Gift of Sight

The idea to bring used eyeglasses to Tibet came to Ashley Pasteka (a student on the “WorldWide Tibet” course) last year at Terdrom. Ashley had taken a nap in the Terdrom guestroom. When we woke up, one of the head nuns was wearing Ashley’s reading glasses and reading a text. That was when Ashley recognized a need among the nuns. She brought the idea to us and I decided to start a small “Gift of Sight” project to fundraise and collect used eyeglasses and sunglasses (snow blindness during the winter can be a serious problem) to bring to the nuns and other underprivileged in remote areas. Through the sales of items we bought from the Barkor last year and the efforts of various individuals, I was able to bring a few hundred pairs of glasses on this trip and monetary donations as well. Most of the eyeglasses were given to the 180 or so nuns and retreatants at Terdrom. We just left them with the two nuns we met the day we visited Terdrom since the director nun I know – Ven. Puntsok Drolma – was away in Lhasa and other nuns were over at Drigung-til attending the annual cham. We did keep some extra glasses for Namtso as Bhuchung-la knew that they would be greatly appreciated by residents there. So when we got to Namtso, we found some people who clearly needed this “gift of sight” – nuns, lay caretakers, retreatants, and pilgrims and nomads from remote areas.




If you can help with next year's "Gift of Sight," please contact me! I'm hoping to take a group of Drigung Kagyu followers to Central Tibet next June.

Colliding Karma

Colliding in a good way, that is. I can't believe how many friends I have run into in Lhasa this time. Although I knew I would see a couple of them, I had no idea that it would be so many. On the morning after I arrived, my Dharma-friend Christine from California (we were expecting each other) turned up at Kyichu Hotel looking for me. Then we left for Drigung a couple of days later. Early morning after returning from Drigung, as I was stumbling downstairs to meet Christine before she left Lhasa, I ran into a Benji Bogin and Betsy Napper - colleagues in Buddhist Studies. It was my first meeting with Betsy who graduated from UVA Religious Studies years before I got there. Benji, I first met at an AAR a couple or 3 years back when he was then finishing up his PhD. The next day, while meandering around the Barkhor, shopping and people-watching while circumambulating the Jokhang, I ran in Jon Stoltz - a graduate-buddy. Jon got his doctoral degree in Philosophy last year (I think). Jon spotted me first and stood watching behind me until I turned around and see him with a bag of potato fries in his hand and a smirk on his face. "What are you doing here?" "Me?" The next day, we got done with visiting Drepung and Nechung Monasteries and went into Namaste Restaurant near the Barkhor for lunch. It was a crowded room and at the end of one room, in a booth was David Germano, one of my mentors at UVA.... Then just yesterday, I met Ying whom I had met in my last year at UVA when it was Ying's first year MA-program at UVA. We were all over at Drophenling - the fair-trade place near the Lhasa Grand Mosque. I knew Ying was in Lhasa working for THDL and had chatted with her on Gmail chat (http://www.thdl.org). AND (yes... one more), later that evening, when I turned up for dinner with David was Rich. Rich was an undergrad at UVA when I was a grad student there. I remembered him as someone very interested in Tibet and studied Tibetan language.

Sow how many is it now? We will see how many more people I will run into in Lhasa. BTW, it's not just me, one of the members of our group - Sarah - ran into someone she knew at Drophenling as well! So, if you want to run into friends whom you hardly get to see while in the US, hop on over to Lhasa!

But as Ryan M. just commented on Gmail chat, "I wonder for every person we run into halfway across the world, how many others do we pass by just 60 seconds earlier or later without our knowing." I wonder.

Greenville-Atlanta-San Francisco

So that last (first? whatever) blog entry was done at GSP Airport. This next one is from Atlanta Hartsfield Airport but I was too cheap to pay $7.95 to put up a blog entry and so waited till I got here (SF - I have 3 hours to go before we take off).

It’ll be about 48 hours before I get to sleep on a bed. I left Swanna-no-where around 1030hrs on Wednesday for GSP Airport in South Carolina and will not arrive in Xining, China until 2030hrs on Friday (China time is 12 hours ahead of North Carolina time). Curious about the routing? Greenville-Atlanta-San Francisco-Hong Kong-Beijing-Xining. OUCH! The first time I’ll meet everyone in the group will be at the Beijing airport. Buddha willing (ok, that’s not buddhologically-sound but I needed an excuse to use the word “buddhological”), all twenty of us make it to Beijing in time to catch the flight to Xining. We’ll get to sleep a night in Xining and have a full day in Xining before catching the 26-hour Qinghai-Tibet train to Lhasa.


Right before I left I spoke to Jampa, one of the managers of Tibet Windhorse Adventures on the phone. The good news was I finally got to speak to him and got a confirmation that there will be someone at the airport in Xining picking us up. Relief. But the bad news was that our group will be in two separate trains – they were not able to get all 20 “soft-sleeper” seats on the same train. Bummer. And, the (2nd) good news is, they have sent Bhuchung-la to Xining to pick us up. Bhuchung-la (pictured here in a photo taken last year at Terdrom Nunnery) was our guide last summer. Fantastic guide, hands-down, no questions about it.
With Bhuchung-la coming to Xining to meet us, I can be in one train with one half of the group and Bhuchung-la can be with the other group in another.

A couple is about to watch a movie on one of those mini-TV/DVD units you cant rent at airports, an older lady is reading the magazine Kitchen Trends while nibbling on a burrito (I hope she’s getting remodeling ideas and did not just randomly decide to read that….), another woman is reading one of those gossipy, celebrity magazines (what goes on in some of these minds? Curious minds would like to know….), and a guy is reading some intelligent-looking book (tried to read the cover from across the row of seats but no success). People sitting across from me at the waiting area at Gate A26 at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. So that’s the “random report” that Dustin asked for – “to make it read more like a blog.”

Hmm... Ben & Jerry’s or Starbucks?

Sometimes, it is like
the sound of one hand clapping;
"Caution: Contents Hot!"

Blogging?

Yea... I've decided to blog this summer. And that was how shocked I was myself when I made the decision.... We'll see how long this is going to last but primarily it's to keep folks updated on my summer wanderings and wonderings.

I've to cut this short as I just heard "We would like to invite our customers on Delta flight 479 seated in Zone Nine to board right now...."