Land of Oz

Oz has a familiar air to it; as if I am at home. And yet there are such differences. Some of the birds here make truly alarming sounds, like a small child being tortured. It is spring; the jackaranda trees have gone mad with purple, painting it everywhere and dripping it onto the streets. The story I heard was that the jackaranda are native to South America and were brought over. Later, an OB nurse fell in love with them and gave a baby tree to each of her new mothers. They are planted everywhere.

I walk for hours a day, downtown, to the Rocks, where the first settlers lived, to the opera house, to the botanical park. I have been on a short ferry ride cool ocean breeze licking my face and plan to take the longer, two hour ride around the harbor when I get back from this retreat.

But the thing that keeps sneaking up on me is joy. It jumps me as I am walking, trying to figure out which way the cars will be coming from, trying to figure out exactly where I might be going as I meander about. It is such a strong impulse, this joy, like a sudden buggle blow billowing out into the quiet, filling my mind. For so long I felt I had messed up my life in some serious ways, choices made that if only. . . Things might have been so different for my children, for me. Guilt and worry and what if's. This joy rips that to shreds. It shouts of the wonder of this moment, of the strength that evolved through all that I have experienced. It whispers of aspects of my self that would never have bloomed had I lived the life my mother painted; safely married to a devoted, wealthy husband who would tenderly care for me and our children. And I find myself laughing outloud, shaking my head and letting my imaginary long hair blow free (let's hear it for another bad, inch long hair all over my head haircut). I am well and truly alive. Fearful sometimes, lost sometimes but such adventure just here, just around the corner. It is a gift; the pearl from years of struggle. I live. I laugh. I learn. And I love it all.

Back to the western world

My last morning in Kathmandu, I walked the fifteen minutes to the stoupa. I walked past the new mother bathing her two to three month old baby on her cement front stoop as she let him have some sun. We exchanged the same smile we'd been exchanging every time I pass by and see them, the smile of awe and joy. I passed the men sitting on their front stoops sewing, the men and boys playing the same game of flipping a chip with their fingers across a board, past the men hammering copper, brass and silver pieces, past the cows, the goats, the dogs, over the mounds of dirt that surround the men digging up the street (with shovels and picks) and putting it back together again. They are preparing to pave it. I walk all the while dodging bicyclers, motorcycles and the occasional truck as the street is blocked off due to the working men. The barriers are large bamboo poles tied with nylon rope and a few cloth flags under which scoot pedestrians, bicyclers, cows and dogs. I walk avoiding the mud, the cow pies, garbage that lines the streets, the dog poop, the beggars (there are two to three regulars on this walk). It is my last day so I give the old woman with the blind husband(?) she leads around 100 rupees. I tell her, even though I know she won't know the words, that today is my last day. Usually I give her 20 rupees when I see her, ($.25) which delights her so today, she knows something is different and we look into each others eyes wordlessly for a long time before I hold my hands together in prayer and tell her goodbye and Nameste. My eyes fill with tears. I give the emaciated man with one foot who sits in a tortuous position on the ground 100 rupees as well. Usually I ignore him. My old woman and her blind husband are my charity and the rest, well it was too overwhelming. But today, I am out early as is he, and for some reason, maybe because it is my last day, we look into each others eyes and I have to offer some part of me in response to the part of him that is open for the whole world to see. As I give him the bills, he too looks deep into my eyes and we hold that look for some time before I say Nameste and he says the same back to me. Quietly, softly, and then I walk on.

I left the monastery at 2PM, flew to Delhi, flew out of Delhi at 11PM to Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, two hours later, flew the last 8 hours to Sydney, arriving 8PM the next day. And it is another world. The streets are paved. Traffic flows in an orderly fashion, albeit on the wrong side of the street--I mean on the left side of the street. There is no honking. There are traffic lights. There is a speed limit. The traffic is light, moves easily. And this morning, I took a long, hot shower. I love it. I love consistent electricity. I love a computer that works quickly and reliably. I love air that is clean and doesn't hurt my throat and lungs.

And yet, my heart will hold Nepal.

