{"id":6841,"date":"2010-06-24T16:17:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T22:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=6841"},"modified":"2017-11-29T06:45:43","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T12:45:43","slug":"gyatsho-tshering-my-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=6841","title":{"rendered":"Gyatsho Tshering: My Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Strawberry Moon<\/p>\n

Gyatsho Tshering* died a year ago\u00a0 today.\u00a0 He left his wife and daughter who live in a neat\u00a0 home in a first ring suburb of Minneapolis, Columbia Heights.<\/p>\n

Regret is not a big part of my vocabulary.\u00a0 What’s past is\u00a0 past and cannot be changed.\u00a0 A healthy life, I \"tibetflag\"believe, leaves yearnings for past deeds, past achievements and lost loves behind us, where, I believe, they belong.<\/p>\n

I do have regrets about Gyatsho.\u00a0 Read the material below and\u00a0 you will learn what an amazing man he was.\u00a0 I sat in a class with him on South and Southeast Asian Art that he, no doubt, could have taught himself.\u00a0 He was a shy man, a bit introverted, although that could have been partly his immersion, late in life, in U.S. culture.<\/p>\n

He loved to share his knowledge, to speak from within his own experience and learning.\u00a0 He was a sweet man, and, as I told Scott Simpson today, I don’t meet many sweet people, a result, no\u00a0 doubt, of the company I keep.<\/p>\n

We had plans, Gyatsho and I, but we both tarried in fulfilling them.\u00a0 I was going to eat at his house, learn more about Tibetan Buddhism, just spend time with him.\u00a0 He didn’t call.\u00a0 I didn’t call.\u00a0 Then, he died.\u00a0 Tarrying has a cost.<\/p>\n

As a result, I went to his house today with a lump in my throat, a combination of grief and yearning, grief for Gyatsho’s absence and yearning for the time we did not get to spend together.<\/p>\n

Tibetan Buddhists, as in the Jewish tradition, commemorate a loved one on the anniversary of the death.\u00a0 Monks come to chant, friends and family prepare food, people sit on folding chairs and eat from styrofoam plates using plastic spoons and forks.\u00a0 Sound familiar?<\/p>\n

Gyatsho’s gracious wife,\u00a0 Namgyal Dolma, received guests and guided us in the ritual.\u00a0 Scott, Yin and I went in, one at a time into the tiny corner bedroom transformed into a small temple with thangkas and prayer flags, an altar with offerings and the monks on low cushions and the smell of incense.\u00a0 The chanting was remarkable, mesmerizing.\u00a0 I wanted to be there, bowing first to the monks, hands folded in a namaste like position, then to the altar.<\/p>\n

The chanting fell over me like a shroud, no, like a prayer shawl, a tefillin.\u00a0 It moved me into a sacred space at once, the repetition soothing.\u00a0 One of the monks, thick of shoulder with a magenta robe crossed over one shoulder, the other shoulder bare chanted in two tones, the throat singing that has gained some fame here.\u00a0 The other three, with magenta robes and gold, chanted in a single tone.\u00a0 They began at 10:00 am and will end around 5 pm, with, as Namgyal said, a break for lunch.<\/p>\n

Namgyal said, “He was my husband,” she paused, “and my teacher, too.\u00a0 He still lives here.”\u00a0 Her hands swept over her body.\u00a0 Me, too.\u00a0 In a much less intense way of course, but his presence lives on for me, as well.<\/p>\n

In a setting back home in Dharamsala or Tibet the monks would have been at one end of a long room, the food and the guests distributed further back.\u00a0 Every one would pray.\u00a0 In the more cramped conditions of a 1960’s working class suburban home, the whole became fragments:\u00a0 the monks in the corner temple room, the guests outside under an amazing orange tent, food being cooked in the garage with propane burners and woks.<\/p>\n

