Even Fate’s trapped by Sun’s gravity…

“…Karma that restless stallion made of wind,
In tossing me, where will it land me yet?”
Gedun Choepel

Serious matter and samsara

Samsara is build into a wheel which finds its strength to turn around with ignorance suffering. Following Dharma, Buddha’s teaching, we’re all trapped in this Wheel of Life where our birth depends on our previous lives.

May be the cold helps… and being far from home… and poetry, but compassion surely does the main work. These last days I’ve hold the tears, building a pool around my heart.

It is as a teen I first feel sympathy for the Tibetan cause in the same spirit that made me admire Gandhiji’s sathyagraha.
China invaded Tibet in a period of history called decolonization. The British Empire let do while Nehru promised to stay still. Some years later China and India were at war and as a consequence of partition, while the Tibetan government in exile settled in Dharamsala, Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter used the SFF (Special Frontier Force) to secure the border with Pakistan and protect Hindus stayed in Bangladesh. The SFF, composed from Tibetans in exile, was first established with Kampas, West Tibetans whom fathers helped the XIV Dalai Lama to run away safely.  Samsara?
From his Great Leap Forward Mao threw his Liberation Army on the world’s roof to free Tibet from old beliefs and feudalism. Still today, on the name of progress and freedom China liberates natural resources for in the ideas of colonisation Tibet is in a Special Free-Trade Area. Just like Africa is big cake to share between foreign powers and dictators and Central America is USA’s garden.
Not only Tibet is strategically well situated in Central Asia but it contains, except Ganga, the main rivers of Asia, from west to east: Indus, Sutlej, Brahmapoutre, Salwen, Mekhong and Yellow River. So important is water that is said to be invaluable, a reason to make people pay for it, a reason to use it as political pressure.
In Tibet, Tibetans must speak Chinese, they are impoverished, treated as a minority, pictures of Dalai Lama and freedom speech are banned. All Tibetans have relatives who’ve been incarcerated in a Laogai (work Camp) and died few days after being back from it.
As in colonies it occurs often contradictions are well spread:
The non religious China interferes in all monasteries, kidnapped the young Panchen Lama when he was 6 and presented to Buddhists a Chinese Panchen Lama. I met a Chinese English teacher who works in Tibet, she told me she didn’t understand why there is no literature available about the Dalai-Lama because in her home town, Shanghai that’s not a problem. While prostitution is barred in China, in Lhassa it is common to see prostitutes. In Tibet, NGOs are all controlled by government.

As a teenager, whereas my History teacher taught the death of imperialism, I bound in my head Tibet’s annexion, Gandhi’s assassination, Liberal economy speech and the wars and dictators here and there. I merely saw the Tibetan’s situation as a sum up of the world’s turmoil.

And here I am, at 27 in Nepal, narrow buffer country, hence unstable and pressurized from inside and the international, mainly squeezed between India and China. So Nepal is on the road of Exile. On this road Miss Tsultrim, ex-students of TCV (Tibetan Children Villages, schools set in India by Dalai-lama’s oldest sister) in Dharamsala decided to stay and work as a teacher in Kathmandu. She’s one of those Tibetans who flew Tibet, whose father died coming back from a laogai, whose all family has scattered. With Mrs Bijaya they decided to found their own school to help the Tibetan community.

My dry tears feels my hearts because this school, named after a sacred lake by mount Kailash, rents part of building on its way to be sold. Manasarovar Academy is not like its lucky neighbouring big boarding school which belongs to an important lama who owns several monasteries and a lucrative school in US, no the small primary school’s future is threatened by its landlord’s priorities. He’s a not-so-important lama who needs to feed the monks of his monastery in India and want to fulfil a good karma (what makes turn the wheel) project: building a statue of Buddha.
While French people say “l’habit ne fait pas le moine” (having the suit don’t make you suitable for the priest’s job), even lamas are trapped in Samsara.
To feed the two directors of the school long sleepless night, a group of doctors is interested in the building and there is no such thing to believe in as a world of Good and Evil.
The building would cost 60 millions Nepalese rupees (1 euro = 90 NRs). Of course the first idea is moving, renting another place but the teachers look at me in despair: “These days they don’t build buildings to accommodate schools”. The school would need to stay around because that’s where Tibetans live. I wondered about building but the land because of schools (build with foreign currencies) and monasteries (about 28) is very expensive. For 124 pupils it would need two ropanis (about 280 m2) worthing 20 millions NRs and then adding same amount of money to erect humble walls.

Such thin is the thread over eviction probabilities, a Tibetan school incarnating the education of Exile.