Siddhartha School request from Galen
Art teacher and Global LAB board member Kathleen Frye visiting Siddhartha School students in Ladakh last month
Hi Everyone-
I want to let all of you know about a terrific opportunity that we have for the second week of our program in Ladakh at the Siddhartha School, a small day school which I visited for the first time last fall.
The Siddhartha School was founded in the small village of Stok, Ladakh in 1995 by Geshe Lobsang Tsetan Khen Rinpoche, a Ladakhi monastic abbot who had been living and teaching at a Tibetan center in Washington, New Jersey as well as throughout the northeast of the US since 1978. In 1992 he returned to his homeland of Ladakh in order to open the Siddhartha School and educate the children of a community without a school of their own. With funds raised primarily in the west the Siddhartha School was established, and today the 100 students enrolled there learn Ladakhi, Tibetan, Hindi, and English languages, as well as math, science, history, and culture. Geshe-la (now more commonly known as Khen Rinpoche) travels to the US every fall and winter, and lives and teaches for much of this time just outside of Portland, Maine. Both last winter and again this past spring I had the good fortune to spend some time with him at teachings which he was offering near my home here in Portland. One afternoon over a pizza buffet at his favorite local restaurant we shared our stories of Ladakh and Buddhism in America, and he expressed warm and sincere gratitude for bringing my previous groups to his school. In turn, I said the honor and pleasure was ours, which is the plain and simple truth.
Although I have not been able to confirm his status this fall, there’s a decent chance that Geshe-la will be in Ladakh this September (if not he’ll most likely be on his way back to Portland, Maine or Northhampton, Massachussetts). Either way, we have the great opportunity to visit his school, engage the secondary students in their exercises of English grammar and world geography, and quite possibly receive an amazing dance performance by the nursery and kindergarten classes. Furthermore, I'd like us to participate in this exchange in an extra way, with a contribution similar to what we made last October and for which Geshe-la has already expressed his immense appreciation to us.
While the school has incredible teachers, and an amazing founder/director in Geshe-la, they are nevertheless challenged in terms of financial resources. They are presently building a library which students aged 4-18 will have access to, but their book collection is very limited. In asking Geshe-la how we could most help his students last fall, one request he had was for a donation of English books, if possible. Last October and April our students were each able to bring a couple of books on many different subjects, even (and especially) children's books in English, and the welcome and appreciation we received for making such a modest contribution was truly inspiring.
And so I wanted to extend Geshe-la's gracious request that, if at all possible, we each bring a book or two to donate to the Siddhartha School. I know it's awfully late to ask you all to bring yet something more, but perhaps you can dig up a couple old books and bring them along. Twenty books from us, though it seems like a small contribution, would actually mean quite a lot to them. Please don't burden yourself by carrying too much, but anything at all (especially with pictures) will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks everyone, and please check out the Siddhartha School and Geshe-la’s biography online.
And, as always, if you have any questions in regards to the Siddhartha School or something else general or specific please don’t hesitate to be in touch with me directly.
Thanks so much and see you soon-
Galen
ps-Geshe-la has also been the abbot of Tashilumpo Monastary in Karnataka, South India for a number of years (this is one of the largest monastaries in the Tibetan world), and just last summer was made Khen Rinpoche (High Priest) of Tashilumpo by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (hence Geshe-la’s new title, Khen Rinpoche).