Early this year I decided that I would try to spend a considerable amount of time in Tibet. I started investigating volunteering opportunities and came up with a couple of possible organisations who had operations in places of interest, and who had jobs that looked as if they could use my skills and experience. One of these was an American based charity which had posts in Kham, but the other was ROKPA - the charity associated with Samye Ling. This charity's work is based on supplying food, and providing education to orphans and the children of single parent families, in Nepal, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Tibetan areas of China. While its objectives are less well matched to my skills than the American charity; they do have the overwhelming advantage of being UK based, and thus far more accessible than the other one.
My motivation for going to Samye Ling was sparked by this investigation, and a general interest in all affairs Tibetan, and some interest in Buddhism. I booked the course up convinced that this was my only motivation. However, I got more out of the week than I anticipated, and it made me realise that my motivations were much more extensive than I thought when I booked the course.
The timetable for the course was:
06:00-07:00 Green Tara Puja (prayers) - optional
07:00-08:00 Breakfast
08:00-09:00 Guided meditation practices
09:00-11:00 Work period
11:00-11:30 Tea break
11:30-12:30 Teaching
12:30-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:00 Activity/teaching
15:00-17:00 Free time
17:00-18:00 Teaching
18:00-19:00 Soup
19:00-20:00 Chenrezig puja & instruction
20:00-21:00 Cafe (some activities and some nights)
On the first evening we were all given a choice of work assignments - with the option of changing these every couple of days. I opted for maintenance, as likely to be the hardest physical work on offer. I wanted something that would leave me physically tired, as it is easier to switch off the mental racetrack I sometimes get on as I try to go to sleep. In the event I enjoyed the work so much that I opted for this work for the whole of the week.
The jobs I ended up doing during the work period included helping shift sheet steel and scaffolding poles, going with the monk who is the caretaker and health and safety officer for the site to feed the (pet) yaks they have at the monastry, helping him lay out an iron gate that he is making for Holy Island (where the long term retreats are held), clearing up scrap metal, putting boxes of files and papers up into one of their attics, collected a band finisher from one of the monastry's other sites, used the band finisher to take the sharp corners off the metal work on the gate, shifted some waste timber from their camp site, erected a safety fence to keep the public from an earth and rock dump, and shifted various bits of timber. All in all an interesting set of jobs that fulfilled my aim in selecting that work.
I found the monk, to whom I was providing a small amount of unskilled labour, to be a very interesting character. Built like a brick outhouse (or something similar), he is heavily tatooed down both arms, which are visible when he is in his monk's robes, and a genuine artist with metal work. Metal that he was working just seemed to become what he wanted it to be, without effort. He has taken life long vows as a monk. He also has a great sense of mischief, and regaled me with stories of the funny situations he has been in, or created. A nice guy to meet and work with.
to be cont.
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