On the first floor of the big temple can be found the "arts workshops". We have asked Lama Kunkyab, one of the persons in charge, to introduce us to the different decoration workshops, and to explain where they fit within the whole.

"The initiative for this project emanates from the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, who wished for this temple to contain precious artwork. It was originally meant to be built on the Côte de Jor in the Dordogne, but in the end Le Bost, in the Auvergne, is the place where things took shape.

The Big Temple is meant to become a gathering place for the monastic, but also lay Sangha, a place where the Gyalwa Karmapa will give transmissions.

For safety reasons, as work is still in progress, the temple is currently closed to the general public.

Its evolution will go through different stages:

To finish the ground floors so that rituals and transmissions can take place.

Fitting out the first floor, where the flats of Gyalwa Karmapa and his retinue stand.

The possibility to put statues of the lamas of the lineage in the reliquary (top of temple).

A lot however remains to be done for the temple to become an actual place for practice. This is one of our objectives for the next couple of years.

It is important to understand that the activities of the workshops go according to the temple’s evolution.

So that it really becomes a place for practice, we are currently undertaking the realization of art works that will ornate the big altar and the wings. The decoration of the staff around the smaller mandalas is under way.

Some of the workshops are permanent, others operate intermittently (staff, sewing…).

Due to the lack of space, reactivating some of these workshops will certainly be a problem.

For the last three years the painting of the great Kalachakra mandala, the filling of Buddha Sakyamuni’s statue, the making of the 300 niches at its back, the making of Gyalwa Karmapa’s and Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche’s thrones, and many other realizations have meant setting up several workshops.

Things were rather precarious in the beginning. It all started in Laussedat with Céline, in what was left of the room that had been used for the decoration of the temple. The team which up to now had run the place had just entered the three year retreat. Lama Samten and myself were just out of retreat. Motivated by Lama Guendune’s request to us to take care of the decoration and of the temple, we resumed work where it had been left.

Along with Céline we first went through a series of tests on colours, so as to set up a palette for the temple, and made some research on decoration. All we had at the time were a few photographs taken by Lama Shedroup, but later on I also brought some back from a trip in India.

As for know-how, Lama Samten before going into retreat had spent several years in Kagyu Ling, a centre in Burgundy, where he had learned the plaster moulding technique, as well as traditional painting. Max had lived twelve years in Samye Ling, Scotland, Studying sculpture and painting with a Tibetan master, and I’ve made the fine arts school in Marseille and have spent some time in Kagyu Ling, where I started studying Tibetan art.

To start with this workshop was meant as an educational platform, where those who had never held a brush could learn directly, painting simple things in the temple. The learning was done up on the scaffoldings.

This period marks the beginning of the "Art Workshops".

After the realization of the Great Kalachakra Mandala most people entered the three years retreat, and few were left to manage the work. We had to create a new team, and decided to use the different rooms on the first floor of the big temple as working spaces for sculpture, gilding, painting, drawing, sewing and so on … along with a computer room to scan, retouch, file and record documents and photographs of thankas, mandalas etc …

Nowadays it is no longer possible to start painting in the temple without being trained, over a rather long period of time, into different painting techniques, sculpture, etc … This requires a lot of expertise.

A workshop has therefore been set up specifically for those who wish to learn these techniques. As for the ones we do not master, the idea is to learn as we put them into practice, to produce something as we learn.

According to Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche the Karma Gadri lineage had died out. But he still had in mind two painters who could possibly help us. In the meantime he had asked an hother painter (Norbou) to come. Lama Shedroup had met the man in India and had asked him to get in touch with us, but at the time Norbou, who had never heard about Kundreul Ling, didn’t feel like coming to Europe at all.

The first meeting took place in Copenhagen, where he had come to see to a fresco that had suffered damage from water leaking from a broken chimney. Having heard of his presence in this country, Lama Jigme Rinpoche had then asked me to go there and get in touch with him. We needed his help to realize the Kalachakra Mandala that was to ornate the temple’s ceiling.

Norbou at the beginning agreed on painting, but not on teaching. As time went by he however saw that the right conditions for learning were there. Although motivated in the beginning, he also met with disillusion, for pupils would prove unstable, then most of those trained would enter retreat, and other circumstances. It is indeed difficult to have to start all over again with newcomers, for this teaching is a very demanding one.

Norbou has come to work on the Great Mandala three times. In spite of Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche’s insistence, who would like to see him teach all year round, he somehow showed reluctance in coming again. During his last visit however he stayed six months, to set up the conditions for apprenticeship.

The true function of these workshops is to safeguard imperilled traditions and art techniques proper to our lineage. This knowledge, which is linked to rituals Guendune Rinpoche never had time to teach us (such as making tormas, or sand mandalas), is often halfway between technique and ritual. We know it is very important to protect these aspects of Dharma. What we are discovering is that each type of expression carries an identity whose style differs from the one of an other lineage.

What also matters, apart from protecting and learning how to perpetuate these traditions, is to adopt new techniques. That is why we are currently learning the western art of stained-glass window making, and how to use bronze. Tibetans have always been keen on incorporating foreign ways, either from Persia, China or other countries into their own means of expression.

Most of their sculptors used to use clay, but nowadays in modern temples artists often work with cement, a material they first came across in India, in 1959. Fresh cement fits in between the Old and the New. That’s the reason why we have dedicated a workshop to it. This is a technique into which Tibetan artists have displayed much talent.

Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche is himself in favour of certain innovations, such as stained-glass windows, among other things…We here witness the beginnings of a Karma Kagyu expression specific to the West.

"To conclude, the Karma Kagyu artists of today must put to profit whatever is useful to their expression, without any bias, for what matters is for that expression to serve something perfectly authentic. That is why we make a point of respecting the iconography in a scrupulous manner, without deviating".