Pictures of Norbulingka

Here are the Norbulingka Institute photos that I thought were lost in cyberspace. I brought the "shortcut" CD to a genius computer teacher in McLeod Ganj. Nyimon gives lessons (I think I need to take a few). In a few short clicks and properties explorations, he was able to reverse the fatal "shortcut" flaw and create a new CD for me.

The first photo (above) is the entrance to the institute. A few meters from the entrance, standing in front of a cafe, was a woman asking institute visitors to sign a petition and give a donation for a group of Hindu refugees looking for homes somewhere south of Dharamsala. Everyone here is in need of services of one kind or another.

The cloth Thankas (corrected spelling, here, but the /th/ is pronounced as /t/) are completed by teams of artists. Some are laying the stencils, while other artists are stitching over the chalk stencil lines. Men and women can be found winding silk thread around horsetail hair (as shown below) or snipping fabric and pressing cut edges back. One of the final steps is to glue the sewed pieces to a backing.


This woman is winding silk thread around horsetail hair. She ties a small pebble at each end of the hair in order to weigh it down as it is pulled through her fingers with one hand while she is spinning colored thread around the hair with the other. Simply amazing to watch!


Here is an example of the center of a brocade Thanka. Each individual piece of fabric used to make this part of the central design will then be stitched again before being attached to a larger cloth where additional designs make up the outer "setting."


In the woodcutting workshop, the craftsmen work tirelessly on their pieces. There's a quiet and peaceful air to the studio as well as the clean smell of fresh cut wood. As you can see from this photo, the paper stencil is pasted to the wood before the cutting begins. These fellows learn to simply draw the pictures for one and a half years before being allowed to work with wood.


Here are the drawings created by the woodcutters. The images are based on Buddhist scripture and apprentices are instructed by the head lamas (master teachers) as to the proper depiction of each story. Some images can be used more than one time, but like the Thankas, once the central image is cut, the artist adds his own background "setting."


In the metal sculpture workshop, the artists often work together on larger pieces. Some of the Buddha sculptures are over eight feet high. After the resinous mold is made, the copper is formed around it. Then, a layer of gold leaf and another gold-like material is layered over that to increase the luminescence of the piece.


The Japanese style gardens definitely have a Tibetan quality to them as well. These prayer stones are found all over Tibetan communities. They basically are prayers for world peace which is the Dalai Lama's message. Om Mani Pad Me Hung...May Peace Prevail Everywhere On Earth.

Time to go meet my private tutor English student. We spend our hour together reading and understanding political articles and opinions essays about Tibet. He , like so many other young Tibetans, is absolutely certain that a fully independent Tibet is the only solution. Older people are more moderate and want to follow the Dalai Lama's Middle way.