While I get things up and running around here, I thought I’d post my India notes, scribbled and scrawled with love, inspiration and revelation during the five weeks I spent scurrying around India last year. I was thrilled with the feedback the first time I posted them, and they should give you an idea of the flavour I’ll be trying to create here. Sorry for the redundancy if you’ve already seen them on Facebook.
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6:52am Saturday, Jul 14
Sorry for the delay - yesterday I was running around a lot and didn’t get around to posting. I decided to spend today sitting around and relaxing… This is Eden after all.
All is still well - the monsoon comes and goes, but it’s such a part of life here that India’s daily goings-on aren’t really affected - torrential downpours don’t keep anyone from going about their business except us silly tourists.
Two nights ago during our bedtime tea, the lights went out on the veranda where the three of us congregate to chat and play chess. Out came the owner with a candle and an apologetic smile - no disruption at all. Apparently it’s quite common for the power to go out - certainly it can’t be less reliable than the Internet services. But then, I didn’t come here to check my e-mail.
Security was tight at the Dalai Lama’s residence yesterday. Guards rifle through bags and conduct the most vigourous frisks I think I’ve ever experienced. Cameras are not allowed - too bad for me, since I have two. I’m told I can temporarily leave them in any of the shops in the surrounding area, and that all the merchants are honest Tibetan refugees who’ll look after them for me. Nothing about that sounds like a good idea. But I do want to see the Dalai Lama, and there’s no time to return to the guest house to drop it off (or the Swiss Army knife the friskers somehow overlooked). I was actually reminded of the messages that several of you sent me, about how stuff is only, after all, stuff. And you know what, you’re right. So, I headed for the monastic office in the main temple and left my bag with two monks with shaved heads and crimson robes. I asked them if my things would be safe with them, and they laughed at my stupid question. What did I think they were going to say - no? But their laugh is good-natured and so I leave my bag, containing a fancy manual camera and a less fancy digital one, with two perfect strangers in a refugee camp in India. If you can’t trust a couple of Buddhist monks living at the Dalai Lama’s house, who can you trust?
Following my last note, that fantastic book Siddhartha says that contrary to the traditions of many religions/spiritualities, wisdom cannot be taught but only experienced - gained through doing and not listening. This is why the book’s main character chooses not to be taught by the Buddha himself - although he recognizes his perfection, he knows that what he wants to learn, no Buddha can teach him. This is just as well for me because while I got to attend the Dalai Lama’s teaching today, I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Evidently my Tibetan is even more non-existent than my Hindi and we hadn’t thought to ask anyone if we needed a portable FM radio to pick up the translation. I’d assumed, wrongly, that there would be a live translator. In any case, his teachings sounded really deep. The deep joyous smile, though, was enough for me - that beaming grin that wins so many hearts. How can anyone not love that grin? If Buddhists are right and such a thing as enlightenment exists, this man is the closest I have ever come to such a person.
Just look at that grin!
The youngest monks wade through the crowd of sitting, kneeling and praying devotees, accepting donations of nonperishable food and filling teacups I didn’t know to bring. And so we sit in the garden, tealess, listening to chanting and teachings we don’t understand - and in a way I guess it’s just as we’ll. He preaches love, peace, non-violence and the unity of all things. This much I already know - I think the rest, like Siddhartha says, must be learned through experience. I hope this doesn’t sound too arrogant - I only mean that great people become great because they know the greatness is within them already, and because their hearts already know the way.
A funny thing happened though - a deep heavy fog took shape around the monastery, but strangely it stopped just outside the perimeter of the grounds. I could see the trees a few feet from the fence, but after that was only a white wall of nothing. The fog was overhead as well, but not a wisp around the few hundred devotees gathered for the teaching - the air here was clear as can be. With deep fog above and on all sides, the effect was of being in a cloudy white bubble, with the Dalai Lama and the rest of us at its centre. Totally surreal - the effect is the unmistakeable feeling that something holy is here, and the sensation that the teaching and chanting - this perfect Om - is in a language we all can understand….. I remember vaguely a quote by the Dalai Lama that I’ve heard somewhere: something along the lines of “All the religions preach one principle, and this is love, and I need no religion to practice this.” This is another language we can all understand.
