An Illuminating Day

There are many holidays throughout the year that celebrate the Buddha. Saga Dawa is, perhaps, the most important. It marks his birth and his death and contemporaneous reaching of enlightenment. It takes place on the full moon day of the fourth lunar month, otherwise known as June 7 this year. I was in Lhasa. Though celebrations were necessarily subdued, Saga Dawa was palpable — especially on the Lingkur, the 8km loop that demarcates the old city. Locals, pilgrims who manage to get into the city, grandmas, children, workaday folks, rich, poor, educated and illiterate all walked the Lingkur in the lead-up to the holiday. The walk circumambulates what used to be the city limits; now much of it is on busy sprawling streets, and on a regular day, those on the Lingkur blend in with the regular street scene. Not so on Saga Dawa and in the few weeks leading up to the holiday, then the walkers are a crowd. One part, considered the heart of the walk, was closed, perhaps because it was too narrow to handle the throngs. It is a walk that takes several hours, and some would start as early as 4AM to finish in time to go to work. Some would hit the sidewalk again at night for another round. A hardy few do the whole thing prostrating, which I understand takes several days if you keep at it all day. It was a small, almost unmarked Saga Dawa by historical standards, but it felt like the whole city turned out for this walk — a quiet way of celebrating.

Along one arm of the river

Leaving the quiet part, heading into the city

Carved prayer stones for sale

Route crossing a wide city street

Behind the Potala, many do extra loops

In the newer part of the city

Busy Lingkur

the new Lhasa

Monlam Chenmo

Today is a holy day for the Indian and Tibetan inhabitants of Dharamsala. For the Hindu, it’s Holi, a day of much celebration and colored-dust throwing. I saw one guy walking down the street purple from head to toe, except his eyeballs.

For the TIbetans, it’s Monlam Chenmo, a prayer festival in praise of Buddha Shakyamuni. His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave a teaching this morning down at the main temple in McLeod Ganj. It was an amazing and powerful event. I’d seen His Holiness once before, 2 years ago in the same place, at a festival to honor his Nobel Peace prize. At that time, it was snowing, I was sick, and it wasn’t a teaching.

This morning, the courtyard was full of people — westerners, Tibetan lay people, monks and nuns. It was a clear and beautiful morning. After a few minutes of prayer, pomp and ceremony, His Holiness got down to the business of giving a wonderful teaching on the core of Buddhist philosophy of emptiness, replete with his characteristic pithy examples and anecdotes. He taught from the text, “Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way”. In discussing the view of the impermanence of things, he described the Chinese Communist leaders as behaving as they do because of not seeing clearly. He told of how flies go towards light because it’s attractive to them, and they get zapped by bug zappers because that light is attractive to them, though they’re not seeing clearly what the thing really is. And I didn’t catch the whole thing but he told a story of someone who was meditating to increase their patience, who when asked to eat shit, got angry. That one got a chuckle but I’m not quite sure what the lesson there was. Something about continuing the things we practice in meditation, in the rest of life.

His Holiness gave a nod to theistic religions, counseling the westerners in the crowd to respect their traditional beliefs even if they themselves prefer to practice Buddhism. In wanting to do right in a god’s eyes, he said, you’re doing right by others, and the result is still of benefit. And he extolled listeners to reflect, contemplate, and examine the teachings. No blind faith here, that would be missing the point.

His Holiness concluded with the Refuge and Bodhichitta prayer, a powerful prayer that invokes the aspiration to raise compassion towards all. He called the group in attendance a “mahayana sangha”, a community of those working towards the release from suffering of all. Having been thinking about my own practice in these ways, it was an amazing stroke of luck and timing for me.

I decided to forego yesterday’s Uprising Day marches and speeches in favor of a quiet day, as I was still catching up on sleep and getting over a cold. It was an important day for Tibetans, though, the 50th anniversary of the uprising and a big change in tune from His Holiness on the issue — from consilience to serious displeasure over the Tibetan suffering under the Chinese. His statement can be found here, and is well worth a read.

Tibetan reverie

I am in the midst of planning my return to Asia in early March, and I stumbled upon some more notes I made during my time in Tibet in the fall.  It happened to be November 4, and while my fellow Americans were preparing to go to the polls I was arriving in upper Tibet.

