What Jhamtse Gatsal Means To Me

Duncan Lally

By Duncan Lally, Geneva, Switzerland

It was perhaps November 2015 when I was asked to accompany a group of IB students from the school where I teach, Institut Florimont in Geneva, Switzerland, to watch a film and attend a conference to celebrate the World Day of Child's Rights. We filed into a conference hall at the UN and watched "Tashi and the Monk."

For whatever reason, it left me sobbing. My family will confirm that this is so rare as to almost never happen. I think it was the incongruity of the privileged situation I enjoy - working in a superbly equipped school in one of the richest and most beautiful countries in the world, teaching English to gifted and motivated students as well as counseling them as they prepare applications to the most prestigious universities globally - contrasted with the humdrum, grey poverty and arbitrary, cruel events that lead to children attending Jhamtse (I think in particular of that painful scene in which Lobsang is forced to turn down the child left as an orphan because of his father's drunken falling off a roof). The mismatch was just too much, and it hurt me deeply.

My students sensitively turned the other cheek as their teacher sobbed quietly but uncontrollably - and I was convinced that the man who I realized later to be Lobsang, sitting on the panel 20m away, saw me and understood.

Let me stress again: I am as unemotional as they come. Despite this, I wanted to run to the front and hug him. I knew that if I did, he would just understand, and there would be no need for words: no need to speak of the grace that was written into that film; that had captured Lobsang himself; that clearly motivated his team; that transformed a grieving, obnoxious imp-like Tashi; that even revived the ailing career and motivation of the film-maker (also present, whose life had also clearly been changed); that seemed to be in the air that cold November Geneva day. (The fact that I was there was an "accident" - another teacher could not attend; it was not planned for me to be there).

Dominique, a kind Swiss gentleman, saw my distress and sensitively came to offer me the DVD to borrow: Confession: I have it to this day!

I returned to school, and all I could say to my colleagues was, "I know I have to go there one day."

And nothing happened.

I did nothing to make it happen.

I met Suzanne and Dominique, the Jhamtse Swiss representatives, for coffee. I was touched by the family they have gathered for themself among the orphans of Jhamtse. I was entertained by the stories they told of traveling there, of the visits to older students now at university in India.

But nothing happened beyond that; I didn't make anything happen.

A couple of years later - June 2019? - Lobsang himself came back to Geneva, and my family and I made our slow way among the protesting crowds (it was a huge protest against gender inequality) to the other side of town to meet him. The revelation at the delicious buffet meal was that Jhamtse was an organization way bigger than I had realized: a global network of gifted people helping the vision be realized. What place was there for me? I felt rather small, but at least I got to meet Lobsang himself: he graciously bowed to my family and me, but I think I would rather have dropped down and kissed his feet...

And that was it: apart from a small monthly donation which means that I read the Jhamtse email and - this article is the evidence - respond to requests when they are made. Very far from the family project I once envisioned: my daughter would accompany me for a year to teach languages; I would do university counseling; we would live up on that cold but happy mountain-top; our lives would be changed, and we would serve the poorest of the poor, those with nothing.

And none of it has happened...

What happened on that day? Am I a failure? Did God speak, and I fail to respond?

That is not my view of the divine, and I do not see this as a failure.

For years, since the age of 18, I firmly believed that anyone who did not subscribe to my particular faith would be eternally punished. Every conversation I had with a non-believer was an opportunity to save him or her from eternal suffering. You can imagine the emotional trauma this belief caused.

Lobsang's experience of grace helped break me away from a narrow sectarian view of grace as limited to any one religious or non-religious worldview. Was god's spirit limited to those who believed in the correct doctrines? Or was it rather, obviously, powerfully at work in people like Lobsang whose own experience of grace is infectious? "But he's a Buddhist!" I can hear my old friends protest...What can I say? Where the poor are cared for, the orphan looked after...the Bible says this is divine work. So wherever it happens, surely the divine is at work?

My life and outlook have been changed, and I think now there is nothing for me to "do" to prove it: simply live out my calling in the place where I am.

And who knows, maybe one day I will climb to that mountain top, my son gardening and my daughter language-teaching, my administrator wife helping out....but if it never happens, does that matter?

Thanks to all who work to make Lobsang's beautiful vision a reality. I am glad to be a part of it, even if not in the dramatic manner I sobbingly envisioned on that tearful November day!