Ja-ka-wan

Recently I've found myself studying subjects I tackled when I was in high school. Hearing words and phrases like vectors and balancing equations transports me to that time. I have very little will in the matter, in fact. Those times were so formative that the memories are ingrained somewhere automatic, such that when the stimulus arises, the memory appears. And maybe in that immediate moment, when I first understand that I have a memory about this thing, I can almost taste what it was really like when I was young. But when I try to think back--when I try to actually be there--memories elude me. Or rather, they're fuzzy, and fading into further distance. And I know they're only going to get darker and smaller and further. Still, I do remember thinking, when I was in high school, that high school was everything. Everything seemed so big and important--the school walls were the ends of the universe. It's obvious now, that what used to be my universe is nothing but a fuzzy distant memory--how important could it really be? But since I can see the change, to how things feel now, I can empathize with my past self. To me this means that I identify with past-vanessa, and sometimes it feels like I am still her, facing the world as she would have. But I'm not her, because I barely remember most of the things she experienced! Of course, this is not the only reason. I am not her because so much has changed, from the way I think to the way I look to my ambitions, motivations, etc. etc. you name it, it's changed. And it didn't take long, either, for so much to change that it was easy to see, to look back and see that not for more than a moment are you one version of yourself. We are always changing, and who were are today will turn into a distant memory for our future selves. I'm writing about this now because I've only just realized how strong that sensation is--being reborn from moment to moment, understanding how powerful each moment can become, taking responsibility for each moment as it is, neither in the past nor the future, and most significantly for me these days, the fear of churning through moments faster than they can be appreciated. Maybe my future self will know better.

What can you learn from a failed relationship? Hopefully something, otherwise you’re in trouble in the long run. Most recently I learned about hope, and expectation, and insecurity. For example, a lot of other emotions are a result of insecurity, rather than the cause of it. The myriad anxieties about our corporeal form would be one illustration. What I mean is, everyone has a trait they wish they could change. But some people with a certain trait are bothered, and some people with that trait aren't. It seems plausible then to conclude that the traits themselves are not the actual cause of the insecurity. The insecurity is caused by an already existent insecurity, and until you solve that problem, you will never get any of your other problems sorted out.

Thinking about hope, I learned that we all have a hope that each of our endeavors will work out in the long run, in the sense of lasting through time. Why? Because we want it to. Why? Because of insecurity. Instead of working with a relationship in the here and now, we work with it in a not-yet-existent future, because we have hopes and expectations that it will work out because we want it to. If we dissolve our insecurity, we also dissolve what it spawns—a blindness to our present moment and a certain inclination to suffering.

What is that already existent insecurity? From the Dharma perspective, we could call it impermanence, or the way it feels to truly ponder it. Emptiness too, would characterize the feeling—-that overwhelming fear that you can’t find anything to hold on to. But realizing this is our situation doesn't make it this way--it was already this way! We just have to find a way to deal with it. So far, grabbing around desperately for something to hold onto anyway seems to be the predominant approach to this problem. But the Dharma approach is to come to understand and embrace the nature of our world which is impermanence.

Staring down emptiness of course has its own associated anxieties--when everything is empty, what do you do with your life? Who do you love? But these questions would be irrelevant when asked of someone who has already understood these fundamental truths, because the sense of security you gain when you have a direct experience of impermanence trumps all other worries.

Under the aegis of meditative equipoise, the non-existence of one’s insecurities is realized, and the fear of impermanence begins to dissolve. Only then is one secure. And only then can one have meaningful relationships, because when you finally understand how to have compassion for yourself, your compassion for others multiplies a thousand-fold.

The heart of the Mahayana path is the union of wisdom and compassion. Wisdom entails the knowledge of emptiness and dependent arising, the law of karma—cause and effect, and especially that of impermanence. These all make good sense to me (karma was the last one I accepted, but more on that later), but compassion has always bewildered me somewhat. I mean, I understand that compassion exists—we all know what it feels like to feel sorry for someone, to hope for the best for them, to rejoice in someone else’s success and to put effort into eradicating someone’s suffering. Plus, it would be pretty difficult to find someone who actually thought compassion was a negative thing. In other words, my feeling thus far has been it’s obviously not a bad thing, but is it a necessary thing?

The wisdom aspects seem like logical conclusions to me—philosophical consequences of a logical proof which elucidate the path towards liberation. But I have always wondered: what is the logical proof which necessitates compassion?

