Really lovely, inspiring documentary ~ Tashi and the Monk
https://player.vimeo.com/video/95735800?badge=0
TASHI AND THE MONK from Pilgrim Films on Vimeo.
In a remote region of the Indian Himalayas, Lobsang Phuntsok, formerly a Buddhist monk, has dedicated his life to rescuing unwanted, orphaned and needy children. He cares for and educates them at a unique, donor-supported community called Jhamtse Gatsal (Tibetan for ‘garden of love and compassion’), which houses around 90 children and their caretakers. Abandoned as a child and taken in at a Buddhist monastery, Lobsang now strives to give vulnerable youngsters the loving father figure and the experience of childhood that he feels he missed. Tashi and the Monk follows Lobsang as he balances pleas for help from nearby families with the Jhamtse Gatsal’s limited resources. Meanwhile, he’s faced with a difficult recent arrival, five-year-old Tashi who is a restless cyclone of a girl, prone to spitting, hitting, pushing and crying.
Winner of the 2016 Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary, Tashi and the Monk is at once uplifting and heartbreaking as it contemplates the many challenges – and remarkable rewards – of making compassion truly the centre of one’s life.
From an interview with Phuntsok…
Our older kids that have been here for nine years — we started in 2006 — and these kids become one of the most amazing agent of change. So I know that these kids will go out someday, and they will do much better than what I am doing right now.
Generally just Being. Nothing in particular, no claims to fame. I like gardening and the sea, nature, art in all forms from poetry to films and everything in between, and being in the company of my family.
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