Last Updated on January 4, 2025 by pg@petergamma.org
Hünenberg in Canton Zug currently has 8990 inhabitants:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCnenberg_ZG
2018 around 7,500 people of Tibetan descent live in Switzerland, this is a similar number of people than who live in the village of Hünenber.
In 1972 the new Holy Spirit Church in Hünenberg was built.
Here we can see a current priest of Hünenberg on Christmas 2022 in the fire depot which is on the same area than the church in Hünenberg:
It is Christian Kelter, Gemeindeleiter and Diakon in the Holy Ghost Church in Hünenberg ZG:
https://www.pfarrei-huenenberg.ch/wer-wir-sind/ueber-uns/team
The Tibet Institute Rikon Monastery
was established in 1968
In 1961, Switzerland was one of the first countries in the West that allowed Tibetan refugees to settle in large numbers. Tibetans have been living in Switzerland in larger groups since the 1960s, when the Swiss Red Cross helped to resettle about 300 Tibetans in Switzerland. Due to a strong influx of refugees from Tibet, the number grew to several thousand.[1]
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibeter_in_der_Schweiz
Henri and Jacques Kuhn, owner of Metallwarenfabrik AG Heinrich Kuhn, now Kuhn Rikon AG offered work and accommodations to a group of refugees. They helped found a monastic Tibet Institute for spiritual and cultural care of Tibetan people in Switzerland, which would also preserve and maintain the Tibetan culture for future generations.[1] Jacques Kuhn supported the monastic community until his death in January 2017.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet_Institute_Rikon
With around 8,000 people in Switzerland, Tibetans are the second largest East Asian immigrant group in Switzerland after the Filipinos. They live mainly in Zurich and Geneva, are mostly Buddhists and some still speak Tibetan as their mother tongue, and mostly German, French and Italian as foreign languages.[1] The Tibetan community in Switzerland is numerically the largest Tibetan community in Europe.[2]
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibeter_in_der_Schweiz
But the Tibetan community in Switzerland cannot be compared to the Christian communities in Switzerland, who have evolved over thousands of years.
The earliest information about Christianity in Switzerland comes from Irenæus, the Bishop of Lyon. There were already Christian “churches” in the area of the Helvetians and the other Celtic peoples, including the Allobroges in Geneva, around the year 180 a. Chr.
https://www.religionslandschaft.ch/de/religionen/geschichtliches/fruehes-christentum
The Tibetans in Switzerland do as far as we know not have something which can be compared to the church church taxes of the Christians to fund their community activities.
So to build a new center such as the Drukpa Center Kollbunn is difficult for Lama Pema Wangyal without such a financing by the Tibetan community
Is this the reason Lama Pema Wangyal has such a struggle to survive?:
Lama Pema struggles, although he has become a real Swiss, who never has enough time, as he said on “Schweizer Monat”:
In 2003, 3,000 Tibetans lived in Switzerland:
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/history/east-meets-west-in-swiss-tibet/1021034
And in 2018 their number increased to around 7,500 people of Tibetan descent. Many of those came to Zurich in 2024 to see the Dalai Lama, the Spiritual Leader of the Tibetans
And it is the Dalai Lama the 14. who awakened the interest of Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org for the Tibetans and the Tibetan Buddhism. And it is not only the Tibetans who visited events of the Dalai Lama in Switzerland, but also Peter went there twice. And the Tibetan Leader said things which are very interesting, as for instance:
““The essence of any religion is a good heart. Sometimes I call love and compassion a universal religion. This is my religion.” ― Dalai Lama XIV”