bio/existence
My mother left Germany to go to Brazil when she was twenty to marry a Brazilian basketball player who she had met at the Olympics Games in Munich 1972. At that time, my father was married to a woman whom he had met at the conservatory in Brazil, São Paulo, where he was studying music.
Around 1980 my future parents separated from their respective partners searching for a monastic life. Until then, their paths still hadn't crossed.
 the Father |
My mother took the famous train "Tren de la Muerte" from São Paulo to Machu Pichu. My father traveled by a small airplane, which he was using for his research on birds (because by then he had become a scientist in biophysics (later with a PhD from Bristol). Blame destiny; his airplane broke and he took the train my mum was on. Monastic life? Their ideals brought them together, but nobody was to become a nun or a monk... yet. |
 the Mother |
From 6 months old until I was 4, we lived in Bristol. After that we came back to São Paulo and a few years later, when I was around 8, my parents bought land in the mountains in the state of Minas Gerais to found a spiritual community and lead (an almost) monastic life in nature with meditation and intense search.
As I grew up, every day after school, I would ride on my horse without a saddle, build tree-houses, play hunting and "lost-in-the-bushes-looking-for-treasures". All us eight children living in thought we were a tribe and that we were all Indians. On special occasions we would paint our horses and our faces and dance around the fire. When I was 14, my father realized that all what he wanted to be was a sailor... because it had all much to do with music, mathematics, astrology, physics, biology and of course meditation. We both moved to our sailboat at an Island while my mother stayed on the mountains because she didn't like the water. I had never stepped inside a boat before, and there I was... having to live on one. We started working together, taking tourists around and once I had learned the skills of sailing we participated in competitions as well. That's when I felt it was time to finally leave this "water world" and move to a drier place, like a desert. I sold my horse and with the help of others, I went to Australia. |
 the Child |
An Australian friend of my mom's who used to live in our community was now living on an aboriginal reserve. I stayed with her for 3 months learning with the aboriginals to eat snakes, hunting pigs, emus, kangaroos and lizards. They also taught me about the moon, the river, and many other stories and secrets from the desert. After those 3 months I left the aboriginal reserve and went backpacking for other 3 months around the whole West, South and East coast visiting many communities and improving my English.
When I came back to Brazil, I felt I didn't belong to anywhere. I felt strongly that something was missing, even though it was something I couldn't identify. I felt I should search for it now.
Maybe this urge to move was in my blood, because soon after my parents came up with the idea of making a pilgrimage from Germany to China. My mum said the time had come for them to find a living master and it had to be a search made by road.
Two friends and me followed my mum and dad. My parents sold the boat and bought a motor home in Munich. My friends and I bought an ancient Ford Transit and we started the journey at the beginning of 2000.
We crossed Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine and the whole of Russia where we visited Orthodox monasteries, shamanic villages in Siberia, wild and untouched forests in Altai. We went thru many magical and unforgettable adventures.
When we crossed the border to Mongolia we all cried, we didn't know why... that lost land was our home, we didn't feel the wish to continue the next 500km to the Chinese border.
We found a small Buddhist monastery up in the mountains near Kharakorum, where lamas use to live in caves. There was a lama who kindly received us and introduced us to the sutras: the teachings of Buddha. I knew: I had found something that I was looking for.
Finding Thangka
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In Ulaan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, we visited the Gandam Monastery, the main monastic Buddhist University. There we were received by the teacher of sacred arts, who insisted on showing us his work.
We went inside an old Chinese style building that was falling apart and smelled horribly. The Thangka workshop was upstairs. There were many students sitting quietly, making their measurements and drawings. The teacher, in his broken English, whispered in my ears "This is a sacred art, the path which can take you to enlightenment."
With goose bumps on my whole body, I felt again, this was my path. A wonderful path that went towards what I was looking for - the spiritual path thru arts.
I wanted to study at this school but the lama told me that there were other things to learn before taking the first steps in Thangka painting. To understand the path of Buddha I had to solve some things in the world and learn about myself a bit more. And he said, that at the right time, I should go to Dharamsala, India; where I would find the right place to study Thangka painting.
I wanted to stay in Mongolia, feeling strongly connected to the land, the people and the religion. Ulaan Bator was an unpleasant city, but I could be close to the nomads and to the lama in the small monastery where we first went. I had to make a choice - staying with my parents in the monastery or move on and prepare my path to India. This would mean - go back to Europe, find a job and earn some money.
