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Early Monday morning we piled back into the car and drove down the valley to a small village called Tashi Jong, about three hours from Dharamsala to meet Ani Tenzin Palmo at her nunnery. Tashi Jong is home to the 9th Khamtrul Rinpoche, whom we had hoped to interview, but he was too busy due to the lama dances being held at his monastery. We did however get a chance to film the dances, which was quite a sight.

After a few hours at the Khamtrul Rinpoche’s monastery we drove to the outskirts of town to the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery where Ani Tenzin Palmo lives and teaches a community of nuns. Her teacher, the 8th Khamtrul Rinpoche, instructed her to build the nunnery. It is still under construction and won't completed for several more years. We were invited into the simple one-room apartment where Ani Tenzin Palmo lives. Sitting cross-legged on her bed, she shared her thoughts and opinions with us, offering a less optimistic view about the fate of the world than we had previously heard from the other Tibetan Buddhists. She talked about how everything is now commercialized, including spirituality, and that although she hoped to see a global shift in consciousness she felt it was unlikely. 'People are just too unwilling to let go of their attachments and ego, especially now with all the new comforts we have acquired. I mean do you really expect all of Asia to give up its cars, washing machines, TV's and fridges? Maybe if America does it first, but don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.'

We left early this morning (Tuesday) for Delhi where we will be interviewing environmental activist and lawyer MC Mehta before flying to Chennai and on to Auroville.

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

Choegyal Rinpoche warmly welcomed us to his monastery late Friday afternoon. Choegyal Rinpoche is a peaceful man, full of compassion, wisdom and a great sense of humor. Off-camera he spent some time showing us his paintings and talking about the importance of diversity with comments like 'If you only eat bananas, your stomach won’t like.'

Later that afternoon we met with Tenzin Lhadron, a lighthearted nun who shared her candid thoughts with us. The security was much more lax than earlier in the day at the Karmapa's monastery although a group of monkeys did attack the table we were sitting at after the interview having tea and biscuits.

Sunday morning we met with Geshe Kalsang Damdul la , the assistant director of the Buddhist dialectics institute. He was an articulate and intelligent man who talked about not only the Buddhist perspective on oneness but how current political and economic models can be impacted by seeing life as an interconnected whole.

Off to Tashi Jong tomorrow!

Arriving in Dharamsala you immediately feel as though you have left India and have entered the world of Tibet. The small winding streets are filled with Tibetan monks and nuns, mala beads in hand, their robes creating a sea of red as they walk to and from classes and prayers. Dharamsala is also filled with western faces, Buddhists from Europe and the US and lots of 'spiritual tourists' (as they are called by the locals) sitting in coffee shops and internet cafes. Waking early on our first day I walked the streets before dawn listening to the sounds of monks chanting in the crisp mountain air, and passed others softly murmuring as they turned their prayer wheels – quite the contrast to the busy streets of Delhi!

We had been granted an interview with His Holiness the 17th Karmapa, the head of the Kagyu lineage, and one of the most revered spiritual leaders in Tibetan Buddhism. There is some controversy around the Karmapa because there are two people who claim to be the reincarnation of the 16th Karmapa, but only one is recognized by HH the Dalai Lama. The recognized Karmapa escaped from Tibet to India in 2000 where he was given refugee status. As a result, he is closely guarded by the Indian government and considered a political target. In order to film the interview with the Karmapa we had to obtain permission from the local superintendent of police, which we were told would just take a few minutes and a little paperwork. It turned out to not be so simple – but after several hours, lots of paperwork, some serious pleading and a whole lot of luck, we finally got the film permit!

On Saturday morning, we drove down the valley to the Karmapa's Gyoto Monastery, a fairly large place filled with mostly young monks milling around enjoying their morning off. After making our way through the first round of security I was stopped and asked to describe the nature of our project (again) and to write down the questions we would be asking the Karmapa. After they approved my questions we were led through some hallways, up some stairs into his audience room. The Karmapa is a young, tall and powerful figure who received us rather formally and spoke in Tibetan through his translator but could understand some English (or so it seemed). He sat with us for an hour, answering my approved questions thoughtfully before we were ushered out by his assistants. Before leaving we got a chance to see a puja taking place in the main hall of the monastery with some of the monks dressed up as dakinis, the Tibetan female deities.