So now you know - if ever you go to the Dalai Lama’s house, bring a radio, a teacup and a few cans of food. Also, leave all electronics, cell phones and pocket knives in your room. Security is incredibly tight, since the Chinese government is waiting with bated breath for this 72-year-old man to die - much like Washington’s optimistic vigil for Castro - and many Tibetans worry that China may want to hurry things along…
Mountain people have hiked from their homes in traditional clothes of all kinds. As the teaching goes on, white people without radios get up to leave, trying hard to look respectful as they step over and around the Tibetans listening intently. After a half hour or so we do the same, and walking through the streets outside the temple, something big and heavy falls out of the sky and lands a few feet away with a heavy thud. It startles me, and I see that it is a big burlap sack, ripped down the middle, containing what look like raw chickens. The bag sits on the street full of turds from the free-roaming cows, garbage of all kinds, and the various body fluids that people have left in the street. More sacks follow, thumping onto the road, before being dragged into a restaurant. I resolve then and there to stay vegetarian for the rest of my time in India. (Ed. note: I almost made it, too.)
Oliver isn’t feeling well and heads back home to Bhagsu for a nap. Adi and I stop “Oogo’s Italian cafe,” a place that is about as Italian as Neptune is French. I have pasta arabbiata for breakfast - the teaching started at 7:30 and we haven’t eaten. When the food comes, it’s not so much arabbiata as pad thai, made with fusilli instead of rice noodles. It’s one of the most delicious thing I can ever remember eating. We’re marooned in the cafe for three hours as we wait for a monsoon rain to pass, and end up talking about the Middle East of all things, a subject that always guarantees a pleasant conversation, especially with an Israeli soldier. It goes well though, and again I’m surprised at how my talks with people on both sides of this issue usually expose their morals, values and ultimate hopes for the region as essentially the same.
The next day, yesterday, Oliver is beating me at chess on the verandah and the guest house owners come outside. The father, son and grandson (maybe eight years old at most) take turns chiselling away at the brick wall of the adjoining cafe, knocking bricks out of the wall one by one with no apparent rhyme or reason and certainly no measurements. We watch for a while and I finally work up the nerve to ask why they’re wrecking the wall. Dad smiles as he answers my second stupid question in two days - still nowhere near a record for me. “We’re making a door!” I try to help and ask where he wants the bricks but he only nods, not understanding the question. I put them nearby and he smiles and says no. So after a while I just stand out the way and stop making a nuisance of myself while the new door takes shape.
And a fine door it is, too - we both laugh as I receive the great honour of being the first person to step through it once it’s done. God I love this place.
Lots of shopping yesterday - just light things that I can lug around the country with me. I’m getting lousier at bargaining, too - mostly because I’m having trouble arguing to save an amount of money that back home is worth less than nothing, and that here may mean two or three extra meals for the merchant and her family.
The Moondance must have 100 CDs stacked around their stereo, but they only ever play three. I sit on the terrace and Radeep comes with his friends - he’s a local, very kind, and the guitar is his. We chat and smoke and talk about women, the thing they seem to want t talk about most. Radeep, in pretty good English, tells me he is single - he has trouble talking to girls, and anyway if he made a move he’d have to marry her almost immediately. I am surprised that even in this Westernised town full of tourists and Pringles and Camel cigarettes, all but the briefest of dating periods is totally unheard of here. Sitting with these four guys of roughly my age, I’m amazed to see their experience with love and romance about on par with that of a 16-year-old Canadian. Radeep will bring the guitar tonight - he says he wants to learn American songs, and I’ve promised to give him a lesson.
Oh, and it’s now official: on the 17th I leave this heaven in the clouds for a dusty night in Delhi, and then it’s off to Manipal in the south to visit Sumi! I’ve decided that today will be a day for e-mail, reading, chai, relaxation and maybe a nice afternoon nap. It has started well, with a yoga lesson from Oliver, and I’m about to head back up for a milk tea and a good read. I hope your days are going as well as mine!
Take care,
Mark
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