Zangdok Palri Project Newsletter - February 2008

At the Dzogchen school…

The pupils were recently tested by regional authorities. Their degree of schooling was found to be remarkable and the school-orphanage was labelled best school in the region.
From among the eldest pupils, three girls have been given the opportunity to continue their studies at the Manigango high school, some fifty kilometres from Dzogchen.
Several other children have interrupted their schooling to take up the duties traditionally assigned to youngsters in nomad families. For the rest of this school year, therefore, there will be fewer pupils at the school, fourteen in all. Their tutoring will on the other hand be a lot more individual.

Urgyen Thöndup

Since 2004, when he first started teaching at Dzogchen, Urgyen Thöndup has shown strong motivation and great pedagogical skill. For personal reasons, this young man has decided to leave the school-orphanage: he goes with our best wishes! We hope to welcome a competent new teacher soon to join Urgyen Tso, our young school principal.

and our new English teacher

Rafael, our English teacher, left for Dzogchen and started his classes on 1 March.

Why learn English?
Today, as the modern age inexorably approaches, these young people are faced ever more directly with a lifestyle for which they are very ill-equipped. To avoid being marginalized in a society rapidly entering the information age, they need a solid command of the English language, that indispensable survival tool for tomorrow. No English tuition is available in the region.

Proficiency in English will not only enable the children of Dzogchen to enter the domain of information technology, but will also show them an opening into the world.
The local community will benefit on several levels: greater access to information will increase their understanding of their social, economic and political environment, greatly diminishing their risk of marginalization.
The young people, aware that Tibetan culture is threatening to disappear, will find it much easier to access the means of safeguarding their thousand-year old cultural heritage.

Moreover, on the middle to long term we envisage hosting Dzogchen’s most gifted pupils in the West to continue their studies. As young people trained in new trades and techniques return to Tibet, their new ideas and initiatives will launch an economic revival and inaugurate a brighter future for this entire poverty-stricken region.

Making a connection…

This spring, a new joint project will see the light between the Dzogchen school and the socio-pedagogical home Krondal in Denmark. In the words of Henrik Sahl, responsible for the project: “In the beginning of July 2008, I will venture to the Zangdok Palri orphanage and school in Dzogchen Valley, where I will shoot a little video, take pictures and conduct some interviews with the local responsibles. The footage will be used as documentation for the beginning of a project.
The project is about bringing young people in Denmark to do fundraising for the orphanage as an extended school assignment. This will be part of a special needs education programme for these institutionalized youngsters who are in the process of overcoming severe psychosocial problems and drug abuse. To conclude the project, we will bring the young people involved up there to actually see the orphanage. The rationale is that the very different cultural, material and spiritual situation in Dzogchen might change their perspective on their own situation, and that bringing much-needed help to the needy young people in Tibet might change their understanding of themselves.”

Many thanks to our sponsors
- to the Fraen a Mammen association of Bettembourg, for donating their charity earnings to us
- to Michèle and Georges, for suggesting to their friends and relatives to make a donation to Zangdok Palri to celebrate the birth of Lila
- to all our sponsors and patrons, for their generous support of our continuous development of the Dzogchen school-orphanage!

Have you ever heard of wind horses?
You can see prayer flags all over Tibet: around monasteries and temples, on the roofs of houses, at crossroads, on bridges and mountaintops. They are called ‘lungta’ in Tibetan: ‘lung’ means air or wind, ‘ta’ means horse.
These lungta or wind horses are always seen in a series of five colours, white, blue, red, yellow and green, representing the five elements: space, water, fire, earth and air. They are very often still printed by traditional methods, from wooden printing blocks. In the centre of each flag is a picture of the wind horse carrying on its back the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma or teaching and the Sangha or community of students. There can also be a picture of a deity. The picture is surrounded by prayers, mantras and sometimes auspicious symbols.
For Tibetan Buddhists, the wind carries these sacred formulas away, spreading happiness and good fortune to all beings near and far.
The old flags are replaced with new ones every year on the Tibetan New Year.