
What was so unsettling about approaching, by car, a Buddhist retreat center in the middle of western Montana?
Great question, but a definitive answer won’t be forthcoming in this post. Just images, public-facing narrative context, and local insights you have to be IN PERSON to hear directly, from locals, and I’m talking close enough in person to smell the aroma of urine wafting from a jovial town drunk.

It was around 4:30pm on a weekday last week that I arrived with a friend to the desolate valley cul-de-sac’ing in a horseshoe-shaped bowl of mountains where the Namchak center is located. Offering three-year stints to meditate and find enlightenment, this retreat center isn’t for your casual Buddhist.
I would expect nothing less from a seasoned JuBu like Linda Pritzker, the humble billionaire who is ultimately the figure (and money) at the heart of “establishing the Namchak lineage” into the cultural fabric of western Montana.
Whatever that means.

Surviving volcanoes, floods, bioweapons, zombies, wildfires, and other forms of world-transforming cataclysm means having food, so pictured above are the new greenhouses currently under construction at Namchak. There are also yummy looking steaks walking around on four legs for hearty protein when the need arises.
I wanted to go back in time to before the heavy machinery getting to work outside Hot Springs, Montana, to when the number of Buddhas in Arlee was still under 500.
Who was involved in establishing the Namchak lineage back then (2010)?
More than 430 Buddha statues have been completed at Ewam Montana in Arlee. Their goal is to have 1,000 finished and placed by the fall of 2011 for the opening of the garden. If all goes as planned His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama will attend the dedication ceremony
Visualize a 10-acre garden with a thousand Buddhas to inspire visitors of all faiths to reflect on peace and find compassion and happiness within themselves.
Buddhist teacher Gochen Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche of Tibet had such a vision many years ago.
There’s a difference between having a “vision” and building an off-grid fallout complex spread across an entire valley, so let’s see who else was involved in raising that number of Buddhas to 1,000:
Recently, the center announced that the Dalai Lama has agreed to personally consecrate the garden. Dr. Georgia Milan, coordinator for the visit, has scheduled the momentous event for late 2011, pending completion of the project.
“His Holiness is getting older — he’s 75 this year — [so] we wanted to make sure we took advantage of his incredible, kind and generous offer to come and consecrate our garden,” she said. “We’re going to work very hard.”
Did the Dalai Lama make an appearance? No, but an article from 2014 better places the date of the original vision…

In Arlee in 1993, Rinpoche visited a sheep farm that seemed the real life embodiment of a place he’d dreamed of as a child. He was forced to study Buddhism in secret after the Chinese invaded his Tibetan province when he was 7 years old. He spent nine years in prison.
“He recognized the land, and other signs pointed him that way. He had a belief he would come to America and a lot of teachers told him to spread it to the West,” said Deborah Hicks, Ewam spokeswoman. “A lot of Westerners try to learn meditation but don’t know who to go to. They’re wonderful for moving here and helping us.”
In the ensuing years, Rinpoche, along with students and volunteers, turned the sheep pasture into a tranquil garden.
…and the fact that Namchak’s Hot Springs location was already being planned in 2014:
The Buddhist community at the Ewan and a Buddhist community developing on a retreat center near Hot Springs have made themselves known to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council, said Robert McDonald, communications director.
“They’ve self-identified as trying to do outreach,” he said.
Tribal members are outnumbered three-to-one on the reservation, McDonald said.
“Our main focus is on operating our crucial services for tribal members and going about our business,” he said.
Before we return to Dr. Georgia Milan and an organization called Hands On Global, I want to tell the local story I heard about an injured elk shot dead on the Namchak property–land clearly identified in this article as TRIBAL lands.
Before mercifully shooting the injured animal, did anyone at Namchak think to notify Tribal Police that an elk had to be put down? According to the town drunk’s friend telling me this story, no, but Tribal Police eventually found out, and it took a hefty “fine” (I was told) to remedy that little whoopsie.
Not very respectful of your indigenous neighbors, is it, Dr. Georgia?
By the time Namchak was being built, Dr. Georgia Milan was in Pocatello, Idaho, working at a free clinic. For context on her non-profit work with people from other cultures, here’s an excerpt about her refugee work around the world:
Another day had been a blur—a not-one-more-thing-I-can-do-no-more kind of day—at a medical clinic in a Ukrainian refugee camp near the Romanian border last spring.
“We were all so exhausted and still had to cross the border when a grandmother came just as we were about to close,” said Valerie Hellermann, a registered nurse and founder and executive director of Hands On Global, a nonprofit headquartered in Helena, Mont., that tends to the medical needs of the underserved in the United States and abroad.
She and her longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Georgia Milan, were among a team of volunteers on a 20-day medical mission during March and April. Dr. Milan welcomed the grandmother, her last patient of the day.
“If a person asks for care, Georgia cannot say no,” Hellermann said. “I’ve seen it so often wherever we’ve worked together in Ukraine, Greece, India, South America, or the medical tent at Standing Rock during the oil pipeline stand-down. It took more than an hour to treat the woman, yet Georgia was never impatient or made her feel rushed. She listens, giving her entire attention to the people she sees and makes them feel like they matter. That attitude is so important with refugees because they feel like they’re invisible and forgotten.”
If refugees feel “invisible” and “forgotten” then THANK GOD (or Buddha) that an empathic white woman from America is joining forces with OTHER women, like Valerie Hellermann, and the “Tibetan Children’s Education Foundation”:


