I had one of those dreams last night that seemed to be a reiteration of one that I had a few years ago. I found myself in an auditorium filled with people. Andrea Blackler, a good friend of mine, and a few other familiar, but unnamable faces, sat with me. At the front of the room was some sort of important person. I could not see his or her face, but I recall the first time I was in the presence of a person it was a male, but now it could be female…I was not sure. Everyone was given a plastic cup of pure water to drink. Close to 520 PM, two assistants sitting next to the person at the front started to sing and at 520, the room was filled with an intense energy field that started to pull the water out of our bodies and through our clothes, into the air as a vapour. My body felt like it was in one of those spinning vortex rid es you find at travelling amusement park s. The G-force pulling on my body produced a very euphoric yet equanimous andstablestateofmindandlasted for what might have been 30 seconds. It subsided and everyone quietly got up from their seats and left the room.
We’re still in McLeod Ganj and will be staying here until the end of the week. We thought about a possible Annapurna circuit trek in Nepal, but have ruled out the option in favour of seeing more of what’s around us – some next step decisions still need to be made. Delhi is still 34 degrees celsius so we might hold out here in the mountains before we charge south. Within the relative calm and groundedness of staying put for over two weeks here in this bustling village in the hills, lots of interesting things have happened.
We arrived a day before the Dalai Lama’s last public talk. Security at this temple was high and rigorous, by Indian standards, and I found a seat next to some monks on the upper level of the monastery just outside where the HH (His Holiness) himself does his thing. Fortunately the woman next to me was an english speaker because she, like everyone else who couldn’t understand Tibetan, had a radio that picked up the instant translation of his talk. The Dalai Lama has a healthy sense of humour and the crowd was often laughing to jokes that I only caught onto minutes after they were actually made. He was speaking about developing ‘calm, abiding mind’ and wisdom in meditation. He made some good points about how to calm the mind, yet still keep it active enough to study various phenomena of mind. He said that if you could do these things well, sitting for 3-4 hours straight would be easy-squ e e zy. Ev eryone else around me seemed to agree.
McLeod Ganj, which sits just above Dharamshala, is home base for the Tibetan government in exile. The communist Chinese government’s brutal genocide of the Tibetan people forced many Tibetans to walk here by foot over the Himalayas in 1959, where the Indian government has allowed the Tibetan government in exile here to govern it’s own people here. From what I have seen, thousands of people continue to make the trek every year, both to Dharamshala and to other places in India. Some don’t make it and many lose toes and feet because of frostbite.
Buddhism is very central to Tibetan culture. Throughout the town are many monks and nuns in red and yellow r obes. Many have cellphones, sip coffee at cafes, and otherwise completely demolish the stereotype of what a monk or nun is supposed to be. Their role in society seems both highly respected yet so very normal. Lay Tibetans, particularly the older ones , remind me so much of the aboriginal crew back home. Someone said to me that Tibetans take a long time to age on the outside because most of their wisdom is developing on the inside. The hair, the facial features, etc. of the Tibetan profile somehow seems to echo this in a way in see in native peoples from around the world.
You can often see Tibetans walking about town with prayer beads and mumbling ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’. Apparently all of the Buddha’s teachings about suffering and liberation from suffering are contained in these six syllabales, which from what I’ve been able to learn, have no English translation. Colourful prayer flags, hot steamed momos, thukpa soup, and well-fed dogs (a rarity in India, t he Buddhist compassion for all beings being their saving grace) line the streets with smatterings of tourists from all over the world (but mostly Israel).
After making a number of short hikes in all directions and eating at all the restaurants we started to find ourselves wanting for things to do. We decided to take a stab at learning Hindi and for 2000 Rs ($50), we arranged for 10 private classes with Surinder. We’re on Day 6 or 7 at the moment and we’re slowly putting the basics together.
Mujhko ek chay bina chini ke dijie = Give me one tea without suga r please!
This is important to know because the chai here comes with WAY to much sugar. I’m finding that even though English will more than do, people are appreciative of the effort to learn. It’s been sometime since I’ve studied a language and I’m enjoying how confusing a completely new symbol and grammar rule set is.
Sometime last week I happened to bump into a young monk and his friend on the street. Tsampa and Sonam, both refugees from Tibet, have been here two years and are working on their English. They said it was imperative for them to learn it in order to find jobs (well, not for the monk, but he wants to teach young Tibetans). I agreed to ‘tutor’ them for an hour and half every morning and it’s been quite hilarious. Tsampa has, for some reason, been given the name ‘Horny Monk’. We work through an old beat up Intermediate Grammar book over chai, crack jokes with each other, and ponder our life paths in the world. On request of my dad, I asked Tsampa to pray for world happiness and he said, in his funny Tibetan accent: “Hey man, that’s my business, I do it all day, of course I can”. There is a small make shift movie theatre here in town (it has inspired me to make one when I return) and Laura and I took them to see ‘Wall-E’ the other night and they were like giddy little kids, munching away at popcorn – given their situation, this kind of night nearly never happens for them.
I will be sad to leave them both, but encouraged Tsampa to think about travelling…possibly making a trip in Canada. He’s interested in learning English and Chinese so that he can return to Tibet one day and be a translator and English teacher for young Tibetans. If anyone knows of resources, programs, services, etc. for Tibetans to come and do this in Canada, let me know and I will pass the info along to him.
Things were looking perfectly smooth until I came down with strep throat a few days ago (I wasn’t actually sure if it was strep, but the condition of my throat and the absence of other symptoms over a few days somewhat assured me). The great, or perhaps not so great, thing about India is that you can get many drugs at the chemist without a prescription. Not so great because the level of professionalism can be quite dismal. Take the chemist in McLeod Ganj for instance. I walked up to the roadside shop where I waited a good five minutes staring at the unattended wall of drugs. After asking the next door shopkeeper where the chemist was, he took me into the back of the kitchen of a nearby restaurant where he was oogling over something on a cellphone with a few friends. We walked back to the chemist shop and he asked me what I needed medication for. “Easy, this is what you need”, he said, as he through down a few packets of Amoxycillin. I’m fatally allergic to drugs in the penicillin family so I assured him quite strongly that this wasn’t what I wanted. I knew I needed Azithromycin and so began my self-medicating regime. The throat has cleared up and I’m feeling tonnes better.
Just as this was happening, Laura came down with a rough case of traveller’s diarrhea with healthy side shot of vomitting. The bugs here do a real number on your system. And so began Laura’s journey into the land of Cipro – she is recovering well, but needs a few more days before she’s back to being Superwoman again.
I’m feeling calmer, less anxious, and more relaxed than some of my best days at home. There’s a lot we can do on an individual level to cultivate inner peace, but I’m really starting to see how certain environments have a big impact on your state of being. I guess it helps that I have no real daily responsibilities other than to feed myself.
Well my friends, as my friend Jake Wadland wisely advised me today (and I think others would benefit from his advice), “go easy on the bhang baby, keep your head up, eyes open, and don’t shake or eat with your poo hand”. (NB: “Bhang”, Hindi for the ganja you can find in yogourt drinks, is ubiquitous. Also because there is not much in the way of toilet paper here, people wipe with the left hand and wash it using this little funny tap on the wall – hence the no shaking or eating with the poo hand).
big love
sp