For the past seven months, chaos and serenity have shared space here, in an old house in Parkdale, on the third floor, closest to the sky.
Sirens and street noise waft through a window into a cramped warren of smallish rooms, mixing with the sounds of ringing phones, a photocopier and the ding-dong of the doorbell. All the while, workers move about calmly, speaking in quiet tones and smiling often, in spite of the stress.
They're Tibetan Buddhists, softly hard at work preparing for next weekend's arrival of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and they aren't about to let such trivialities as computer cables and stacks of copy paper trip them up on the path to enlightenment.
"This is all superficial," says Salden Kunga, a former monk now in charge of 500 volunteers enlisted to ensure the Dalai Lama's visit to Toronto from April 24 to May 6 runs smoothly.
"My philosophy is, wherever I go, I don't look to the future and I don't look to the past," says Mr. Kunga, who was born in India to Tibetan parents, and has his own ties to the exiled leader. "I look to the present."
And the present looks pretty good, judging by the massive chart on the wall behind him. Taller than Mr. Kunga and twice as wide, the chart displays the status of every aspect of the preparations, from marketing and fundraising to security and transportation for His Holiness and his entourage.
The work, all unpaid, has been under way since last September, led by members of Toronto's 3,000-strong Tibetan community -- with a little help from their Western-born friends and fellow followers.
Mr. Kunga himself seems surprised at how smoothly the planning has gone. "I never thought Tibetans would be that efficient," he says, eyeing the chart.
Still, he admits that some volunteers have struggled to maintain inner peace when it comes to work assignments. "Everybody wants to be customer service," he says, so they can work within earshot of the revered leader as he conducts daily prayers and teaching sessions at the National Trade Centre. If he assigns them to full-time parking duty, he says, "they'll leave and I'll have a hard time."
Not surprisingly, Mr. Kunga found an enlightened solution: rotate the workers to give everyone a turn at the more popular jobs.
Administrative duties are nothing new for the jovial 37-year-old who, in 1986, joined the Dalai Lama's personal monastery in Dharamsala, India. Mr. Kunga was born and raised in the northern Indian town after his father, a bodyguard for the spiritual leader, fled the bloody Chinese occupation along with the Dalai Lama and 80,000 other Tibetans in 1959.
In his 16 years at the monastery, Mr. Kunga helped keep house for His Holiness, gardened with him, and earned a promotion to the monastery office, though he rarely spoke directly with the revered leader. "We saw him much more than other people," he says, "but not for some sort of chitchat."
Mr. Kunga returned his monk's vows in 2002, left India and settled in Toronto, arriving on Canada Day. He was part of an immigration wave that has seen the city's Tibetan population grow an estimated tenfold in the past six years, and, like most, he settled in Parkdale, west of downtown.
In the same neighbourhood, not far from Mr. Kunga's volunteer command post on King Street West, Ngodup Namgyal is working on traditional paintings of Buddhist gods, to be displayed during a Tibetan cultural festival at Harbourfront Centre April 25 to 30. The festival will feature dance and music, food, film screenings, lectures and craft vendors.
Aside from official events, local Tibetans see the visit as a chance to expose the rest of Toronto to Buddhism's surging popularity in the West, fuelled in part by a growing number of Hollywood stars who profess adherence to its teachings.
"The Dalai Lama's non-violence message is getting through," says Namgyal Gonkhar Gyatso, owner of Little Tibet Restaurant on Queen Street West, adding the message is timely as Toronto grapples with a surge in shootings. "I think, especially, the people of Toronto, non-Tibetans, are going to gain tremendously from this visit."
Born in Tibet in 1951, Mr. Gyatso was 8 when his family mounted horses and fled to India along an ancient trading route. Seeking to better his fortunes, he immigrated to Canada in 1983.
"There were so many lights everywhere," he says, recalling his nighttime arrival by plane in Montreal. "It was like the whole city was lit up with joy, you know?"
He married, moved to Toronto in 1986 and later opened the city's first Tibetan restaurant, in Yorkville, before relocating to Queen Street West in 2001.
Since 90 per cent of Mr. Gyatso's customers are Westerners, "I try to educate them about Tibet," he says. To that end, during the visit he will provide them with bulletins about current conditions under Chinese rule and will put up a poster outlining the Dalai Lama's teachings.
Back at the old house in Parkdale, Mr. Kunga remains unflappable, despite the last-minute work that remains. "Everybody feels their problem is the biggest, but I can't say my job is more difficult than his, or his is more difficult than mine," says Mr. Kunga, pointing to a fellow volunteer. "It all works out the same. We all have the same goal."