Building the Printing Press
This week has been very busy in our village. We are building a medicine factory and rebuilding the nun’s library, which was destroyed a while ago. The nuns generally receive fewer contributions to the nunnery than the monks so I am very pleased that we have received enough donations to build the library. Perhaps the visit of the Lama put everyone in such a spiritual and compassionate mood that they have donated more resources than normal to the nunnery. Some other community members are going on an expedition to a cave to search for some ancient texts. My husband was an avid mountaineer before his accident and he is very sad to not be able to go on this mission. I am hopeful that they will find valuable texts for our community.
I am working on building a printing press for the nun’s library. I am the only builder on the team so I have been doing a lot of research on how the press is constructed and which materials will be used. The Tibetans have been using this printing process since the 1100’s to print texts, with some improvements of course!, so I have found lots of information on what is required to build and operate the press. The library will print some of it’s own books but many of the texts will be acquired through trade with nearby communities.
The woodblock printing press we will be building is effective for printing many versions of the same text. Texts are extremely central to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Tibet received most of our Buddhist teachings through monks who went on long, dangerous journeys over the Himalayas to retrieve Buddhist texts and to bring them into Tibet. I am extremely honored to be able to contribute to a library in our community because of our close relationship with texts in Buddhist. Some Buddhists also have a controversial relationship with the printing press. Many Buddhist teachers believe that meditation is more important than studying and that we overvalue books. Other Buddhist teachers believe that the lama/student relationship, which is central to our tradition, will be lost because the focus of study will be on reading texts instead of sharing oral knowledge. Personally I do not agree with these arguments. I think that texts are essential to continuing to educate people on Buddhist ideas and that the new library and printing press will be an asset to the nunnery and to our entire community.
There is only one man in our community who deals with iron so I must get in touch with him to discuss purchasing and working with iron for the printing press, I believe iron will be used to make the axel and handle of the roller tool. The press and the woodblocks will be made of wood. The head nun at the nunnery has told us that there will be special rituals preformed before the trees are cut down to limit harm to the living tree. Few trees grow on the Tibetan Plateau because of the altitude and harsh climate, mostly shrubs such a juniper and smaller plants grow around here. The ritualists who will perform the tree cutting ceremony and myself must travel south to find the appropriate wood.
I have some of the correct tools used to cut and sand the wood. For the press I will be making a wooden block to place the paper on and a roller. These will be the easier part of the process. Making the wooden block reliefs is a very big job, which will take many hands. To make the blocks we need a knife and chisel. To find the correct chisel I will have to travel to a tool trader in the next village. The Tibetan alphabet has thirty letters so we will need blocks with all of these and possibly some complete words and images.
I am not personally in charge of making the printing ink but others on the team have found an effective recipe. The ink will be made of water, walnuts and vinegar or gum of Arabic. The walnuts and gum can be found in Tibet so we will be able to make a good supply of ink for the printers. The paper will be made of tree bark, most likely birch, which is boiled and made into a pulp then made into paper. Making this paper is quite a process, I imagine the nuns will have a lot of work ahead of them if they are planning to make the paper themselves. The press requires two people to operate it, one to place the paper on the wooden base and one to roll with the roller. I am not sure if there will be people designated as printers to work on the texts or if the nuns will do this themselves, I will have to consult with the rest of my team. I am honored and excited to begin the building of this press.
