Re-inviting the Uninvited Guests of the Universe
Not a regular Awakin call, but a KarmaTube Theatre special offering — a week-long journey that began with a streaming of the film Loving Karma, unfolded through six days of online reflections in loving karma pod, and closed with this conversation with Lobsang and voices from the community.
Audrey opened the call by naming what the week had been: a film, Loving Karma, watched together; six days of online reflections; and more than a thousand people across twenty countries showing up with open hearts. Counsellors, social workers, ministers, trauma psychologists, a Catholic nun, a woman who visits incarcerated women carrying messages of hope — people whose seasons span their 30s to their 80s, stretched from the high Himalayas to North Dakota, Uganda, Kuwait, Vietnam, rural France.
What united them, she said, was not profession or place, but a deep resonance with the power of love — and a nagging insistence that compassion is not just a nicety, but the heart and core of life.
From the week’s daily reflections, Audrey shared a few leaves and blooms: a woman in her ninth decade who recalled feeling different and alone until her younger brother was born when she was three, and wrote what a gift that early loneliness had been — without it, she would not have valued her brother’s love the way that she did. A counsellor and teacher who lost his father a few weeks ago, reflecting on the tensions between them, noted that forcing anything is only good for breaking things, not for healing or instilling trust or caring. A volunteer firefighter remembered the village elders in Alaska who had been immensely generous and patient with me as I fumbled my way towards becoming of benefit to people.
Archana · India
Archana shared that Loving Karma did to her what she was least expecting it to do — it took her to places within her she had visited before, but not completely come out of. Watching Tashi throw her tantrums and be met with love, something in her began to melt. “That’s the medicine. It was always the medicine. The only part.”
Sandra · Germany
Sandra spoke from a late afternoon in Germany. In her late 30s, she was pursuing a scientific career in the US — a biologist who had loved nature, every being, since she was twelve, and who planned to become a professor. She had never imagined being a mother; there was no space, no time. Then suddenly she found out she was pregnant — and lost the child. “That moment I knew that I wanted to be a mother.”
She had always thought she wouldn’t be a good mother because of her own difficult childhood. Then, as if by miracle, she got pregnant again soon after, and gave birth to a healthy daughter. And in that becoming, she realised something about her work. She had studied biology because she loved every being — “but eventually, during my career and during my work, I killed everything.”
“How would I ever explain to my daughter that my job was to kill animals?”
There was a silent voice, she said — the one the week’s first prompt had spoken about — telling her a better world was possible, that a more loving and useful job would be valuable. So she gave up the career she had wanted since she was twelve, and became a full-time mother. It was tough. “And I never regretted having done that.”
Shayna welcomed Lobsang — born in 1971 in the remote Himalayan foothills, left as a newborn in a pile of dried leaves by his unmarried mother, rescued by his grandparents, an angry and lost boy who tried to end his life before he turned seven. The same child is now father to hundreds of children who felt unwanted in exactly the same way. He spoke from Dharamshala, having just had an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and admitted that in such moments he goes completely blank — all thoughts, all jumping thinking, disappear — and called that emptiness the kind of peace he never otherwise experiences.
Asked who taught him to communicate, he pointed to his monastic teachers. Each was different, he said, like mental doctors with different specialties — because he had so many challenges, he needed many of them. But what set them apart was not their words. In Tibetan culture, he reminded us, no one says I love you; today people imitate the phrase from English, and it still feels weird to him to say or hear it.
A teacher can show love a thousand ways — gifts, vacations, daily texts, boom, boom, boom — but if he cannot be love, none of it lands. Lobsang remembered his own teacher giving him only one gift in all his years, and a difficult one at that. But sitting next to him — even expressionless — calmed him down. It was much better than saying a thousand words.
“The most powerful is being love. It’s the most powerful way.”
He brought it back to his own struggle with the children at Jamtse Gatsal. He could say wonderful things, bring presents, take them out to nice dinners, even give them money — “but if I am not being love, I screw up many things.”
Shayna asked about a moment from the film: that the right question is not whether he had forgiven his mother, but whether he had forgiven himself. Lobsang paused, and then named what he called his disease. “I often expect things from people which I deny to give myself. And I’m expecting somebody else to feel that emptiness.”
He had wanted love — but his kind of love, in his way. “I made it so complicated. I want love, my kind of love, and in my way. So this is my disease.”
Somebody had said something to him recently that he loved: my first 50 years of childhood was very difficult. Now I’m 55. From the last 5 years, I’m getting better. I’m kind of enjoying now — his relationship with his mother, his relationship with himself. Now he tells himself, not his mother: I don’t want my kind of love in my way. I want, mom, your kind of love in your way, and that is what I needed. Younger ones, he said, please don’t wait until you’re 55.
