We remain enormously
grateful to all of you who are sponsors of monks. Your donations contribute to the well-being
of the entire monastery, through the food fund, in education, healthcare
through the clinic, as well as giving the individual monk a connection with
someone from the other side of the world.
Thank you so much for your continuing support.
News from the Monastery is that the project to add a second floor to
the school building has now been completed, and that the students are very
happy with their new accommodation. Last
year a donor gave funds for the purchase of a photocopier, and we are now
looking for a projector for use during lessons, so if anyone has a
spare/second-hand one that is no longer needed, it would have a good home in
the school! The construction of the
Choera (Debate Hall) will start within the next few months, and this, when
completed, will be of immense benefit to the monks. We have also recently learned that His
Holiness the Dalai Lama will be in South India during February
and early March 2009, and we hope he will visit the monastery at some stage during
his time there and see the improvements which the monks have made. The major appeal for funds continues for the
construction of the much-needed new Assembly Hall, of which the Choera makes
the first stage.
The cultural tour of eight monks during 2008 started auspiciously with
a Chenrezig Sand Mandala exhibition in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge as part of the
Heart of the World Festival. This
offered the opportunity for a couple of ‘sporting’ activities: a second cricket
match with the Britten Symphonia and punting on the Cam, both of which
were greatly enjoyed by all involved.
The visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama
to the UK in May again saw the monks in splendid surroundings, making a
Mandala in the Upper Waiting Hall of the House of Commons prior to His
Holiness’ visit to address the Members of Parliament in the Foreign Affairs
Committee.
The monks were also in Nottingham during the five days
of teachings organised by Dharma Network, and offered prayers onstage ahead of
each session of teachings, as well as completing a Vajrasattva Mandala.
We returned to Bournemouth for a sand
mandala exhibition in the Library and performance in the BIC, and were invited
to tea with the Mayor. A small
contingent drove to the Netherlands for the Mundial
Festival near Eindhoven where, in spite
of constant rain, Ven Thokmed la managed to make a peace mandala to huge
popular acclaim. Although prevented from
taking the whole group due to problems with visas, we have been invited back
for the same festival in 2009, and hope that we will manage to get all the
monks there this time. We also worked in
Spain with our Agent,
who has been finding a lot of good work for us.
The next stage of the tour took us to Suffolk, Exeter, Yorkshire, Newcastle, Chipping
Norton, Sandwich and back to Jersey on the Channel Islands for two
performances in the Jersey Arts Centre.
We were, as you can imagine, very grateful for our new/secondhand
minibus, which made the driving much more comfortable. More highlights included a week on the Isle of Wight at Quay Arts
Centre in Newport, a performance
at Womad near Malmesbury, after which Rinpoche gave an interview for Radio 3,
and a final four days in Devon and Cornwall.
The monks returned to India at the beginning
of August, and came back to the UK for a second
mini-tour at the beginning of October, when they spent a week in Bath at the beautiful
Museum of East Asian Art. We drove to Bridlington for a performance at
Sewerby Hall for Music Port, which was only
marred by a broken clutch on the way home which necessitated an AA relay
journey home. The monks spent a week in
the Czech Republic where they had a
great VIP reception and were personally entertained by the Mayor, staying in a
five star hotel. We now have rather a
lot to live up to!
We have been developing our workshops over this year, and have been
invited to a number of very interesting places, including a school in
Puddletown, organised by Salisbury Cathedral interfaith organisation, a series
of Nottingham schools in the wake of HH the Dalai Lama’s visit, a return visit
to Port Regis School in Dorset and three days in HM Prison The Verne, where the
monks made a mandala and ran a series of art and performance workshops for the
prisoners.
A film crew from Channel 4 followed us around for most of the tour, and
we are hoping that we will hear that a short film has been commissioned. We also brought out are new CD, ‘Dawn till
Dusk’, which was reviewed favourably in Songlines, the world music magazine,
and brought us quite a lot of good publicity during the year.
The monks will be back in the UK for another
series of performances in 2009, and we very much hope to see you at some point
during the tour. The full programme will
be on our website and as usual, I will be sending you a copy of the full tour programme as soon
as it is available. We are also planning
a visit to Ladakh during the late summer 2009 to visit many of the places where
the monks from Tashi Lhunpo Monastery come from. Please do contact us if you are interested in
coming along.
