Faculty of Art

Photography

Haosu Pei

The Five-Kilometer Pilgrimage

The Five-Kilometer Pilgrimage is a documentary series that focuses on the community of Little Tibet here in Toronto. It is completed during my many walks from OCAD to the Karma Sonam Dargye Ling Temple, a Tibetan Buddism temple where I seek spiritual comfort and relief. This series is a representation of how a community that is mostly forced to leave its home thrives in a foreign land while holding on to its unique identity, faith and beliefs.

“The Karma Sonam Dargye Ling Temple is located roughly five kilometres away from OCAD, I have walked that distance several times to shoot to seek some relief in a spiritual shelter. In Tibetan Buddhism, their pilgrimage is called the Gnas Skor, traditionally, believers from all across the Tibet Plateau would travel on foot toward a selected destination among several holy places including Lhasa City and Mount Gang Rinpoche. However, due to the natural environment of the plateau, only a few of the most pious has completed the journey. I have once been told that the journey of Gnas Skor is a process of reflecting upon the physical world around us by not only thinking about the destination but the process of getting to it, from there I treat all of my journeys to the temple and the little Tibet community around it as my own pilgrimage.The Karma Sonam Dargye Ling Temple is located in a normal residential building on Maynard Ave, I pay my first visit to the place on Oct 22nd. To be honest, the temple does not look like anything that I have imagined, I could hardly recognize that it is a temple if not for the prayer wheels surrounding it. I speak to a monk sitting by the door if I can take some photos, the monk says yes with a friendly smile on his face. But maybe it was my illusion, I seemed to see a hint of vigilance in the monk's smiling eyes. I can hardly blame him, especially after everything that his people have been through. People come and go, they walk around the temple spinning the prayer wheel. In Tibetan culture, the act of spinning the prayer wheel is an act of cleansing one’s guilt and clearing one’s mind of distracting thoughts. “Om mani padme hum”, I recite the six-syllable Sanskrit mantra as I walked around the temple for I know that my people have some serious guilts to cleanse. As I walk back home from little Tibet on October 27th, I see a Tibetan man cycling towards the west on Queen St, the flag of Tibet, a symbol of free Tibet and its identity, shines in the last light of the day. I did not photograph that scene, my mind at that moment is overwhelmed by one thought - what have we done? I have to admit, my feeling toward Tibet is complex, it is my spiritual homeland, and I can not address the importance of the wisdom of Tibetian Buddism enough in words. Yet I can not help to notice the hidden sorrow upon the faces of the older generation, the generation that has been exiled from their home to a foreign land as I walked through the streets, take photos in grocery stores and see them scrolling through the Prayer wheel.What I am trying to do here is ask a question, a question about home, political violence and displacement, one of freedom, faith and struggle. I hereby invite my viewers to think, to think about the hidden violence, and the border problems behind those faces you see on the streets on a daily bases. Is this city there home? Why did they abandon their own homeland behind?”