Greetings from Brad Choyt
Dear Fellow Traveler:
Namaste, Tashi Delek and Jule!
Before pujas or prayer offering ceremonies in the Hindu or Buddhist traditions, practitioners often make several preparations. Hindus create sankalpas, a kind of statement of intent which gives worshippers a moment to meditate upon why they are actually doing the puja. Tibetans perform prostrations in front of the central deity followed by a ritual purification of their body, speech and mind with saffron water and incense. These preliminary steps in both traditions allow devotees to take pause and focus upon the reasons behind their actions.
The experience you are about to embark upon is also a kind of ceremony--a ceremony of discovery and learning. And so, I share with you my preliminary thoughts, or sankalpa, with the hope of seeing how all of our preparations and actions while on the program will be significant during the journey together in India.
In my first few hours in India, I boarded a public bus in Delhi. This bus, like nearly all that you see in the places you will be traveling, was completely full with people so squeezed together that the walls seemed to be bending outwards. Yet, two men made room for me and I found a corner of the bus where I could crouch in relative comfort over their seat. The men, as I soon learned, where having a debate about God and creation. I couldn’t help pay attention to their conversation and wondered during this first impression if everything that I had heard about India being a spiritual land was true, even on over-crowded buses! After a few minutes, the men noticed that I was listening and turned to me. “What is your opinion of God and how the universe began?” was the very first thing an Indian ever asked me. In my previous 21 years, no one had ever really asked me God before, let alone about my perspective on the nature of the universe! I knew right then that India would have to be a country I would return to again and again.
That spring, I completed a program with the School for International Training in Nepal and India. My Independent Study Project (ISP) was spent learning to draw and paint traditional Tibetan thangkas. As a religious studies and studio art major in college, this tradition allowed me to combine my two interests in a very powerful way. When I graduated, I traveled back to Kathmandu on a fellowship where I studied as an apprentice to a master Tibetan painter for a year and a half.
On my return to the States, I completed a Master of Fine Arts degree. Eager to return to the classroom, I accepted a position teaching studio art at Miss Porter’s School and later at St. Paul’s School where I served as a chaplain for the Buddhist and Hindu community as well as a teacher in the Arts and Humanities Divisions. And in 2001, I co-founded Pacific Village Institute with the help of two colleagues and began developing programs such as the one you are about to embark upon. Last summer, while continuing my role with PVI, I also started a position as Director of Education Department at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. This museum has one of the best collections of Himalayan art in the world and if any of you are coming through New York either before or after your semester, please let me know. I would be delighted to have the chance to meet you and walk through some of the galleries together.
Students often ask me about the most important thing I have learned in my time in northern India and the Himalayas. While this answer often has many different layers, mostly I see these places as great teachers. They have been teaching me since I was 21, presenting me with questions I had always wanted to ask myself. They have allowed me to explore their answers. And they laughed when I realized that I could not answer all my questions. They encouraged me to see and feel the contrasts within their great borders--from the Himalayas to the deltas of the Ganges--and to recognize that those same contrasts existed within me. They gave me the lessons I had wanted to give myself. They were not concerned if I passed or failed as long as I was present--truly present with the lessons. And perhaps more than anything else, they have taught me that the human mind and spirit has more potential than we can even imagine.
When you travel with Pacific Village this semester, you will have your own lessons, ones that I hope you will continue to unravel long after you have returned to your homes. I so look forward to hearing about your relationships with India as you create your own collective experience.
Sincerely yours,
Brad
Brad Choyt
Co-Founder and Director of South Asia Programs
Pacific Village Institute