This And That In The Here And Now

Here are some "random" photos of this and that here and there and now in the Sherabling mandala.......
                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                

First coat white washing of the unfinished Chenrezik shrine hall

Collecting pine sap for sale

Piles of old prayer flags cut down from the trees

Strolling up the road in young monkly affection

A path through the woods and the jungle of wild lantana

My uninvited volunteer companion on my 3/4 hour loop around the grounds

In and around Sansal, a nearby village, on my walk there with Tsultrim

Main building of the shedra, or monastic college at Sherabling

Here are the Sherabling monks during a 10 day drupchen or "vast" puja they held recently. This puja is said to be as efficacious as several years of solitary retreat in awakening and creating the conditions of the sacred necessary for realization, especially in this degenerate age:

Tso Pema, Lotus Lake

According to Rewalsar Hospitality, Private Limited website:

Tso Pema, Lotus Lake, viewed from the huge Guru Rimpoche statue above the town

"A place of beauty, a place of pilgrimage
 
Rewalsar has long been a traveller's secret just off  the  beaten track in Himachal Pradesh. Pilgrims come to make prayers, meditate or simply soak up the peaceful atmosphere.
At its heart lies the holy lake that is home to three Hindu Temples, a Sikh Gurudwara and three Buddhist Monasteries. One of the local names for Rewalsar is Trisangam (Three Holy Communities) and as such it serves as a fine example of religious tolerance and harmony that makes India great.

The Tibetan and Himachali Buddhists call Rewalsar Tso Pema (Lotus Lake) in honour of the Indian Yogi Padmasambhava who lived and meditated here. A 12 meter high statue of Padmasambhava has been erected on the hillside above the lake, a sight that dominates the landscape as you enter the town."

Guru Rimpoche, overlooking the town

For Tibetans, Padmasambhava is known as Guru Rimpoche, and is revered as, essentially, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism. The story goes something like this:

This great yogi, who had been meditating by himself for some time in the local caves, up and took the local royal princess, Mandarava, as his consort, and after some more time meditating and practicing together in these caves, the king decided he'd had enough of that sort of thing and arrested the guy, and set about burning him at the stake. Being the great yogi that he was however, the soon to be Guru Rimpoche turned the funeral pyre into a lake (the now famed Rewalsar or Lotus Lake (Tso Pema), of course), and was seen to be coolly and comfortably sitting there in its middle, on.................a lotus, naturally. The king, realizing his foolishness, and "overcome with remorse, and in homage", offered his entire kingdom to Padmasambhava. I assume this included the Royal Princess Mandarava, who some say was the cause of all the rukus in the first place.

Pinku, from Bhattu Village

But be that as it may, Nancy and I hired local taxi man Pinku Kapoor
to drive us from Sherabling up up up farther into the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, about a 3 1/2 or 4 hour ride along the endlessly winding one lane - as usual - road, sometimes paved, sometimes very broken, rocky and rough, past villages, towns, construction, working mules, horses, cows, people walking or carrying loads of branches or brush on their heads or backs, or working on the road itself, big tour buses, large dump trucks, ubiquitous motorcycles and scooters, other cars and taxis with other pilgrim/tourists or local residents, monkeys, dogs, children, holy men....... swerving with high skill and practiced aggressiveness, frequent/regular/somewhat relentless horn honking which is the recommended and encouraged practice on India's "highways" whenever you want to: 1) pass another vehicle or pedestrian or animal, or 2) warn another vehicle or pedestrian or animal that you are there or that you intend to pass and you want them to move over, or 3) are coming up on a blind curve, which most of them are, and you want to warn oncoming vehicles of your presence on this road built for single lane/one way traffic but which in a continuing present tense miracle on the fly serves to accommodate all manner and size of vehicles in two directions.

