A Week of Celebrations

Tashi delek, Jared here! This week concluded our final week of classes. Before the start of the school week, we celebrated Diwali, a Hindu festival of lights and fireworks. The celebration of Diwali symbolizes good over evil, light over darkness, and knowledge over ignorance (wikipedia.com). The story of Diwali covers the kidnapping of Sita, the wife of Lord Ram, by Ravana. Ram had searched in the mountains for Sita. When he finally found Ravana’s island fortress where Sita was held, he battled Ravana and won. The day that Ram had successfully brought Sita home to safety is known today as Diwali. 

Lit candles surround the Diwali mandala.

Our night of Diwali was spent at a farm in lower Dharamshala. The owner gave us a tour of his farm, which included wheat, rice, and a multitude of fruits and veggies. We gratefully tasted starfruit, ginger, spicy peppers, guava, bitter gourd, and much more. The rest of Diwali was lit with candles and fireworks. We arranged lights around mandalas and celebrated “light over darkness” with fireworks. Diwali is also celebrated by non-Hindu religions, as Sikhs celebrate Diwali as the day that the 6th Sikh Guru was freed from imprisonment. Jainists celebrate Diwali as the day of the spiritual awakening of Lord Mahavira (nationalgeographic.com). 

The 2019 TS group attending the Geshe ceremony for our friend.

On Thursday, our Buddhist Philosophy teacher, Tenzin Tselek La achieved Geshe status. We attended his ceremony, hosted at the Institute for Buddhist Dialects. This degree requires monks and nuns to pursue decades of philosophical study. “Ge” translates to virtue, and “she” means “knowing”. I was amazed to see the large crowd of friends and supporters that Geshe Tenzin Tselek La was greeted by. 

We greeted Geshe La with katas (Tibetan prayer scarves).

On Friday, we celebrated our last philosophy class with traditional Tibetan Buddhist debates. These debates involve one defender, who defends an argument, and one challenger, who opposes their defenders claim with questions. A sweeping clap usually follows the question of the challenger. The idea of the debate isn’t necessarily to prove who is right and who is wrong; the debate more so attacks misconceptions about definitions and common concepts. I challenged Truman, who defended that knowledge is more important than money. 

We also celebrated our last Tibetan Language class with a test. As our internships began to pick up, a test seemed like another hurdle to jump over. Yet, we prepared confidently. Personally, I enjoyed noticing the progress that we had made over the past two months. I was impressed that we had gotten to form sentences from a language that was unrecognizable months earlier.

Berto challenging Evan’s statement that action is more important than intention.

Our debates weren’t the only celebrations of Friday. We also celebrated our time spent with our host families by eating at Hotel Tibet. Here, we exchanged gifts with our host families and shared our memories and stories. We also played games with the kids of the host families after stuffing ourselves. This celebration was a heart-warming way to express our appreciation towards the people that considered us family for two and a half weeks. 

Overall, this week was greeted with celebrations and closures. Yet, soon marks the beginning of our independent travel time. The boys are headed to the mountains, whereas the girls are headed to the beaches! Stay tuned for more updates soon!