Then he offered a story. He had been returning to the US after a visit, very sick with a cold, but forced himself to have breakfast with his mother. The moment he arrived she told him there was a child he needed to take in. He pleaded — he was sick, he had no money — and she dismissed both: cold is not a disease, don’t say you’re sick. She insisted she would supply the bedding, the food. He agreed.
After breakfast, she told him she had opened a bank account for him when he was very little in the monastery, and had been putting money in every month. This is the time. You take this money and put it for her. For a few seconds he got excited — oh, this is good, must be a lot of money. In India, savings books are small physical booklets; he asked the film’s director to use this story, but they hadn’t. He opened it. The balance was 2,000 rupees. Less than ten dollars.
Two thousand rupees, paid in over decades — 5, 10, 15 rupees at a time, from her hard-earned money. The year he had hated her most, she had put in the most.
He started crying. “Imagine: when you hate someone so from your heart, and that person is quietly doing everything for you, thinking about your future.” She had told him: I won’t be forever in this world, but when I die, you will need something. So I started putting money for you.
That 2,000-rupee bank account, he said, is sometimes more precious to him than Buddha. “Even if somebody said, I will give you ten million dollars, I would never sell it.” She never said I love you. She never told him she was putting money for him. And it changed his whole perspective about her. There is no question, he said, of forgiving his mother. It has all become forgiving himself.
Shayna asked how he had prepared himself to walk into the village the mob had come from. He paused, took a sip of water, and said: somebody told me, sharing is healing. I hope as I share this, I keep healing.
The mob had been outside. Their demand was simple: we only need Genla. Send Lobsang out, we just want to kill him, and you all will be saved. Around 85 children — he doesn’t remember the exact number — were packed into a single room, windows and doors shut. He had wanted to go out. But the children surrounded him, refusing: if you go out, we all will go out. Outside, the mob destroyed buildings, cars, everything.
He paused on a memory of gratitude. A board member, Ted Holson, a retired principal, had once insisted on installing fire alarms and carbon-monoxide sensors. Lobsang had laughed loud at him: Ted, we don’t have food and electricity, and you want to install this? That night, the alarm went off; children had been passing out; staff were able to pry open a small window so they could breathe. Without it, he is sure three or four children would have died.
The hardest part was that some of the children’s own parents had been encouraged, out of greed, to turn against him. Military, paramilitary, police with guns walked the campus. He couldn’t go to the bathroom alone. The first response, when humanness came out, was simple: let’s send all these kids back. Their parents are against us.
Then they spent a whole year — in prayer, chanting, meditation, reflection — deciding what to do. And they came to a different answer.
“We will take revenge. But this will be compassionate revenge. Compassionate and loving revenge.”
He walked us through how he thinks about it. In Tibetan, Dharma is translated as choi — the essence of which means to change, to transform. So Buddhism in Tibetan means inner transformation. And how do you change yourself? Through your own karma. Life gives us who we are and what we need — not what we want. That is the gift of past karma. It is a stage.
Our job is not to change the stage. Our job is to choreograph — to decide what kind of dance we want to do on the stage past karma has given us.
The first instinct, he said, was we will teach them lessons. And soon they realised: it is not our job to teach them a lesson — it is actually our lesson. Be wise, be selfish — ask what this attack has brought to you. They had named the community Jamtse Gatsal, love and compassion. He called it a living laboratory of love and compassion. This was the test — could love and compassion stand in the most difficult situation? Could it transform the most challenging human?
Don’t let it go, he said. “Take revenge. But revenge has to be something very opposite to what they did to you. The revenge of hate has to be revenge of compassion. And revenge of love.”
Today, the children of those mobs are at Jamtse Gatsal, being educated. The men who once wanted to kill him offered a huge piece of land to the community.
Shayna asked what he wished people would ask him. He warned he might sound a little arrogant. In a documentary, he said, the camera makes you look powerful and like a hero — that is solely for entertainment, and a little exaggeration, also. Many people had told him they were moved by Loving Karma, moved by Tashi and the Monk. His request was to not stop there.
“Don’t watch this as entertainment or a massage to your soul. Try to go deeper. Ask: how does this transformation happen?”
He had started Jamtse Gatsal because he wanted to test the philosophy he had been teaching for years. It’s so easy to talk; so easy to be nice. Somebody once said, if you think you’re enlightened, spend one week with your family. He has spent twenty years with his big, crazy family. “You guys think Tashi is naughty? Tashi is nothing. Worst things happen in my big family.” He is not enlightened, he said — that is precisely why he needs to keep spending time there.
Jamtse, he reminded us, is not a location. Jamtse means change — changing through your own karma, through your own practice. Thirty years of talking philosophy, twenty years of putting it into practice. If you’re inspired, try to go a little deeper.
