Have You Seen This English Buddhist Monk?

[TARA]

English monk went missing after the Nepal earthquake. 




Hope for English-born monk missing in Nepal, says father


The father of an English-born Buddhist monk missing in Nepal said he has had third-hand reports his son may have been travelling away from the epicentre before the quake struck.
Martin Gattuso, 38, has been teaching English to children in Punakha, Nepal.
His father Michael, from Rugby, said one of his other children had heard from a friend in Nepal that his son had been seen heading towards China.
"It's been frightful, we're obviously quite worried," he said.
Mr Gattuso was ordained in 2013, taking the name Thubten Senge.
A graduate in Japanese studies, he had previously worked in India and Japan.
"He was in Japan at the time of the earthquake there and helped with the rescue effort," his father said.
Mr Gattuso has been teaching for The Bhutan Canada Foundation - a spokesperson said they were "very upset to learn that Martin is missing".
Communications with his son in Nepal were "hit and miss" in normal circumstances, Mr Gattuso said, but things were now "even more difficult".

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-32512695

[icy]

English Buddhist Monk is safe at last!


An English-born Buddhist monk who was missing in Nepal has contacted his family to tell them he is safe.
Martin Gattuso, 38, was studying meditation at a retreat in the Lapchi mountains on the border between Nepal and Tibet when the earthquake struck.

After an appeal, his sister Lucia, from Coventry, was emailed a photograph of her brother by a group in Lapchi.
His father, Michael, from Sporle, Norfolk, has since spoken to his son, who has now returned to Kathmandu.
"He's been on a retreat up in the mountains and he had no idea how worried we were - it's dawning on him now how lucky he was," his father said.

Mr Gattuso was ordained in 2013, taking the name Thubten Senge.
A graduate in Japanese studies, he had previously worked in Bhutan, India and Japan.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-32591170

[Kim Hyun Jae]

Thank you for the updated news on this English buddhist monk and bless that he is still alive and well. The best news is he was in a retreat and the Buddha deities have blessed him to be protected from the earthquake.

[Dondrup Shugden]

Rejoice to hear that Thubten Senge is safe.  The blessings of the Buddhas.

[lotus1]

Glad to know that he is safe. Thank you for the update.

[kris]

I pray that I would have the merit to also do big retreat in the mountains like Thubten Senge in this life time. At this stage, I am struggling with a week long retreat, with my mind going wild like monkeys. Looks like I would need a lot of merits in order to do a big retreat.

[Kim Hyun Jae]

To be able to undertake on a feat of a longer retreat, it is better we learn to do smaller retreats first to get the hang of it, especially on watching what goes on in our monkey mind and get that settled. In those smaller retreats, we can accumulate vast amount of merits to support longer and higher yoga tantra retreats in future.

[grandmapele]

From my little understanding, we have to purify and collect merits at the same time. Guess there's going to be a lot of small retreats for both to build the momentum for the big retreat in the mountains. As Kim Hyun Jae said, we need "vast amount of merits to support longer and higher yoga tantra retreats".

[Klein]

It's wonderful to still hear of people doing retreats in the mountains. This is one of the ways to extract ourselves away from the delusions of Samsara if we truly want to gain some sort of attainments. We are so used to and attached to Samsara's distractions, that if we don't physically stay away from them, we will never be able to have the clarity of the mind to confront our self cherishing mind.

As the others on this forum wrote, it's good that we do short retreats now and graduate towards longer retreats so that we can eventually have the resilience to do retreats in the remote mountains for much longer period of time.

[grandmapele]

It surely require a lot of merits to do retreats, period. Not even long retreats. For many, it can be obstacles in the form of finances or family or even our own paranoid mind. For other, it is the sheer thought of the long hours of silence and being alone.

To read of such a monk who spends time meditating in the mountains, is awe-inspiring. To face any initial difficulty as nothing out of the ordinary and just go head out to the mountains is fantastic. He must have collected a lot of merits for him to finish his retreat and be unharmed through this devastating earthquake.

Rejoice for him for finishing his retreat. Rejoice for his family that he is safe.