Believe it or not, there is an intuitive logic to all this that would elude anyone committed to a linear kind of rationality. Perhaps a conservative Asperger's mathematician or scientist, for example, or a rationalist philosopher. It makes no sense in that framework, but..................it is nonetheless mysteriously understood by all, and it works. Welcome to mystic India, where "logic" has an altogether different meaning.

I told Nancy that the way these things work here is analogous to how (free) improvising musicians are able to communicate with and engage with each other in deeply meaningful ways, ways that are often not available to, or understood by highly technical classical musicians, who cannot break out of their formal and studied skill sets to be able to think or play creatively out of the box. That kind of flow, spontaneity and connection is just out of reach for them, as they will, sometimes, readily admit.

And so we three arrived safely and soundly, none too much the worse for the wear, in time for lunch at the Kora Cafe, just near to our Lotus Lake Hotel, which is run by one of the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in town, and in which our room offered a great lake view. After lunch and a bit of a rest, Pinku drove us farther up the mountain to find the meditation caves of Padmasambhava and Mandarava (it's not too hard to find these, as the area is now a developed, but still pretty low key pilgrimage/tourist destination), and then on the way back down to stop at the huge statue of Guru Rimpoche which overlooks the lake and the town.

Pilgrims at the caves

Mandarava shrine in smaller cave next to Padmasambhava's cave

Nancy was moved to some strong emotion praying and sitting in front of the cave statue of Guru Rimpoche: sadness, she said it was, for all the suffering of so many people in the world. I felt a deep stillness sitting, praying and meditating in front of the smaller cave statue, in the smaller cave, of Mandarava, just next door (or next cave), so to speak.     
















According to legend, this foot print was left by Padmasambhava in the rock near his cave .

Guru Rimpoche's foot (shoe?) print in rock

Back down to the huge statue for some photos and circumambulations, and to town, and to another rest and parting for the night from Pinku (we gave him money to pay for his room and food, the balance of his fee to be paid upon our next day return to Sherabling), before dinner, again at the Kora Cafe, a walk around town, and, as usual, a pretty early retirement.

"Padmasambhava" in his cave

After a light breakfast at Kora Cafe, we set out to walk around the lake, which Nancy wanted to do, and which I wanted to do also, and specifically to stop in at the Shiva Temple on its shore. One of the sights to see at the lake is the jumble of fish that gather at the shoreline because, of course, they are fed each day by monks or others, and when they are, they create a water churning feeding frenzy just like the ones you might see in the movies. They weren't eating at the moment we saw them, but here some of them are anyway:

 

And here's a bit of the Shiva Temple, in which you see the Shiva Lingam on the floor, and a pot of oil hanging above, which drips drop by drop onto the lingam into eternity, while the temple keeper goes about his morning tidying up of things.

Shiva Lingam inside the temple

And back to Stupa Guest House with a fresh supply of apples and bananas, and some peanuts too, and having lunch with friends, including our boy "Tiger", the ferocious monkey removing, dog fighting Stupa watch dog:

Tiger, at rest

Sherabling Full Moon; Suja Village Girl Musicians

Last night, October 15, was full moon, and I was lucky enough to get a shot of the moon directly above the pinnacle of the Palpung Institute, which is right in front of our balcony. Just thought I'd share it with you all, cuz it's beautiful:

 I wanted to walk to Bir today for fruit, and momos, and just because it's a lovely walk. The route goes through the Tibetan village and school at Suja, and just after stepping off the road on the school grounds, and taking the trail through the fields, I was treated to the sound of three Tibetan girls behind a wall, but within view, playing and singing what I take to be a folk song. I stopped, because it seems that I almost always do when there's music involved, especially serendipitous music, and they were nearly giddy with delight that I wanted to film them, so I did. Enjoy this brief clip:

Sherabling Haiku; Karmapa Poetry

Miss Nancy offers the following:                                         

1)

Eight stupas greet us

Gate keepers on holy ground

All's well at Palpung

2)

Raven perches high

Pinnacle of Buddha's mind

Squawking to the wind

3)

Purpose and longing

Bardo of becoming what?

