After the teaching, I overhead Genla speaking to one of the students.

"When I started studying, I did not think I could learn Sanskrit. At that time I did not even have the thought of English," he said. "I thought, 'If I can just learn enough Hindi to read the newspaper, that will be something.'" Now he is a scholar of the classical Tibetan language, fluent in his native Ladakhi dialect as well as cenrtal Tibetan, Hindi, Sanskrit, and highly proficient in English and Pali.

We tend to think of scholars of his caliber as sort of springing up out of the muck fully formed. But he is fond of quoting Sakya Pandita: "Drop by drop you fill an ocean."