MARTY DURLIN: On Tuesday morning, the monks offered a River Blessing at the fairgrounds near a boat ramp on the North Fork River. Delta Middle School students were there on a field trip preparing to raft ten miles downstream and got to witness the unusual event. Local rancher Doug Beale hosted the monks.
DOUG BEALE: It started with a visit to California. My wife and I went there last year and we ran into this group and we were so struck by how beautiful they were and their message and we invited them to come visit if they were in this part of the world and last month they called me up and said they were coming — so here they are.
KAREN: I love their spirit. I like to be around their energy. They bring like a beautiful
calm spirit to our valley.
MARTY: And we could use it.
KAREN: The whole world could use it.
DOUG: The middle school was involved because they're having a float trip for several of
their students and they just happened to be on the same day that we were going to do the river blessing so we kind of combined the the two together.
Delta Middle School assistant principal Jamie Ogden spoke to KVNF.
JAMIE: We’re here with our gifted and talented and talentful students. We have 26
students with us today, and this is their field trip. And it was an opportunity to see
something unique for our kids who in seventh grade also study world religions. So most
of these students are seventh graders.
As the students prepared to float, a couple of them talked to us.
STUDENT: It was really cool.
MARTY: Did you expect something like this?
STUDENT: Um, I don't know. I didn't know what to expect. But it was really cool.
MARTY: What did you think?
STUDENT TWO: I thought it was really beautiful and I love how people can just
connect to their world.
DOUG: Yes, the Drepung Komung Monastery. Yeah, all the money goes straight to them.
And their monastery is in India. And they're all exiled from Tibet. Which is very unfortunate. All of them have a few words of English, but there's two that can speak to
some extent.
MARTY: What will you do right now today?
MONK: Here's a river blessing. River blessing. So that this river is going to anywhere
and that is useful for the farmers and anywhere so we can get this blessing over there and the success of food anywhere, and pray for the world become very well, like this. We
visit church anywhere, whoever we meet, whoever is the local coordinator, anywhere, so
help us, so help my monastery. My monastery is 2000 monks, so help very good, very
kind people. I love that. I talk sometimes about the Tibetan situations. The people are
very listening, very interested, very noticed. That's very good. Thank you. I say like that.
MARTY: Thank you.
MONK: You’re welcome.
