Don't Forget the Soap

You play music in the class! It is not uncommon to observe students taping feet, moving bodies, clapping hands, and snapping fingers with the beats of the music. You can also see their lips pretending to sing and synchronize with the song. These are unspoken expressions of interest students have in the music.

The young students of Lhomon Education (LME) at Chokyi Gyatso Institute in Dewathang, Bhutan wrote and performed the song title ''don’t forget the soap'' with the help of Mr. Simon Thomas. The theme for the song is healthy living!

The song composition is a platform for students to consider music as means of learning and sharing their ideas; to learn and experience simple song writing skills; to consider music as fun part of life and also to approach music as an offering in essence and generous in its message and melody.

We would like to thank to Simon Thomas, Gary Dyson, Brian Stevens, Brodie Cass Talbott, for your help in production. Watch the video and share it!

The camp ends

‘‘In this materialistic time just to have little interest to look inside, contemplate inside, not getting distracted by outside and really looking inside is very important. It's worthwhile to spend our time and energy in it.’’                                                                                                --- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

                               Photos and short video clips from the camp 

A week-long mindfulness camp at Chokyi Gyatso Institute, Dewathang ended on the 13^th of January, 2018. The camp was an essential platform for introduction and foundation of mindfulness techniques offered to Bhutanese educators and others. Our goal was simply to give everyone a chance to experiment and explore the inner working of their minds so that they may benefit their students, community members, and others through their examples.

The camp was organized keeping intact the tradition of our profound and deep meditation practices from the Mahayana teachings. The camp’s content included meditation practice, teaching about meditation, practice techniques, mindful offering of butter lamps, selection of local agriculture produced, waste minimization, cooking, eating & walking, karma yoga (work as practice) & sharing of experiences. 

The camp was resourced by Chungtrul Jigme Tsheltrim Wangpo of Tharpaling Monastery, Bumthang, Khenpo Tshering of Chokyi Gyatso Institute (CGI) and Dr. Yang Gyeltshen of Lhomon Education. There were 54 camp attendees including organizers: 18 teachers, 3 lopens from CGI, 3 from Youth Development Fund (YDF), 6 civil servants, 3 from Sherubtse College, 2 youths, 3 parents, 9 Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative (SJI) youth interns and 7 SJI staff. 

The camp is an integral to SJI's education program (LME) conducted annually, primarily targeted for educators, community leaders, and others in collaboration with Chokyi Gyatso Institute (CGI), Dewathang.

‘‘If the teachers are interested in value of Mindfulness, this is a good sign for the future of Bhutan. If the interest of mindfulness grows at a grassroots level, then we will have hope for our nation. If not, we will become mindless. We will become insane, our country will soon be filled with greed and insanity people.’’                                                                     --- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

The 5th Winter Mindfulness Camp

 A group of educators, youth, and civil servant from 12 Dzongkhags (districts) completed 8 days of winter Mindfulness camp at Chokyi Gyatso Institute, Dewathang on 31^st of December 2018. The 5^th camp had 73% of teacher participants from 22 different schools across Bhutan, 12% of civil servants, 3% from Nunnery Institute and 12% of high school and college youth. The camp also saw more female participants with 59% of the total participants. 

The mindfulness camp is an annual program of Lhomon Education to introduce the profound tradition of authentic mindfulness techniques to Bhutanese educators, educationists, stakeholders, and others, keeping intact the priceless tradition of Mahayana Buddhism.

The goal for such a camp is simply to give everyone a chance to experiment and explore the innate nature of human minds so that we can help our upcoming generation and youth in authentic manners to grow into being decent human. It is also to recognize that the mind is much more important than anything else and if we don’t control our mind there is no point controlling all the other things. Further, the program is in line with Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche’s vision to recognize our own profound practices of meditation that are authentic, rich, traditional, and progressive.

‘‘Actually, in Bhutan, we have a tradition of many kinds of profound and deep meditation practices such as Shamtha, Vipassana, visualization and dissolution. Even then, we are not aware of our own tradition and heritage. These days, when people from outside teach us mindfulness, there is shock and disbelief, leading people to believe that we need such things. This is similar to us not being able to recognize our own possessions and wealth. Only when the outsiders give us these things to us, which we actually already possess, then it appears like that the outsiders are introducing such a thing.’’ — Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

H. E. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche in its opening video session highlighted that, ‘‘in this materialistic time just to have little interest to look inside, contemplate inside, not getting distracted by outside and really looking inside is very important. It’s worthwhile to spend our time and energy on it.’’

Drubgyud Tenzin Rinpoche, who presided over the camp, remarked on the importance of educators and individuals, in their roles to facilitate the necessary conditions for students to look inward (one’s own mind) and contemplate on it.

The whole program from the start to the conclusion was thought through carefully as contemplation. The path LME presented was straightforward. It involved practice, practice, and more practice. The eight days of mindfulness program was practice-oriented, with 4 hours of sitting and walking sessions every day, interspersed with short talks, breaks, recorded teaching, guided contemplation, noble silence, discipline, offering, stretching, discussions and karma yoga practice (work with positive motivation) on daily basis. As a whole, the camp facilitated more than 40 hours of mindfulness practice sessions and more than 20 hours of teaching sessions for the participants. Even during tea and meal breaks the practice is integrated by encouraging mindful eating, mindful washing, and drinking to connect the practice into daily lives.