Leaving Nepal

Today I fly. It's hard to believe. This place has come to feel like home. The rhythm of each day predictable, comfortable, familiar. Yet I am poignantly aware that my loved ones are elsewhere and I am moving, albeit in the opposite direction, towards them. I am also aware that I am not ready to come home. There is something about being free of roles, expectations, responsibilities that is delicious; an experience I haven't had since I was in my 20's. That sense of possibility, of freedom to be myself, whatever that looks like today, is filling. I want to take that with me, even when I pick up the harness of work, even when I slip into "granny" status again. I've noticed that when I don't use a part of myself, after a while I lose familiarity with that part and feel that it is no longer accessible. If I am not in a sexual relationship, I must not be sexy. If I am not free of responsibility, I must not be carefree. If I am not doing something new and untried, I must not be adventurous. But all those parts exist regardless of my activities. And I don't want to lose them again.

When I was working in Napa, it was so easy just to fill up on the activities of the day. Work, maintenence of the home, of my body, some brief time for personal relationships, sapped my energy and left me with a sense of exhaustion and being trapped. And yet I loved my work, my relationships. So how do I pull those other newly rediscovered parts out as I pick up those routines? Ah yes, more to discover.

I am lucky. I walk through the streets of Nepal knowing that this afternoon I will be on a plane to Australia. I look at the people here, caught in poverty. There is little opportunity for the luxury of going away and exploring what means the most for them. They are grateful for hot water, should they have that, a full belly, healthy bodies. It is a gift, this affluence, health and education that lets me explore, travel both internal and external. I am lucky.

Stretching Heart

My heart is stretching. It's odd. At first I thought I was just having an emotional moment, or even a few of them. Makes perfect sense; on the road, away from friends and family. Yet it keeps happening. It happened again the other day and I finally asked Julie why I cry at unexpected times. "Your heart is stretching," she said. I thought about that. I have a big heart, I thought. I love easily, feel empathy for people. When I hear their stories, tears often come to my eyes. But this was different. It started when I said good-bye to His Holiness Sakya Trizim. When he looked at me and it felt as if he was looking straight into my heart; I wanted to sob. Well, I thought, he is an exceptional human being and maybe it was him, in his enlightened state that had this effect. But then, the other day, when we were participating in the tsok ceremony (a ceremony of thanksgiving and gift giving) at the monastery here, I took my envelope with money and kata (silk scarf) up to the empty chair with the Dalai Lama's picture on it. I looked at the picture and it felt as if the Dalai Lama was looking back at me and again, I wanted to sob. Tears ran down my cheeks. It was as if I had looked into the eyes of compassion and felt seen and loved. From a picture. I put down the envelope, stretched the kata across the front of the altar, composed myself and walked on. But then, a little bit later, Julie said some word of kindness and again, the tears came.

I have given the heart a lot of thought. It seems that there is a spectrum of love, caring, fear and anger that it can run through. There is a range of comfort that I maintain and when I get to the outer reaches in any one direction, tears or anger or fear will well up. Maybe the heart does and can stretch. Maybe there is a habituating to loving freely without fear that can be expanded. Julie describes love as shared mutual presence and well wishing. Not having another person do what you want them to do. It's an interesting idea, that love could be so simple. Just that, shared mutual presence and well wishing. I am going to practise that. And see. Who knows. Maybe my heart can keep stretching even when I'm not looking into the eyes of a realized human being. Maybe I can grow from the inside out as well as the outside in.

The "I don't want to" girl

I ran into the "I don't want to" girl yesterday. She refused to do what "big girl, responsible girl" said she would do. Bad girl said "I want to go shopping with my new friend and I don't want to listen to Julie recap the group and then transcribe this summary for those not here." And she ran out the door. Later, when others expressed disapproval, I couldn't really believe it myself. How had I been so irresponsible? I flashed on when I was four and refused to go indoors after a particularly delicious recess. How did four become so vocal?

As I sink deeper into this retreat, this whole trip, actually, there has been an alarming phenomenon. I continually run into myself. The trouble with traveling alone is that there is no one else to blame anything on. If I am crabby, irritable, self-absorbed, it is because I am crabby, irritable and self-absorbed. I am left with pulling apart the origins of said moods. My stories, my self talk, my judgements, my critic; they all bubble up in full view. And I am such a nice person, too. I have spent a life time of figuring out how to get along, be included and please others so that I can play too. What are all these selfish, bad ass folk doing in my psyche? I wish I could say I am truly shocked to meet them. Actually, we have had a long aquaintence, thanks to years of therapy, writing, talking with a loving sister and patient friends. Yet my first impulse continues to be RUN.

