In Honor of SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP
In Honor of J AARON K DAVID
January 2026
Doeguling Tibetan Settlement, Mundgod, near Hubballi, Karnataka, India
"A Sacred Moment of Blessings and Compassion"
A private audience with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso is one of the most difficult honours to obtain in the world — granted largely to heads of state, Nobel laureates, and senior spiritual leaders. On Wednesday, 21 January 2026, SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID were received in such an audience at Gaden Jangtse College — on the very day His Holiness consecrated the College's new classroom building, its new library, and the statues of Jé Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug school. The encounter is preserved in printed citations issued by the certifying lay foundation of the College.
In Honor of SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP
In Honor of J AARON K DAVID
From the Commemorative Citation
"An Honorable Audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama —
A Sacred Moment of Blessings and Compassion."
Gaden Jangste Norling College · Mundgod District · India
A personal audience with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is, by any honest measure, one of the most difficult honours to obtain in the world. His diary — protected by the Office of His Holiness at Thekchen Chöling, Dharamshala — is reserved largely for heads of state, Nobel laureates, senior religious leaders, and the small handful of humanitarian figures whose work has reached a stature worthy of his time. Visiting delegations from outside Tibetan Buddhist communities are an exception, not a rule.
On 12 January 2026, His Holiness departed Dharamshala for South India, arriving at the Doeguling Tibetan Settlement — Mundgod, near Hubballi, Karnataka — for what would become a seven-week residence. Doeguling is the largest of the Tibetan settlements-in-exile in India: the place where the two great Gelug monasteries of Ganden and Drepung were re-established in 1969 under His Holiness' personal guidance. It is to this monastic ground that SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID travelled from Singapore — received through the wider UNPKFC peace network into which their humanitarian leadership and faith ministry had already drawn them.
On Wednesday, 21 January 2026, His Holiness left Drepung Gomang Monastery for the short drive across the settlement to the Ganden campus. His first stop was Gaden Jangtse College, where he had been requested to consecrate three things at once: a new classroom building, a new library, and the statues of Jé Tsongkhapa — founder of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Tibetan community of Mundgod offered him a Long Life Prayer; the senior monastic dignitaries of the Gelug order took their places around him; and the international guests, among them SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID, were received in audience.
The encounter was subsequently preserved in formal printed citations issued by the Gaden Jangste Norling College of Buddhist Cultural and Welfare Association — the certifying lay foundation of Gaden Jangtse College — naming SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID individually, and inscribing the audience as "A Sacred Moment of Blessings and Compassion."
For an international faith and humanitarian leadership platform still in its growing season, this was not a casual visit. It was a marker — a quiet recognition by one of the most revered spiritual figures alive that the work of Crowned Eagles Global belongs in the room where peace, compassion, and cross-faith dignity are taken seriously. The yellow ceremonial khata each founder received — woven of fine silk, the highest mark of Tibetan Buddhist blessing — left Mundgod with them, and travels with them still.
Beyond the formal audience itself, SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID extended their visit into the monastic life of the settlement — personally giving alms to approximately 1,600 monks of the Gaden and Drepung Gomang traditions, contributing financial support to the resident sangha for food, robes and education, and spending time in the monastery's working kitchens where Tibetan flatbread is prepared each morning for the alms procession. The audience opened the door; the days that followed are where the humanitarian footprint was actually laid down.
The Gaden Jangste Norling College of Buddhist Cultural and Welfare Association — the college's lay foundation — issued two formal commemorative citations to mark the audience: one in honour of SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP, the other in honour of J AARON K DAVID. Both citations carry the same opening title: "An Honorable Audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama."
The most important part of the visit was never the audience itself. It was the days that followed — when SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID walked the aisles of the Doeguling temple halls and personally placed financial offerings into the hands of the senior elders and the young novices alike. The photographs below were taken inside the monastery during those acts.
