10 Tibetan Monks Get in the Spirit

There’s a classic Grateful Dead tune with the lyrics “what a long strange trip it’s been” that 10 Tibetan monks just starting a six-month U.S. fund-raising tour might want to adopt as a theme song. These monks on the “Joyful Wisdom Tour” are cheerful, friendly, open-minded and the embodiment of strangers in a strange land.

The Tibetans, who will be at UC Irvine for three days beginning Thursday, spent several days last week raising money at the Yujean Kang restaurant in West Hollywood. They demonstrated song and dance and sand mandala painting and hosted benefit vegetarian lunches and a $175-per-person dinner.

Only one of the Tibetans has been outside India before, where the monks took refuge after the Chinese subdued Tibet in 1959. He’s also the sole English speaker in the group. Geshe Tashi Gyaltsen was born in Tibet and lived the next 38 years as a refugee in India.

It had taken almost two years to arrange the tour’s paperwork since, as stateless refugees, the monks travel on identity cards issued by the Indian government’s rigorously lethargic bureaucracy.

Geshe Gyaltsen (the term “geshe” is an honorific denoting a doctorate in Buddhist scholarship requiring two decades of study) organized the trip primarily as a means of raising funds for the Ganden Jangtse Monastery, which was destroyed by the Chinese. It was rebuilt in southern India and houses 1,200 refugee monks. The geshe’s secondary mission is to pass along some spiritual advice while on the tour.

The monk expressed his philosophy in a manner both eloquent and fundamental: “Act more better, behave more better and care more better for the people.” Explaining the Tibetans’ nonmilitary approach to freeing their land from the Chinese, he said: “Violence never brings solution nicely. In America, material development is very high, but spiritual development is not so high,” he said. “Tibetans are very rich in examining mental consciousness so the human being is not so occupied with self-cherishing”--this said about 200 yards from Beverly Hills, quite possibly the world capital of self-cherishing.

The geshe’s occasionally imprecise understanding of English led to another incongruous moment. As he walked on Melrose Boulevard, a black Rolls-Royce suddenly pulled up to the curb. The driver, a heavy-set man in a tank top with a tattoo covering his right forearm, leaned across the passenger seat and informed him that his family “spends millions lobbying the Chinese to leave Tibet.”

The geshe seemed to understand that the man has good intentions, thanked him, and as the car pulled away he turned to an American and asked “Who was that?” He was told it was “a rich guy.” The monk translated this as “Richard Gere” and turned excitedly to wave after the Rolls.

While here, the monks meticulously built and displayed a sand mandala, and at Friday night’s dinner, they sang, danced and presented the exotic culture of Tibet.

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The mandala, a 2-foot-by-2-foot sand painting used in healing and called the Medicine Buddha Sand Mandala, took most of three days to construct. It is done using cone-like tubes to drop colored sand into an intricate, symmetrical pattern. The final effect had the appearance of brightly colored spun sugar candy.

As a gift, the mandala will be left to the restaurant that generously hosted the three days of events. Usually the mandala is ritually swept away and destroyed as an example of life’s impermanence.

“If we keep the mandala a long time, then people become lazy and they will not do it again and again,” the geshe says. “And by doing this you become more familiar and more expert.”

The monks stayed with Tibetan immigrants in Los Angeles. They plan a national tour to a number of states, though their mode of transportation is uncertain. At literally the last moment, the loan of a secondhand van the Tibetans had counted on for transportation in the U.S. is unavailable. Gyaltsen is looking for wheels.

He said he’s confident his American tour, in one way or another, will be a success. “People, no matter what they do, want happiness. They don’t want suffering. Maybe we can bring the training how happiness is coming.”

* The monks will be at UC Irvine Thursday through Saturday. For information, call (626) 457-2732.