What can Benedict teach us?
ONE of the things – if I was ever given the chance to ask – I’d love to know more about with Benedict, was his time teaching Tibetan monks during his gap year.
By all accounts he worked for a perfumer to raise the funds for his trip to Darjeeling, where he worked at a Nepali home to teach English to the monks.
In an online interview, he said: “They were amazingly warm, intelligent, humorous people. Hard to teach English to. I built a blackboard, which no other previous teachers seem to have done. With 12 monks in a room with an age-range of about 8 to 40, that’s quite important – and the reward-punishment thing of sweets or no sweets, or game or no game, worked quite well. But they taught me a lot more than I could possibly ever teach them.
“They taught me about the simplicity of human nature, but also the humanity of it, and the ridiculous sense of humour you need to live a full spiritual life.”
I wish I had known that such a rich and rewarding experience was out there to be grasped when I had my gap year.
It must have been relatively unusual for Benedict, say 20 years ago, to do such a thing. Nowadays with the world getting smaller, what opportunities are out there now?
I’d like to think they are not exclusive to gap year students looking for an adventure before the start of “real life” and, on looking around, it’s not.
Through Hands For Help Nepal (www.handsforhelpnepal.org) you can teach at any age, for one to five weeks. Through their scheme, the reward for teaching is learning the monks’ way of life. You teach for two to four days a week, and live in the monastery with them.
A similar experience, and more more akin to Benedict’s, is being run through Global Crossroad (www.globalcrossroad.com) where they aim to help the 150,000 Tibetans who live in exile in India, Nepal and Bhutan. You don’t need to have a qualification to teach, just a strong will and sense of discipline.
But of course programmes like these are not exclusive to Tibetan monks, there are schemes around the world where you can enrich the lives of others, and your own life, through education and culture.
Visit www.globalteer.org if you’re in the UK to see a whole list of opportunities to help those in need abroad, from community and children’s projects in Cambodia, to animal sanctuaries in Peru and Thailand.
Alternatively, www.workingabroad.com has a large range of projects, from humanitarian to environmental and teaching.
But if the idea of going to far-flung shores is not appealing, volunteering locally can be equally rewarding. You could walk dogs at the local animal shelter, provide company for elderly people who are perhaps isolated, or work with charities to support your local homeless population.
With Benedict’s birthday now less than two months away, the Cumbercollective is busy fundraising once again to show their love and support for him. Maybe, if you are unable to give money, you could give time? I’m sure Benedict would wholeheartedly approve!
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