Community service by Tibetan Youth Congress during His Holiness the Dalai Lama's Teachings in Varanasi

Community service by Tibetan Youth Congress during His Holiness the Dalai Lama's Teachings in Varanasi

More than 25,000 devotees from around the world, 1,500 of whom are foreigners and 5000 monks and nuns are attending the teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Sutdies, Sarnath, Varanasi. The two sets of teaching on Gomrim Bharpa and Shantideva's, A Guide to Bodhisattva's way of life is from January 8 to14, 2008.


The devotees began arriving several days before the teachings. At these large gatherings, there is always a dire need for volunteers who can properly guide the devotee's many of whom are strangers to the city and help them feel at comfort here. Even before the teachings started, the devotees need information and directions on finding proper accommodations, making identity cards (entrance pass), the items devotees are not allowed to bring to the teachings, where the entrance gates are located and directions to free medical aid providers here.

The Tibetan Youth Congress Information Centre which was started here on 4 January, 2008 has been set up for this purpose. The Centre not only tries to reduce the inconvenience to devotee's through announcements directing them to proper entrance gates and by announcing the timings of the teachings in various different languages, it is also a place where devotee's can rely on to find their lost friends and helps people from different locations meet each other, etc.

For many elderly Buddhists, making a last pilgrimage to holy sites in their old age especially when teachings are taking place is a sacred dream. When they make these long and arduous journey there is always the fear that their weak and vulnerable bodies may give up on them here. When people do pass away here during the teachings, members of the Tibetan Youth Congress try to ensure that the dead receive proper last rites and are cremated.

People can also report their lost items here and we help to deliver items that have been found and dropped at the Information Centre to their rightful owners. Because the Centre has been set up only for social service, it has strict guidelines and does not make any commercial announcements. At present, a lost wallet belonging to Mr. Isuzo Sogimuro of Japan has been dropped at the Centre. The wallet contains some identity cards and money. Though we have announced in Japanese and English for him to kindly pick up his walled, he has not come to claim his wallet. If he does not come to claim it here, we will handover the wallet to the Japanese Embassy in Delhi after the teachings.

Tibetan Youth Congress has been proudly doing social service for the last almost four decades since its inception on 7 October 1970. TYC engages in a wide variety of activities aimed at helping those in need and alleviating some of the most urgent social and educational problems. These range from organizing broom squads to building public toilets, conducting health education programs to blood donation, holding adult education classes to starting schools and planting trees.

During the last few Kalachakra's held in India, TYC and its members have helped ensure that the large number of devotee's here who may not speak hindi, the new arrivals from Tibet here for the teachings or the elderly people do not feel discomfort and have proper guidance and assisters. To carry on this long tradition of social service and have set up the information centre here.

This year as Tibetans mark 50 years of reconstruction in exile, the members of the Tibetan Youth Congress will rededicate themselves to the service of the nation and beseech His Holiness the Dalai Lama to continue to remain as the supreme leader of Tibet and live for hundreds of eon s. For this the TYC will make a supplication for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on 14 January 2008.