A New Library — Part 2
Over the past few weeks, our village has been hard at work developing the many new additions to our community. I have been completely absorbed in my duties as a Bhiksuni and my contributions to the development of the library in the nunnery that I have not taken the opportunity to go glimpse at the progress of the printing press. I imagine it is coming along nicely, and I am elated that it will be a valuable addition to our nunnery, and community.
There has been a ton of progress made on the building of the library in the nunnery. We came together as a large group to discuss how we planned go forward with this project. Collectively, we felt it would be most efficient to split into two groups, those who wanted to help build the library, and those who wanted to research, gather, and organize what books would be in our library. As a scholar, my passion was in joining the latter group. In our group, we were extremely privileged to have one of our village doctors Chodrak Dawa (Corinne) with us, he is contributing medical histories and medical books to our library.
The scholars of the group have gathered a great deal of research about what books we want in our library. The most obvious one we will have is the Tibetan Buddhist canon. The Canon is easy to come by compared to other texts. One of the three most important canons of Buddhist literature, is the Tibetan canon. The canon consists of roughly 5250 texts, and nearly 230,000 pages, known as folio slides. Kangyur and Tengyur, are the two broad categories that the Tibetan canon was divided into, and together they are the most authoritative and respected canons of Tibetan Buddhism. We were able to purchase the Tibetan canon from Herbert the book trader in our village. It is so important to have the canon available in our library as it is an important tool to understanding our Tibetan culture, including our institutional and narrative histories, philosophies, rituals, and social practises. The Tibetan canon is a major priority in our studies and education system.
Pema (Caleigh), one of the other scholars at the nunnery, has been devoting her time to researching and working on biographies of influential nuns. It is important to have written biographies of influential people to inspire us and to give us a deeper perspective and understanding of our culture and heritage. I am so grateful for her hard work in making this available in our library.
As part of the development of our library, we have had to gather a number of resources. Jatsun (Sarah) who is a talented artist in our village made paintings and statues that will be displayed in our library. Many of the resources she needed, members of our community were able to supply.
The significance of having a library in our community, specifically at the nunnery is astounding. It is customary in our monastic tradition, that we spend a substantial amount of our time studying, translating and rewriting texts. To have a wider variety of texts available to us is such a blessing. Books are sacred to our culture. Books are very different in Tibet then they are in the western world. The books consist of folio slides with writing on them. The writing may be done by hand, or if you are fortunate enough to have a printing press, that is more efficient way to produce books. Once the texts are written, they are wrapped in a yellow cloth to keep the pages together and to protect them.
As part of my contribution to the library, I have researched many texts that we would like to have available in the library, as well as translating and rewriting some of these texts. It has been rewarding to come together with many of my fellow villagers, and to work together for a common goal that benefits us all.
Having the library and printing press has been incredible for our monastic community. It has been a wonderful contribution to our education system. One of our goals was to have the resources to better educated our village people and encourage learning. We are now well on our way to meeting that goal. Learning about our heritage and culture is a huge part of Tibetan Buddhism, this is way memorization is a major part of the education curriculum. Knowledge is to be readily available at any time, as a way to have better understanding and to apply the principles to our day to day lives. Many of us have a great understanding of the importance of being well educated and well versed in our culture; because of this, many of the scholars and members of the community have decided to put together a program a few times a week, where members of the community can come and learn. The library and printing press was a huge contributor to the inspiration of the education project. May many lives find joy through these many teachings.
