Daily life in Rigul by Shannon Lui

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Dear Friends,

As many of you will know, Ringu Tulku Rinpoche was born in Rigul, Kham , Tibet, and he is still the Abbot and director of Rigul monastery. Through many difficult years, Rinpoche has had to operate from afar, in a position of exile in India. Students, friends and family worldwide have helped Rinpoche to realise his dream of restoring his monastery, the teaching shedra, providing a health clinic and school for all the people of Rigul and for people coming from many miles around.

Here is a very moving account of daily life in Rigul by Shannon Lui, who visited Rigul last October.

We are now needing to raise £34,000 or 42,000 euros every year to maintain very basic needs.
Yesterday, Ringu Tulku messaged to say that the costs have increased even on this amount of money just given.

 


 

Hello Margret,

I made a trip to Rigul Temple in early October. It was an impressive but tough journey as it took us over two days by car for just one way trip. But it’s all worth it when we finally get to see the temple, the village, the school, the teachers, the students, the doctor, and Kempo’s family.

I’m attaching some photos to share with you. We saw the new playground with fence at school, the repaired roof, the solar energy alternators for the teachers and doctor, and many other stuffs that were purchased or built using the fund from Rigul Trust. Kempo and the teachers/students want me to help pass their appreciation to you and everyone else who have been helping them to make all these improvements during the past years. Kempo also prays for your family and friends during various Buddhist activities as well as his daily practice.

We know Kempo has tried his best to prepare relatively better food and living for us, but we clearly see how tough the living condition is. The weather is cold, with winter of over 6 months long. (It snowed when we were there in early Oct). People lack of a lot of basic supplies for live. Things like vegetable/fruits, clothes or even toothpaste, they will have to buy from a town that is 3 hours driving distance. To purchase school furniture, books, and other important stuff, Kempo will have to travel 2 to 3 days to ChengDu city, then arrange trucks to carry back. The cost of trucks is quite expensive due to the long distance and bad road condition, (RMB 5000 to 7000). .

The kids were happily taking the school meals and smile to us all time, when taking photos for them. They are really sweet kids. They practiced some Tibet dance after class and performed it in the next day to thank us for bringing them gifts,candies and school supply. Also, the village has no phone lines, even mobile phone signal is only available for a short period of time in the day time. We were out of connection most of the time there.

Also, we visited the doctor and his clinic office, he is a very nice and reliable person that helping a lot of people including the neighbor village. He travels to patient home by bike no matter in daytime or nighttime. There are also a couple items that need additional fund.

  1. Dr. Chuga plans to build an attached room for patients to take treatment, as currently, they can only do it in the open yard area, very cold.
  2. to save medicine cost, Dr. Chuga picks and collects Tibet medicine on his own and need two kinds of machines to grind them into powder, currenlty, he is doing by hands, but it’s very slow and hurting his hands. I saw there are a lot of medicine are getting sundried in his room, but not able to grind into powder yet.

So Kempo wonders if there is any possiblity to fund above two items. Please kindly advise.

During the one week stay, we all experienced a lot, and learned a lot. It’s a beautiful and peaceful piece of land with good souls. I want to visit there again. Hope you will have a chance to come to China and get to visit Rigul village, to meet the people you’ve been supporting some day.

Meanwhile, wish you all the best! Stay warm!

Best Regards,

Shannon


 

We welcome your help, service and donations.
For further information either

email info@rigultrust.org,
visit Rigul Trust Communities
visit the blog: www.rigultrust.wordpress.com
visit the website: www.rigultrust.org

On behalf of Ringu Tulku and all the people of Rigul we send our heartfelt thanks to everyone for all the help that has been given, is being given and will be given.

 

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