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.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
The Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, Sangha
I’m not sure where I left off since I last posted, so I’m just gonna start with when I got back to Dharamsala. I think it’s only been about 10 or 11 days since I got back but it feels like I’ve done a lot since then. I remember wondering what it’d be like to be in community where spirituality and Buddhism were central values, and now I’m living in it every day, all day. Aside from the typical ups and downs and challenges of traveling, the past week has been great. HH gave teachings all week. They started at 8am and went until lunchtime. Thousands of people came from ALL over the world. I don’t have pictures of anything from this week because we weren’t allowed to bring cameras into the temple so I never had one with me. People pack in to the temple grounds. Every spot on the floor, ground or steps is a seat. The teachings were on the Boddhisatva’s Way of Life and the English translation was broadcast on an FM signal. My friends went up at 6:30a to secure good seats and even when I’d wander in late, they’d scoot over to fit me in. At the end of every teaching HH walked right past us bowing and waving ‘hello’. I got to see him several times week, at the end of every teaching, and during the Long Life Ceremony, which concluded the week of teachings. No matter how many times I’ve seen him though, his presence is still so undeniably moving. I can’t describe it in words. You can literally feel a powerful energy around him. During this week I also became connected with a handful of people through other friends who attended the teachings. There’s something about studying the Dharma and traveling that brings people together so fluidly so quickly. Everyone was in their twenties or early thirties and from everywhere – New Zealand, Israel, Boston, Ohio, Australia, Indonesia, England, Spain, and of course Tibet and India too. We ended up spending so much time together at the teachings and then having meals, it was like a little dharma family.
One thing I continually impressed by is how devout this community is. The foreigners who came to the teachings had to travel from afar to get here. And then arriving at 6:30 every morning where we sit on the ground until 11:30 or 12p and judiciously listen on a small FM radio to translations. And since it’s monsoon season, some days out of nowhere it would start raining/flooding from the sky, for hours. And the wind is blowing so hard the rain is shooting sideways. And the temple grounds would become filthy with mud or dirt tracked in, and people would still do their full prostrations on the ground. It was amazing.
Somehow I’ve been karmically swept up in this group of friends who have all been studying Tibetan Buddhism for the last 5-10 years so through them I met very special, realized high lamas and Rinpoches. Today I went with some friends to a private teaching with a special Rinpoche from Tibet. The whole rest of the day turned into a mini pilgrimage when we went to visit a several other Rinpoches and received blessings from them.
Being immersed in this world sometimes I wonder what my previous life was that I’m so blessed to be here and be able to not work for a year and run around India meeting very special individuals while studying Buddhism.
But it’s not all perfect and sweet all time. Traveling can be intense. There are times, despite having made good friends here, I feel really alone. Because when it comes down to it, I am alone. The end of last week and by the end of this week, all of the people I met will be gone. Some people are leaving because monsoon in Dharamsala is a total deluge, and for some it’s time to go home, and for others, they need to leave the country to renew their visas, but whatever the case, they’re leaving. It’s just like a testament to the true impermanence of everything. And then some days the starving children and lepers and other beggars can be intense, or all of the cow dung and human feces or trash and pollution, or incessant horn honking and dangerous drivers, or the variety of foul smells, or contaminated water or the fact that my clothes can’t dry properly because it’s too humid and smelly here or having chronic upset stomach can really get to me. But even that is impermanent, so it’s not soo bad.
One thing I continually impressed by is how devout this community is. The foreigners who came to the teachings had to travel from afar to get here. And then arriving at 6:30 every morning where we sit on the ground until 11:30 or 12p and judiciously listen on a small FM radio to translations. And since it’s monsoon season, some days out of nowhere it would start raining/flooding from the sky, for hours. And the wind is blowing so hard the rain is shooting sideways. And the temple grounds would become filthy with mud or dirt tracked in, and people would still do their full prostrations on the ground. It was amazing.
