Lama Tashi: Long wait ends

Tawang, Nov. 7: He was nominated for the Grammy Awards in 2005 and blessed by the Dalai Lama after his performance at the Old Music Festival in California in 1999. But 41-year-old Lama Tashi can’t wait to see the Dalai Lama and attend his preaching here.

He will be at the ground, at the foot of the famous monastery here, tomorrow among thousands of people expected to be at the religious leader’s first preaching session in Arunachal Pradesh this time.

He will come from Dirang, about 100km from here, where he lives in a monastery. But for him, the Dalai Lama’s preaching session at Dirang on Thursday, will mark something of a high point in his life.

It was at Dirang in 1983 when he had his first chance of attending a session of preaching and initiation by the Dalai Lama.

“His Holiness came for the Kalachakra initiation ceremony and I decided to become a monk after attending that session,” Lama Tashi says, sitting on a sofa in the spacious drawing room of a new centre for Buddhist studies that he himself founded some years ago in Dirang.

Life has taken him far and away over the past 26 years — and for a special reason. He is among the best-known masters of the Buddhist ritual of chanting. He has performed his multi-phonic chant before big audiences all over the world, including ones in Bodh Gaya, New York and Washington.

He spent the past 21 years at the Drepung Loseling Monastery near Hubli in Karnataka, one of the biggest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in India. When he left it to return to Dirang (“because I was born in this area”), he was the head chant master of the monastery. He now heads a Buddhist cultural centre near Dirang.

The suave monk, who speaks fluent English, says it is the Chinese government that has made the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh something of an issue this time.

“For the common people here of an earlier era, getting to see or hear the Dalai Lama was an impossible dream because he lived in Tibet. But for Indian Buddhists today, it is an opportunity that may come their way because he lives in India. But the people see his visit only in religious or spiritual terms.”

Lama Tashi has, however, seen enough of the world not to see the political overtones of the visit. But he thinks China is unnecessarily trying to politicise the visit.

His concerns, therefore, are about what the governments in New Delhi and Itanagar can — and should — do to improve the lives of the common people in the state. “The people aren’t bothered about the Chinese statements. They’ve more pressing problems to tackle.”