So, yes, I admit it.\u00a0 I regret not pursuing with more vigor and intention my relationship with Gyatsho.\u00a0 Not many, but this is one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
*Obituary: Gyatsho Tshering, Eminent Scholar of Tibetan Studies<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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Phayul<\/span>[Monday, June 29, 2009 12:17]<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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by Bhuchung K. Tsering<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\"His<\/p>\n

His Holiness the Dalai Lama inspecting the Library\u2019s construction plans with former director of LTWA Mr Gyatso Tsering (Left) (Photo: Tibet.net\/file)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Gyatsho Tshering, former director of the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives and a respected scholar, passed away on June 25, 2009 at a hospital in Minneapolis, MN, after a brief illness. He was 73.<\/p>\n

Born in 1936 in Sikkim to Lobsang Lama and Nyima Dolma, he finished his college education from the University of Calcutta. Following his studies, Ku-ngo Gyatsho la worked in the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of India, and had served at the Indian Mission in Lhasa. He also served in the Government of Sikkim.<\/p>\n

He joined the service of the Central Tibetan Administration in 1963 and worked in various departments until his retirement in the late 1990s. He served in the publications and translation department in 1965. In 1966 he was transferred to the Foreign Department and in 1967 to the Department of Religion and Culture. During his stint there he was a member of the entourage of H.H. the Dalai Lama during his first trip to Japan and Thailand. Subsequently he was promoted as a Secretary in the Department and later as Assistant Kalon. In 1972, he became the acting Director of the newly established the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives (LTWA) until the appointment of Prof. Thubten Jigme Norbu as the Director in June of that year. He was appointed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as the new Director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in 1974 and served in that capacity from March 1, 1974 until his retirement. Following his retirement he joined his wife, Namgyal Dolma, in the United States and they settled in Minneapolis, MN.<\/p>\n

He was an unassuming individual who shunned publicity, but was totally dedicated to his work. He came to serve the Tibetan community during those years when there was a dearth of educated Tibetans with adequate knowledge of the English language or exposure to the world. His most significant contribution would be the development of LTWA as the pre-eminent center for Tibetan studies internationally. He nurtured several Tibetans in the field of Tibetan studies at the LTWA. Also, it may not be incorrect to say that almost all of the Tibetologists serving in various research institutes and universities throughout the world currently have had some educational stint at the LTWA during his tenure there.<\/p>\n

His simplicity and his readiness to be of assistance endeared him to all those he came in contact with. Personally, he has been a source of encouragement to me from the time I started working in Dharamsala in the early 1980s. I benefitted greatly from his advices.<\/p>\n

As a subject of Sikkim and a citizen of India, Ku-ngo Gyatsho la had quite many work opportunities, often with more attractive compensation than the one he was getting at the LTWA. However, his reverence and loyalty to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his love of the Tibetan people made him reject all such job offers and to continue with his work in the Tibetan community.<\/p>\n

He liked gardening and used to have a neat but small garden at his official residence at the LTWA.<\/p>\n

He is survived by his wife Namgyal Dolma and daughter Yiga Lhamo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

A Home for the Tibetan Mind: The Legacy of Gyatsho Tshering<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Phayul<\/span>[Wednesday, July 01, 2009 18:59]<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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by Rebecca Novick<\/p>\n

When the young Gyatsho Tshering approached the Tibetan government with the idea to build a library he was told that he was crazy. \u201cThey said, \u2018This is impossible. You\u2019re just dreaming.\u2019\u201d Tshering could see their point. \u201cBut I am a dreamer. I just go on trying and trying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\"Gyatsho<\/p>\n

Gyatsho Tshering (1936 – 25th June 2009)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It was 1967, during the early and challenging days of exile. The re-established Tibetan government, overwhelmed and under-funded, was struggling to provide for 100,000 traumatized and penniless refugees, flooding over the Himalayas fleeing the Chinese occupation. But Tshering had his sights set further than the immediate needs of food and shelter.<\/p>\n

