Sky’s Blog @ The Dalai Lama Foundation — Spreading the word in a networked world

In an article on MountEverest.net (”by climbers”), you can read about George Patterson, who rode in the Himalayas in 1949, and met the Dalai Lama, and continues at age 90 to be a prominent Tibet supporter.

Rather than try to excerpt here, I will simply direct you to the original article. He rode across the Himalayas in the winter of 1949: George Patterson’s final contribution to the people of Tibet. This is an extensive and interesting article. Read it!

No time is more apt than right now for me to post an audio interview I conducted a few months ago. The time is apt because of what’s happening in Tibet over the past two weeks (best reports are at the BBC - search for Tibet). During most of its human history, Tibet was an isolated and difficult-to-reach high plateau, which only remotely came under the influence or control of the Mongols or the Chinese from time to time. The Dalai Lamas were in fact assigned their name and governmental role by Mongol overlords around 1578.

Tibet only “opened up” to the non-Asian world in mid-twentieth century. My introduction was via Lowell Thomas Jr.’s book Out of this World (published in 1950 - I will have more to say about the book elsewhere). And I read this book when I was a teenager in middle America, some time after Tibet was occupied by the Chinese army and just before the 14th Dalai Lama went into exile in India. The Chinese government claims that Tibet has always been a part of China. Those of us who have come into contact with Tibetan people know them as hard-working and dedicated, open and welcoming, and will never forget our encounters.

Last year I met Jane Bay. Jane has worked within the film industry for some time, and Jane came to know Tibet thru some interesting events - but most directly because she sponsored and adopted a Tibetan refugee daughter. Initially her daughter, Namgyal, lived at the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala, India, but due to circumstances and political pressure she moved back to Tibet. And Jane lost touch with her. This story is told in Jane’s first book, Precious Jewels of Tibet.

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I’m impressed that over the years there has been more and more ICT education taking place in the wake of the DITG founding (that we participated in, in 2005). Recently this took the form of a four-day Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) session for Tibetans in exile in Dharamsala.

You can see what I’ve written about in this blog related to the DITG.

Our Project Happiness students from three continents met with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama this afternoon.
We had scheduled a thirty-minute audience and in fact His Holiness was so interested in the students’ questions that we ran nearly 90 minutes.
Among the students were three who had emigrated from Tibet by crossing high passes in the Himalayas - they’re students at Upper TCV now - and two Nigerian students. Both groups were accompanied by their teachers. The California students came by air, train and car and we’ve documented some of their activities already - with more to come.
Until we can get more student experience online, you can read about them at the web site of the Santa Cruz Sentinel.