Around the Monastery

Upon arriving at the monastery we were greeted by many of the monks, they all knew Jo, whose  Tibetan name was Tsomo, and I was introduced to many of them.  It turns out that most of the monks at this monastery are from the very mountainous Indian region of Ladakh, a part of the state of Kashmir, combined with a few Nepalese and a few monks from Bhutan.  The Rinpoche, high teacher, who started this monastery is from Ladakh explaining the preponderance of Ladakhis.  Since this monastery is new, building was only finished about seven years ago, and has not graduated a full class yet, most of the monks here are quite young, ranging from about 7 or 8 up to the older ones, who started elsewhere, and are in their mid-twenties.  The only monks here older than that are the teachers and the administrators of the school and monastery.  So, when I talk about monks most of the time I mean the younger ones who are still going through the required education given to all Tibetan Buddhist monks.

After being introduced around I was guided to my room, in the guest house section of the grounds, down about fifty steps from the level of the dining area.  I dumped my bags in the room and Jo gave me a very quick guided tour of some of the monastery before the gong rang to call us to dinner.  One thing I learned in this short time was that I had better get used to steps and ramps as the monastery is built into the side of a steep hill and everything is either up or down, few buildings are on the same level.  Dinner was tea, rice, vegetable curry and lentil soup all nicely spiced and in more than adequate quantity.  I would learn as time went on that this was a very common meal sometimes more veggies sometimes more potatoes, sometimes, not often, a different soup and often freshly baked flatbread.  We sat at a table with many of the older student monks and many of them began to try out their English on the new foreigner.  There was great variation in the quality of their English and I had a lot of difficulty understanding it because my ears were not yet tuned to their accent.  When dinner was over I returned to my room, unpacked, took a shower downstairs in the bathroom and was asleep by 9 PM, a full and rewarding day ended.

The next day after breakfast I took a longer look at the monastery campus, including climbing to the upper level where the shrine room and the large prayer wheels are located.  I had planned to count the number of steps from my room to the top but lost track along the way, but I can confidently say that it is at least 250 steps not including the inclined ramps.  If nothing else happens I am assured of the exercise that was part of the goal of this trip just by a daily walk around the campus.  Another thing I discovered in the morning is that there is fairly fast wifi in the classroom area and in the plaza in front of the classrooms, which makes life much easier in terms of keeping in touch with friends, checking emails and getting the news.  It will be easy to do the writing in my room and then before or after meals stroll up to the plaza and send off my work.  After lunch I had an opportunity to meet Kempo (kind of means head teacher) Dhundrop who was the one who asked for an teacher to help him with conversational English.  He is principal of the school and head of the administrative committee that runs the monastery on a daily basis, but you wouldn't know this on meeting him as he is very unassuming, down to earth and friendly.  One of the first things he asked me was if I liked to go for walks, I answered that I did but wasn't in very good shape because of the effects of Lyme Disease.  He said we could walk at my speed but that he would like to go for walks and talk.  So, it seems that in addition to the exercise I get walking around the monastery I'll be getting even more from our walks.  After the talk with Kempo Dhundrop, Jo and I talked some more about how I could help her with her work teaching English to the student monks, we didn't come up with a concrete plan but decided we would first see how much of my time would be spent with Kempo and then figure out how I could help her.  At 7 PM I had dinner in the dining hall and some great conversations, the the older monks and I are getting better and understanding each other.  After dinner I checked my email in the plaza, went back to the room, read a bit and was again in bed by 9 PM.  Not so early since I was now in the habit of getting up at 5 or 5:30 and doing some meditation, yoga and reading before breakfast.

No pictures this time, I'm still smarting from trying to get them set up the way I wanted last time and failing, but I hope to post again tomorrow, trying to get a bit caught up, and I'll get some pictures up with that post.