I am trying a new strategy; I am listening to them and trying out new stories in response to their insistent behavior. Maybe, if I can learn to incorporate their needs into my life instead of focusing so much on others. . . Well, you can see the challenge. So we lurch along, bad girl and me, like a new driver trying to figure out the clutch. Sometimes she drives, sometimes responsible girl drives. Sometimes it feels like no one is driving. But, as I am back in Nepal, we all honk the horn.

Back in Nepal

It's been a wild and woolly ride, these last ten days. What surprised me the most, was saying goodbye to His Holiness. Now this is a man whom I'd met once when we first arrived in a private meeting with Tony, who knows him well, Emily, William and myself. He was immediately human, talking with Tony about his health, his concerns about the health of his monks (Tony is an MD) etc. There was all the usual catching up about family, what was to come in the next few weeks at the monastery. I listened. Smiled. Spoke minimally. The next two days I sat in a temple with a few hundred monks and received two empowerments. Then a week later, we went to say goodbye. And this is the odd thing. I felt my heart open to this man. I wanted to cry. I felt bereft I couldn't understand it. He gently took my hand, told me that he'd heard that when people go to Australia, they fall in love. I think he meant to say that they fall in love with Australia but who am I to argue. I told him I was looking forward to it. And then he went back to his preparation for that evening's teaching and my heart ached. So Tony and Emily and William and I packed up our things, journeyed on to visit two other monasteries, meet new monks, and enjoy each other's company.

When I returned to Nepal, I noticed a difference. The only time I've experienced this is in the first rush of new love, when I've felt loved and beautiful and certain that regardless of what the world might bring my way, I was wanted in a most thorough and seen way. I felt taller, stronger, more graceful as if I had a secret joy inside that was private.

For the next eight days I will be sitting with Julie in a small group of 19 of us. It will entail body work, emotional work and the mystery that is this transmission business. I am grateful for the gift of time and resources to explore this. I am amazed at the potential of life, that at 59, my curiousity and insistence that life can be more has brought me here. It is a gift.

India

I've been traveling in India for the last five days. I flew to Delhi on Thursday and then met friends from Australia, Tony, Emily and William traveling with them up to Durhadun for six days of empowerment from His Holiness Sakya Trizin. It has been a time of wide stimulation. India is a visual, olfactory, auditory and sensual overload. And then there are the hours of sitting in the temple while His Holiness reads the empowerments that he has been integrating since 3AM and some twelve hours later is sharing with us. The temple is full of some 100 plus monks chanting, blowing horns, having tea, chanting and then sitting quietly while His Holiness chants. Outside there are 100 plus more Tibetans doing the same. And then there are the sensations all mixed together. The fatique of sitting for four hours, the tingling in my brain that makes me wonder what is happening, the dreams at night that are unique--images that I have not ever had before, images of power. So I wanted to write to let you know where I was and will write more when I can, when things have settled and Emily isn't waiting patiently for me to finish so we can walk the mile back to the guest house, past the dogs, monkeys, watching out for the motorcycles, tiny buses that run on LP gas, cars, trucks and tractors. It is India and it is so loud in every sense. The saris of the women are rich in color, the garbage that lines the roads, the cows and pigs that root through it, the monkeys leaping among the trees, they all shout to be seen, heard, and smelt.

I'm sorry if this is chaotic. But then it is India.

Continuous praying

Yesterday I went to a temple built around caves that lamas have been using since ancient times. The temple was built in the 14th century, I believe, not so new itself. As I climbed around the temple, it is up many stairways that look more like concrete ladders than stairs, I came across a small courtyard, maybe 10 feet by 15 feet. In the center was a small altar and around it were buildings, each one room deep. One side of the square wasn't a building but rather a cave that was still being used. As I stepped inside, I discovered that the cave went back maybe five feet, with a width of about eight feet. Inside was another altar with candles, a statue of Buddha and two monks who were praying. The monks were sitting on the floor by the door with strips of paper on a small stool in front of them. The paper had prayers written on them that the monks were continuously reading, turning one over and reading the next as they intoned the prayers in quiet, deep voices. I felt awkward, walking past them to get to the altar but they seemed undisturbed. After standing quietly for a bit, letting their voices weave around me, letting my eyes accustom to the dim light, taking in the statue of Buddha barely discernable from age, candle drippings and red wax or clay that is put on it, I found myself relaxing. This is their life. No need to rush or apologize. They do this every day, all day. People, tourists, pilgrims come and go. They sit and read the prayers. The older monk's eyes never left his prayers; the younger monk looked directly into my eyes after I stepped back out and turned to bow. I found myself thanking him. It's hard to explain the gratitude I felt. As I stumble about, walking fast sometimes, slowly others, and some days hardly moving, these men are praying. They pray for all sentient beings. They pray for peace in the world. They pray for enlightenment in our souls. They sit on the stone floor, in the mouth of the cave so they can read their prayers, wrapped in cotton cloth robes and intone truth, love, and generosity of spirit.

