Tashi Delek! and In February we enjoyed a sucessful visit from eight Tibetans representing the Gaden Shartse Monastery in exile.

Seven Tibetan Buddhist Monks of the Gelugpa order of Tibetan Buddhism, with therir translater Tenzin visited the Sacramento area from February fifteenth until the twenty-eighth.

The monks brought cultural and folk dances of Tibet, including the traditional Yak Dance, sacred healing empowerments, and dharma teachings (the wisdom teachings of the Sakyamuni Buddha).

In order to support the exile government's efforts at the preservation of the cultural legacy of Tibet and its people, the last surviving members of Tibet's former centers of learning have re-established themselves in India. Focusing upon the survival of a culture and people who face extermination, these monasteries and institutions are the only hope for assuring the continuation of the teachings of this rare and valuable way of existence. One of the first such voluntary centers is the Gaden Shartse Monastic College, which was founded in a Tibetan agricultural settlement in South India.

Gaden Shartse Monastic College is situated amid lush green hills and jungle in the remote countryside of southern India. It was founded in 1969 as an effort to re-establish one of the great monastic traditions of Tibet.

A small group of elder monks and fifteen young boys, all of whom had managed to escape the destruction in Tibet, settled on land given to them by the Indian government in Mundgod, Karnataka. Today, it is at the forefront of the revival of Tibetan Monastic education with more than 1600 resident students, teachers, scholars, and spiritual practitioners. Due to the success of the academic program and the quality of the teachers at the monastery, Shartse has established a reputation as being the leader in the field of Buddhist and Tibetan studies. More than 70% of the members are between the ages of ten and twenty-five and 80%of these were born in Tibet. To this day, young monks arrive at the Monastery weekly from Tibet seeking shelter and education.

Gaden Shartse Monastic College (popularly known as "Shartse") was originally founded in Tibet in the 15th century. After the invasion of Tibet by the Chinese, 48 surviving members of the College fled south across the border into India. There they settled in army tents in a remote jungle area that was about a night's journey from the city of Mysore. Slowly they built a mud and bamboo thatched dwelling in which the monks ate, slept, studied, debated, and prayed together. Many died from sickness and exhaustion; others survived but remained ill and bedridden.

Those who survived became very resourceful, teaching themselves how to farm the land by means of trial and error. In 1972, three years after settling, their fields were green with their first successful crops. Fifteen Tibetan children from the local Tibetan refugee camp enrolled in the newly founded monastery, funded by the selling of the produce. A simple everyday routine was set up, combining education with physical labor. A rudimentary teaching staff of Tibetans, well-versed in history and Buddhist teachings, was established.

'Shartse' Today In-depth education in all aspects of Buddhist philosophy and practice is the focal point of the academic program at Shartse. The duration of the monastic program is twenty-four years. The students interact with their teachers on a daily basis. Accommodation, food, and instruction are all free, provided by the monastic administration.

Shartse offers complete basic courses in Tibetan History, Literature, Poetry, Grammar, English, and Mathematics, which are studied as prerequisites for the more advanced courses of Elementary Dialectics, Buddhist Logic, The Six Perfections, the Prajnaparamita (the study of Wisdom/ the Heart Sutra), Madhyamika (Middle Way) Philosophy, Vinaya (Ethics), and Abidharma (Epistemology). Unique to Shartse, it is also compulsory to study Buddhist Tantra. Additionally, there are optional subjects such as Painting, Calligraphy, Tailoring, Tibetan Butter Sculpture formation, and Sand mandala creation. The training program also encourages its students to independently pursue and practice profound Buddhist rituals and to complete extensive solitary retreats. The Monastery hosts multiple festivals, seminars, inter-monastic philosophical meetings, and active fieldwork.

All members sixteen and older are given fieldwork assignments for four months of every year during which time they are required to contribute to the day-to-day running of the monastery. Such co-operative jobs include secretarial office work, cooking, milking the cows, clinic management, and general maintenance. Contributing financially to the local economy, the Monastery also hires some of the local Indian residents to assist with construction and farm work.

Shartse has a staff of twenty, sixteen of whom are teachers and four of whom oversee the proper administration of the programs. Aside from the two English language and mathematics teachers who are recruited from outside the Monastery, every member of the staff has himself graduated from the Monastery. They teach an average of seven hours a day and offer private instruction from their own living quarters. For more than twenty years, they have provided this service free of charge. Only recently did the New Educational Development Project begin to offer them a token remuneration of what is the equivalent of US$4.00 each month.

Teachers play a very special role in the lives of their students. As is the Tibetan tradition and due to the early age at which many youths leave their families to join the Monastery, students admire and respect their teachers as they would their parents. Teachers are considered to be the source of both academic and spiritual development for their students.

The administration of the Monastery is two-fold. Following the democratic constitution promulgated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1964, all Tibetan Gaden Shartse Monastic College institutions now function as parts of a democratic government. Although privately administered, the College is also administered on an election basis. There are eight board members who are elected as directors every three years. The President of the College, however, is appointed directly by the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as was done in pre-invasion Tibet.

A world tour by members of Shartse in 1988 enabled the administration to begin the new Education Development Project. This interagency body now monitors all educational development and makes suggestions regarding the necessity of improvements and modernization.

Additionally, a few senior students are elected to oversee a library at the Monastery that is open to both students and non-students. With a modest collection of important Tibetan works and Western works of philosophy, the library is accessible free of charge.

In order to feed, house, clothe, and provide study materials for each monk, it costs just over US$1 per day per monk. For 1600 monks, this amounts to close to US$1700 per day, or approximately US$600,000 per year. This expense is for the most basic necessities and does not cover the costs of building maintenance, construction, farming, or any improvements.

Maintenance is the most costly aspect of running Gaden Shartse Monastic College. The original 84 acres of farmland that was allocated to the monks in 1969 was done so as a lease, and provides the bulk of the Monastery's income. The main source of income for the Monastery comes from the sale of rice grown on the leased farmland. When most profitable, the yearly revenue from the crops can only cover one month of the expenses of the Monastery. With this acute shortfall in cash, short-term loans are arranged from time to time. Unlike other active educational centers of its size in India, Shartse does not receive any government funding from India or abroad. The need to fulfill the financial obligations of the Monastery is urgent. There are very limited and unreliable sources of income, and the majority of revenue comes from tours abroad.

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