The first question that should be asked is: what is compassion? According to the teachings on the four immeasurables, compassion is wishing that other sentient beings are free of suffering and the cause of suffering (love is wishing that they have happiness and the cause of happiness). The first thing I understood about this compassion (other than that mentioned above, i.e. compassion does arise) is that it’s a tool to suppress self-righteousness and ego-clinging. And that is logically necessary to attain liberation. I get that. Dzongsar Khyentse discusses it in his book, What Makes You Not a Buddhist—-that you generate compassion or generosity or many such virtuous acts to suppress pride, grasping at the self, jealousy and many such defilements in order to clean up your mind, to make you receptive to enlightenment. You see, it’s the other way around! You don’t suppress ego to generate compassion. Compassion is a tool we use along the Path. This is a good understanding, but the next question is: is it only a tool? Is my sincere wishing for others to be free from suffering enough, or must their lack of suffering actually manifest?

The teachings say it must also manifest, which is confusing. Because if there is no self, there are no selves of others, and then what does it matter if the lack of suffering actually manifests or not, as long as the intention is there which is the foundation of that mind training. The answer came to me through Milarepa, who said he first did bad actions, and then he did good actions to counteract those bad actions, and then he finally transcended both good and bad actions because on the ultimate level there is no good or bad. That made sense at first, but then I wondered: who says that’s the way it happens? That the only way to counteract bad actions is with good ones? And that that’s the only way to realize there’s really neither in the first place? Why can’t we just skip straight ahead to the transcending part where we realize our notions of opposites are empty too? The answer to that is Vajrayana: when you understand the philosophy of the previous stages, you can leap over them to the swifter method. But only once you really understand it. It’s the same thing with the 3 turnings of the Wheel, outer/inner/secret teachings, and many other elements of Buddhism. Only after you fully comprehend the philosophy of a stage can you go beyond it. Same wisdom, different method.

I'm pretty sure this issue could be more thoroughly examined (I'm still a little hazy on karma, as I mentioned, and the Milarepa explanation doesn't entirely sooth my trepidation) but it's a good start. It's more than I ever understood before, at least. And it's good to remember that the difference between Buddhism and science is that the former does require faith. As much as we skeptical, analytical, empirical Westerners might wish it were otherwise, faith is absolutely part of the path. Mine is growing.

“Nothing is shit until you call it shit” –Junn Heng, 8:00 pm Friday August 7, 2009 IBA Kathmandu

It sounds funny until you think about it and realize it’s true, and if you could live every moment believing that, nothing would have to be negative. Take for example my current situation. I literally would not have stumbled upon or embraced Vipassana meditation without what appeared to be a negative encounter. If I look at things from the point of view of the benefit, I should be kissing the feet of this person (with whom the “encounter” took place), for Vipassana will change the rest of my life, whereas people come and go. If I can learn to skip the negative emotion period, those few weeks earlier when I was moping and feeling sorry for myself and wishing for things to be otherwise—if I could skip straight to the part where I put on the glasses that see the benefit of things, the positive side, I could eliminate half my suffering. It’s all about what lens you use when you look at the world. It’s a simple concept with immensely good consequences. So why aren’t we all operating this way? Simple concepts are not always easy to implement, it would appear. It takes habituation. Better start now.

Saturday, August 8th 2009

Just finished my longest meditation session yet—half an hour. It was actually kind of amazing. By the end my whole body was buzzing, and I felt calm and determined afterwards. What did I experience in there? The usual onslaught of thoughts was there, but towards the end it got much calmer inside. I began to feel my body more too, which is when the buzzing started. The thoughts themselves were of the ordinary type—quickly zooming from person to person I know, hoping for praise and recognition and all this kind of judgmental thinking. Also I noticed at one point after a clap of thunder how freaking quickly my mind connected that thunder to what it meant for the afternoon—so quickly it went from a clap of thunder to some event having relevance to the whole day and all the people in it (from my perspective). I noticed this, tried to coach myself on it, thinking “hey it’s just a sound,” and actually, at the next clap of thunder no stories were instantaneously created in my mind. This is a good start.

