Karma Karma Karma Karmeleon

No. 1: The other week when I went to HH’s teachings I met a sweet Australian couple, Rob and Jude. I spent the next week and a half hanging out with them. They took me to Tushita Meditation Retreat Center on the Turning of the Dharma Wheel day. I met a young couple from New Zealand, Jacqueline and Robin, during lunch there. I was looking for a place to stay in McLeod Ganj. Rob and Jude showed me their place because they were leaving. It’s not a guesthouse, but owned by a Tibetan lady for long-stay travelers. I really liked the room and ended up moving here. There aren’t a lot/any Vietnamese people here. It so happens that my next door neighbor is a Vietnamese nun. She lives in Houston now, and escaped from Vietnam the same year my family left. She loves to dance and sing. She’s 62 but doesn’t older than 50. I spent hours talking to her and getting acquainting. And by the end of our talk we were dancing Cha Cha Cha and the Twist!

No. 2: The other day, I was buying water in a convenience store. There was a man, in his forties, and his young daughter, in front of me paying for their stuff. The little girl was extremely cute. I told the man his daughter was beautiful. After I paid for my stuff and left I ran into them again in the street. We were walking in the same direction and got to chatting. He was an interesting man—half Spanish, half Italian, grew up in Switzerland, was a successful Deutsch Bank director, abandoned it all after his wife died in a car accident, became a Theravada Thai monk for 12 years, disrobed to go back to Switzerland to take care of his sick mother, met a Thai woman, had a baby, and after finding out she married him for money and was actually lesbian, has been raising his daughter alone ever since. Now he teaches in Buddhist universities in Thailand and other South East Asian countries.

These two people are completely opposite of each other in every way. I have a feeling that I’m going to learn a lot about Buddhism from both of them.