LIFE IN THE MONASTERY

Last November I took my first trip outside of Australia. My daughter, Amanda and I spent seven weeks in Nepal doing volunteer work, first at the Everest Children's Home and then at the Pema Ts'al Sakya Monastic Institute. The time at the monastery I found fantastic, amusing and so surreal. We taught classes, had classes in Buddhist philosophy, attended prayer sessions, ate with the monks, talked with the monks, laughed with monks, even danced with the monks and for a short while experienced life in the monastery.
(see sevenweeksinnepal.blogspot.com)

A little history of the monastery. Its located in the village of Hyangja, just outside of Pokhara. It was first established in 1999 in Kathmandu with 30 children, 25 of these were from the different villages of the district of Mustang (the people who are ethnic Tibetans) and five from Tibetan refugee camps around India and Nepal. In February 2002 in was moved to its present location near Pokhara, and in 2004 added 25 more students again from Mustang and Buddhist communities in Nepal. At present there are about 80 students but the monastery aims to accommodate 105 students eventually. The institute also caters for blind students who are taught using the newly invented system of braille pioneered at their sister school in Mundgod in India. Lama Kunga was formerly appointed chairman of Pema Ts'al in 1997.

The Kingdom of Mustang, where the children are drawn from, is one of the smallest Buddhist Kingdoms. It is located to the northwest of Nepal and surrounded on three sides by Tibet. Until recently it was one of the most isolated and inaccessible areas of the world. While its social and spiritual life has remained unchanged for centuries it lost its spiritual patronage from Tibet in 1959. The institute seeks to in part fill this void and preserve cultural identity and the Buddhist way of life.


The monastery is under the care and guidance of Lama Kunga. While there I was to teach him english. It was such a surreal experience each night to be in his room reading Goldilock and the Three Bears and trying to explain to him why she was called Goldilocks. He was so caring towards the young students and he had a great sense of humour. This was evident the night we returned late from shopping in the city to find he had locked us out of the monastery and wouldn't let us in until he had lectured us about being late .

While there we had the occasional Buddhist philosophy lesson. In one of these we talked about all life being sacred and how buddhists didn't eat meat, nor did they kill anything. Not even an insect. I saw this in practice one night in the dining hall when a mosquito landed on my arm. I made a swipe at it but missed and slapped my arm. It was like a scene from the movies. I felt like almost immediately eigthy faces turned to look at me and a dead silence descended on the place. Lucky I missed it.


One night I was called to remove a cockroach from the room the two female Dutch volunteers were staying in. Ronne and Eva were final year medical students and used to dealing in blood and body parts but Ronne just could not stand even the sight of cockroaches. The next morning the three of us attended the early morning prayer session held just before dawn. We would sit cross-legged on little benches around the side of the prayer room. Maybe it was divine intervention but in the middle of the prayer session a cockroach scuttled into the centre of the room. It stopped, slowly turned towards us, and then slowly scuttled closer and closer. It stopped just in front of us and sat there watching for about fifteen minutes before advancing to below our feet and then following the bench along to the door. Ronne was biting her lip trying not to scream. I was biting my lip trying not to laugh. I think the cockroach was just licking its lips and I'm sure it had a little grin.