TV: The West Cork temple at edge of the world
A few years ago, an international group of misfits and spiritual seekers came up with a utopian dream - to build a traditional Tibetan Buddhist temple on a remote cliff in one of the most savagely beautiful parts of Ireland.
The remarkable story of how Dzogchen Beara in West Cork came to be is told in a new documentary this week.
Called , it airs on RTÉ1 on Thursday at 10.15pm.
The feature-length film tells the story of Dzogchen Beara, a spiritual haven perched amidst the stunning landscape of West Cork’s Beara peninsula.
Founded by Peter and Harriet Cornish in 1973, the Centre appointed an internationally renowned Buddhist teacher, Sogyal Rinpoche, as its spiritual director, in 1994. More than 20 years later, the community was rocked by revelations that Rinpoche was a serial sexual predator.
With unique access over five years, Maurice O’Brien’s film captures the community’s efforts to come to terms with this scandal and with the death of Peter Cornish, while constructing Ireland’s first Tibetan Buddhist Temple.
The documentary was produced with funding from Coimisiún na Meán’s Sound & Vision Fund and Screen Ireland.
Nestled on the rugged coast of West Cork, with its copper roofs glistening across the skyline, and original Tibetan architecture, the new temple opened its doors to the public last summer when it hosted its first retreat.
For three days, teachings were delivered to 280 participants who travelled to Dzogchen Beara.
Director of Dzogchen Beara, Malcolm MacClancy, at the time explained the thinking behind the site for the temple..
“Temples bring different levels of benefit. But this temple, in terms of geomancy, its position at the very southwestern tip of Europe is particularly a power point.
“A thousand years ago, the monks who went out to the Skelligs recognised something about this place as being the edge of the known world at that time,” he said.
“They really thought they were at the edge of the world, you know?”
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