Erica from Maryland asked how to help adults stay connected to a child’s humanity when that child’s behaviour is frightening, disruptive, or harmful. Lobsang said there is no universal answer — but if you are a teacher, you must learn to be a loving teacher; if you are a parent, a loving parent. And love manifests, he said, in two things: patience and undivided attention.
Children, he said, can only feel love if you are patient. You don’t have to fix their behaviour — often, their behaviour has to be fixed by themselves, not by us. I love you, honey, let me buy you this — that, children don’t understand. “They will repeat that behaviour 100 times. Can you be patient 100 times? They will need your attention 200 times. Can you be present for them 200 times?”
He confessed he struggles with this. He has to remind himself again and again. But if he can do it — 95% of the problem, they will fix it.
He told a story from a recent visit to Singapore, where a child named Raju had come with him and shared the deepest wounds of his life in front of strangers. Raju had said: I often think, why am I getting second chance, third chance, fourth chance, fifth chance? “When you are able to share the most personal thing, the deepest wound of your life, in front of strangers, that’s the healing.”
And patience — he wanted to be clear about what he meant. Patience is not gritting your teeth and waiting for it to end. “Patience means being able to hold your space there without getting disturbed inside. Just able to present your own peace and calmness when they are so upset.”
Audrey [check: was this Audrey or another staff member?] surfaced something Lobsang had once told the team: don’t see their behaviour as them acting out to make our life mission. They have unhealthy ways of asking for help. Lobsang built on this. Children, when they misbehave, are giving their best performance. Instead of getting upset, we should give them loud applause — thank you for trying your best — and take on the responsibility to help them calm down.
“Nobody likes to cry. Nobody wants to get upset. When children get upset, they did everything they can. When they reach the worst behaviour, they are saying: I did my 100%. Now this is your chance to show your 100%. But often, adults, we don’t even give 30%.”
He named his own struggle plainly. When his relationship with a child goes up and down, often it is his responsibility — because children give 100%. They are more genuine. As a dad figure, as a teacher, he often gives only 30%. The shift is not to demand best of ourselves — he’s not saying we always have to be best — but to see the child’s behaviour as their last and highest attempt, and let that shift our mindset.
Asked what makes Jamtse Gatsal different from any other school, he had a one-word answer: relationship. Lifelong committed relationship. Children there have fired him as their dad many times. He stays. “Nobody can sustain this kind of work if your intention is to change other people. If your intention is to change yourself, you will do this many lifetimes. I don’t take responsibility for changing the world. I take responsibility for changing this difficult person.”
Sister Marilyn Lacey · California
Sister Marilyn, a Catholic nun, shared a story from her work in Africa. There is a nomadic ethnic group called the Fulani who move with their cattle and rarely cling to possessions. Once in a while they go into a town to buy something they can’t produce themselves, and the shopkeeper, realising they’re not from the region, asks where they’re from. They never answer where they originated. They answer: we are here now.
“I think that is the secret of your effectiveness. Wherever you are, you are there now. For each child, for each audience, for each meditation session.”
Krista
Krista spoke to the power of being seen through, mid-pain. As an adult, blaming her mother for many things, her mother had simply looked at her and said: this is not the Krista she knew — and left her with that. Eventually Krista realised she was not acting like the Krista she knew either, and with a lot of work began to change. She thanked Lobsang for strengthening her belief in the power of that — the parent who does not involve themselves in the conflict, and trusts the child to find their way back.
Pallavi
Pallavi said the authenticity she saw in the children’s faces touched something very deep in her, and touched her own childhood. From that place, she had written a poem. Rumi famously said the wound is where the light enters — but she had come to believe that the wound is where the light that is inside you reveals itself.
I am now a redwood washed clean in the rain.
I am now a feather carried by the wind.
I am now the dust particle that dissolves into the light.
I am the dot that holds infinity in its being.
I am the bolt of golden lightning that pierces my very soul
until I am whole, and so I wait
to be gloriously me.
Fatu
Fatu closed the audience reflections by naming what she had taken from watching the troubled children being handled: attention. “We are in a century where attention is very scarce. The biggest disease in the world is attention deficiency.” When I give you attention, she said, I’m giving you belonging — and attention comes from the soul. Echoing Lobsang: love means patience, and love means attention. Her plea was to fight for authentic attention.
Shayna closed by noting how the universe puts things in your path at the right time. In the week leading up to the call, she had encountered a line from a poet: what survives of us is love. Genla, she said, is a living example of that — and long after his physical body has left the earth, what will survive him is love.
Lobsang then offered a closing prayer in Tibetan — a chant that the transcript could only partially hold, but that the room held in full. Audrey invited a few moments of silence to let whatever goodness had been shared not stay within the Zoom squares, but beam beyond them.
Listen to the complete conversation with Lobsang Phuntsok.