GAIA MANDALA
GLOBAL HEALING COMMUNITY
GUIDING ANCESTORS,
ELDERS AND LINEAGE MASTERS
HIS EMINENCE KUSHOK MANGDEN RINPOCHE
His Eminence Kushok Mangden Rinpoche was the 106-year-old lama that Cynthia met in 1990 at his cave hermitage at Charok, Nepal in the high Himalayas.
Realizing she had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ask a question of the proverbial old wise man in the cave, she requested his guidance about what we could do to bring healing and protection to the Earth.
Receiving the Earth Treasure Vase practice from Kushok Mangden (Charok Rinpoche), gave her a sacred purpose and revealed a dharma path that she is now passing on to others.
LAMA NGAWANG TSULTRIM RINPOCHE
Lama Ngawang Tsultrim Rinpoche the Abbot of Tolu Tharling Monastery, Nepal was responsible for guiding Cynthia to meet Kushok Mangdon Rinpoche in the cave back in 1990. Lama Tsultrim translated his teacher’s teachings for Cynthia and personally oversaw the crafting of the Earth Treasure Vases. He collected countless sacred medicines from all the lineage masters in Nepal at the time and mixed these into the clay, then consecrated the pots and gave them to Cynthia and her community to fill and seal and bury.
Lama Tsultrim has been a true spiritual friend providing invaluable support on the path of fulfilling this practice. In 2018, at Tolu Tharling Monastery, the monastic seat of the Konchog Chidu lineage he inherited from both his father, Kyabje Kyaprok Tulku Rinpoche and Kushok Mangden Charok Rinpoche, Lama Tsultrim recognized Cynthia as Lama Sherab Zangmo.
LAMA NGAWANG TSULTRIM RINPOCHE
THICH NHAT HANH
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is a global spiritual leader, prolific writer and poet and a peace activist revered throughout the world for his teachings on mindfulness and peace. A pioneer in bringing Buddhism to the West, Thich Nhat Hanh has founded monasteries and practice centers in America, Europe and Thailand, and over 1000 local mindfulness practice communities, known as ‘sanghas’. He has built a thriving community of monks and nuns worldwide, who, together with tens of thousands of lay students, apply his teachings on mindfulness, peace-making and community-building in schools, workplaces, businesses and prisons throughout the world.
A gentle, humble monk – the man Martin Luther King called “an apostle of peace and nonviolence,” Cynthia met Thich Nhat Hanh in the mid 1980s. He quickly became her root teacher and in 1985, Thay (as he is affectionately called) invited Cynthia to join his Order of Interbeing. In 1993 he married her and her husband Hugh, and in 1994, gave her Dharma Transmission, making her a teacher or ‘Dharmacharya.’ Since then, Cynthia’s bell of mindfulness has traveled on every pilgrimage and opened every ceremony and sangha gathering, especially in Liberia where for a decade, Cynthia has worked with veteran peacebuilders, teaching mindfulness, supporting their work of community-building, trauma recovery and reconciliation, and bringing them to Thay’s retreat center in France, Plum Village, to study and practice.
AUNTY MARGARET KATHERINE OENPELLI
Aunty Margaret Katherine Oenpelli was a Jawoyn-Buyhmi Elder from Northern Territory, Australia who we first met in 2013 on the pilgrimage to take the last of the original Earth Treasure Vases to Australia. Aunty Margaret took us in, welcomed us to country, and gave us “skin names” making us family to her and to each other. Cynthia became her adopted daughter, she will always be Mumma to Cynthia. It is through Aunty Margaret’s ancestral blessing that our global healing community became a true family.
Aunty Margaret invited us to place the Earth Treasure Vase (known as “Our Teacher” to her) for burial on her sacred ancestral lands. There the vase and the entire Earth Treasure Vase Mandala entered the Dreaming. Two years later, as Custodial Elder, Margaret invited us to bring the first of the second generation of Earth Treasure Vases to Gabarnmang, a 50,000-year-old sacred Aboriginal site untouched by the world. She gave her blessing to this community and her Spirit lives on in our hearts.
AUNTY MARGARET KATHERINE OENPELLI
JOANNA MACY
Joanna Macy has been a guiding light to this community since the beginning. Her work on Nuclear Guardianship was an early wake up call that catalyzed Cynthia to ask her question to the old wise man in the cave. Joanna’s Work That Reconnects is a thread woven into the fabric of all that we are doing to restore balance and harmony to the web of life in these times of Great Turning.
