After three days walking they reached Jomsom, then Pokhara. Then from Pokhara, they reached Kathmandu by bus. In Kathmandu, they stayed in a monastery in Boudhanath. And also here the story is the same, even if a few years passed between the two. Nobody told them that they were not in India. So both of them thought they had arrived. They started to settle down. But they were in Nepal. One day, one of the elder monks told them: “In a couple of days we will go to India”. This shocked both the kids. Where was this India then? Lama Yonten Sangpo, describing the situation, said: “What? It’s not India here? - No, it’s not, we need to go to India, Dehradun. We went for two more days by bus. I reached the school and there I stayed for 8 years. After three years I could go back to Mustang for a holiday to visit my family.”
So small, so lonely, so far away, all of them.
Sometimes they couldn’t sleep for months out of sorrow and homesick feelings. And they were crying in their bed at night.
Luckily our monks were lively kids.
So with the help of the Dharma teachings, they could overcome this hard beginning. And they became very strong-minded and dedicated people.
But it has been hard on them all.
That’s why opening our monastic school has been so important.
So as not to take away from their family small children. Give them the chance to have a happier childhood, with studies, but also love and leisure.
Our senior monks remember how it had been for them, and are doing all their best to avoid the bitter part for our kids.
At that time, the system in the monastery was that every year one young monk had to be at the service of the monastery.
Lama Yonten Sangpo's time was when he was sixteen, lama Karma was when he was seventeen.
But after the year of service at the monastery, their paths of life shifted.
Lama Karma went back to the Sakya college for a normal monk training.
While Lama Yonten Sangpo had to make a difficult decision that changed the course of his life forever.
For avoid the kids all of that, that our actual school was founded.
Now our kids spend half a year in Musang and half in Pokhara. Winter in Mustang is cold, summer in Pokhara is monsoon time. So we keep the kids in Mustang in summer and spring, and in Pokhara in autumn and Winter. They are very lucky!
p.s. The school both of them had attended, was about whatever a monk has to know. From performing pujas. To prepare the tormas. Play monastic instruments. Mandala making and so on. They came out fully accomplished in all the ceremonies and pujas a Sakyapa monk has to perform.
