Every year, because the music groups take a big trip and miss the day before Spring Break, the rest of the school takes the day off to do community service or take alternative education trips. Think J-term. This year, and last, I took a group of Head-Royce students to assemble books for the Yeshe De Project (YDP), which is funded by the Tibetan Aid Project in Berkeley. Find out about the teachings of this organization at The Nyingma Center.
In short, every year in January, there is a large celebration in India at which thousands of Tibetan monks gather. At this gathering, the YDP distributes texts to the airport, that the Yeshe De Project have printed and put together back here in Berkeley. These are sacred buddhist texts that the monks have never had in printed form. This year, 2005, the YDP will be printing the first 30 Sutra's which are teachings of the Buddha. About 17,000 of each of the 30 Sutra's will be printed, cut, assembled and wrapped by November, which is when they will ship out. So, doing the math, the YDP must make one Sutra per week and a half, which turns out to be just over 1,000 a day.
Chanel B. (9), Naomi O. (12), Brittney T. (10), Katie R. (11th), David T. (11th) and yours truly
So our group had two tasks to perform. One needs to know the reason why our two tasks exist is because these sacred texts are not bound, but simply sheets of rectangular paper sandwiched between to pieces of tagboard. So task one was to take the texts and assemble them.
Putting the back cover on
Turn over
Put the front cover on and keep together with two stretchy ponytail things
Here is task two, wrapping the texts. Here our hand model is my Honors Geometry student, Chanel B.. Props to Chanel for being such a great wrapper.
We and the volunteers that worked along with us, assembled and wrapped 850 books. Here's a picture of one of the two pallets of books we finished.
I assembled books and stacked them on the pallets. Let's just say the my wrapped books had to be done over again regularly. I got the message loud and clear.
In short, every year in January, there is a large celebration in India at which thousands of Tibetan monks gather. At this gathering, the YDP distributes texts to the airport, that the Yeshe De Project have printed and put together back here in Berkeley. These are sacred buddhist texts that the monks have never had in printed form. This year, 2005, the YDP will be printing the first 30 Sutra's which are teachings of the Buddha. About 17,000 of each of the 30 Sutra's will be printed, cut, assembled and wrapped by November, which is when they will ship out. So, doing the math, the YDP must make one Sutra per week and a half, which turns out to be just over 1,000 a day.
So our group had two tasks to perform. One needs to know the reason why our two tasks exist is because these sacred texts are not bound, but simply sheets of rectangular paper sandwiched between to pieces of tagboard. So task one was to take the texts and assemble them.
Here is task two, wrapping the texts. Here our hand model is my Honors Geometry student, Chanel B.. Props to Chanel for being such a great wrapper.
We and the volunteers that worked along with us, assembled and wrapped 850 books. Here's a picture of one of the two pallets of books we finished.
I assembled books and stacked them on the pallets. Let's just say the my wrapped books had to be done over again regularly. I got the message loud and clear.
No comments:
Post a Comment