Student Perspective

Here are a few unedited samples of what the students are observing and experiencing. Excerpted, with their permission, from their journals.

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many mountains in one glance. They just never end. The mountains stand so tall and numerous while the river seems to have a mind of it’s own weaving in between. I love new thinkgs, new sights, new pwople. It’s all about learning as much as you can from what’s around you—people, places. Mountains, rivers. It’s fiving it time to sink and spending less time expecting or planning. Life goes on, no matter what my friends are still at school while I sit by a famous giant river. You can never predict the future and I love it.
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One thing I really like about staying at the monastery and library is getting to interact with the monks. At first I was afraid of dishonoring one or being disrespectful to one but now I find that the monks are very kind, generous, happy and forgiving people. It makes me smile to see them laughing on a cellphone or sitting sipping chai at the corner. Walking down the road one is always greeted with a cheerful ‘Jullay’ and just their whole atmosphere is very relaxed and happy. They are average people and just by observing them these past days I have found that the monks and I have more in coomon than I do with other locals I have met along this trip which is not what I would have expected. Their clothes too also interest me. They look so comfortable and are so simple yet each monk has a different oufit on. Usually I am not one who cares let alone notices what people are wearing but for some reason I am just intrigued by how different each monk’s clothes are yet they are so similar. But seriously I would love to walk around in long red skirts and giant scarf/shawls all day long.
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The more I learned about Buddhism the more the teachings resonated within me. I found myself thinking of them throughout the day and how applying these practices could benefit many people. Some of the concepts proposed really stretched my mind and forced me to do some abstract thinking. For instance, the idea that there is no “I” and that t is just an illusion is quite intriguing, especially because it is so contradictory to Western views. Also the idea that happiness was the cause of happiness was truly alien idea that took some time to begin to fully understand. However, the more I listened to the Khenpo the more the teachings made sense. For instance, he told us all to look within ourselves and try and find what makes us us. It’s impossible to identify the one characteristic that makes us “I”.
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Listen to this: When you stop to think, think through the eyes of the kids. Beggin’ for their next meal, searching for old bottles and odd can lids just to get by. We walked by, didn’t even bat an eye. Sit down, take sips of our tea, while they’re still hungry. Turn our heads towards the sky. Bend our faces upward, anything, just “keep walking,” do anything to not look down at the ground where we know hunger abounds. But their cries pull us in and we cannot look away from their little beseeching frowns, as in their eyes hope is drowned, and surrounded by glum sadness confounds them. We say it’s “us” and “them” because we don’t want to admit that we’re both interconnected. don’t want to admit that it’s partly our fault that they are so adversely affected. Why is it that we are respected when every time we thoughtlessly consume we effectively make them have a little less. All is an interconnected chain of cause and effect, Buddha said. But we are not blessed, with the wealth we are born with, no, because it gets us obsessed and we cannot escape until we make the request to leave it all. Gotta give it away I guess, only then will we see thing for what they are.
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Barely ten years old
Left to watch the shop alone
Green comb in hand.
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(Siddharta photos) Every day student read Hesse’s Siddhartha out loud on the roof of the Songtsen Library. This day the library was closed so we read in the gardens.