Tibetan Buddhist texts had been arriving in the sub-continent across Tibet\u2019s borders since 1959\u2014carried on the backs of these same refugees. Tshering was profoundly impressed by how many people, only able to bring with them what they could carry from their homes, chose to rescue dharma objects from their altars; pechas<\/em> (Buddhist texts) statues and thangkas<\/em> (sacred scroll paintings) rather than items of monetary value.<\/p>\n

Tshering was deeply concerned that the millennium-old heritage of Tibetan wisdom was being destroyed by Communist forces in Tibet. Inspired by the stories of the great library of Alexandria in ancient Egypt built to house the knowledge of the world, he wanted to create a safe repository to preserve \u201cthe skill of the Tibetan mind.\u201d He finally took his \u201cimpossible\u201d dream to His Holiness the Dalai Lama who gave the project his blessing. \u201cHe was very pleased,\u201d Tshering recalls. \u201cHe said, \u2018Why not? Go ahead.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But there were a few considerations. Firstly, there was no money. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have any funds,\u201d said Tshering. \u201cNot one cent. Not one penny.\u201d During visits to the West, he would always try to bring up his vision with potential supporters. He was repeatedly, if politely, turned down, with the explanation that the library would be a religious rather than educational establishment. But Tshering refused to become disheartened and he eventually found an ally in the Catholic Church that understood the importance of religious archives. \u201cThey were very generous,\u201d he said. After this, other funders gradually began to come on board.<\/p>\n

The texts that managed to survive the punishing conditions of high altitude passes and a rugged month-long trek in the packs of Tibetans dodging Chinese bullets, formed the library\u2019s very first collections which can still be seen today. Manuscripts were landing on Tshering\u2019s desk battered and torn, with missing pages and passages smudged beyond recognition from snow and rain. It was clear that the challenges went far beyond those of cataloguing and archiving. This was first and foremost a restoration project.<\/p>\n

A team of the most learned Tibetan scholars was assembled\u2014monks who had spent decades studying in the great monastic institutions of Tibet. \u201cIt had been part of their study to commit many of the texts to memory,\u201d said Tshering. They worked from dawn often into the late hours of the night, filling in the missing parts of the texts by hand with nothing but their own memory as a reference.<\/p>\n

Gyatsho Tshering expressed his regret that with the computer-age Tibetan calligraphy is fast becoming a lost art. \u201cTibetan calligraphy has power. It has energy. That is something that I miss. But what can we do? The times have changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The manuscript restoration team lived without electricity in shacks that before them had housed cows. \u201cWe were living hand to mouth, but we didn\u2019t care. We spent whatever we had that day even though we didn\u2019t know what we would eat tomorrow.\u201d Lamp oil was considered more precious than food. \u201cEvery day was a day of excitement for us because every day we discovered a new and rare manuscript.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gyatsho Tshering\u2019s most vivid memory of that time was the support that he and his team received from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. \u201cHe would personally take the time to come down and encourage each one of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The construction of the library building began in 1969 and took four years to complete and became known as the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. But just as it was mostly the contributions of ordinary Tibetans who filled its shelves, it was the contribution of the poorest and most disenfranchised Tibetans that stood out in its construction.<\/p>\n

In those days, many Tibetans were literally carving out a living on road crews in the harsh North Indian mountain states, sleeping and eating in dust-filled tents, and earning a meager 3 rupees a day. Many of these workers put aside one rupee and donated it to the construction of the library. Others even took unpaid leave to come to Dharamsala to volunteer as laborers on the building project. Said Tshering \u201cThey built it as if it was for themselves. That was very moving.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives began to gain international recognition acquisitions started to arrive not just from Tibet but also from Mongolia, Germany, and America. Private individuals began donating their personal collections, including a number of gifts that had been given to them or their family members by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. Tibetan scholars and academics from around the world began making regular visits to Dharamsala to the library that was becoming renowned for its rich and comprehensive collection of authentic Tibetan texts. Tshering recalled people like Jeffrey Hopkins, Robert Thurman, Stephen Batchelor, Alan Wallace and Alexander Berzin who went on to become seminal figures in the Tibetan Buddhist movement in the West. \u201cI remember every one of them,\u201d he said fondly.<\/p>\n