I went to numerous temples yesterday, some Buddhist, some Hindu. The Buddhists and Hindus often share a temple, each honoring the other's gods. The god of creation, the god of destruction, the god of protection. My guide told me that Hindus have 36 gods in all, the three major ones and their offspring, the lesser ones. They pray to them all. I asked my guide if he was Hindu. Yes, he said. I pray to all the gods, Hindu and Buddhist, but, he acknowledged, whatever you are born, that is what you truly are. What a thought; that religion, like family, is so embedded in your bones that no matter what happens to you, that root never fades. It made me think that if you're not born Hindu or Buddhist, you can never truly be one. Maybe intellectually, maybe emotionally, but not bone deep, not returning to this rhythm of adoration that speaks of home, of gods, of protection. Unless, of course, in another life, you knew this way and this undeniable song that sings through your bones, your memory, calls you home.

Today it rains, as it did yesterday, and I stay in my monastery. Life's routine reasserts; email, blog, phone calls, writing, reading, walking, chatting with new friends. But that image, of those two monks in the cave comes with me, like a low throb barely discernable. Somewhere, there are monks, more than these two, spread throughout the world, praying to different and similar gods, asking for peace, asking for loving kindness, asking for enlightenment for all sentient beings. Maybe I don't have to understand it, maybe I can just lean into that chant, that hum that throbs below the din of everyday life and rest.

Traveling

I've been thinking about why we travel, why I travel. There are lots of reasons on the surface; see exotic places, meet people with different cultural backgrounds, and the last, discover ourselves. That last one, discovering me, is what I have been aware of the most these last few days.



I heard a story a long time ago, about fleas. Apparently, fleas can jump about three feet high, which explains a lot. Anyway, according to this story, if you put fleas in a mason jar and secure the lid, fairly quickly, fleas will only jump slightly less than the lid so that they don't keep hitting their flea brains on it. The spooky part is, after some time (and I apologize for not knowing the data-how long exactly) if you take the lid off the jar, the fleas won't jump out but will continue to jump just a little less than where the lid once was.



I feel a bit like the flea that discovered the lid was gone. I am nervous. All this potential jumping, all this potential freedom. If I am not a worker, not a mom, grandmother, who am I? If I am not being productive (and here I tip my hat to my mother) what do I do that matters and what makes it matter?



The other day I was talking with Tamdrin about the mala, or the Buddhist rosary that monks wear on their arms and Buddhists use to count the repitition of mantras to insure that the mantra is said 108 times or multiples of 108. I told him I wanted to buy one and he told me that if I did, I would have to decide which mantra I would say. He said there are three mantras, one that asks for my awakening, the second that asks for the awakening of myself and those I bring with me and the third, that requests awakening for everyone else so that they don't return to this world of suffering but which says that I will stay, helping, until everyone is free. That gave me pause. If I am free to jump out, the first thought is to jump. The next thought is that I want everyone I know and love to jump with me. But the third, hang out until everyone jumps? It gave me pause.

In that I am not sure I have figured out how to jump out, I am still mulling this question. It raises so many questions. What does help others, how do I communicate, assuming I even know, what will make things better? Maybe life is a series of jars, each a bit bigger than the last. As I contemplate jumping out of old roles and expanding who I am, I am, according to the Buddhists, still in the world of suffering. But then again, maybe to make big jumps, one must start with small ones.

So, travel makes me aware that the lid is off, always has been, or at least has been for longer than I realized. Jumping higher is scary, exhilerating, exhausting, invigorating.

I suppose, being in Nepal, I should beep. I am jumping.