My parents stayed with the nomads for another 6 months, and my friends and I went back on the Trans-Siberian train, leaving behind our old and miraculous truck, that my dad had named "pop-corn car". We preferred to name it "Jabuti", which in Portuguese, means "turtle", slowly and surly.
Back in Germany, I wrote to the school in India, but they said they did not accept foreigners. I was really disappointed, but I did not lose hope. The right time would come, just as the lama had told me.
Arriving in Germany, I planned to fly back to Brazil. But first the money for the ticket had to be earned, so I started to work with children, which was more or less the only option for someone who couldn't speak the language well. The government, considering me a German citizen as the daughter of a German, put me on a course to study German.
One year later I joined an intensive course of Multimedia, print and web design for one year. Then, I worked in a media design company for almost another year. Altogether took nearly three years and I didn't go back to Brazil, keeping my mind fixed only on the target: India.
People use to say that I was too stubborn about my dream; I needed to be more flexible and put my feet on the ground. But I kept on working like crazy and saving what I could; going everywhere by bike, so I would economize on the bus ticket and having only bread for lunch during the breaks at school.
At the end of 2002, I saw the H.H. the Dalai Lama for the first time in Austria, where he gave the Tantric Kalachakra initiation. At this moment I was even more certain that I would follow this living Buddha, who I consider to be my master who guides me through my dreams.
Finally at the beginning of 2003, I had all I needed to go and study in India (besides being accepted by the school).
India
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I left Germany and arrived in Delhi accompanied by my best friend: my mum. Everything seemed to go wrong, the taxi driver almost dumped us in the slums, we missed our train in the middle of the night and they put us with some saddhus and beggars of a very crowded train and soon we were all sweating and smelling like animals. But I loved it, I laughed, I was in bliss. |
Eventually we arrived in Dharamsala and I visited the Thangka painting school, Norbulingka Institute, which impressed me at first sight; it was so beautiful... that I lost my hope. For 3 months, I never even tried to apply, instead I started working as a volunteer for Longsho, a Tibetan Youth Organization and having classes in Buddhist philosophy with Geshe Sonam Rinchen at the Tibetan Library; I let time tell me what to do. Most of the time my mom and I were very sick; she wanted to live, but I felt I should wait, something was still to happen. |
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The deal was that I would work in their office doing graphic design work, and in exchange, I would be allowed to study Thangka. (So, it was for a good reason that the lama in Mongolia had told me to go back to the West before I started looking for schools, asking to study). I now had a skill that I could offer and exchange. It was raining that day when I left her office, and my tears of deep gratitude mixed with the drops of rain; I even started to dance. My mom left end of September and I started my studies in October 2003. They offered me a room at Norbulingka. A couple of months later, I shared a mud cottage with a friend for 6 months, and today I live by myself in an Indian style room, it doesn't have a sink and hot shower is also a luxury that I don't posses. My "garden" is the cow and donkey shelter. Some weekends, Indian neighbors put on loud Punjabi songs and take care of their animals. They wash their clothes, and put henna on their hair. They'll then cook rice n'dhal. Again, I started to feel what I had experienced in Mongolia: simplicity. That life can be so simple! Everybody has problems... the poor might have difficulty finding a job and food to eat, and the rich might have to worry about protecting their money from thieves. So, everybody has their own worries, but I realized, when one leads a simple life, it looks easier to come closer to the reality of existence when it is not covered with unnecessary excesses. Everything that surpasses simplicity is artificial; it is in simplicity that we come closer to our own nature, all that is in excess does not belong to us, it is just an accumulation of insecurity; a fear of not having enough to be happy. March 2006 after working on the website for teh Kalachakra2006.com for Norbulingka, i finally went 'back home' caring a little seed inside me, born then in October - my half tibetan baby boy, called Arion H. Gyatso. The daddy, Kelsang moved to Brasil 2 months before he was born. In September 2007 I was offered to coordinate the paintings of a buddhist temple in South Brasil, Viamao, RS guided by the Brasilian physicist Lama Padma Samten. (www.caminhodomeio.org). I started from sketch and trained a few people who came to help. The paintings of the temple will finalize around end of 1010. |
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In "Life and Thangka" is written over nearly 100 pages about my apprenticeship in India in the art of Thangka painting.
If you like to read it, please contact me and ask for a copy.
Tiffani painting at the temple in Viamao, RS Brasil- Centro Caminho do Meio
