May 2002 - Los Angeles
Last November I found myself in New York, searching for clues to the nature of my future.
After five months of immersion in the activities of the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya in Colorado,
I found LA lacking. I felt like one half of a Velcro unit, looking for the hooks to bind me.
But LA seemed too slick. Move back to NY? I wondered. I went to the city for a ten day search
mission. World Trade Center dust still hung in the air. But much as I loved the city, it too
was not grabbing me. Then a phone call came. DJK Rinpoche invited me to Nepal. "But come soon,"
he said. "For how long?" I asked. "As long as you can." Seven days later I was on a flight to
Kathmandu. I'd managed to get back to LA, find a trustworthy subletter, pack up the apartment,
enlist a loving catsitter, get hepatitis shots, write an article for the paper about chewing gum,
transfer all my bills to auto pay, take my car off the road, disentangle from the Croatian, repair
a laptop, and do all the required provision shopping necessary for the journey. I had no
idea what to expect except that it would be cold.
After three days of travel, I arrived in Kathmandu on December 6. This in itself was a miracle
as my travel agent had erroneously made out my ticket to my adopted name "Jones" which didn't
match the suspicious name in my passport in the slightest.
NEPAL
I didn't realize the mistake myself until I was in Hong Kong. Instead of sending me back to the States, they gave me a first class ticket to Kathmandu via Bangkok. Magic. Ella Milligan and Dechen Pradhan met me at the airport. These lovely ladies were a very soothing sight for sore eyes. Ella and I were to share a room at the Kailash guest house in Boudhanath, two doors from Rinpoche's house. It was a cold room with cold water and damp, mold-stained walls but I was in heaven. All of Boudha was shrouded in mists for the first week.
I didn't even see the majestic mountain range that surrounded us until the tenth day. I kept my wanderings to a small route - home, stupa, Sechen monastery and home again. In the mornings we would do prostrations with the old Tibetan ladies at the stupa. Sometimes they would share their sweet tea or give us pointers on technique. We soon became inured to the OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDI HUM incessantly blasting over the loudspeakers. I was quite weak and could only do 200 prostrations per session. After a quick freezing shower, we'd have lunch at the Three Sisters Cafe then "circumshopulate" (my new word) taking in all the crazily inexpensive wares around the stupa.
In the afternoon I worked on my novel in a very special room
while a steady stream of his fascinating students from around the world dropped by. We had Brits, and Bhutanese, Canadians, Chinese, Honkys, cowboys, Malaysians, Australians, Danes, Romanians, New Yorkers, Tazmanians and so on. At any one time there would be no less than six languages spoken about the dinner table. It was really satisfying to finally meet many of the people - fellow students - I had heard so much about.
Nights were unexpectedly lively - ex pat parties, tango lessons, Nepali cover bands playing Bon Jovi classics. Sometimes we just sat and watched BBC World news with Rinpoche and argued about Islamic fundamentalism.
The valley was filled with the sound of dogs, particularly at night. They seemed to be relaying messages from miles away, rhythmically, ceaselessly barking. Almost like damarus. These sounds, the smoke of trash and incense, the wizened old faces of refugees and pilgrims, exuberant children chasing each other down cobblestone streets, lepers, lamas, rickshaws, rivers of spit and mud, hours of charged conversation, mountains of turquoise beads, the red of Khampa headscarves - these are what I remember of Kathmandu.
After a low key New Years Eve celebrated by about 15 of Rinpoche's students with a pile of "aromatic" (ahem) dried yak meat fresh from Tibet and some nice Aussie wine,
Ella left for Canada and I moved into the house. By this point I had already suffered the common Nepal Gut which rendered me useless for days. My stomach rolled and barked as if stuffed with warring aliens. Optimistic friends called it a "purification" process. Soon I was well enough to take some day trips - exploring Patan with Albert from Thailand and Alex Trisoglio, taking a tour of the new Sechen retreat land in Namo Buddha with Mathieu Ricard, Sarah Rooney and Alan Kozwalski,
having my palm thoroughly read by Lalji (please note that I am a princess and should not surround myself with coarse things. No siree. Only "subtlety, polish and refinement" for this chickadee. I am destined for a "position of influence and public relevance" if I can keep my "inborn inherent duality" in check. Additionally, I should strip naked and envision myself "soaked in brightness, saturated in light" so that I "emit light like a bulb" on a daily basis to "maximize physical naturalness and openness and activate imagination faculties." Thus spake Lalji). I also spent one day interviewing children at the Tibetan reception center who had just climbed over the Himalayas to escape Tibet, an experience deserving an entire web site unto itself.