Spider on the wall

4)

Mist covered mountains

Late monsoons confuse the eye

This heart sees clearly

H.H. 17th Karmapa offers the following:

 

(ANNIVERSARY POEM, from 2010, an excerpt, commemorating 900 years of the Karmapas)

Because you are here, we dare to face the angry countenance of the samsaric sea.

Because you are here, we know there is an end to the suffering.

The world, its voice raised in cries of birth and death, falls silent.

Your deeds blend completely with the sky, as deep blue as your brilliant crown.

Your great heart, like a splendid mandala of wind, keeps this world ever moved.

The King Is Dead....Long Live The King

We'd like to express our sympathies to the Thai people on the passing of their revered and much beloved King, Bhumibol Adulyadej. The King passed quietly at age 88, according to official reports, following many years of ill health and recent complications of kidney failure.

The King was considered the Father of all Thai people, and for many, the emotional and spiritual attachment to him is profound. Hence, the loss is of great and soul shaking proportions to a people who have, for the most part, known no other king, and have never experienced a succession, as the king reigned for 70 years, the longest reigning monarch on earth.

We express our wishes that the future succession to the throne of Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn go smoothly and without problems, and that his reign be as beneficial to the Thai people as his father's was.

Long Live The King.

What's Down The Road Today? Come And See

Ram Krishnan

Today I asked Ram,
the young man who works at the guest house here, about kirtan in the area. He was surprised that I was interested, and that I participate in this form of worship in the States, or that I knew anything about it at all for that matter. Maybe because he assumed I am steeped exclusively in Tibetan dharma, or maybe just because I'm a Westerner, and as I've discovered, the understanding that Indian forms of spirituality are fairly widespread in the US is actually lacking for many ordinary Indians. In any case he offered that there is a temple in his village, Bhattu, just down the road from here, where there is kirtan, every evening at 7PM I think he said, but he never goes there. Why not, I asked. He's not welcomed there, he said, because he's of a lower caste. Arggghhhhhhh! He would let me know though if he learns of kirtan, maybe in someone's home.

Having opened the door, later in the day I decided to walk down into the village, chanting my favorite Hare Krishna mantra along the way, engaging a particular energy field and having an outline of a desire, to see what and who might present themselves to me. It's only about a half mile down the hill, as it turns out, to the temple, and as I was passing it and heading further into the  village, an Indian man came walking up the hill in my direction, and of course I said "hello", as I routinely do.

He was dressed in full light blue kurta and pants, looking clearly not like a laborer or farm worker for example. He answered hello, and we began to talk. I asked if the temple I just passed was a Shiva temple, and he offered to take me in to see it after I expressed interest and asked if I would be allowed to go there. What country am I from? What is my work there? And to my surprise, based on other experiences I've had in Asia, he understood "psychotherapy" and mental health counseling. He's a civil engineer, he shared, and lives just there, as he pointed to his very nice looking house just a  short way back up the road. And what is my good name? And his turns out to be Ashwani Sharma.

One of many possible representations of Ma Durga

So he took me into the temple, and I noticed that there were the remnants of a ceremonial fire still smoking in the fire area on the floor, and I asked if this is something that is kept going all the time. No, this was remaining from this morning's puja,  or worship service. I remembered that when we were in Delhi last year at this very time (see October 2015 post), that it was the ending time of a 9 day Durga worship, and he showed me that the deity in the temple's  little alcove was indeed Durga, and that tomorrow will be the 9th and final day of this year's cycle dedicated to Her. I asked if there was music involved in the worship and yes, there was singing and drumming, and then I noticed first one and then a second dholak, an Indian two headed cylindrical drum, very similar to the naal I have and play.