Prostrating yourself to enlightenment

Yesterday Tamdrin told me about pilgrims who spend three years traveling from eastern Tibet to Lasa. Their mode of transportation is prostrations. They wear knee pads and hand pads, the hand pads are made of wood and look like sanding blocks. A prostration consists of squatting down, then putting your hands on the ground in front of you and pushing forward until you are prone on the ground, arms extended. Then you push yourself back up, once standing, you slap your hands together, the blocks of wood making a loud, loud smack, and then do it again. It is a slow way to travel. There are other things devotees do. They will spend 2-3 months saying 1 million repititions of a mantra. Not so hard, Tamdrin told me. If you just do 2,000 a day, it goes pretty quick. All the monks do this, some more than once.

As I listened, I thought there is no way I would want to do any of these things. It brought forward to me how different I am from these monks, whose lives are devoted to awakening.
And yet I too, feel the need to grow, explore just how much stretch life has, how much joy and love can be felt, shared, sent out to others. Somehow, prostrations don't tempt me though, as the path.

I find myself grateful for my teachers, Julie Henderson and Michael Macklin. People who have also pushed to find ways to grow.

So I hold out to the truth that life is seldom all or nothing. Like water running down hill, a path emerges if the drive to find it exists. So I poke along, looking, listening, feeling my way through this plethora of choices. Slow business, this, and yet there is a kind of peace in this slow moving, sometimes sideways, sometimes stalling, sometimes a free fall into a new space. So maybe this is my form of prostration, this slow path of moving. Who knew?

yogis and regular folk

It is hot here during the day, hot and humid. But the morning dawns clear and cool with the light brilliant on the temple across the garden, the colors glowing. Almost every other day, it rains in the afternoon. Big drops, cloudburst of rain driving everyone in. And then, in the evening, it clears, the air is fresh as it can only be after a rain, and the sky is a deep, deep blue.

In the afternoons, Tamdrin and I talk. He tells me of Buddhism. Yesterday we watched a documentary on his computer about the yogis from Tibet allowing themselves to be videoed, and in some cases seen, for the first time. These are people who have spent their lives in a cave or living in a monastery studying secret documents on how to become enlightened. The Dalhi Lama asked them to participate in this, afraid that the old ways would be lost.

The first noble truth of Buddhism is that life is suffering. And in Tibet, that is certainly true. It is easy to see the draw to a path that might mitigate this suffering, if not in this life, in the next. I marvel at the devotion of these monks, the willingness to renounce all pleasure and I find myself feeling foolish. I do not have this one pointed devotion, this utter focus on finding emptiness, freedom from suffering. I want to be comfortable, happy, loved, busy in activities that feel generative to me and others. And yet maybe this is also a path. Buddhism talks of the three parts of Buddhism, Buddha, dharma (the teachings) and sangha (the community). For most of this, the slow evolution does not happen in a cave but with others, with teachers and with a sense of the holy. Maybe there is hope for me.

Tamdrin tells me that Buddhists believe that Buddha is in everyone. That Gandhi was Buddha. Mother Theresa was Buddha, Martin Luther King was Buddha. It gives me pause. This idea of fragments of the divine, yet again, a familiar concept. It comforts.

They say Buddha had 1000 incarnate lives before he became the Buddha. They call it changing faces. This need to win, succeed, solve the problem now is not so prevalent here. Rather there is a sense of slowly chipping away at the mountain, a gentle moving towards that divine buried inside. If not in this life, the next. If I can make one small act that carries me in the direction of enlightenment, then that is enough. Such patience. It's so unAmerican.

I am trying it on, that kindness towards myself. If I am patient with myself, less harsh, maybe I can look up a bit more, look around, see others walking towards me, next to me. See the way the light catches the brilliant colors. It is short, this time here, maybe taking pleasure in this moment is also a slow movement toward the divine.

Walking the stupa

Every evening, people walk the stupa, a large octaginal shaped building in the center of the shops. Inside, men are chanting, ringing bells, blowing horns and drumming. The tradition is to walk clockwise and let your mind move to nothing, just that. As you walk, you can turn the prayer wheels that are built inside the walls of the stupa. You can chant. You can talk with your neighbor. It is a time for the old people to visit, the young people to hang out all the while accumulating good karma, walking the stupa. I don't know how that works. I only know that the first time I saw it, I was walking out of a shop and found myself wondering where everyone was going. I didn't explore, realizing it was time to go back to the monastery for the evening meal so I started walking back, against the flow. I felt like a salmon swimming upstream. No one seemed to mind, though, intent on their walking, their conversations, their silence. One man was doing prostrations. He had pads on his knees and wooden pads on his hands. He was not young and after stretching flat out on the ground and then pushing himself up, he would pause a bit, resting, before standing up and stepping a few steps and then doing it again. People walked around him as easily as the walked around me, going the wrong way, stopping, watching.