Somehow I’ve been karmically swept up in this group of friends who have all been studying Tibetan Buddhism for the last 5-10 years so through them I met very special, realized high lamas and Rinpoches. Today I went with some friends to a private teaching with a special Rinpoche from Tibet. The whole rest of the day turned into a mini pilgrimage when we went to visit a several other Rinpoches and received blessings from them.
Being immersed in this world sometimes I wonder what my previous life was that I’m so blessed to be here and be able to not work for a year and run around India meeting very special individuals while studying Buddhism.
But it’s not all perfect and sweet all time. Traveling can be intense. There are times, despite having made good friends here, I feel really alone. Because when it comes down to it, I am alone. The end of last week and by the end of this week, all of the people I met will be gone. Some people are leaving because monsoon in Dharamsala is a total deluge, and for some it’s time to go home, and for others, they need to leave the country to renew their visas, but whatever the case, they’re leaving. It’s just like a testament to the true impermanence of everything. And then some days the starving children and lepers and other beggars can be intense, or all of the cow dung and human feces or trash and pollution, or incessant horn honking and dangerous drivers, or the variety of foul smells, or contaminated water or the fact that my clothes can’t dry properly because it’s too humid and smelly here or having chronic upset stomach can really get to me. But even that is impermanent, so it’s not soo bad.
Monday, July 9, 2007
The Past is Always Present
More photos and entries from Bir
***********
(OLD SCHOOL ENTRY)
June 30, 2007 - Good Food Makes Everything Better
I managed to find my way into the kitchen scene here at Deer Park. I really love the food here, so I asked the kitchen staff if I could hang out and watch while they prepare meals. I’ve watched them cook several meals in my free time. This past Sunday the staff had a day off from cooking for the workshop people, so I showed them how to make a fried tofu in lemongrass and chili, banana bread, and oatmeal cookies.
The young guys that work in the kitchen are really funny, sweet and hard working. Chotu is the head cook, and he and his younger brother Dilep are from Bodhgaya, Bihar where the Buddha attained enlightenment. Bihar is the poorest state in India, and many cooks and laborers around northern India are from Bihar. Chotu has a delightful disposition. After spending some time in the kitchen I learned that Chotu is here working and earning money, and his wife, who is 5 months pregnant is in Bihar. She was just here and I asked him when he’ll see her again and he said maybe when the baby is a toddler. Then Chotu said proudly that he had a photo of his wife in his room. Chotu’s positive and happy demeanor amazes me. He’s the kind of person who is always smiling, and his smile evokes the kind of energy that makes you smile and feel happy inside too.
Arun, the second cook is from Nepal. He’s only 20 years old and left to come find work in India when he was in his early teens. He said he had to bribe the police on the trains so they wouldn’t beat him. Indian police aren’t paid well so many of them are corrupt.
Rejinder is also works in the kitchen, but not in a child labor sort of way. He just looks to cook, and he loves being with Chotu and Arun, who have become like his older brothers. Rejinder came from the nearby Indian village. His mother died and his father is an abusive alcoholic. Rejinder dropped out of school a couple of years ago. Prashant found him, and sent him back to school, but Rejinder failed out of school. He didn’t like the Indian school system and preferred to cook and bake with the other kitchen staff at Deer Park. Rejinder is extremely talented and bright. He has so much indigenous knowledge of the plants and trees in the area. He knows exactly how different plants or bark can be used to cure or treat illnesses, or used in cooking or teas. He also learns languages easily. He knows how to speak Tibetan, Hindi and English. And he knows how to bake different breads, and even how to make fresh cheese. He led us on the hike the other weekend off the trail, along the rocky river bank and he was hiking in sandals and was climbing up and down rocks like a monkey. It was amazing!
I’ve gotten so used to being here at Deer Park. I feel like this is becoming home. I almost forgot that I’m going back to Dharamasala next week. Some new professors arrived and some will be leaving mid-week. Ed, the astrophysicist invited me, Sangey, Eleanor, Hunter and Pema out to eat at City Heart. The food there is gorgeous. Everything is so tasty that it’s easy to overeat.