Wednesday August 12th, 2009

Now at my longest meditation yet--an hour. It's really an amazing thing to sit and do nothing for an entire hour. And, on the outside it looks like you're doing nothing, but on the inside, the movie is playing in full speed; you are doing battle with your mind. But when you finally tame it (for me this is usually after about 15 minutes) sometimes you're doing nothing on the inside too, at least for a few minutes here and there. Then you are truly just sitting, just being, in the here and now.
My favorite thing about meditating is that in there, in the arena where my ego and I do battle, nothing else exists. All my desires, fears, feelings of inferiority (or the rare feeling of superiority), future wishes, anxieties, the need to impress, to succeed, to compare myself to others, thoughts of people I like or don't like, people I'd like to be like or people I'm happy to not be like--all of it is gone. It is even reduced to ludicrosity in there, when you're just sitting there in the space inside your mind, when you think of all these ridiculous things you do and think and feel and want, you see how none of it really exists, and finally you can let it all go. The only mission you have then is to calm things down, to experience your mind as it is when it rests, to train your mind in preparation for glimpses of the ultimate, the emptiness of yourself, your own buddhanature. Nothing else exists in there. I wish I could set up shop and never leave.

Nepal sounds like dogs barking in the night; sometimes just one or two, sometimes a whole cacophonous chorus. The dark hours are filled with their cries, their antics, gangs roaming the streets. Nepal sounds like airplanes rumbling overhead-- roaring, soaring. It sounds like the gongs of many monasteries booming solemnly at dawn and dusk, and the deep-throated chants of the monks rippling out over the city, tapping into all the good deeds and bad. They offer up their pride with the wail of the jaling and the final clash of caution from the great Tibetan cymbals. During pujas, the haunting resonance of the dungchen thunders through the valley, up and over the Himalayas, out into the never ending beyond. Nepal sounds like children singing school songs all day long, contentedly unaware of their bittersweet surroundings. There’s the sound of motorbikes honking their way through throngs of people on dirty, dusty roads, and trucks rattling along much faster than they should. It sounds like children playing with whatever lays at hand—the swish of tree branches, the hollow thud of a flat old soccer ball, the cries and shouts and whistles of glee of those empty-handed but playing still. Nepal sounds like a people striving, the common man attempting to survive, the spiritual ones yearning, beckoning the ultimate. But sometimes, when you’re lucky, Nepal sounds like clouds gliding quietly over blissful, solitary mountain peaks, monsoon rains drowning out the sounds of struggle, clearing away the dust and preparing for a new dawn, a new day. When you’re lucky, Nepal sounds like the beginning.

Starring: Vanessa’s Mind and its Fantastic Fabrications!


In my life, there is a movie playing all the time. It’s all the drama, all the sadness and happiness, all the attachment, love and desire that I’ve ever experienced, and it’s all completely invented by my mind, and I’m only just realizing that this is the case.

I meditated for the first time a few weeks ago. I mean actually meditated—I didn’t just sit cross-legged with my eyes close and wonder what’s for dinner and who my next boyfriend will be and if I really like the skirt I just bought. Well actually I did wonder all these things, but this time I observed myself do it. It’s really like there’s two consciousnesses involved when you sit down and really put your mind to the task of meditating. One is the consciousness that has a billion meaningless disconnected thoughts running through it and one is the consciousness that tries to ignore the first, getting distracted and following the daydreams off on some tangent, then remembering to come back and observe from the centre. The first time I did this, I realized the first consciousness, my mind, was like a hyperactive drunken child. There were so many thoughts zooming off in every direction, it was like a TV with a broken remote; the channel was changing like lightning, with no rhyme or reason to the different scenes. And the second consciousness, whatever that is, is sorely out of practice with observing, and easily followed whatever random thought down its happy little road towards fantasy.

This experience was not a bad one; quite the contrary, it has been the most useful understanding I’ve had of Buddhist practice thus far. It is the realization: “Oh, this is the nature of my mind” (hyperactive drunken child). Given that description, it’s easy to see why we might want to exact some change. And the more I meditate, the more details I get about just what kind of drunken child my mind really is.

This is where the movie bursts into action. My drunken childish mind is like this: it likes to make up stories—depressing ones to explain others’ actions as if they were trying to hurt me (but from the perspective of others that’s obviously untrue). And judgmental ones, as if there were really some identifiable quality of others, or even things, that would make them ultimately good or bad. As if I could even know, eve if there were! My mind even likes to reinvent explanations for situations it’s already worked through, as if it were bored with the first story and just feels like telling a new one.

All these thoughts, the movie, dwell in the past, and in the future. What happened? Why? Who was doing what, were they evil, or wise, or wrong or right? And what will happen? Will it be like this or that, will I impress people or disappoint them, can I visualize the directions I’m going in, towards success or failure, and so on and so on and so on. Where are the present thoughts? Where is the experience of what I’m doing right now? More thoroughly, where is the non-judgmental experience of my present moment?