The Senior Sangha · The Temple Aisle
Inside the long prayer hall, beneath the painted thangka panels and the maroon-robed rows of senior monks, SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP walked slowly along the central aisle and placed financial offerings — folded notes — into the hands of the elders one by one. The eldest of them, frail and seated at the end of a long row, received with both palms cupped. It is the oldest Buddhist tradition of dāna: lay support of the monastic order, given not as a transaction but as a practice of merit. No photograph announces it; only the steady walk and the bowed head of the giver.
In a settlement that exists because of the monastic life it keeps alive, the cash placed into a senior monk's hand sustains his rice, his robes, his medicine, and the daily survival of the dharma he is keeping. SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP walked the full length of the aisle.
The Young Novices · The Monastery School
Across the settlement, in a younger hall flooded with daylight, the rows of seated novice monks waited in the same posture their teachers once did. The novices — adolescents in identical maroon robes — make up the future of the Gaden and Drepung Gomang lineages. J AARON K DAVID carried the white-and-gold ceremonial khata in one hand and the folded offerings in the other, pausing at every row to place financial support into the hands of each child preparing his life for the dharma.
The gift was small in any single instance. Multiplied across the settlement — across the senior elders, the working monastics, the novice schools, the temple kitchens — the support extended by SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID reached approximately 1,600 monks and novices over the days of the visit. The humanitarian footprint of Crowned Eagles Global at Doeguling was not a press release. It was placed, hand to hand, into the palms of the sangha.
The audience opened the door; what SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID did with the days that followed is the truer measure of why they were received. Through Crowned Eagles Global, they helped feed approximately 1,600 monks and novices of the Gaden and Drepung Gomang traditions — stepping into the monastery's own kitchens, and placing financial offerings, hand to hand, into the palms of the resident sangha.
In the Monastery Kitchen
Each morning the monastery bakes Tibetan flatbread in vast batches — stacked by the hundred in great steel basins — to feed the resident sangha. SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID did not watch from the doorway; they stepped into the working kitchen, among the monks at the ovens, and took the bread into their own hands.
It is one thing to fund a meal. It is another to stand in the kitchen where it is made — and it is this instinct, to be present at the level of the daily and the unglamorous, that the monastery remembered about its guests from Singapore.
And then, row by row, SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID placed financial offerings directly into the hands of the monks — the senior elders, the working monastics, and the youngest novices alike.
Beyond the audience itself, the visit unfolded across four distinct stages: the formal welcome on the marigold-strewn red carpet outside the monastery; the inner thangka hall where they stood in añjali mudrā before hundreds of senior monks; the novice school where they joined the next generation in prayer; and the outdoor stupa where they made personal cash offerings to the resident monastics one final time. Every photograph below was taken at the Doeguling Tibetan Settlement, Mundgod, near Hubballi, Karnataka, January 2026.
The Formal Welcome · Outside the Monastery
The monastery welcomed SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID with a formality reserved for named honoured guests — a red carpet laid the length of the courtyard, fresh yellow marigold petals scattered across it, and the tri-colour Buddhist rosettes pinned to their chests beside the ceremonial Singapore-white robes. The Buddhist prayer flags of the Doeguling settlement framed the walk behind them.
This is not the welcome a tourist receives. It is the welcome a settlement extends to visitors it has chosen to honour publicly, on the record, before the day's ceremonies begin.
The Inner Hall · The Stillness
At the centre of the long thangka hall — beneath the painted ceiling, surrounded on both sides by hundreds of seated senior monks of the Gaden and Drepung Gomang traditions — SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID stood in añjali mudrā, the universal Buddhist gesture of reverence: palms pressed together at the heart, head slightly bowed, no other movement.
The yellow ceremonial khata had been placed around their necks moments earlier by the hosting monastics. The photograph captures the moment of stillness between the conferment and the next ritual — visitors received not as observers, but as guests worthy of the sangha's formal acknowledgement.