The other night Prashant invited me out to a birthday dinner for Pao, this Bhutanese guy. Aside from the workshop there are a handful of students studying Buddhism here and at their affiliate Buddhist school down the road. I’ll have to track down some photos, but it was a beautiful night. There were about 25 of us sitting around tables we had pushed together outside underneath the night sky and moon. After lighting Pao blew out his birthday candles, we passed around a lit candle to each person. It beautiful. As we sat out under the moon on a hillside overlooking the valleys of wheat and rice paddies, I looked down the table filled with glowing birthday candles, and realized their were 13 different countries represented at the table including the Bhutan, Spain, France, India, Tibet, Taiwan, USA, New Zealand, Australia, England, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Having just come to India and meeting all these people who have been in India either because they live here, or have been traveling here for a long time, I felt a little anxious like I was the new person. One of the major teachings in Buddhism is the impermanence of all things. The only constant is change. I’ve been reading a lot about this. While I sat there in the company of all these wonderful people on a night so lovely I didn’t want it to end I truly realized that I the only way to live is in the moment and in the present, because everything that has past and everything yet to come is as faint as a dream.
***********
(OLD SCHOOL ENTRY)
June 30, 2007 - Good Food Makes Everything Better
I managed to find my way into the kitchen scene here at Deer Park. I really love the food here, so I asked the kitchen staff if I could hang out and watch while they prepare meals. I’ve watched them cook several meals in my free time. This past Sunday the staff had a day off from cooking for the workshop people, so I showed them how to make a fried tofu in lemongrass and chili, banana bread, and oatmeal cookies.
The young guys that work in the kitchen are really funny, sweet and hard working. Chotu is the head cook, and he and his younger brother Dilep are from Bodhgaya, Bihar where the Buddha attained enlightenment. Bihar is the poorest state in India, and many cooks and laborers around northern India are from Bihar. Chotu has a delightful disposition. After spending some time in the kitchen I learned that Chotu is here working and earning money, and his wife, who is 5 months pregnant is in Bihar. She was just here and I asked him when he’ll see her again and he said maybe when the baby is a toddler. Then Chotu said proudly that he had a photo of his wife in his room. Chotu’s positive and happy demeanor amazes me. He’s the kind of person who is always smiling, and his smile evokes the kind of energy that makes you smile and feel happy inside too.
Arun, the second cook is from Nepal. He’s only 20 years old and left to come find work in India when he was in his early teens. He said he had to bribe the police on the trains so they wouldn’t beat him. Indian police aren’t paid well so many of them are corrupt.
Rejinder is also works in the kitchen, but not in a child labor sort of way. He just looks to cook, and he loves being with Chotu and Arun, who have become like his older brothers. Rejinder came from the nearby Indian village. His mother died and his father is an abusive alcoholic. Rejinder dropped out of school a couple of years ago. Prashant found him, and sent him back to school, but Rejinder failed out of school. He didn’t like the Indian school system and preferred to cook and bake with the other kitchen staff at Deer Park. Rejinder is extremely talented and bright. He has so much indigenous knowledge of the plants and trees in the area. He knows exactly how different plants or bark can be used to cure or treat illnesses, or used in cooking or teas. He also learns languages easily. He knows how to speak Tibetan, Hindi and English. And he knows how to bake different breads, and even how to make fresh cheese. He led us on the hike the other weekend off the trail, along the rocky river bank and he was hiking in sandals and was climbing up and down rocks like a monkey. It was amazing!
I’ve gotten so used to being here at Deer Park. I feel like this is becoming home. I almost forgot that I’m going back to Dharamasala next week. Some new professors arrived and some will be leaving mid-week. Ed, the astrophysicist invited me, Sangey, Eleanor, Hunter and Pema out to eat at City Heart. The food there is gorgeous. Everything is so tasty that it’s easy to overeat.