We will put the interview up after it's translated from Tibetan!

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

It is the morning of our fifth day in India yet it seems like we have been here much longer than that. We are now driving from Delhi to Dharamsala, a twelve-hour drive up into the foothills of the Himalayas where we will be spending the next five days. As I write, the sounds of honking cars, buses, auto rickshaws and motorcycles fill the air as they fight for space on the crowded roads. At first all this motion seems quite chaotic, but then you start to see the hidden rhythm of it and it begins to make sense. The sheer number of people everywhere is eye opening, everything and everywhere is filled to the brim with men, women and children selling wares, traveling to work, eating the wonderful smelling street food and of course, talking on mobile phones.

Most of our arrangements have worked out so far and we have interviewed four out of five of our planned interviews. Our first day in Delhi we met with Nirmala Deshpande at the Gandhi Ashram, who by some very strange twist of fate was meeting with a group of students from Mount Madonna School (the high school I attended in California) when we arrived. It was very strange running into an old teacher of mine in Delhi -- what are the odds?

Nirmala Deshpande is a strong and lovely woman who has been a prominent Gandhian and peace activist for more than fifty years. Now in her seventies she is full of energy and hope. She spoke to us about how Gandhian values are needed in the world now more than ever. Her strong yet gentle voice was quite an inspiration to us as she described how simple it is to live and treat others from a place of peace and understanding.

On Monday we spent much of the day shooting b-roll in old Delhi before meeting Anupam Mishra, a Gandhian environmentalist and water rights activist. Although Anupam spoke some English, he preferred to speak to us in Hindi, which Sumaira Aslam (who is traveling with us) translated for us. Anupam spoke about many of the environmental issues now plaguing his country, including the privatization of water and the effects modern water harvesting techniques are having on the environment here. One of the things he said stands out, “If we can learn not to dismiss all the old and more harmonious ways of living and working with our environment perhaps things can start to change. Modern or industrialized doesn’t necessarily mean better.”

We left early Tuesday morning for the city of Agra, which is well known as the home of India’s most famous landmark, the Taj Mahal. The day before we had been able to connect with a very prominent environmental lawyer M.C. Mehta who has fought for years to close factories near India’s historical monuments whose pollution is damaging, and in some cases destroying them. We arranged to interview him the following week at his Eco Ashram on our return from Dharamsala but wanted to get some shots of the factories around the Taj Majal and of the Taj itself to use as b-roll before we met him. M.C. Mehta is also responsible for making all the auto rickshaws go green and run on clean fuel which has had a tremendous effect on pollution levels in Delhi. He should be an interesting interview!



Returning to Delhi late that evening we headed straight to see Medha Patkar whom we had arranged to meet for an interview. Medha was in Delhi for a protest called Action 2007 that focused on the issue of rural villagers and farmers being displaced form their homes due to the construction of the Narmada Dam in the Narmada Valley. Medha is respected and loved by millions of people in India and around the world as a champion for the rights of rural people. Medha was camped out with hundreds of others at Jantar Mantar, the section of Delhi where organized protests are usually held. Speeches, meetings and singing were still going on when we arrived and so we were asked if we could come back in the early morning for the interview. Arriving early the next morning we interviewed Medha and listened as she talked about the problems with the current paradigm. She spoke eloquently about the need to create a new paradigm where the rights of the rural people of India were respected and not destroyed by corporate interests.

After a couple of hours of shooting the protests in Jantar Mantar we crossed the city of Delhi to an area called Sarita Vihar where we met with a truly inspiring man named Anshu Gupta. Anshu founded and runs an organization called Goonj whose work is an example of real ingenuity and service. Goonj provides clothes and other basic amenities to millions in the far-flung areas of India by turning one person’s waste into a resource for another. Goonj not only redistributes discarded clothing and other items to people in need around India, but takes what most would consider unusable materials and turns them into children’s notebooks, backpacks, school mats, sanitary napkins, rugs and many other things. Nothing goes to waste; every scrap is reused and made into something that can be of great use to another. Anshu walked us through the entire process, from the sorting and breaking down of cloth to the construction of new materials and final touches like sewing buttons. As he took us from room to room I became more and more moved by the conviction and selflessness the work Ashnu’s organization is doing. The model he developed is beginning to catch on with organizations in places as far away as Poland and Brazil.