Dholak

Before I knew it Ashwani was offering me lunch and escorting me to his home, where, just at that moment, friends from the nearby city of Baijnath pulled up in their car, a mother and her grown son. We were cursorily introduced and all went into the house, where I was instructed to sit on one of the two sofas, and water was brought for all. Before long Ashwani's young - 10 year old? - son arrived and sat with the friends. A lovely greeting, when Mrs. Ashwani Sharma arrived, performed by the grown son of the friend, and by her own son, was the standing up, approaching mother and touching her feet and bringing the touching hand to one's own heart.

Soon we males left for the communal temple lunch that was being served during this Sunday holiday time. What immediately caught my attention as we arrived at the eating grounds was the music, of course, being delivered by what looked like all women, inside of a small, cave-like, low slung structure, complete with drum and multiple voices and chimta,

Chimta

the long fire-tong-with-attached-jingles folk percussion instrument. It was beautiful, but I had no opportunity to pursue it, as I was being hosted, as it were, by my new friends,  and they clearly had no particular interest in the music.

We sat on the ground, being served in shifts of perhaps a few dozen people all told, and were served by men carrying large baskets of rice and bowls with several varieties of dahl, in subsequent rounds, during which, I was told by software engineer Shivanshu, the 24 year old son I mentioned, and with whom I sat and talked primarily, that one could eat as much as one wished, until they were full. Ishan, the young son of Ashwani joined us, and after he asked me my good name, I asked him his name and whether it was the name of a god, and yes, it was a name of "Shiv", he told me.

After lunch we walked back to the house where we exchanged contact info, and said our goodbyes with my effusive thanks and appreciations, and permission to snap a photo.

From left to right: Shivanshu, Ishan, and Ashwani

I had entered this unknown rural village hoping to find, open to finding, some kind of exposure to or entree into the kirtan there, and low and behold, by Durga's Grace no doubt, I was led directly to people who could provide this. What may come next of this introduction is yet to be revealed, but here so far is an example of a simple wonder experienced in Mother India. My thanks.

And yet............these very people, professionals, probably Brahmins by caste, may be some of the same people who make Ram feel unwelcomed by virtue of caste hierarchy, and may have already passed onto the next generation this same barbaric, ancient, illegal and alive and well bigotry. India. Land of extremes and contradictions; of the most profound wisdom and the most abysmal ignorance; of the most unimaginable and obscene wealth and the most grinding and inescapable poverty; of brilliant color and despairing darkness; of palpable holiness and wrenching degradation; of widespread Mother/Goddess worship and widespread extremes of misogyny perhaps without equal. India.

Just being here, and being aware, is among the most challenging experiences one might know in a lifetime. Love/hate. Attraction and repulsion. Joy and exhaustion. The light that shines from the smiles of some of the poorest children one is ever likely to encounter is unlike any I've ever seen anywhere else. At the same time, certain children are routinely maimed, blinded, or otherwise injured so as to make them more pitiable, and therefore more able to earn money for their handlers, or for their parents, as beggars.

India. Maddeningly slow to change, and racing carelessly and dangerously into the 21st century of hi-tech and manufacture, selling its life sustaining water to American and European multi national corporations, and depriving its own people of the clean water they need in order to survive. It's politics moving ever backward toward more fascistic governments, corruption never abating, food that  could feed some of its hungry (1.25 billion population in total) held in storage for lack of political will toward distribution.

Hand stitched protector deity that our friend Tsultrim is working on (see October 2015)

And acceptance, or fatalism perhaps. Karma. What  if all of this is, truly, the working out of personal and national and regional karma? (I ask this rhetorically. I have no personal doubt about it). While it's easy to understand how invoking "karma" can be turned by the cynical and the corrupt, as it often is, I'm sure, into Marx's "opiate of the people", it may also have a basis in truth. And if that's the case, then what? Then, as Tibetan Buddhism most routinely and most explicitly seems to promote.....then, we are left with compassion as the single sane response to everything. Or, to put it in the words of the Serenity Prayer:

Amen.