As I walked home I saw tables of small lights, a wick sitting in a tiny holder of oil. For 5 rupees, I could light one. (77 rupees for the dollar, you do the math). The lamp lighting was to remind everyone of the story of a poor woman who came to see the Buddha and had no beautiful gift to give him as the other devotees did. All she had was a small lamp. The other devotees mocked her, pointing out her pitiful gift to the Buddha. The Buddha commented that her gift was more valuable than all the others as it was from her heart and all that she had. And the lamp, it kept burning, long after it should have gone out.

I love how the stories all swirl together. How the religions teach the truths of love, generosity, kindness. So I lit five lamps and gave the old woman my money and we smiled at each other, our faces vivid in the light of all the candles, the dark surrounding the rest.

the stupa

Yesterday I went to the stupa, about 14 km away from here, via motorcycle. I have a new appreciation for drivers here. First, the roads are tiny, about a lane and a half. The good news is that the cars are also tiny however they share the road with bicyclers, pedestrians, dogs, and motorcycles. The roads are also intermittently paved so the driver is constantly avoiding potholes, sudden disappearance of pavement, resumtion of pavement and the occasional rock. In addition, they drive on the left side of the road. I found myself peering over Tamdrin, whose motorcycle it was, trying to help steer until I finally realized my fate was truly in the hands of God or gods, as the case may be. I had no helmet, no leathers to protect me. So, if I was meant to survive, brain such as it is, I would, and if I wasn't meant to survive, I wouldn't. And finally, the wind, the zipping through traffic dodging about began to kick in and I couldn't stop smiling. I have new appreciation for the horn. It is a necessary part of negotiating the streets. You beep when you find a smooth stretch of road and can go fast warning everyone you are flying down the road. You beep when you come up behind a pedestrian. You beep when an oncoming car, bus or motorcycle is in your lane passing his obstacles. You beep when you want to turn as there are no stopsigns or stoplights and if there were, it is questionable whether anyone would mind them. You beep when the errant dog wanders into the street. You beep when you are passing any or all of the above. It is a joyful sound indicating movement. Driving here is a bit like skiing down a very rocky slope. Dodging, shifting, moving, flying a bit, slowing down, all is part of the process. And the beeping, of course.

Puja and the Feast of Kali

Tomorrow the Feast of Kali begins which is a Hindu tradition, and each family buys a goat to slaughter to insure a profitable and healthy new year. I am told that if the family doesn't do this, the neighbors will think that the family is too poor to afford the goat so whether or not they want to, people feel pressured into continuing the old customs. Nice to know they have Jones' here as well.

Puja is a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony which entails drums, a blowing of a very large horn, chanting and prayers. In the morning, it lasts for one and a half hours and is more effective than any alarm clock. The first morning, I thought it was a low flying airplane, then maybe a leaf blower before finally realizing what it was. I have yet to witness it as I have been a sleepyhead. Tomorrow, Tamdrin said I could go with him to the Puja in the central stoopa, which is a religious building, many sided. If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I will take pictures and see if I can download them onto a computer.

There are so many sects of Buddhism and Hinduism here that I am never sure what traditions belong to whom.

Funny how small things tell so much. In Jordan, as well as Saudi, Merrill reports, there are almost no dogs. In the very fancy hotel Merrill and I stayed in, four beautiful swimming pools, marble terraces, palm trees and gardens everywhere, there were feral cats that looked like they had a very tough life and would come up to the table and beg for scraps. In Petra and as Merrill and I drove through the small towns, we saw not one dog. In Nepal, they are everywhere. They are subdued, skinny and pay little obvious attention to people, motorcycles racing by as they sleep on the edges of the road. The monastery has three dogs, two a gift from Julie's group who the monks play with and care for. But here, clearly,dogs are dogs and not part of the family. I have seen no cats. Goats also wander about here. I worry that there won't be so many after tomorrow; we shall see.