For historical context, Hands On Global got its start in 2017 after Valerie Hellermann got inspired by traveling to India to work with the Tibetan Children’s Education Foundation which, when I checked the 990 form, is also based in Helena.
Hmmm.
Hands On Global began in 2017 after Valerie Hellermann traveled to Zanskar, India while working with the Tibetan Children’s Education Foundation. At the request of Geshe Yountan, a medical assessment team journeyed into the remote Himalayan region to serve Zanskari Tibetans.
What began as a simple clinic in a mud hut became something much larger. The team witnessed profound medical needs in one of the world’s most isolated regions — a place His Holiness the Dalai Lama has described as among the last authentic Tibetan cultures. During that visit, the Dalai Lama encouraged the team to continue this humanitarian work.


How many tax-exempt organizations was I going to find? It was like an infinite lotus flower of never-ending non-profits blooming, and I just kept finding more petals, like the Feathered Pipe Ranch founded by hippies in the early 70’s.
This is getting tiring.

I went back to India and asked Baba what to do with the Ranch, and he said make a place to train leaders of the world.
In the summer of ‘73, Jeanette Herman, an astrologer, and Doug McKay, a graphic artist, wandered through, having heard about us. She and I became the seminar leaders. Janis Paulsen, William and I started the Holistic Life Foundation and we began to organize seminars. These were the summers of ‘73 and ‘74. I had nothing planned – it was a laid back, never-ending summer. William came back with students and we started to create what is now the Feathered Pipe Foundation. William had great creative energy and was able to put things together nicely, I had the heart energy and Janis had the administration skills. It was an amazing team.
By the end of the summer of ‘74 we were ready to start our mission. William and Janis went back to San Francisco, rented a large house on 10th Avenue and started the California Yoga Teacher’s Association under the auspices of the Holistic Life Foundation. They created the Yoga Journal with William as the first editor and Janis as assistant editor. They laid it out and published it from their bedrooms with an IBM Selectric – our own typesetting machine – Janis’ credit card (limit $500), and sheer will. I commuted between Montana, San Francisco and India for years running the Feathered Pipe Ranch piece of the Holistic Life Foundation.
I found this organization the way I found the others; scanning 990 forms and looking up names, which leads me to an important question I think we, as Americans, should consider asking ourselves:
Is it time to end the tax-exempt status for non-profits AND religious organizations?
I hope all the well-meaning seekers of enlightenment and helpers of global refugees in Namchak’s orbit, like Ewam, and Hands On Global, and the Tibetan Children’s Education Foundation, and Feathered Pipe Ranch, all appreciate the tax-exempt boost they got (and get) as they operate Big Sky country.
And, after yesterday’s post about Bill and Hillary’s use of “Asian money“, we definitely have a better idea regarding how much Democrats like suckling cash from “non-profits” that “help” marginalized populations.
You’re welcome, “Buddhists”.
Since I probably won’t be getting any of those JuBu dollars for my upcoming birthday on Saturday, readers of this humble blog can direct their online donations to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.
And stay tuned, I plan on ending this week with a VERY BIG post about the death of Sean Stevenson, so stay tuned…
And, as alwways, thanks for reading!





