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I bought this notebook from a little Chinese stationery shop. It is “Brilliant New Century” brand. It is early morning and I write from under four layers of blanket in a tent on the shores of Nam Tsho. Yesterday we left Lhasa and headed north, stopping along the way. Fist we stopped at Yangpachen monastery, the Sharmapa’s seat.  This place has been in the midst of controversy, and Shamar Rinpoche’s challenge of the recognition of the 17th Karmapa rings strongly in my mind.  It is situated at a bend in the valley on a hillside they say is like the back of an elephant. Hot springs nearby are capitalized upon for Chinese tourism and geothermal electricity. I am there to deliver a hello from a friend in America to the monks. They say there are around 60 monks, but I don’t see many around. I see a few, and a few villagers, whitewashing the walls in front. Prayer wheels are stacked in the courtyard, awaiting some kind of refurbishing or construction. Ruins of other monastery buildings surround the main assembly hall, and lie between the hall and a brand new Chinese-built shedra (monastery school) next-door.  We visit only briefly and then head on.

Next stop was a village outside Damshung, where some of our driver’s family lives. We have tea and thukpa, and reject half a sheep’s worth of mutton that they wanted to sell us, at some outrageous price. (The driver’s brother in law brought in the whole sheep’s rear half and chopped it longitudinally beginning at the rear.) As we leave, the sister stands by the stone wall, daughter hanging around nearby – the youngest of 3 children, maybe 5 years old. I touch my forehead to the grandmother’s in the traditional way and she breaks into peals of laughter.

I crave news from home, though everyone is more interested in where I am than the other way around.

Nobody was stopping traffic at the entrance to the pass to Nam Tsho to collect entry fees. Not surprising, as the road has been mostly closed recently, with heavy early-season snows. On the road last night, an eagle swooped across the windswept snowy plain. Two yaks in the road faced us. We pitched our camp by the lake shore between the two halves of Tashi Do headland, our spot windy and sacred, just behind a mani wall. The sunset arched over the western headland as we set up tents. At 15,000 feet, I am acclimatizing again. I sleep here higher than I have ever ventured before.

It is a quiet morning. Election day in America. I wonder what is happening, which polls will come in first.  I write, under four layers and on top of five. In this high mountain place, I finally feel free – standing (sitting) on my own. Yet here everyone must depend on each other for survival. (Why was man created so helpless, such that we must kill and wear other animals to stay warm?) Perhaps it is that innate sense of interdependence that allows for the feeling of freedom. The Tibetans are an unembarrassed people. The language doesn’t handle the concept of self-esteem. Yet they are struggling to maintain their identity as a people; even the local handicrafts are made in Chinese factories. It makes me want to help people be good leaders. Somehow it seems like a piece of the puzzle that would be helpful, to help individuals find new ways to solve problems and compromise.  I write small in this journal, as though I will fill it up quickly, but I doubt I will.  Soon the day will begin, weather moving in and work to do.

Retreat time

The sun is not so strong here, at this lower elevation and with the winter coming on. I’ve been studying the Tibetan alphabet in a patch of sunlight on the front patio, bees buzzing around a mongoose picking up kitchen scraps from the meadow below, where they get thrown.

At home I have been studying Buddhism mostly in the Kagyu tradition, which is rather well-established in the West. The high Kagyupa lamas enjoy quite some celebrity among Westerners, as many Kagyu teachers have gone to the West and ‘planted the dharma’ there (as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said). Wednesday I went down to Sidhbari, a town below Dharamsala, which is the current home of His Holiness the Karmapa. Though he is mostly devoted to study and practice, twice a week His Holiness holds a public audience, at which westerners and eastern devotees attend and receive his darshan (blessing).

I laid eyes on His Holiness one other time, when he gave a public talk at the Waldorf Astoria in New York during his visit to the United States last Spring. In that venue, he held a crowd of hundreds, in opulence and with grace. It was quite some change for him, spending young childhood in Tibet and the past 10 years or so in India in intense monastic life. On Wednesday he appeared well, settled, and as always, bright-eyed.

Kagyu lamas and practitioners were out in force in Kathmandu when I was there, celebrating the enthronement of Urgyen Jigme Rabsel, the reincarnation of beloved teacher Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who passed away in the 1990s. The young tulku, recognized several years ago, is now 8. I attended one event, at Nagi gompa, the tulku’s monastery in Shivapuri Park on a hill outside the city. The monastery was in a festive mood. Reincarnate lamas as children are still children, yet often with a special calm and grace. Through great ceremony the young tulku sat, at one point with lollipop in hand. It was nice to spend the day in the presence of so many people who are there to wish the world well — and nice to have without so much Western dharma circus.