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Scarred Tibetans, gentle message By FERGUS SHIEL Red, blue, green, yellow and white prayer flags flutter on a mast in the sea breeze outside Mount Martha Community House. Inside, down a corridor, beyond a line of leisure shoes, a door opens to a hall temporarily transfigured into a Tibetan monastery. A red altar is adorned with images on paper and silk of the Buddha, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan deity Yamataka, the Conqueror of Fear. Small candles burn before vases full of lilies and plump white roses; there's a tiny throne for the Dalai Lama; the Om of a meditation tape plays in the background. A party of five Gyuto monks have come to Mount Martha as guests of the Mornington Peninsula Shire to share their culture and wisdom with locals. Famous for their harmonic chanting, the Gyuto monks have performed to a packed Carnegie Hall and recently recorded a CD overseen by George Lucas, of Star Wars fame. For the monks, Mount Martha is another important opportunity to thank the Australian people for contributing to their dream of building a new monastery in northern India. As a symbol of their gratitude, the monks are building a peace and reconciliation stupa in South Australia and they'd like to build another on the Mornington Peninsula. The group's leader, Gyuto Lama Tseten Gyurmey, was seven when he fled Tibet as part of a mass exodus following the abortive 1959 Lhasa uprising against Chinese oppression. His mother and several other close family members died from exhaustion on the mountainous trek to the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, as did many of his boyhood friends. Tibetans claim that since the Chinese People's Liberation Army invaded their country in 1950, 1.2 million of their people have died due to political unrest, famine, executions and torture. Millions of Chinese colonists have been subsidised by the Beijing government to settle in occupied Tibetan lands. The migrants now are believed to outnumber native Tibetans. The Gyuto Lama, in the words of his interpreter, Sonam Rigzin, "remembers all of the sadness". During China's socalled "cultural revolution", Red Guards were reportedly responsible for the looting and mass destruction of Tibetan monasteries. Human rights organisations say political and religious repression, arbitrary arrests and detention, unfair trials and widespread torture continue. Two of the younger monks among the touring party are said to carry the scars of torture inflicted by the Chinese. A quarter of a century ago, the exiled Gyuto monks established a monastery in Tenzin Gang, in the foothills of the Himalayas, near India's border with Tibet. The monastery is built on remote, barren, saltland, eight hours bumpy descent from the nearest town, making it a place of confinement as well as a sanctuary. Thanks in large measure to donations from Australia, the monks are preparing to relocate to a new residence in Sidbhari, near Dharamsala, about 500 kilometres north of Delhi. Moving close to the home of the Dalai Lama and headquarters of the Tibetan governmentinexile will bring improved work, medical, educational and social opportunities. Speaking of the move, the lama jokes that Buddhists believe life is suffering but if he's going to be miserable, he wouldn't mind being so in a more comfortable place. He adds, through his interpreter, that Australia's help has contributed to the survival of the Tibetan race and culture, not just a new monastery. Earlier, sitting crosslegged in another room under portraits of the Queen and Baden Powell, the lama had addressed about 60 people on the topic of happiness. "Misknowing (sic) yourself is the cause of all our problems," he said, via his interpreter. "Thus, ignorance is not bliss ... and we must fight for wisdom. No ignorance in you and me is compassion. Compassion and wisdom are no different, they are one instrument. Intuition, intellect, emotion are one. They are no different." A young monk, dressed in burgundy robes and a white apron, is leaning over a mustard table scratching grains of sand from a silvercolored, conical pipe called a tsompu. Smiling warmly, he pauses to accept a little girl's gift of a drawing, gently knocks heads with her then returns to his painstaking task. The dyed sands, ground from Himalayan marble, will coalesce into the Mandala of Charsamvara, a symbolic circular figure of female energy. Five days later, this perfect, granular world is swept up into a ritual vase then poured into the sea - a lesson in life's impermanence. The Gyuto monks arrived in Australia last month, with the intention of touring the country until February next year. Maureen Fallon, the director of the Gyuto House art, culture and philosophical exchange centre in Adelaide, says travelling with them is great fun. "I tell you, Priscilla has nothing on us," she says. "The things that happen to us in any one day are stranger than fiction. What the monks are, are examples of unconditional love." Julia Humbles, the festivals and events manager for the local shire council, says it invited the monks back to Mount Martha after an overwhelming response to an earlier fourday visit. "It was the biggest thing I have ever seen in terms of feedback from the community in a positive way," Humbles says. "This year, we've had a 10day program (embracing spiritual teachings, art, cooking, meditation, harmonic chanting, a slide show) and it's been just as strongly supported." In a nearby courtyard, master stupa builder and Gyuto monk Thubten Khedup works on a model of a stupa he's preparing to build in South Australia. Khedup, who has built four stupas in the grounds of the Dalai Lama's palace in Dharamsala, says the finished stupa will represent peace and harmony. Precious gems being shipped out from India, incense, a small statue of Buddha and fragrant wood will be buried within the structure. "We have started to discuss with the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council the potential to build a stupa on the peninsula, perhaps positioned in a peace park," Fallon says. "Tibetans believe that contributing to the making of a stupa brings great good fortune to everyone involved, so they like to make lots of them. "It may even be that our own one in South Australia gets put off if the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council wishes to proceed with one here." There'll be further opportunities to meet the visiting monks at the Womad, Port Fairy and Apollo Bay music festivals. For Losar, the traditional Tibetan New Year, they'll be appearing at the Gasworks, in Albert Park, on the last weekend in February. The Age website referring page: http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/01/25/FFX334PVBIC.html  ~ | CLOSE WINDOW | ~  |
NEWS FEATURE
- The Age, Melbourne