The other night Prashant invited me out to a birthday dinner for Pao, this Bhutanese guy. Aside from the workshop there are a handful of students studying Buddhism here and at their affiliate Buddhist school down the road. I’ll have to track down some photos, but it was a beautiful night. There were about 25 of us sitting around tables we had pushed together outside underneath the night sky and moon. After lighting Pao blew out his birthday candles, we passed around a lit candle to each person. It beautiful. As we sat out under the moon on a hillside overlooking the valleys of wheat and rice paddies, I looked down the table filled with glowing birthday candles, and realized their were 13 different countries represented at the table including the Bhutan, Spain, France, India, Tibet, Taiwan, USA, New Zealand, Australia, England, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Having just come to India and meeting all these people who have been in India either because they live here, or have been traveling here for a long time, I felt a little anxious like I was the new person. One of the major teachings in Buddhism is the impermanence of all things. The only constant is change. I’ve been reading a lot about this. While I sat there in the company of all these wonderful people on a night so lovely I didn’t want it to end I truly realized that I the only way to live is in the moment and in the present, because everything that has past and everything yet to come is as faint as a dream.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Bir, India - Science for Monks Workshop
Internet here is SO SLOW! This is all I could upload for now..
Monday, June 18, 2007
There's a Hole in My Bucket!
The drive from Dharamsala to Bir was a bumpy three and half hours. I’m seriously cursed for getting carsick so easily, but I managed to keep what was in my stomach in my stomach. I was traveling with three LTWA Science Section staff members, Sangey, Paldon and Karma. Poor Karma got so nauseas from the ride and the crazy humid super hot then super cold weather, we had to stop several times for him to throw up.
Bir is a tiny village town of Tibetans and Indians. The main market is a short cracked road of shops, half of which are always closed when I walk through town. But the people here are nice and the atmosphere is really mellow. Apparently Bir is world famous for paragliding, but it’s off-season and no one gliding now (pre-monsoon season) except for highly skilled experts. The surrounding area is beautiful. We’re at the foot of some lush, green mountains, with rice and wheat paddies dotted by villagers’ houses. All around the fields and on tops of people’s houses are Tibetan prayer flags. These flags are common in Dharamsala, but here they’re especially beautiful flapping in the wind amidst a lush mountainous landscape during a sunset.
The workshop is being held at a place called Deer Park Institute, a center for Buddhist Studies. Deer Park Institute was converted into a center for Buddhist Studies just a few years ago. Prior to that it was Dzongsar Monastery, where 400 monks practiced and lived. Then a Rinpoche (literally means “Precious One”aka a Dharma teacher) had the vision to convert the monastery into a place where one could study about all sects of Buddhism and some aspects of Hinduism. It’s run by a dynamic young guy name Preshant from Mumbai and Xhing Xi, a woman from Taiwan. The first day we arrived we met some of their resident scholars who are doing year-long internships in ecological waste management, Buddhism, Tibetan and Hindi language, and sustainable/organic farming methods. Despite being located in a tiny, remote village, these students are from all over. There’s a student from Canada, Laos, Cambodia, Spain and France.
I would have never thought such a progressive and proactively green center of study like this one would exist in India, let alone in a small village. The area has no civic infrastructure (including no landfills, etc) so the Institute had to find a way to deal with waste and trash. Nearly all of the village people and local community burn their trash, unknowingly releasing toxic chemicals and pollutants into the air. Deer Park set up a trash segregation system where they separate different kinds of paper products, recyclable plastics, and non-recyclable plastics. The pipes also cannot handle too much toilet paper so this has to be thrown away in wastebaskets and dealt with in another way. The biggest problem is tetra-packs like juice boxes and milk boxes, and the stuff that chip bags are made from. There’s no way to recycle those, and they still haven’t found a waste solution for those items. It’s really sad to see so much litter here, even in the mountain streams and fields. Preshant told me some people don’t know what to do with their trash so they throw it in the streams and rivers. But he said in the small Indian village nearby, there’s hardly any litter or garbage because the people there don’t consume packaged goods like chips or milk, but are entirely self-sufficient.