Getting Back Into The Swing Of It

It's been a full 12 days, and we're in the process of finding our rhythm and balance, working through jet lag, our aging and less resilient bodies adjusting to all things India, connecting with people we know, figuring out again how to get most of our needs met and even what our location specific needs are altogether, visiting familiar places, meeting new people, some of whom I regrettably neglected to get images of. In fact, I find that I routinely neglect to get images of people. This is no doubt a reflection of the I'm-not-really-a-photographer truth of things. It doesn't come automatically to me to think of getting images of anything, really, so if I forget to remind myself in the moment, or if Nancy doesn't say "there's a picture", well, it doesn't happen.

An early part of the beautiful walk to Bir goes through this rice field

Right now I'm thinking of three images I wish I had, all from Bir as it turns out. Two of them I may be able to come up with later on our next visit there, and one is just lost.

1)  Martin, the young French para-glider who we met at a local restaurant eating momos, and spoke with for while about his home region in rural mountainous Alpine France, as well as, inevitably, about some politics. We ran into him again yesterday just after he'd landed from his first flight on this visit, after a week of waiting for the weather to clear up enough to fly safely. One week out of his three lost to mist and clouds and rain. He had naturally worked up an appetite, and was hurrying off almost desperately to the momo shop for replenishment.

I surely don't play the naal as skillfully as she does!

2) Showba, the owner/cook at said momo shop/restaurant, university educated, with whom we entered into a lovely getting-to-know-you-a-bit conversation about the restaurant, her family - local Indian Bir-ites in this Tibetan "colony" - who live there with her: her one child, a 9 year old son, her grandmother, parents, and sister; who speaks English quite well as well as making great momos and I'm sure other dishes which we'll try on another visit there; and who, upon learning Nancy's name, became alight with glee saying that it was a "very good name", because, it turns out, it was the name of a teacher of hers. We  don't yet know which teacher - English perhaps?

Under construction Chenrezik shrine hall on the monastery grounds; the above drummer will be part of the peripheral ornamentation

3) A 20-30-ish couple taking their one month old, tiny Rotweiller  puppy for a training walk up and down the one road through town as we sat waiting for our taxi back home. "You could put him in your pocket" I offered as they approached our position. With a smile the fellow responded that this would only be possible for a little while, as this dog was programed to attain about 60 kilos (135 lbs) when grown.

Ordinary interactions with ordinary people, but which take on a simple, somewhat luminous extra-ordinariness by virtue of their happening in India. While sitting on the concrete bench waiting for our taxi to come from Sherabling - we could have easily taken one from Bir, but we'd told Bihari Lal, a driver we'd met before, and then again as we were walking out from Sherabling earlier that day, that we would call him when we were ready to leave  Bir - I experienced what I told Nancy was a surrealistic quality in the just-so activities of sitting and waiting, watching the para-gliders circle above and come in to land, interacting with locals in the street, in the rural mountains of northern India, in a tiny town settled by Tibetan refugees in the early '60's and now developed to cater to a mix of monasteries and institutes and medical centers and students of Buddhism and tourists and expats and para-gliders from all over the world. It felt like a dream state, or an otherwise ordinarily natural altered/expanded state, in which there was precisely nothing else to be doing and exactly nowhere else to be doing it.

Doing kora, or circumambulation of the 8 stupas

Nancy and I had a conversation a couple of mornings ago about something that was upsetting her, triggered primarily by a novel she'd just read, The Inheritance Of Loss, written by the Indian author Kiran Desai, and by a drama we'd just watched, Amu, both partly or wholly set in, and/or to do directly with dark or despairing sides of India; and also by her not feeling altogether well.

The issue for her was, as I understand it, the way people ignore, or are unaware of, or otherwise neglect important and troubling human realities because of their "white privilege". She shared that a mentor of hers can no longer travel to or be in "third world" countries because it's too painful for her to be there and to experience the disparity between her own American privilege and the conditions of many of the people in these countries; and that the decision to no longer go to these places was, for her, a moral decision, meaning, I take it, that she sees her being there as a kind of affront to the people she encounters; or that it is perhaps rubbing their noses in their own perhaps distressing conditions.