INDIA, THE LONG WAY AROUND - 24 hours in Zurich
The date of my return flight came and went but I stayed on in Boudha, doing practices and writing.
Rinpoche advised me to get an Indian visa (a three-act drama at the Indian Embassy). In the meantime
I had also gotten an assignment from Marie Claire Magazine to interview the man who ran a brothel
servicing undersexed women in Switzerland. Calvin, the guy who owned the brothel, and I had a few
hasty satellite phone calls and a date was set for me to go to Leibstadt.
Rinpoche left for Varanasi on the tenth of January and I made arrangements to fly to Delhi on the
sixteenth. I spent one night at the Delhi labrang, squeezing in a rickshaw ride through the red light
district, then caught an overnight flight to Zurich followed by a one hour train ride to this remote
town on the German border with a brothel, a nuclear power plant, some cows and not much else.
It was still daybreak when I arrived so I went for a cup of coffee and a honigkucken at the only place open in town. There, I picked up a newspaper and on the front page was a photo Calvin. Next to him was a picture of a revolver.
I tried to read the article but couldn't decipher the German. The bakery owner finally translated as best she could. Turns out Calvin was arrested the night before for robbing an old couple at gunpoint. The brothel was shut down. There was no story. I fled back to Zurich, called my editor choking back tears. She told me "these things happen. Just go home as soon as possible." Home? Where was that? I checked into a pensione run by nuns. Zurich prices were staggering in comparison to Nepal. But I treated myself to a nice spaghetti Bolognese dinner which I ended up regurgitating all night much to the dismay of the nuns and fellow pensioners. I woke up the next morning shaky and weak as a wet newspaper and crawled to Swiss Air counter at the train station. All flights back to India were overbooked. "No chance" they said. But I had to get out of Switzerland. I went to the airport and prayed. They put me on standby and miraculously I got on the only flight of the day which was packed with Kalachakra seekers. My seatmate was escorting her gorgeous black Lhasa Apso to Bodh Gaya from Northampton.
LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN
I have never wanted to go to India. It always frightened me. I thought the whole place looked
like Mother Theresa's Calcutta. I thought I would catch leprosy and that beggars would claw at
my skirts. What I found was a sprawling, dusty but cosmopolitan city filled with friendly people and great food. I recommend reading THE CITY OF DJINNS if you are at all interested in Delhi.
I arrived back at the Delhi airport at 1 a.m. on the 19th and ran into Lesley Ann Patton who had
just flown in from France and was looking for the sound equipment which had been lost en route.
She was on her way to Bhutan to film Rinpoche for her documentary Words of My Perfect Teacher.
We were picked up by the multi-talented Pema Wangchuk and I slept briefly at the Delhi Labrang before getting up and taking the 12 hour overnight bus to northern India. It was frightfully cold on the bus and so dark I could only sense the incredible speed of the diesel-spewing bus and the precipitous cliffs we were caressing. My escort was an older monk from Dzongsar Institute who was carrying a large satchel of cash. I think we were both equally relieved to finally tumble off the bus onto the solitary dirt road that makes up Bir's "town." Little did I know but my passport remained on that bus as it continued to Dharamsala. The resulting saga comes a bit later.
BIR
Bir is a Tibetan refugee community about one hour southeast of Dharamsala in the Himachal Pradesh
state of India. If you watch the film THE CUP you will see where I was and the people I was with.
The village is in the Kangra Valley ridged by the Dhaula Dar Mountain range, a subset of the upper
Himalayas. Just over those mountains to the North is Eastern Tibet. Islamabad is about six hours
away or less. The Pakistani border is only an hour and a half away. But Bir felt safe. There are
about six monasteries in the small town including Dzongsar Institute which is one of the most rigorous
establishments of higher education for Buddhist scholars. The Dzongsar monks study philosphy morning noon and night.
The Khyentse Labrang is an eleven room home
belonging to DJK Rinpoche just behind the institute.
This was to be my home for the next four and a half months. I arrived that morning at 6 a.m., bleary
eyed after four countries on two continents in five days and no sleep. But my welcome was warm. I moved into a room on the
second floor, second door on the right. It had a bed, terrazzo floors, a window looking over the
village funeral pyre and the Himalayan foothills, and a shelf of about 30 exquisite statues.
Over the months, my housemates managed to completely demolish my concept of monks. Quite a batch of
characters. I'll let the pictures do the talking.
When Rinpoche told me to go to Bir, I asked, "Are there any other Westerners there?" "More than you can handle" he replied. But upon arrival, it seemed that I was the only one in town. I supposed he didn't think I could handle much. Slowly as new year came around and the monks returned from holiday, more Westerners showed up but they were few and far between. After a month and a half Valerie Kennedy finally arrived from Brisbane Australia and joined the household.