Ten North American professors flew in to teach Physics, Biology and Neurology to 40 monks, most of who traveled all the way from southern India to participate in the workshop. There’s even a female Physics professor who came that’s nearly 7 months pregnant! I’m helping the Library film the workshop sessions to produce DVDs that the monks can use for review of the materials, and for monks that didn’t attend the workshop. Since we’re in session all day, we also take our meals here at Deer Park. The food here is beautiful. Everything is prepared with organic or locally grown ingredients. The meals aren’t extravagant, but just wholesome, delicious and cooked with TLC. I already know that I’m really going to miss this place when I go back to D-Sala.
The other day I went with some friends to visit Dzongsar Monastery (what Deer Park used to be). They moved to a new facility that houses over 3,000 monks. It’s like a small college campus. The main temple there has a lot of beautiful paintings and imagery.
I’ve been so lucky to be able to spend a lot of time in beautiful mountain areas in different parts of the world, but nothing has been like the mountains here. The other day I went up to the roof of Deer Park’s main temple. It was nearing the end of the ‘golden hour’ and the sun was about to dip behind the mountains. I’ve never seen the air so clear, and the sky so blue and the mountains so green. And the breeze was cool against face, and from the roof I could see all the tops of people’s houses and their faded prayer flags blowing in the wind, and I thought to myself that this is like heaven on earth.
ps.. I'll add photos soon!!
Bir is a tiny village town of Tibetans and Indians. The main market is a short cracked road of shops, half of which are always closed when I walk through town. But the people here are nice and the atmosphere is really mellow. Apparently Bir is world famous for paragliding, but it’s off-season and no one gliding now (pre-monsoon season) except for highly skilled experts. The surrounding area is beautiful. We’re at the foot of some lush, green mountains, with rice and wheat paddies dotted by villagers’ houses. All around the fields and on tops of people’s houses are Tibetan prayer flags. These flags are common in Dharamsala, but here they’re especially beautiful flapping in the wind amidst a lush mountainous landscape during a sunset.
The workshop is being held at a place called Deer Park Institute, a center for Buddhist Studies. Deer Park Institute was converted into a center for Buddhist Studies just a few years ago. Prior to that it was Dzongsar Monastery, where 400 monks practiced and lived. Then a Rinpoche (literally means “Precious One”aka a Dharma teacher) had the vision to convert the monastery into a place where one could study about all sects of Buddhism and some aspects of Hinduism. It’s run by a dynamic young guy name Preshant from Mumbai and Xhing Xi, a woman from Taiwan. The first day we arrived we met some of their resident scholars who are doing year-long internships in ecological waste management, Buddhism, Tibetan and Hindi language, and sustainable/organic farming methods. Despite being located in a tiny, remote village, these students are from all over. There’s a student from Canada, Laos, Cambodia, Spain and France.
I would have never thought such a progressive and proactively green center of study like this one would exist in India, let alone in a small village. The area has no civic infrastructure (including no landfills, etc) so the Institute had to find a way to deal with waste and trash. Nearly all of the village people and local community burn their trash, unknowingly releasing toxic chemicals and pollutants into the air. Deer Park set up a trash segregation system where they separate different kinds of paper products, recyclable plastics, and non-recyclable plastics. The pipes also cannot handle too much toilet paper so this has to be thrown away in wastebaskets and dealt with in another way. The biggest problem is tetra-packs like juice boxes and milk boxes, and the stuff that chip bags are made from. There’s no way to recycle those, and they still haven’t found a waste solution for those items. It’s really sad to see so much litter here, even in the mountain streams and fields. Preshant told me some people don’t know what to do with their trash so they throw it in the streams and rivers. But he said in the small Indian village nearby, there’s hardly any litter or garbage because the people there don’t consume packaged goods like chips or milk, but are entirely self-sufficient.
