum on the steppes of Mongolia.

A gathering of almost 2 percent of a country´s population is large by any standard. In Mongolia, given the near absence of roads and the sparseness of population, it is gigantic. Yet, an estimated 30,000 devotees attended the opening ceremonies of the Kalachakra initiation conducted by the Dalai Lama at the Gandan Hiid Monastery in Ulaan Bataar last August. They poured in from the countryside, many came from as far away as the south-Siberian Russian republic of Buryat.

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