Our Mission

Geshe Dorjee & Geshe Wangchen

The TEXT Project (Tibetans in Exile Today) is an oral history program based at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.  It is designed to gather and preserve the stories of Tibetans currently living in exile in India.  The project is directed by Professor Sidney Burris, Director of the Fulbright College Honors Program and Professor of English, and Geshe Thupten Dorjee, an instructor in the Humanities Program.

Students at The University of Arkansas who are interested in participating in The TEXT Project should consult the student TEXT site for further information.

The TEXT Project is dedicated to recording video interviews with the oldest Tibetans in India who remember life in Tibet before 1959. As these elderly Tibetans pass away, so too do their personal histories; there is, accordingly, an increasing urgency that this work be undertaken and completed in a timely fashion. Ultimately, we will create a permanent online archive where we can house these interviews and make them available both to scholars and to the general public as well.

We believe that it is essential that these stories and memories be given a permanent home, and it is the primary goal of The TEXT Project to provide such a home. The current site is simply an experiment, a work-in-progress, that serves as the predecessor to our on-line archive.

We will add to this page viewer-friendly excerpts from the full-length interviews until we have secured the funding necessary to build the archival website.  Once we have acquired such funding, we will post these interviews in their entirety.  We are also compiling photographs from our trips to India, and these will eventually be posted here as well.

For more information about The TEXT Project, contact Professor Sidney Burris (sburris@uark.edu) or Geshe Dorjee (tdorjee@uark.edu).

Meet Tenzin Dardon Sharling: An Interview Excerpt

In the following interview excerpt, Tenzin Dardon Sharling, the Research and Media Officer for the Tibetan Women’s Association in Dharamsala, India, discusses her cultural identity as a young Tibetan woman born in India of parents who came from Tibet. She speaks of her devotion to His Holiness, but also acknowledges that Indian culture has had a profound impact on her identity.  At approximately 2:00 into the interview, the interviewer mentions Ling Rinpoche, who has expressed concern about the fact that many younger Tibetans, as they leave the Tibetan settlements, are losing the fundamental traditions of Tibetan culture.  Ling Rinpoche is the current incarnation of the Dalai Lama’s original teacher in Tibet.  He is currently a young monk living in Drepung Loseling monastery in south India, and when the current Dalai Lama passes away, Ling Rinpoche will most likely be one of those responsible for the education of the new Dalai Lama.

The Tibetan Women’s Association was originally founded on March 12, 1959, in Lhasa during the Tibetan Uprising against the Chinese invasion.  The main objective of TWA is to raise awareness of the abuse suffered by Tibetan women in Tibet as a result of the Chinese occupation.  Today, TWA has become one of the vital organizations devoted to the preservation of Tibetan culture in exile, placing Tibetan women at the forefront of charting the future of all Tibetans who are currently living both in exile and in Tibet.

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Meet Geshe Wangchen: An Interview Excerpt

In the following interview, Venerable Gelong Namgyal Wangchen, known to most of the world as Geshe Wangchen, speaks of the arrival of Chinese troops in Lhasa, Tibet.  The date was March 10, 1959, and Geshe Wangchen was a young, twenty-five year old monk at Drepung Monastery.  His concerns in this excerpt are two:   for his teacher or guru, Khenshur Rinpoche, who was at that time abbot of Drepung Monastery; and for His Holiness the Dalai Lama who was currently residing at the Norbulingka summer palace outside of Lhasa.  Khensur Rinpoche at first counsels his young monk to remain at the monastery, expressing hope in the 17-Point Agreement that Tibet had signed under duress with the Chinese government eight years earlier in 1951.  Finally, however, Khensur Rinpoche relents, feeling that life in Tibet has become impossible, and decides that they must leave their homeland.  Geshe Wangchen mentions that the route they selected through southern Tibet was relatively safe because of “Tibetan guerillas,” who had taken up arms against the Chinese in that region.

Geshe Wangchen currently lives at Drepung Loseling Monastery in Karnataka, India.  Not only is he one of the most revered teachers within the Tibetan community, but he spent many years teaching in Europe and the West where his deep wisdom and clarity have become legendary.

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Meet Tsering Lhondup: An Interview Excerpt

The following excerpt is from a longer interview conducted in June, 2008 at Tara Hotel in Majna Ka Tilla, New Delhi.  The subject’s name is Tsering Dhondup, who currently lives in Bylakuppe, India, the home of the largest Tibetan community in exile.  In this section of the interview, Tsering speaks of his journey out of Tibet in 1959–his mother was pregnant with him at the time and so he made the trip “in her stomach”–and continues by recounting the difficult conditions faced by the Tibetans in the early years of their exile.  They worked on road crews and had little else to sustain them–the sky and the earth alone were their companions.  Tsering also speaks of the relative helplessness of the Dalai Lama to improve their situation.  This interview is one of several dozen collected by students and faculty working in the TEXT Project (Tibetans in Exile Today) at the University of Arkansas.  We are currently attempting to design and implement our on-line archive; accordingly, this initial offering is only an expirement.  For more information on the TEXT Project, contact Sidney Burris (sburris@uark.edu) or Geshe Thupten Dorjee (tdorjee@uark.edu) at the University of Arkansas.

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