These past few months have been a trial period in the house, as I have been busy with the Geluk exams and unavailable to function as acting director.
For the first time since 2005, there has not been a senior monk available to function as director, as the next most senior person in the house after me is eleven years junior.
Fortunately, Ven. Lekshe was able to step up during this time and take on the difficult task of working as acting director. It is certainly more challenging to do so for somebody who is not themselves senior (in terms of Sera’s seniority), but he managed the role with a good mix of firmness and humility. Despite being in a somewhat junior class, Lekshe does have the advantage of many years of monastic experience, having already been ordained for about seventeen years (seniority at Sera is determined by class, not by years of ordination).
Now that I have finished exams for the year I will be returning to the directorship role, until my class begins our intensive period again next Spring.
This trial period has been helpful for considering how we will maintain the future of the house after I complete the program in five years. We have never been a large group, an inevitable result of the manifold difficulties faced by foreigners in this environment. But we have always had a core group of a few serious students, and I’m hoping that can continue after I move on.
Ven. Thubten Tegchok, our newest arrival, has been showing signs of great promise for the future. Soon after arriving he jumped into the second class, and after a successful first year of study he is now considering taking an exam to skip the third year as well, thereby advancing directly into the challenging first year of the Prajnaparamita studies.
We are expecting at least three new arrivals within the next year, one of whom has been training in London under Geshe Namdak, the founder and first director of our house.
Three months ago we were joined by Yogi Kurade, a local resident who applied to volunteer in our house. We hosted several volunteers earlier this year, but none of them worked out. We are very happy to have Yogi, as he has fit in nicely and taken a big load off the monks by doing our cooking and other tasks. Having previously studied and lived in Germany for eight years, Yogi is well-adjusted to Western habits and has the potential to also be a member of the house in the future. It has been a new endeavor for us to accept volunteers with little Buddhist background and train them ourselves. Previously all new members of the house had already studied for some years with teachers in their home countries. Members of the house have worked together to help give Yogi a solid foundation in Buddhist philosophy, and he has also been following the Discovering Buddhism program with Geshe Namdak. It seems like it might work out for him to stay here with us, opening a new avenue for new recruitment in the future.
