The flyer for the upcoming Three-Year-Retreat in 2012 is now online. It can be downloaded here.

Please come back for updates often, because some of the courses may shift.

Love,
Ani Dreunma

in 2 short phone calls Lama Kunga told the following news:

The trip to and from Hong Kong to Yushu had been relaxed and without any problems. Lama Kunga is now together with many other lamas in a tent in Thrangu monastery. The day before his arrival in Yushu, Lama Kunga had visited Yushu- patients in 3 hospitals in Xining. Who had been in need of support, got it out of your donations.

In one of the clinics the Lama had visited an old relative, who is suffering from 2 broken legs and a scull fracture. The old gentleman had not been able to recognize Lama Kunga. His situation does not look good.

Yushu town is completely destroyed. Lama Kunga admitted, that he had underestimated the extent. Partially it is looking like, as if there never had been houses before. Lama Kunga did not recognize anything anymore.

Lama Kunga repeated again and again, how grateful he is for your donations, with which he really can support a lot.

Still the discussions in Thrangu monastery are going on. Still the monks want to try to rebuild the monastery in the old place. This decision was made unanimously. The harder it is for the monks, that still the Chinese government does not give the permission.

Alternatively the leaders of the monastery are checking other places, whether they could be useful for the monastery’s reconstruction. Every day there is a meeting of all monks in the monastery about that issue.

Lama Kunga said, the weather is fine at the moment. Only yesterday they had a little rain.

Yesterday Lama Kunga had visited 25 families from his ex- neighborhood and more distant relatives. He had seen the orphan children, too. Who needed support, got it.

If I understood Lama Kunga right, he intends to install a kind of constant support for the orphans, who will be in need of it. The Lama will explain that, when he will be back. On the other hand Lama Kunga mentioned once, that the orphans will be taken to Chinese orphan homes, where they will be treated well. Maybe this is not right anymore.

Today in Thrangu monastery there will take place an Amitabha and a Khorwa Tong Truk ritual for the deceased. With the daughter of his aunt and her husband Lama Kunga will perform a 100.000 butter lamp offering tomorrow. The same will take place the day after tomorrow in the nun’s monastery.

The reconstruction of Thrangu village has started. Lama Kunga will bring pictures with him.

What Lama Kunga hit hard, was to see his Lama Karenchi’s house, where not one stone was touched by anyone.

Lama Kunga thanks all of you. He is praying for us.

Sent to us by Gaby Hollmann. Thanks!

Prayer made on the occasion of the destruction caused by the earthquake in Jyekundo. May 1, 2010. by Karmapa Orgyen Trinley Dorje

From the loftiest abode high above where Brahma dwells,
to the lowest of low buildings made of metal in the hells:
in outward appearance, their differences are great,
yet the faults of all are exposed alike, when disaster strikes.

Houses and property, stretching far as the eye can see,
and the siblings we kept close within our hearts,
are consumed together by the beast that makes the earth shake.
In this heaving there lies terrible grief.

To the piercing sound of anguished cries,
a fearsome hell breaks forth on the surface of the earth.
If even great minds find it hard to hold this,
how could we bear to take it in with our limited senses?

Lifeless bodies all about, as if dropped by torrential rains.
Buildings’ roofs cave in, as if struck by thunderbolts.
The two roar past lightning-fast, as if competing in a race
to fill earth and sky with flowing blood and flying dust.

Many are the mournful watchdogs abandoned by their owners,
many the young orphans who lost gentle loving parents,
many old couples whose cherished children are now dead,
and many whose dearest lifelong friends are gone.

All the family he called his own now dead, one man stands alone,
left behind at the edge of the world.
Staggering from the excess of his grief, his sobs die out,
as bursts of laughter take their place.

Alas! Many tens of thousands of beings die
while we watch their life force waver and slip away.
Though brief, this mere instant of sheer terror
opens a wound that will haunt us for a hundred eons.

Oh, Chenrezig, you who guard the snowy land,
your body is white as the mounds of driven snow.
Behold with your eyes of loving wisdom open wide
these poor, poor people of Tibet. Protect them, please!

Dropping their unfinished business of this life,
they crowded onto the bardo’s perilous paths,
shoved ahead in mass confusion, unprepared for their next life.
With the power of your compassion, protect them, please!

They watched transfixed as before their very eyes
those they’d loved so dearly for so long were snatched away
by that sudden demonic force sweeping through.
These left behind in its trail—protect them, please!

A race whose ancestry is shared,
the Tibetan people are united by karma and samaya,
brought together in the snowy land’s Dharma field:
May the wishes of those there and abroad be completely fulfilled, I pray.

(Sent to us by Gaby Hollmann. Thanks!)

Dear friends,
Lama Kunga received his visa yesterday will leave tomorrow heading China.

The young woman with the fracturized leg, who was brought to hospital last time, is dead. Having had a severe infection, the leg was amputated. But it was too late for anything.

From the hospitalized monks survived approx. 50 %.

In general there will be many handicapped people in Yushu, where the necessary facilities and supports are still missing. During the first phase right after the earthquake many “minor” injuries became treated with amputation – what can be done very quickly – because of there being so many severely, life endangered injured, who needed the the doctors’ interventions more urgent. Physicians and time were missing at that time.

Thrangu monastery is in steady discussion about where to rebuilt. The oldest monk – the old physician – recommended, to rebuild the monastery on the old area. For being a place blessed by the 7. Karmapa, it should not be given up. What would come, would come. The like it would be with earthquakes.

Thrangu Rinpoche himself did not decide yet.

In the tents of Yushu people are waiting for the decision, too, where the town will be rebuilt. The Tibetans are not happy with the idea of a Western style town. They say, for the poor it is a real blessing to have “a roof above their head”. But who can afford it, wants to buld up on his/ her own. Tibetan style. They do not want to live – as it was heard – in a geometrically organized town right from the drawing board, in one of 80 quarters in anonymous buildings made with precast concrete slabs.

Those people, not registered in Yushu, but being with their families – like it is normal for nomads at winter time – are meanwhile ordered to leave the town. They have to make room for 30.000 Chinese workers, sent to help rebuilding the town.

For the Tibetans it is unclear until now, how they could overcome up to 5 years – what is the amount of time, planned for rebuilding the town – in tents.

The town rebuilding is planned to start at Thrangu monastery area, where the damages had been the biggest.

It seems to be impressive, how quickly a certain “normality” is coming up: many shops have opened now. You can buy almost everything again.

You should bring to mind the fact, what it means to a town with 80.000 inhabitants, which lost just now approx. 10.000 persons, when 30.000 Chinese workers will come. While the estimate for the town rebuilding is about 5 years, it is quite likely, that most of the workers will bring their families to Yushu and will stay there lateron. This means, that out of those 30.000 can become easily 60.000 or more people. Tibetans could become a minority.