These next few days should be quite different from Delhi as we enter the world of Tibetan Buddhism and meet with several Rinpoches and nuns including HH the Karmapa, Ven. Choegyal Rinpoche and Ani Tenzin Palmo.




More soon…

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

Director, Global Oneness Project

We are currently on the first of our three flights as we make the journey from San Francisco to New Delhi via Washington D.C. and Zurich. We will be spending the next three and a half weeks traveling India, interviewing people for the projects first trip to South Asia. This trip will be intense because we're traveling a great deal in a short time in order to capture a diverse Indian perspective on oneness.

We touch down in Delhi Saturday night and will meet up with a photographer friend of mine named Diane Barker who will be traveling with us and taking pictures. Diane is not only a great photographer but she also runs a wonderful project called Heart of Asia that works in northern India and Tibet. Our first interview is on Sunday afternoon with member of parliament Dr. Nirmala Deshpande at the Gandhi Ashram where she lives and works. The remainder of our four day stay in Delhi will be packed as we meet with and interview prominent Gandhian and water rights activist Anupam Mishra, social activist Medha Patkar, film maker and artist Muzaffar Ali and Anshu Gupta the founder and director of Goonj, an organization that distributes recycled clothing to those in need throughout rural India.

Thursday we leave Delhi and make an over ten hour journey to Dharamsala where we will be spending five days interviewing several Rinpoches and nuns including Ani Tenzin Palmo, Tenzin Lhadron, Ven. Choegyal Rinpoche, Ven. Khamtrul Rinpoche and Geshe Kalsang Damdul la to get a Tibetan Buddhist perspective on oneness. After the return trip to Delhi we fly south to Chennai and on to Auroville and Pondicherry. We will spend several days talking with 'Aurovillians' and see a city that was created as a place to live the principles of oneness and unity. I am curious to see what life is like there, and how the these principles are incorporated into a city structure.

From Auroville we take the coast road down to Chennai where we will be meeting with Tsumani survivors and filming a street play about about how people worked together to help those in need in the aftermath of the disaster. We also have plans to meet with some Hindu leaders and community based NGOs. Next we head to Mysore, where we will be meeting Emmanuel Sumitran, the project manager for a small NGO called the Niligris-Wynaad Tribal Welfare Society. We will spend several days traveling with Emmanuel through rural villages, interviewing local tribal people to document the work of the welfare society.

Another day long drive will lead us to Bangalore, the new tech capital of India, where we will catch a plane to Ahmedabad where we will be spending the last four days of our trip. Here will be staying at Gandhi's ashram as the guests of Jayesh Patel and Manav Sadhna whose work is inspired by the Gandhian principles of truth, non-violence and working for the rights of the poor. Manav Sadhna has begun a movement to adapt these ideals to the current and complex issues facing not only India, but the world.

We will be blogging daily as well as posting photos and videos with clips with the places we go and people we will be interviewing so be sure to subscribe to the blog here and travel along with us.

Read about the personal inspiration behind the project in an interview with the project's director, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

The first thing I think we need to start changing is our attitude towards each other as human beings. In most indigenous cultures in the world, we see our brothers and sisters are the trees and the animals and the earth around us. We are related to all of these - how can we not claim each other as brothers and sisters, as human beings? -- Gary Simon

We've just added over twenty new videos to the site from interviews with indigenous leaders in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Listen as
Arana Collett, Cliff Curtis, Timoti Karetu, Chris Peters, Trevor Moeke, Gary Simon, Basil 'Mulla' Sumner, Roger Thomas, Napi Waaka and Te Taru White share their thoughts about diverse topics such as indigenous culture, language, education, media, power, and land ownership. What insights can we gain from the perspectives they offer?

We were so excited to learn that, after watching a Global Oneness Project video on YouTube, a woman named Sabra Hardy felt inspired to respond to the project by creating a video of her own. Thank you, Sabra, for taking the time to share your thoughts about oneness with us. Your video is the beginning of the dialogue about oneenss that we hope this project will inspire. We will be developing ways for people to respond to the videos on our web site directly in the coming months. In the meantime, follow Sabra's lead and add your own video respone to YouTube!