Written by Laurence Brahm - Published by Hongkong Culture on 11/01/2007

Tashigang Monastery lies along a quiet bend of the Lhasa River. Here the current is fast as icy water passes rapidly from melting glaciers on the long winding path to India. At the gate of Tashigang Monastery a dirt road marks the famous Tea Caravan Trail which one served as the main link between China and India. Tea Traversed by pony from rich Yunnan Province across Tibet to India. Buddhist sutras returned with the caravans. Historically, Tashigang Monastery was the first overnight stop of the Dalai Lamas whenever they made sojourns from Lhasa.

Tashigang Monastery was chosen by Shambhala as the center of a new experiment to expand holistic and preventive health care to Tibetan communities at the grass roots level. The concept involves empowering monks, monasteries and communities with the tools of their own sustainable health care and development embedded entirely within a Tibetan cultural context.

The program consists of four stages: [1] restoring destroyed sections or buildings of a monastery; [2] establishing a medical clinic within these buildings, training monks or nuns as paramedics to treat patients there; [3] empowering them with medical skills of both Tibetan and western practice, opening a Tibetan medicine pharmacy which includes production using local herbs and mountain plants; and [4] expanding the facility to provide training for monks and nuns from other monasteries where Shambhala is establishing similar clinic facilities.

By offering medical services - for a fee reasonable and acceptable to the local community - the monastery can receive income and monks can double - as medical service providers. The medical clinic provides the monastery with a source of sustainable revenue. Moreover, more pilgrims will visit the monastery because of the medical clinic further sustaining and supporting their culture.

The monastery is a traditional centre for providing community self-help. Tibetan medicine was developed and dispensed from the monasteries as a matter of basic cultural tradition. Effectively monks serve in the context of their religious practice as social psychologists, family counselors, and job counselors. We are re-empowering monasteries and monks with what was already theirs.

Restoration of Cultural Heritage

In the first stage Shambhala restores - which often requires rebuilding a monastery building.

During the 1980s and 1990s China’s central government recognizing the tourist value of monasteries began to provide funding for their restoration. The monasteries are primarily self-sustaining and depend on donations from pilgrims. In the case of Tashigang Monastery, no funding was made available given its rural location. Devotees from Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Hong Kong contributed to rebuilding its main hall and restoration of its famously precious murals.

One complication was a small crumbling building which held yak butter candles lit by pilgrims. It has been built right behind the white pagoda, an awkward point for entry. Moreover, it has been built with limited resources on the base of the original building that would be re-built and restored from its ruins. So if we rebuilt the original building on the site in its entirety, then the yak butter candle room would have to be moved.

We offered to re-build the yak butter candle room expanded in size at the entrance of Tashigang Monastery. This would prove more convenient for pilgrims as they could light yak butter candles entering and leaving the monastery. This has since been completed.

Then a second problem was brought to our attention. The chapel holding a Yidam-tantric spirit-was too small. Monks had to crouch to see the towering figure of the Yidam and the room could not provide space for full sutra reading ceremonies. So we re-built the hall raising the roof to a two story structure adding missing images of eight accompanying Dakinis-angel spirit - which had been demolished during the Cultural Revolution.

Establishing a Medical Clinic within a Monastery

As for developing an efficient and self-sustaining medical clinic Shambhala sought specialist advice from experts on the ground in Lhasa who are Tibetan and understand both medical needs on the plateau together with cultural sensitivities. Shambhala approached Kungala Tashi, Director of Seva Tibet Sight Programme, for advice. He understood there was one medical clinic in Nyetang opened by the government providing western treatment.

The clinic consisted of some simple rooms manned by three doctors. Despite its tiny size, the clinic was overwhelmed by visitors. The population of Nyetang is only 5,000. However, records showed 7,000 visits in 2006. This signaled to me that the need for medical services reaching into the countryside of Tibet is acute.

Even though Nyetang is only about a fifty-minute drive from Lhasa, the population is relatively poor, relying on subsistence agriculture and herding. Per capita income in Nyetang is about 2000 RMB per year, which means health care remains unaffordable for most. Preventive or holistic medicine has a key role to play in people’s lives, as it always has in Tibet.

For local Tibetans living there, the only place offering such service and natural Tibetan medicines is Menzikang the government’s official traditional Tibetan medicine hospital in Lhasa itself - a half day’s drive. It appeared Nyetang could be an ideal place to begin offering Tibetan medicine clinical treatment and dispensary services. So the idea of a local Tibetan medicine clinic that could outreach to the Nyetang community seemed appealing to almost everyone we talked to. Now all we needed was a doctor who could train monks as paramedics. Kungala thought for a moment, and then had an idea!

Empowering with Medical Skills

Dr. Lobsang Thupten is a monk who has been trained in the ancient art of Tibetan medicine in Shigatze City, seat of the Panchen Lamas in central-western Tibet. Kungala knew of Lobsang’s outstanding reputation not only as a classic Tibetan doctor, but moreover as a devout Buddhist monk. He invited Lobsang to Lhasa.

There could not have been a better choice of doctor to open and run the Shambhala Clinic at Tashigang Monastery. Under Dr. Lobsgang’s teachings we had Tibetan classical thanka artists paint elaborate murals of the medicine thankas which reveal the secret arts of Tibetan medicine. Dr. Lobsang then established a small production line for the mixing of preparations and making of Tibetan medicine to be made available through the dispensary built into Shambhala clinic.

To expand the scope of service available at Shambhala Clinic, Kungala arranged for Dr. Lobsang to take courses in western eye care in a Lhasa hospital under a Seva organized programme, and other courses in western medicine to further expand his existing background. Then the abbot of Tashigang Monastery assigned several monks to become students of Dr. Lobsang and he trained as paramedics and Tibetan medicine pharmacists.

Reaching Out to More!

The concept of placing the clinic within a monastery seemed revolutionary. It could reach out to the local population easily because the monastery is traditionally a central point of community. Moreover, it could serve as a model for other communities in the Himalayan region - regardless of religious beliefs as long as they are traditionally community rooted and centered - to develop sustainable outreach whether medical care or education.

Since the establishment of the Shambhala Clinic at Tashigang Monastery we have received requests from many monasteries to establish similar clinics along this model. In 2008 Shambhala has undertaken commitments to raise funds and develop clinics based on the Tashigang experience in one Tibetan monastery in Yushu Prefecture of Qinghai Province and two in Aba Prefecture of Sichuan, both Tibetan nomad regions.

Note: The embassy of Ireland in Beijing provided funding to make this project possible.

Shambhala is a social enterprise committed to promoting and supporting initiatives for ethnic diversity and cultural sustainable development. For more information go to www.shambhala-action.org

Laurence Brahm is a global activist, international mediator, political columnist and author. He is the leading advocate of a fresh development paradigm - The Himalayan Consensus - an innovative approach to development.

Back to Top