An old friend.
Jun. 13th, 2008 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusI'm back in touch with an old friend.
Tenzin Norgay was my Tibetan teacher and good friend back at the monastery in 1992. We corresponded for several years after I returned from India and then I fell out of contact. (Sorry the first photo's so large, it's the only one I have.)
He went on to be a Khenpo (that's similar to an abbot) and taught in Tibet for two years.
I was scoping out some information online and stumbled across his name. He'd come to the US in 2004. Drat. I'd missed him. Then, going through more documents, I stumbled across an announcement he'd be teaching in 2008. Oh, right on! He's far away, in New York, but he's going to be teaching in the US for... a while. It's sort of fuzzy how long, could be a couple years.
I asked him what he thought about the United States. Because he never wanted to come here, he just wanted to squirrel away in a small monastery somewhere in India where the monks didn't have a means to support a teacher.
He said (pardon my paraphrasing a bit), "I used to think that America was this perfect place. But really, most people here are middle class and struggling. Then, the people who are wealthy work so many hours that they don't have time for anything.
"Also, the pictures you see of America are all of cities. So I had the idea that it was all urban. I was suprised to find so many trees and forests. It's quite beautiful."
Tenzin Norgay was my Tibetan teacher and good friend back at the monastery in 1992. We corresponded for several years after I returned from India and then I fell out of contact. (Sorry the first photo's so large, it's the only one I have.)
He went on to be a Khenpo (that's similar to an abbot) and taught in Tibet for two years.
I was scoping out some information online and stumbled across his name. He'd come to the US in 2004. Drat. I'd missed him. Then, going through more documents, I stumbled across an announcement he'd be teaching in 2008. Oh, right on! He's far away, in New York, but he's going to be teaching in the US for... a while. It's sort of fuzzy how long, could be a couple years.
I asked him what he thought about the United States. Because he never wanted to come here, he just wanted to squirrel away in a small monastery somewhere in India where the monks didn't have a means to support a teacher.
He said (pardon my paraphrasing a bit), "I used to think that America was this perfect place. But really, most people here are middle class and struggling. Then, the people who are wealthy work so many hours that they don't have time for anything.
"Also, the pictures you see of America are all of cities. So I had the idea that it was all urban. I was suprised to find so many trees and forests. It's quite beautiful."
