Exporting with a Cause

Next week I will be sending a few cubic meters of manufactured items from Kathmandu to New Orleans via Sea Cargo. It should take about two months for the boxes to be driven to the coast in India, and slowly make a journey halfway circumnavigating the earth to our favorite dirty port city.

It will mostly be prayerflags of various sizes, and I'm including some scarves, clothes, wallhangs, doorhangs, prayerbeads, Nepali paper, soap and incense as sample items (to feel out the future market potential) and as gifts.

In the future I hope to set up regular shipments of certain items to raise awareness and money for the education of monks and nuns in Nepal. I have worked closely with both the Khari nuns in Tramo village, Khumbu Nepal, and the monks at the Vajravarahi monastery in Chapagaon, Nepal. We have already begun to teach higher Buddhist philosophy to the nuns in the mountains. It is rare for nuns to study philosophy here. I am also already sponsoring one lama to complete a traditional three year mediation retreat, and hope to continue doing so. We are also hoping to turn the monastery in Chapagaon into a training center for monk translators of Tibetan to French, German, Chinese, English, Spanish, Nepali and Newari.

Otherwise, I've been spending my time helping out our six summer Passage students and working on a Tibetan translation for some Nepali Dharma friends.

More nuns: Khari Gompa and Nagi Gompa

A photo of the Khari nuns at the Lawudo Gompa (Lama Zopa Rinpoche's previous' meditation cave, for the Nyungnay Avalokiteshvara fasting retreat in Saka Dawa May/June 2005. These are some of the nuns I'm sponsoring and raising some money for. The Khari Rinpoche, the reincarnated lama who runs the nunnery, is seated in the center of the photo.


Some more Khari Gompa nuns with flowers they grew. I took this photo in March 2004.


Three generations of practiotioners at the Khari Ani Gompa (nunnery) in Khumbu, Nepal (Everest Region). Sangye Thinlay, the older monk, passed away last year. His grandneice in the center of the photo has since taken robes there as a nun and lives and studies with her aunt, the nun on the left.


Below Nagi Gompa there is a Tamang village that the trail from Boudha winds through. The monument is a Buddhist stupa, a type of reliquary built to give people something to make offerings to, among many other things. Some older Tamangs are taking a break from walking next to the small tea shop on the left.


Some cute goats I spied while walking from Boudha up to Nagi Gompa for the drupchen and some retreat about two weeks ago. I took this about fifteen minutes climb from the stupa in the previous photo.


My seat at the Ngagso (confession and mending of samaya) drupchen, with the pecha (tibetan text) I borrowed in front of me. I got the opportunity to read along with the monks and nuns for a few days, and even mananged to lend an English translation from a friend, so I could better understand what was meant in the prayers. Very powerful stuff!


Prayerflags in the wind above where I set my tent at Nagi Gompa for the drupchen ceremony.