Ratna Ling, a Buddhist retreat in the coastal hills above Salt Point State Park, has a modern printing plant that annually churns out 100,000 Buddhist texts destined for shipment to Tibetan monasteries.
"The goal is to replace the texts that were burned by the Chinese at 6,000 monasteries during the Cultural Revolution," said attorney Curt Caton of Berkeley, spokesman for Ratna Ling.
Inside the metal-sided warehouse, a robotic arm stacks texts brought by an overhead conveyor belt in the plant, where Tibetan-language pages roll off a modern Heidelberg press.
Outside, the bucolic countryside seems more like a setting for ranching, timber and vineyards, except for the traditional Buddhist garden nearby, with prayer flags flying and a giant Stupa statue.
The printing of Buddhist texts has been allowed by Sonoma County for six years because it is considered a religious practice for the volunteer workers, some of whom live there or visit as students or retreat participants.
"Our goal is to produce texts to preserve the culture, and we do it in the most expeditious way we can," said Gene Gretchen, retreat center director. "We never projected ourselves as being here with wood blocks."
Some neighbors, however, said that what was portrayed as a small printing operation that is ancillary to the retreat, at times has printed more than 300,000 texts a year, three times what the county had permitted.
They are protesting Ratna Ling's application to expand the living space at the retreat site and the printing capacity. The request is being considered today by the Sonoma County Board of Zoning Adjustments. On April 5, the board granted preliminary approval.
The application is being opposed by Coastal Hills Rural Preservation, which is made up of area ranchers and landowners.
"We do not oppose the retreat center; it is an appropriate use," said Carolyne Singer, spokeswoman for the group. "The printing operation is an industrial use that belongs in an industrial area, whether they sell the books or not."
Singer said if the application is approved, the group may appeal to the county Board of Supervisors.
The Ratna Ling Retreat Center was established in 2004 when the Berkeley-based Tibetan Nyingma Meditation Centers bought Timberhill Resort, once meant to be a mountaintop getaway for the wealthy.
The retreat is on 120 acres with sweeping views of hills on Seaview Ridge, about 10 miles north of Fort Ross.
It is considered an annex to Odiyan, a Buddhist monastery in the hills nearby that was founded by Tarthang Tulku, an exiled Tibetan lama, in 1975.
Soon after Ratna Ling was founded, the Buddhist community received approval from the Board of Zoning Adjustments to move Dharma Press, its book-publishing operation, from Berkeley to the property.
It also was allowed to build cabins and buildings and remodel existing buildings to create a retreat center with a lodge, dining hall, library, meditation hall and meeting room for community members, students and visitors.
Gretchen said there may be 40 visitors and students and 27 staff members at the center at any one time.
As part of their religious stay, they work in the printing plant.
Gretchen allowed a tour of the plant, where four people were working, but said photographs were not permitted for religious reasons.
The printing plant is in a pale yellow corrugated building half the size of a football field, located below the brow of a hill and hidden from the view of Hauser Bridge Road, which traverses the retreat center property.
There are six presses, but only two are modern and do the bulk of the work, printing runs of 1,000 to 2,000 texts that are wrapped individually in orange cloth and tied with red ribbon.
The other four presses are older and kept because they have printing plates that don't fit the modern presses. They are used in smaller runs of about 500 texts, Gretchen said.
"We have been working 40 years to collect these texts from around the world," Gretchen said.
The texts are printed on acid-free paper meant to last 200 years and stored in four large tent structures called "sacred text treasuries."
Gretchen said hundreds of thousands of texts are stored there, awaiting permission from the Chinese government to ship to the Himalaya region.
"We need to stockpile. We may see a window of opportunity to ship texts into Tibet; it may last six months or 20 years, but we have to be ready," Gretchen said.
The Buddhist texts are meant to replace those destroyed in 1959 and 1960, when Chinese soldiers after a decade of occupation destroyed 6,000 monasteries and the monastic libraries.
China invaded Tibet in 1950, defeating the Tibetan army and establishing its sovereignty over the nation.
At Ratna Ling, two to three trucks a week come to the site, and some supplies are delivered by private parcel companies, Gretchen said.
Ratna Ling is seeking to have one 24-foot truck a day and to run the presses from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily and to increase the number of workers allowed in the printing plant from 27 to 94.
The application also seeks to convert the text storage tents to permanent storage, build a six-bedroom residential facility and a seasonal campground, increasing retreat occupancy to 122.
Singer said they are opposing the entire application because it allows for an expansion of the printing operation. She said the tent storage is a fire hazard.
Cynthia Demidovich, a county planner, said Ratna Ling had been in violation of its 2004 permit but worked with planners to bring it back into compliance, except for an unauthorized addition to its printing building.
"With this approval, that will be in compliance as well," Demidovich said.
The Board of Zoning Adjustments meets at 1 p.m. at the county Permit and Resource Management Department.
You can reach Staff Writer Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bob.norberg@pressdemocrat.com.
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