I beheld the sight of the sun’s rays bathing the slopes and drifts of the Arabian desert from the air at dawn, painting the sand pink and gold. After a stop in Abu Dhabi, I arrived in Kathmandu that afternoon. The evening found me celebrating yet another New Year, The Nepali New Year, in Bouddhanath––a neighborhood I’d call home while working the Global Dental Relief Clinic set up at Shree Mangal DVIP school, a boarding school.
4/12/14
Shirley, the school director, shared that most of the children attending are from “Yackland,” an area above 10,000 feet with no electricity, running water or communications in their villages. To get to their villages requires a week trek and a day’s drive. She informed us that they lost three fathers this year on their treks down to Kathmandu. The kids survived. Shirley told us that what makes the kids at their school special is their mastery of Buddha’s greatest teaching––the ability to turn a problem into happiness.
Shirley went on to tell us that the man who founded the school, Thrangu Rinpoche, fled Tibet. Most of the Buddhists in Nepal are Tibetan refugees from Communist China’s take over of their country. The story goes that Thrangu Rinpoche lived in a shack. He said that if he ever had the power to, he would see to it that the kids of Nepal had access to a free education, health care and dental. The Global Dental Relief team is part of his dream. She said that we were all there because we not only have good hearts but we are doing something with them. She blew me away with the stories she shared and the goodness that comes out of tragedy. I keep thinking about the power in losing everything as I witness my first Puja, walk the streets of Boudha, around the stupa mindful of the monks prayers and sacred bead counting.
It was clear to me that the universe was trying to tell me something about newness, about faith and promise, about beginnings and happiness and the power of dreams. In the silence of Bali’s Nyepi Day my inner voice cried out. In the candlelight and chanting of the Nepali New Year celebration around the Boudha Stupa, I awakened to a new world of wonder and possibility.
(Nepal is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world with 42% of its population living below the poverty line. Poverty, mass illiteracy, ignorance and conservatism causes a majority of Nepali children to be deprived of their basic rights to education.)