Today, the Tibetan Library houses the entire collections of Tengyur<\/em> and Kangyur<\/em> \u2014the complete Indian commentaries on the Buddha\u2019s sutras and the Tibetan Buddhist canon respectively. Every evening you can find Tibetans, generally the older ones, ambling clockwise around the building, rolling prayer beads through their fingers. \u201cWherever you find the collection of Tengyur<\/em> and Kangyur<\/em>, you will find people doing circumambulation around them,\u201d noted Tshering. \u201cWhenever they feel sad, whenever there is someone sick in their home, or when they want to find consolation, they go to the library and pray.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe library was a pioneering institution in many ways. We started a thangka painting school, a woodcarving school, a philosophy school. We had the cream of the scholars. Each one of them was a specialist in some field of Tibetan learning.\u201d The original idea was for the library to house only written works, but Tibetans were arriving with so many statues, and other religious artifacts that Tshering saw the need to also incorporate a museum. \u201cTo outsiders it\u2019s a museum, but to Tibetans it\u2019s something living.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tibetans going back and forth from Tibet in the 60s and 70s were often requested to look out for missing parts of key manuscripts that made up the monastic curriculum, and without which monks could not complete their studies. Although they risked arrest and imprisonment for bringing such items out of Tibet, to Tshering\u2019s knowledge no one ever got caught. He believed that there are still many important texts and documents languishing in drawers and file cabinets in Tibet, some that could prove politically \u201csensitive\u201d for the Chinese authorities who have no interest in seeing them made public.<\/p>\n

Born in 1936 in Gangtok, Sikkim, a country where Tibetan Buddhism dominates, Gyatsho Tshering grew up with a love of Tibetan culture, particularly its literature. \u201cThe attitude of the Tibetan people towards Buddhist philosophy was very different to now,\u201d he observed. The generation of which he was a part, was in his view motivated by a purity of purpose and a sense of altruism that\u2019s becoming harder to find in the Tibetan community. \u201cNobody thought to extend their hand to outside help,\u201d he said. \u201cWe all thought, if we don\u2019t do it, who will do it for us?\u201d<\/p>\n

Tshering served as the director of the Tibetan Library from up until 1998, after which he moved to the United States because he said, \u201cI needed some rest\u201d. He also wanted to have more time for his personal spiritual practice\u2014an ironic reversal of the West-East trail that has led legions of Westerners to seek spiritual opportunities in Asia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very satisfied that I was able to do something that was very much of benefit not only to Tibetans but also to people around the world. I\u2019m a very lucky person in that I led a useful life. I have no regrets. When I die, I will die in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gyatsho Tshering passed away at the age of 73 on 25th June 2009.<\/p>\n

—–
\nThis article is based on an interview with Gyatsho Tshering that took place in the summer of 2007 in Dharamsala. Rebecca Novick is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and the founding producer of The Tibet Connection radio program online at thetibetconnection.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Strawberry Moon Gyatsho Tshering* died a year ago\u00a0 today.\u00a0 He left his wife and daughter who live in a neat\u00a0 home in a first ring suburb of Minneapolis, Columbia Heights. Regret is not a big part of my vocabulary.\u00a0 What’s past is\u00a0 past and cannot be changed.\u00a0 A healthy life, I believe, leaves … Continue reading Gyatsho Tshering: My Friend<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,290,1450,14,11,566],"tags":[2541,823,1705,2540],"class_list":["post-6841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging","category-asia","category-commentary-on-religion","category-faith-and-spirituality","category-friends","category-humanities","tag-gyatsho-tshering","tag-regrets","tag-tibet","tag-tibetan-buddhism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6841"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41337,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6841\/revisions\/41337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}