She'd been instructed to teach English to the monks at the Institute. "If you need a hand, I'd be happy to help." I said. Next think I know, we've got 60 students between us and we're each teaching every day for one hour. The monks were so eager to learn and it was a great opportunity to get to know them personally. Some spoke quite well, others had just come from Tibet and didn't even know the alphabet. It was a challenge but it was also one of the most rewarding parts of my trip.
So the schedule was thus: wake at 4:30 or 5 am. and practice; breakfast at 7; practice; shower at 11; lunch at noon (sharp!), rest, check email, laundry, etc until 1; write from 1 - 3; teach from 3:15 - 4:30; relax; dinner at 6 (sharp!). Then maybe I'd take a stroll into the village, stargaze, watch terrible Hindi movies on TV, read, and go to bed by about 11. That routine lasted for months with very little variation. We had the occasional visitors who brightened up our days. Ron and Michiko, Glenn, Maggie & Ron, Mal, and others popped by usually bringing much needed supplies like coffee and jam. We went on a hike up to Billing, a point high above Bir popular with the hang gliders. Here an impromptu staging of The Sound of Music was staged for an audience of mountain goats.
One month into my stay, I came to the terrifying realization that my passport was missing. I arranged to go back to Delhi and grapple with embassies. Just as I was about to board the twelve hour bus from hell again, it occurred to me that perhaps the bus company had a lost and found. Everyone balked at the idea. If you left it on the bus, it's been sold already. Long story short, they did have it and they did return it. Magic. This was a good thing as I still had to make it back to the States with my questionable ticket and having a lost passport would certainly not help my case.
I was soon able to do 1000 prostrations per day and by May I was nearly finished.
Just after the 5 planet alignment (all Aries), I planned a trip to Tso Pema for the final countdown.
This is the special village nestled around a lake where Padmasambhava attained enlightenment. I spent three nights there and at dawn on the new moon, I took a taxi up to the secret caves and finished my 111,111th prostration. The heavens didn't open up, the sky didn't sing. It was actually quite mundane. I wasn't feeling very well actually so I said goodbye to Princess Mandarava, went for a lassi and headed back to Bir.
Monk's cheerfully calling "hello teacher Noa", repetitive rice and dhal meal disorder, the red of my prostration mat, my breath frozen in the air, Sonam Chophel's goofy monkey face, Jamyang Zangpo's gravel laugh, Jampel's Mahakala chants, the groaning of the butterlamp man, the toothless grin of Zo Lama, Simbha's sad eyes, countless puppies, cows patties drying in the sun, the snap and crackle of monks debating at dusk, starry nights, the meat stand-cum-hairdresser, O.T.'s big house, modems at the speed of mollasses, tuk tuks to Chauntra, burning trash, Hindu chants at 5 a.m., Sonam's erroneous English recitations, terrible Indian TV, the monkey chronicles, watching the Academy Awards at 5:30 a.m. with a truant Tulku, hang gliders overhead, dirt paths underfoot - these are what I remember of Bir.
It was time for me to return to the States and I toyed with the idea of a Nepal and Thai vacation because my ticket was routed back through there. But in the end, I decided to go straight home. I was still saddled with this funky Jones ticket and didn't want to press my luck. I switched the ticket over to go through Hong Kong and once again prayed that I would make it through customs with my mismatched passport. Once again there was magic in the air. Not only did they allow me on the plane but they inexplicably put me in first class for the 11 hour flight from HK to LA. I arrived back in LA well rested and well fed. Thanks Cathay Pacific!
I wish I could tell of some profound adventures or wild experiences but it wasn't that kind of trip. I finished prostrations and wrote 170 pages of my novel. That's enough, I suppose. I look the same. I feel the same. Pretty much. I feel quite relaxed actually, even though I am right back where I started from last November. What to do now? I have been consigned to write a guide book about the caves of Maratika (any input or advice is welcome), I have to finish the novel (tied up with technical difficulties), I've got an assignment with the LA Times and am pitching to others. I hope to continue with my schedule of writing and practicing while working to support the interests of Rinpoche's new Khyentse Foundation. Other than that, it's a wide open space.
That's it!
Oh, one important note, lovers of Puddy Matteo el Rubbio De Castro Jones, my famous long haired tabby,
will be happy to know that he has moved to Northampton Massachusetts with his new mother Janah.
It wasn't fair for me to keep him when I've only been home for 2 of the last 13 months.