There is a Tibetan proverb that says the lotus grows in muddy water. If you look for the perfect conditions to begin, you will never begin. You simply plant the seed where you are, and you tend it with whatever you have.

This is the story of how Buddhism; Mahayana Buddhism in the FPMT tradition; found its way to Bucharest; and how, from a handful of practitioners, a small study group, and a great deal of goodwill, a garden slowly grew.

THE FLOWER THAT CAME BEFORE US

Before the Garden of Maitreya, there was another flower.

Our colleagues and Dharma sisters Anne Pleșuvescu and Doina Grigoraș led for years the Compassion Wisdom Flower study group; the first FPMT-affiliated community in Bucharest. They built something patient and sincere: a small sangha meeting in the spirit of the Lamrim, keeping the flame of the teachings alive in a city that was just beginning to encounter the Buddhist tradition in a serious way.

When her group came to a natural close, we did not want that flame to go out. We took some of what they had built; the relationships, the trust, the precedent that this kind of community was possible here; and we carried it forward. This post is, in part, a dedication to them.. The Garden exists because they planted first.

A NAME GIVEN BY A TEACHER

Every garden needs a name. Ours was given to us by Geshe Jampa Gelek, Geshe Lharampa of the Istituto Lama Tsongkhapa in Italy, one of our most honoured Vajrayana teachers and the teacher who has blessed our stupa project from its very beginning.

When we asked him what to call our new community, he said: the Garden of Maitreya.

He explained it simply and beautifully: a garden is made of different flowers. Each one distinct, each one with its own colour and fragrance and season of blooming. In Bucharest there are many practitioners; different needs, different inclinations, different entry points into the Dharma. All of them are good. A garden does not ask its flowers to be identical. It simply offers the conditions for each one to open.

We have tried to be that kind of garden.

HOW WE BEGAN

We began with texts.

Geshe Jampa Gelek had visited Bucharest more than once; not only as a Dharma teacher but as a serious scholar, engaging with the Faculty of Philosophy and with academic circles that were genuinely curious about Buddhist thought. Those visits left traces. They earned us a few good friends in the academic world, people who cared about rigour and about the transmission of wisdom across traditions.

It seemed natural, then, to begin with what we knew: careful reading, translation, textual analysis. We honoured the lineage by taking the teachings seriously on the page before taking them into the room. Our Journal; now registered with ISSN 3044-8972; grew from this impulse: to preserve, to translate, to make the words of our teachers available in Romanian and in English, freely and without charge.

Slowly, inevitably, the texts led us back to practice. You cannot read Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra without wanting to try. You cannot translate the Lam Rim without feeling the pull of the path. And so, alongside our study, we began to practise; following the goals and the vision of our beloved Lama Zopa Rinpoche, whose life was an unbroken act of dedication to the welfare of all beings.

A SANGHA WITHOUT WALLS

We are a small community. We have no permanent meeting room. When a teacher visits, or when our activities require more space, we rent a venue. Otherwise, we prefer to meet outside.

It so happened that our garden; quite literally; is a cemetery.

We practice in a Bucharest cemetery that houses our small stupa, and where a larger stupa is being built. We walk among the graves and we meditate on impermanence not as an abstract teaching but as the ground beneath our feet. The birds sing. There is no traffic. Animals roam freely and we care for them. In the silence between the tombstones, the Dharma feels very close.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught that every holy object; every stupa, every statue; silently liberates beings simply by existing, by purifying the minds of those who pass near it. We are building one of those objects here, in a place that already speaks of the truth of impermanence. It feels right.

OUR FRIENDS IN THE DHARMA

We are the youngest FPMT study group in Romania. We are still developing, still growing slowly and without haste. And we have learned, from the beginning, that a small sangha cannot afford to live in isolation.

Our closest friends in the Dharma, apart from the other two FPMT groups from Pitești and Cluj-Napoca, are the Yeshe Khorlo Nyingma community, the Jonang community, and the Amidaji community; beautiful examples of different streams of the same river. We do not agree on everything. We do not need to. Our teachers meet for talks and joint practices whenever the opportunity arises. We help each other. We learn from each other. For the benefit of all beings, we practice together.

This is not ecumenism as a policy. It is simply what small sanghas do when they are honest about their situation and generous in their hearts.

HOW TO FIND US

We meet online and in person. If you would like to join a practice session or a study reading, you are welcome; regardless of your experience or your tradition. If you would simply like to meet for coffee and a Dharma conversation, write to us and we will find a time.

Nothing here is charged. Nothing will ever be charged. The teachings of the Buddha are not a commodity. They are a gift passed from mind to mind across twenty-six centuries, and we are only the most recent, most imperfect, most grateful set of hands in that chain.

A DEDICATION

We close, as we always do, with the words of our teacher; words that are not merely beautiful but are the very reason this garden exists:

“The most happy thing in my life, the most fulfilling thing, is to work for and to benefit sentient beings. Even just the mere thought to cause happiness for sentient beings, to benefit them, to free them from suffering; this is the best offering to all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.”

— Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

May whatever merit arises from these small efforts be dedicated to the swift return of our precious teacher, to the long lives of all our teachers, and to the happiness of every being without exception.

May the Garden continue to bloom.

🙏

— Veronica Sonam Drölma

Garden of Maitreya, Bucharest