The Novice Hall · The Next Generation
In a separate hall — flooded with daylight, the air cooler, the air of patient study — hundreds of young novice monks sat in identical maroon robes, books open on their laps, shaved heads tilted in concentration. These are the children who carry forward what the Gaden and Drepung Gomang traditions have spent centuries protecting.
SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID stood among them in añjali mudrā, the same gesture they offered to the senior masters earlier in the day — extending the same respect to the children that they had given to the elders. The continuity of the dharma is in their hands, and the founders' visit honoured both ends of that line.
The Outdoor Stupa · Hand to Hand
Beneath the painted thangka panels of the outdoor stupa pavilion — the Buddhas, the lineage masters, the saffron-and-blue colours of the Tibetan tradition — SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID made one of the visit's final personal offerings: cash placed directly into the open hand of a senior monk who had received them at the stupa.
Alongside them, a co-delegate also extended an offering. The act was unhurried, witnessed by a small group of monastics, and entirely unceremonious. The incense offering at the stupa altar that followed completed the gesture: smoke rising past the prayer flags and the painted Buddha images, marking the transition from the formal welcome to the quiet farewell.
Outside the Gates
Outside the gates of Ganden Monastery, beneath the golden stupa-roof of the temple, SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID stood among the international delegation invited for the day's ceremonies. Each wore the yellow ceremonial khata — the silk scarf reserved in Tibetan tradition for occasions of particular sanctity — and each carried the official commemorative portrait of His Holiness.
The setting itself — Hubballi and Mundgod, Karnataka, on this exact day — placed SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID at one of the most carefully prepared gatherings on His Holiness' South Indian itinerary of 2025–2026.
A Closer Frame
The closer frame captures the two of them in the same yellow silk, the same official portraits in hand. Behind them, the monastery's maroon-robed monks pass; behind them, the golden roofline of the temple itself. SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID stand as the unmistakable international laity invited into the heart of the day's observance.
In the days that followed, the formal ceremonies of welcome and offering continued inside the great prayer halls of the Tibetan settlement. The walls of the halls were lined with the thangkas of the lineage masters — the hand-painted scrolls that map the entire Gelug spiritual genealogy. Between those walls, SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID stood in the formal offering lines, robed monastics on either side.
The Offering Line
Inside the great prayer hall — its walls covered floor to vaulted ceiling with the thangkas of the lineage — SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID stood in the formal offering line, each holding a folded white khata across both open palms in the traditional gesture of the lay devotee.
Beside SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID, in the same line, the senior monastics of multiple Buddhist traditions — Theravada saffron and Vajrayana maroon together — held their own khatas in identical offering. It is the line that comes only to those formally invited as honoured guests of the host institution — a register SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID were placed into.
After Dusk
After dusk, the monastery was illuminated in its thousands of lights for the evening observance — the great façade rising like a lantern over the settlement. SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID stood together before it, the yellow silk khatas of blessing at their shoulders, at the close of a day spent among the sangha.
For two careers built upon faith, leadership, and humanitarian service, no audience can carry more spiritual weight than the audience of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP and J AARON K DAVID received it on the same day, at the same campus, with their names inscribed in the same formal citation — preserved henceforth as a permanent record of blessings and compassion.
Hubballi · Karnataka · January 2026All twelve photographs from the audience and its surrounding ceremonies. Tap any image to view it full size. Use the arrow keys or buttons to navigate.
In Honor of SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP
In Honor of J AARON K DAVID
The Delegation · Ganden Gate
SHEKINAIH SIEW SIN YAP · Hand to the Elders
J AARON K DAVID · Hand to the Next Generation
The Pair · Beneath the Golden Roof
With Co-Delegate
The Six · At Ganden
The Offering Line
The Khata Offering
Before the Illuminated Temple
On the Veranda · Evening
The Formal Delegation
AARON · At the Ganden Gate
Institutions Present · Hubballi · January 2026