Day 1 Workshop

I am not sure if the melatonin is working or not.  I seem to fall asleep quickly, but I wake up early at about 4 am.  Anyway, it gives me time to edit photos from the previous day and plan for teaching.  We have also been taking long walks in the hills starting at 6:30 am and we are back for breakfast by 7:30 am.

Yesterday was the first full day of the workshop.  After breakfast, we started with a brief ceremony in Tibetan and then a welcome to the program.  Modesto and Paul presented lessons to introduce perception and ways that the monks can use to engage students in learning.  The monks tested their limits of hearing by dropping smaller and smaller pieces of paper into plastic cups until they could no longer hear the sound.  They were quite surprised at how small the paper must be before they could no longer hear it.   Paul used a piece of string that allow the monks to experiment with how the eyes put visual images together and we briefly discussed right/left eye dominance.

Richard Sterling closed the last teaching session of the day by explaining the writing assignments for the monks and establishing writing groups.  One assignment the monks will do is to create a lesson about Tibetan Buddhism that they will teach to us instructors.  Because I know very little about Tibetan Buddhism, I look forward to learning from the monks.

After dinner, Bobby Sager, the founder of the Sager Foundation and sponsor of this Science for Monks program, talked to the entire group about the purpose and promise of the workshop.  He explained the need to assist the Tibetan Buddhist community in creating leaders and that although it may take time, the Science for Monks program should be an excellent way to establish the monks as leaders in the communities where they live.