The other thing that is so clearly different is that there are people everywhere, on motorbikes, in shops, on the sidewalks or standing in the street talking, walking, together. I feel a bit odd, walking about alone but I feel comfortable. There is no sense of hostility towards a lone woman. I am told that a married Indian woman wears the red dot on her forehead to signify her marital status, Tibetan women wear an apron over their dress, Nepalese women wear a red bracelet on their right arm. It seems every culture wants to know immediately whether a woman is available or not.

It is odd though, not to have anyone to speak to until I have lunch with Tamdrin and the other monastery manager whose name I can't spell.
I am grateful for their revelations about this culture.

Settling in

Yesterday, when I went to my usual internet cafe, first the electricity was off, then the phone lines were down.  The same problem occured this morning.  It is the way here, a sort of tenuous connection with the modern world.  I had Tibetan tea this morning, a tea consisting of butter, salt and water.  The monk who runs the monastery watched my face, as he does at every meal, to see my reaction.  He is quite convinced that I will quickly find a fancy restaurant to eat my meals, initially telling me that I couldn't eat here and then later, when Tamdrin, the lay man who co-runs the monastery corrected him; he assured me that I wouldn't like the food.  If only my mother could see me now.  I eat everything.  But there have been some moments.  The chilis are too hot for me and needless to say, I learned that the hard way.  Dinner, which I missed the first two nights not knowing when to show up the first night and being miss-informed the second due to an error in translation-is the same everynight, a soup with green, spinach like leaves and soy floating in it.  Breakfast is a dumpling like bread with peanut butter and jelly.  Lunch has variety; rice, some kind of sauce and chili.  

The day starts at 5:30AM with puja.  All the monks, there are 108 of them, attend.  Tomorrow I will try and join as today I woke at 5:45 and so meditated in my room while the sounds emanated out of the gompa.  I don't know how to describe the sounds.  Maybe tomorrow.  The monks come here at age 7 or 8.  After puja and then breakfast, they have classes, and then puja again in the afternoon.  In the evening they play soccer in the courtyard or a game in the alley outside the entrance which I haven't figured out yet.  They are quite curious about me, peering around the door when I am eating, smiling and then quickly looking away.  They all wear the red-burgandy robes with the yellow/orange shirts and have shaved heads.  But the eyes are so bright, the smiles so beautiful.  

Small steps, every day, settling, learning, walking, watching.  

I love knowing you are there, reading this.  It gives me a sense of connection.

Arrival in Nepal

My son is of the opinion that due to my hat and my sunglasses, I am still single. I am quite sure there is no truth to that.

I have arrived in Nepal It is a minor miracle, I think. I was so crazed when I left that I did not write down the name, address or phone number of the monastery I was going to nor the name of the travel agent/ taxi service who was picking me up. I had no Nepalese money. I flew from Joradan all night to Delhi arriving at 4AM Delhi time to fly out at 6AM. And yet, when I arrived, after standing in line for an hour to get my visa, Indra was outside w/ a sign waiting for me. Unbelievable. I almost cried.

So I am making my way here. There is a man who works at the monastery, not a monk but equally devoted, I think, and most kind. Today he took me to the bank, showed me around, including this internet cafe, and answers my questions.

It is another world. The roads are questionably paved or are dirt, as wide as a country lane, no sidewalks yet pedestrians, bicycles, buses, cars and motorbikes all zip around one another. They honk at each other a lot, abit like car conversation, I have come to think of it.

I love it.

There is so much to see that my eyes get a bit overwhelmed. When I walk I want to see and do everything, then one I go back to the monastery, I want to sit and be quiet.

Pictures!

Here is the link to my Flickr site, let me know what you think of my new photos with the Boyo.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maryhelenwaters/

Jordan

I have met up w/ Merrill and been climbing all over Petra today as well as intermittently riding a burro and an arab horse.  I am still challenged by the middle east approach to women, or more accurately, the absence of women as we drive through a town, sit on a side walk cafe.  And though the men smile, laugh and talk together, there seems a note of joy that is missing.  

It is wonderful to be w/ Merrill, tonight we are staying by the Dead Sea.  

The first day I arrived in Amman, I was the only lone woman wandering about.  It is odd to not see others like myself.  I am grateful for the freedom to do this but am aware of what an anomoly it is to be able to do so in this country.  

My first write and it seems a bit terse but I am so tired.  I hope after I settle a bit, I'll have more to say.