(Bhutan) Lama Kunzang, photos and Animal People Article

[Guest guest]

Two press articles about Lama Kunzang of Jangsa Animal Saving Trust

1. link with photos

http://www.pasadosafehaven.org/HOMEPAGE/8_4Website/LAMA/LAMA.htm

2. Animal People article below

 

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:

 

 

Even " Shangri-La " needs animal sanctuaries & rabies control

 

THIMPHU, Bhutan--Touring the U.S. to raise support for the

Jangsa Animal Saving Trust, Lama Kunzang Dorjee hesitated to call

his work in Bhutan uniquely difficult.

Yes, Kunzang acknowledged, it is difficult coordinating the

activities of half a dozen animal sanctuaries scattered throughout a

nation which is still connected mainly by footpaths, especially when

dozens of long-horned bullocks have to be moved to and from their

summer pastures over swaying single-file suspension bridges--but all

of the Jangsa locations are now connected by mobile telephone,

Kunzang quickly added.

Yes, the Jangsa Animal Saving Trust needs money, Kunzang

explained. Money is needed to start an Animal Birth Control program

in the capital city of Thimphu. This will be modeled after the

Animal Birth Control program directed by Help In Suffering

veterinarian Naveen Pandey in Darjeeling, India. Money is needed

for equipment, vehicles, vaccines, and surgical supplies, all of

which must be imported.

But, Kunzang continued, fellow Bhutanese donate most

generously in support of the Jangsa programs. Unlike American animal

advocates, Kunzang said, he has little difficulty explaining to

fellow citizens what he is doing, and why.

Kunzang showed slides and video clips of villagers walking

miles to contribute baskets of corn to monks who trek throughout the

nation, seeking alms for the animals. They have little difficulty

convincing people to donate what they can, Kunzang said. The only

problem is that the Bhutanese mostly do not have very much to give.

Bhutan, with just 675,000 residents and 24 indigenous

dialects, is among the world's poorest, least populated and least

accessible nations, with a literacy rate of under 50%. Yet the

entire nation is by ethic and tradition a quasi-animal sanctuary.

About 75% of the Bhutanese are Buddhists; most of the rest are

Hindus. Ethnic tension simmers between the 80% of the people who

practice mostly vegetarian forms of Buddhism and Hinduism, and the

20% who are Tibetan refugees, or are descended from Tibetan

refu-gees, and--though also Buddhists--eat meat.

Archery is the national sport. Hunting, however, is

strictly forbidden. Depredations by tigers and elephants are much

feared, but Bhutanese tradition, Kunzang explained, holds that

tigers and elephants are the elders of the forest, who must be

respected, lest they do even more harm.

Two-thirds forested, mostly more than a kilometer above sea

level, Bhutan was entirely closed to the outside world until 1961,

and is still hard to visit. The mystic city of Shambhala, mentioned

in Buddhist literature more than 1,600 years ago, has been variously

identified with places in Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet, and India.

The " Shangri-La " created by novelist James Hilton in Lost

Horizon (1933), based on the Shambhala legend, drew heavily from

Hilton's experience in the Hunza Valley of Pakistan, at the western

end of the Himalayas while Bhutan is at the eastern end, but even

then Bhutan was a closer match to " Shangri-La, " to the extent of

western knowledge.

Just one small airport serves Bhutan, at Thimphu. Paved roads link

the major towns, but motor vehicles are scarce.

As poaching and deforestation intensify in Assam, India,

according to Kunzhang, Assamese wild animals are fleeing into

Bhutan, seeking refuge at higher elevations.

Bhutan has so far escaped violent insurrections fueled by

poaching, such as have devastated the wildlife of both Assam and

Nepal. Hoping to avoid any spill-over of the Nepalese violence,

Bhutan banned the Nepalese language in 1988 and deported many alleged

Nepalese immigrants.

More than 90% of the Bhutanese population farms the less than

10% of the land that can be cultivated, relying on bullock power to

do whatever cannot be done with human muscle. Most of the activity

of the Jangsa Animal Saving Trust involves looking after retired

working bullocks, many of them lame or blind.

Typically Jangsa receives the bullocks after the death of the

farmer who used them. As aging widows cannot cut and carry the

foliage needed to feed their deceased husbands' bullocks in the

winter, when grass is scarce, they traditionally either donate the

animals to monasteries, sell them to local butchers, or sell them

to traders who walk them down the mountains to be slaughtered in

Darjeeling, India.

" The Jangsa Animal Saving Trust, " the organization's

brochure recounts, " was established in 2000 by Lama Kunzang Dorjee,

after a personal experience where he encountered five bulls who had

come to seek refuge in the Jangsa Dechen Choling monastery, where he

is the resident head lama. These bulls had escaped from a

slaughterhouse and had been miraculously drawn toward the lama's

monastery.

" Presently, " the brochure adds, " the Trust maintains about

600 bulls, 40 yaks, 137 pigs, 23 sheep, two goats, and nine

ducks in the eastern and northern region of Bhutan. There are also

10 goats, two buffalo, and two pigs cared for in a village near

Kalimpong in the hills of West Bengal, India. A further 58 bulls

have found a home in Siliguuri.

" At the monastery in Kalimpong, where Lama Kunzang resides,

10 bulls and a cow have found refuge from the butcher's axe. A pond

at the monastery has hundreds of saved fish, and is a big attraction

for visitors and children. "

Kunzang cites as his inspiration his teacher Chatral

Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist whose work was praised by Thomas

Merton, the Trappist monk (1915-1968) whose writings helped to

introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the U.S.

Attending the AR-2007 conference in Los Angeles, visiting

ANIMAL PEOPLE, the NOAH Center, Pasado's Safe Haven, and Pigs

Peace in the Seattle area, among other stops on his U.S. tour,

Kunzang promoted Compassionate Action, an anthology by and about

Chatral Rinpoche edited by Zach Larson. (122 pages, paperback,

$14.95, from Snow Lion Publications, P.O. Box 6483, Ithaca, NY

14851.) Relatively little of Compassionate Action addresses

meat-eating and human duties toward animals, but the pages that do

are emphatic in rejecting interpretations of Buddhism that accept

meat consumption.

Now approximately 95 years old, Chatral Rinpoche has long

spent whatever money comes his way to purchase fish and birds from

markets and release them back to the wild. Practiced as a spiritual

and compassionate exercise by devotees of many religions for at least

2,500 years, purchase-for-release tends to be counterproductive,

since it gives incentive to the sellers to capture and sell more

animals. In recent years purchase-for-release has also been

recognized as one of the major means by which non-native animals are

introduced to new habitats, much to the consternation of

conservationists whose emphasis is on protecting native species,

rather than on practicing compassion.

The Jangsa Animal Saving Trust is finding more practical and

ecologically compatible means of exemplifying Chatral Rinpoche's

teachings. The Thimphu ABC project will be the most ambitious Jangsa

project yet, seeking to sterilize and vaccinate approximately 7,000

dogs, to eradicate rabies outbreaks that killed three Bhutanese in

2006.

Rabies has also occurred recently in the towns of Chukha,

Samtse, Sarbang, Samdrup Jongkhar, Mongar, Trashiyangtse, and

Trashigang. The latter three have each had recent human rabies

deaths.

Kunzang wants to extend ABC service to these communities,

too--after demonstrating in the national capital that it works.

 

[Contact: Jungshina, P.O. Box 314, Thimphu, Bhutan;

975-2-323949; <lamakunzang;

<www.animalsavingtrust.org>.]

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing

original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,

founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the

decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations.

We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

for free sample, send address.]