Photo: Fisher Gates
Tenzin Choeyang approaches me shyly but with a big smile on face. He weaves his way through the other laughing and smiling graduates of the Lha Traditional Tibetan Massage and Basic Spa course and follows me to a quieter table inside.
He tells me about his crowded childhood in South India shared with twelve other siblings smushed into one tiny house. He reminisces, mostly fondly, but also glad that it is now only a memory, about how their house was like a “cow shelter” and that all fifteen of them, including his parents, used to lie down together on the floor to sleep. He tells me, a grin on his face, about how when his much older sisters moved out of the house he had to become the “lady” of the house – doing all of the cooking and dishwashing for everyone else. He is not embarrassed though, saying that he actually loves cooking and dishwashing and from a very young age loved helping out anyone in whatever way he could. In school, he said, he would volunteer to wash out the very dirty toilets, a job no one else wanted to do. He explains that since he was very young he has felt a deep connection to the Tibetan spiritual life and that his parents thought he had been a monk in a previous life. His family was not particularly spiritual and they did not have much time to devout to spiritual practice. This connection, he tells me, seemed to simply always be a part of him; he was just born with a big heart and felt naturally connected with spiritual teachings. He did confess, however, again with a big grin on his face, to shunning his little brothers and telling them that they could not hang out with him because that was what his older brothers did to him. His parents came from Tibet when they were 13 and 14, making the hard and long journey across the Himalayas in 1959 along with the many other Tibetans who accompanied the Dalai Lama on his famous journey, and first found work doing road construction in Manali. He says proudly that “when I visit Ladakh I will see the very important work that they did”.
After finishing grade twelve he worked a long string of jobs, never staying more than a few years at any one of them. While reflecting on this long journey, he said that he was happiest at the jobs in which he felt he was giving back to his Tibetan community, jobs in which he really was making a positive impact on people’s lives that he was connected to. While working a job in the financial sector, he told me, he started to think about what he would feel like if he died the next day; the money he was making wouldn’t mean anything, he thought, but working at a job where he was helping his community would. This realisation struck him deeply and emotionally; it wasn’t like reading some cliché quote and thinking to yourself “oh, that’s a nice quote”. Thinking about death reframed what was important to him in life. He decided immediately to start looking for jobs in which he did feel that he was doing something important and after securing a job at the Tibet Fund, on a cultural programme of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he quit his previous job.
Then, a few months ago he came across an ad about the Tibetan massage and spa training course and, after realising that he didn’t have many skills that offered him freedom in his career search, decided that this would be a valuable opportunity for him. After finishing the course and the internship he plans to travel, hopefully to France, to learn more about spa and massage skills.
He shyly mentions that he dreams of one day starting his own spa and massage place. He hopes to start it back in South India, where he came from, far away from the noise and hustle of any city. It would be nestled somewhere in a quiet and peaceful forest in the mountains. Hopefully, he says, there would be a little gurgling stream running close to the property where people visiting could go and sit. People would be able to come there for one week or even one month retreats. It would be a haven from the busy, hard world. When he is done explaining he quickly adds that all of this is in the far back of his mind. First, he says, I have to go out in the world and learn.
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