ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how Mongol Buddhist leaders have combined traditional and new religious elements in innovative ways to create modern or post-modern religious institutions in Ulaanbaatar since the turn of the century. Among the Dharma centres in Ulaanbaatar, only the Jetsundampa Khutugtu Centre has been founded by a Mongol and is supported by the Mongol business community rather than by money from Buddhist centres abroad. Modernizers of Gelugpa Buddhism in Mongolia emphasize more than new ways to teach Buddhist philosophy and meditation to laypeople. Like other modern Buddhist undertakings, the Kalachakra Culture Centre is based on monastic-lay collaboration. Mongolian cosmology has been shaped by normative Tibetan Buddhism, as well as by beliefs in benevolent and malevolent spirits inhabiting a sacred landscape. In Mongolian Red Tradition temples, chod, which is primarily connected with the Tibetan Nyingma and Kagyu traditions, is the main religious practice.