I can understand this view, if I have it right, and I can appreciate the sensitivity and the sensibility behind it. It is, in a way, perfectly the opposite of what I described as my experience above, and there is here also a sharp example, potentially, of the coincidence of these opposites, or of the essential and universal truth of paradox. Is one of us  right and the other wrong? One moral and the other something less than that? One sensitive to privilege and the other insensitive?  My answer is: of course not.

Back At Sherabling, One Year Later

Well, we've arrived at our first destination: Sherabling. We got here around 3:30 Wednesday afternoon via the 2+ hour taxi ride from Dharamsala (Kangra) airport, where we were met by driver Pinku, who lives with his family just down the road from here, and to where we have already been invited to come for tea, and where we already met his smiling father (namaste!) and baby niece.

It's very quiet now, and already cool this first late night as I write, and while Nancy sleeps I'm adjusting to the 9.5 hour time difference and three days of travel involving three flights, a welcomed afternoon hot bath and sleep in a lovely London hotel, a night in a dumpy Delhi hotel, a delicious first meal at the Stupa Guest House (where we're staying) Restaurant, and  a first unpacking in 10 days. We were too tired for anything else today. 

The jet lag is in full swing, with our sleep patterns still off by half a day, in that we get quite tired by mid afternoon and rest or sleep for a couple of hours before dinner, and then stay up probably too late, and I then find it hard to get to sleep, and am up and going by 6AM, or maybe by 2 or 3 AM when I read. Nancy's version is a little different in that she sleeps through the night, and is then up too early for her liking. I'm remembering from last year that it took two weeks to work through this, so I imagine it will be the same now.

FOUR DAYS LATER

The mountains have been shrouded in fog and mist since we arrived, and we're told it has been a long rainy season that is just now beginning to end, although the forecast I looked at is saying rain is likely for the next several days. Nancy is disappointed that she hasn't been able to see the snow peaks yet. Our first night here was actually a bit cold, but it has warmed up again since. View from the balcony

A couple of days ago young Ram, a very sweet 24 year old who works at the restaurant, helped me get set up with a local sim card for our phone. We won't be using this for international calling or texting, but only for the occasional local call we might need to make or receive. Turns out we did already use it for the important task of making plane reservations from Delhi to Bangkok.

Reception up here is spotty, but..........

We've begun to re-connect with other people we know here (see last year's postings from October): the inimitable Amma and Aka, who are still doing pretty well; Tsultrim the thanka maker, who is also well; and Lama Lopsang the monastery office director. Also a couple of days ago we sought him out in order to ask who to talk with about performing a particular Milarepa tsok puja for a very ill old dharma friend of Nancy's in Italy who needs to undergo surgery soon, this at the request of his good friend who Nancy also knows, who will be here in a few weeks time. We were directed to another lama, to whom Nancy explained the request, and were told where to find the retreat master lama because the request included the specific piece that it be the retreatant lamas who should do this ritual. We found him, Nancy set it up, made the requisite offering on the requester's behalf, and presumably this ritual has now, some 48 hours later, been performed.

I hope that monkey isn't getting ready to pounce. Careful Amma!

Yesterday we took our first excursion away from the monastery area to go by taxi to Chauntra, a small town about 12km down a narrow, switch backed, one lane, paved mountain road through forest and villages (for the single purpose of visiting an ATM), then back in this direction to smaller Bir in order to buy some apples and bananas and an electric tea kettle, and, as it turned out, to share some conversation around plates of momos with a young French paraglider, and back to Stupa Guest House by way of our waiting taxi. We've  begun to settle in for our 7 week stay.

Ah....hot tea in our room

 As part of this settling in, dear Nancy has decided to unplug from computer involvement for a month, and start going into retreat mode. It'll also help her "drop down" in preparation for the first of Situ Rimpoche's formal 5 day  teachings, coming up around October 20th. We're not in Kansas any more, Dorothy.