Ten North American professors flew in to teach Physics, Biology and Neurology to 40 monks, most of who traveled all the way from southern India to participate in the workshop. There’s even a female Physics professor who came that’s nearly 7 months pregnant! I’m helping the Library film the workshop sessions to produce DVDs that the monks can use for review of the materials, and for monks that didn’t attend the workshop. Since we’re in session all day, we also take our meals here at Deer Park. The food here is beautiful. Everything is prepared with organic or locally grown ingredients. The meals aren’t extravagant, but just wholesome, delicious and cooked with TLC. I already know that I’m really going to miss this place when I go back to D-Sala.
The other day I went with some friends to visit Dzongsar Monastery (what Deer Park used to be). They moved to a new facility that houses over 3,000 monks. It’s like a small college campus. The main temple there has a lot of beautiful paintings and imagery.
I’ve been so lucky to be able to spend a lot of time in beautiful mountain areas in different parts of the world, but nothing has been like the mountains here. The other day I went up to the roof of Deer Park’s main temple. It was nearing the end of the ‘golden hour’ and the sun was about to dip behind the mountains. I’ve never seen the air so clear, and the sky so blue and the mountains so green. And the breeze was cool against face, and from the roof I could see all the tops of people’s houses and their faded prayer flags blowing in the wind, and I thought to myself that this is like heaven on earth.
ps.. I'll add photos soon!!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Kanayara
My stomach issues have cleared up! Yeah. I finally started to eat normal food, and not watery rice porridge. It so happened that other foreigners around here were sick with what I had too. So I was in good company.
Just as I started to really settle into life here in Dharamsala, I’m leaving for 4 weeks. There’s a big science workshop for monks in Bihr, a small Tibetan settlement about 3 hours away. They asked me to film the sessions and lectures, and photograph the monks working in the labs. The science workshop is part of a huge initiative to bridge Buddhism and Science. There are about 10 scientists flying in from the US to lead the different sessions. From what I heard the monks are going to be learning stuff like quantum physics, and biochemistry. It’s supposed to be hotter there. And it’s been hellishly hot here.
Nechung Monastery, the place Choedar used to work, had their annual camping trip out in a small village called Kanayara. I didn’t realize how many mountain streams are around here until Choedar took me to their picnic today. We rode by motorbike through the back roads of the mountain to Kanayara. When we got there, I was amazed to see it was this green, grassy valley with a perfect stream winding through the field. Just below the field was a beautiful mountain stream/river. All along it were swimming holes where monks from Nechung were playing in the water. The water was perfectly cold, and clear. Rocks in this area are mostly slate, so all the rocks along the bottom of the stream are small pieces of slate. And since today was hot and sunny, the rocks glittered in the water. We had lunch with the monks from Nechung up at the field, and then climbed down to the stream where we spent the rest of the afternoon chilling in the water.
Just as I started to really settle into life here in Dharamsala, I’m leaving for 4 weeks. There’s a big science workshop for monks in Bihr, a small Tibetan settlement about 3 hours away. They asked me to film the sessions and lectures, and photograph the monks working in the labs. The science workshop is part of a huge initiative to bridge Buddhism and Science. There are about 10 scientists flying in from the US to lead the different sessions. From what I heard the monks are going to be learning stuff like quantum physics, and biochemistry. It’s supposed to be hotter there. And it’s been hellishly hot here.
Nechung Monastery, the place Choedar used to work, had their annual camping trip out in a small village called Kanayara. I didn’t realize how many mountain streams are around here until Choedar took me to their picnic today. We rode by motorbike through the back roads of the mountain to Kanayara. When we got there, I was amazed to see it was this green, grassy valley with a perfect stream winding through the field. Just below the field was a beautiful mountain stream/river. All along it were swimming holes where monks from Nechung were playing in the water. The water was perfectly cold, and clear. Rocks in this area are mostly slate, so all the rocks along the bottom of the stream are small pieces of slate. And since today was hot and sunny, the rocks glittered in the water. We had lunch with the monks from Nechung up at the field, and then climbed down to the stream where we spent the rest of the afternoon chilling in the water.
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