I am just a beginner, so I have yet to understand what it means to realize the present moment. I’m not even sure what a present moment is, because as soon as you designate it, it turns into a past moment. I also have yet to reflect in this way on my happy experiences, which are also obviously a result of the movie director which is my mind. It’s much harder to create aversion to pleasing ideas and pleasing experiences, though I recognize these along with my bad experiences of suffering and so forth are all sewn from the same material.

I’m sure great clarity comes from a proper understanding of impermanence. Everything is completely transitory. Everything. Emotions come and go, this is obvious. Remember when you were happy? Remember when you were sad? Angry, embarrassed, whatever? Remember? Do you really? Is that experience still present within you, or is it encapsulated, frozen in a memory? Everything is this way—relationships, jobs, travels, good times with friends, bad times with enemies, the delicious taste of good food, the terrible pain of a broken bone, the numbness in your leg when you sit for too long, the itch of a mosquito bite, the pleasing touch of a massage, thoughts, ideas, desires. Everything rises and falls, and from the moment it arises it begins to cease. In this way, what is there truly to grasp hold of, to cling to and dwell on in this totally fabricated fairytale that my mind has called my life? It isn’t there. You may search for it as long as you like, but upon ultimate (I think this is code for thoroughly clever) analysis, you will find nothing.

At first these concepts are disturbing. It feels like spinning wildly out into darkness, like Alice when she falls down the rabbit hole—if nothing is truly existent, and I have nothing to grasp hold of, and all my emotions are products of some deluded child of a mind in my head and all my relationships were basically fabricated in there and everything I’ve ever wanted isn’t even real, where can I possibly turn now? But the truth is, the realization of this situation is not what put us in the situation. We were there to begin with, spinning wildly out into darkness. It is only upon realizing this that we have a chance to come back into the light. This is the path of Dharma, of meditation, of clarity, and sensibility. I am not without fear, but at least I have the hope that one day I may be able to get up and walk out of the movie that won’t stop playing in my head (sudden flashback to MST3K…). All it takes is a little dedication, and a little meditation. I’d say it’s worth it.

Recently I heard there was a Shiva festival in a place called Pashpati. I tried to meet some Indian beggar girls I sort of know to take me there, but not having found them around the Stupa, I thought I might go anyway on my own. Just outside Boudha Gate I met my “friend” Om, an Indian guy who started doing khora with me a few days ago. I asked him about the festival and he told me the way, if only I would go to his house and have tea first. The first time he invited me (a few days before) I declined—I know it’s an issue of politeness to accept but I felt too uncomfortable to do so. Somehow between then and now he had become jus that much more trustworthy, so I accepted. He took me down to his “house” where he lives with his wife and 8-month-old son, and I was shocked.

This is a community of Indian immigrants, and they all live in these bamboo stick huts with garbage bags covering the top. There is no floor or stove or anything, just a wooden platform to sleep on and a small mound where a fire can be built. There are flies and crows and chickens and it’s hot and dirty and smelly, the children are running around naked having bathed in the well at the center and most adults are just sitting around on the ground, busying themselves with some or another domestic task like washing plates.

Though they clearly had nothing to their name, Om and his wife made me some Indian masala tea, which has bits of ginger in it. I tried to decline many times because of food safety issues, but after a while, out of politeness and cultural respect I had to accept—but I asked that it be made with just milk, no water, thinking that might save me.

Anyway the tea was fine, and we had a chat, and I tried to figure out if Om was really happy in such a place. When I asked that direct question, he smiled and said “yes of course,” but in his laugh I think I detected an awkwardness of hidden pain.

After I left, Om told me just to walk down his road for 10 or 15 minutes and I should arrive at the festival. After 10 or 15 minutes, I was in the middle of nowhere, but I decided I may as well continue as I’d never been down that way before. I definitely didn’t see another Westerner along the way and after 45 minutes or so was starting to get a little worried when I finally arrived at the festival. At first I just wanted to run away—thousands of people including countless begging sadhus, a blazing sun, ferocious henna attackers and a million little umbrella stalls selling whatever random Hindu trinkets told me I was in the wrong place. But then a couple Nepali guys started talking to me, and one spoke very good English, and after walking a little ways I saw that I was at the cremation site—it dawned on me: Pashpati=Pashupatinath! My new friend said he would show me around for the same cost as the entrance fee to the festival, and as he was attending university nearby and was very knowledgeable, I accepted. First we went to the Senior Citizen Hospice, which was quiet and interesting, and from there to the cremation site I had heard so much about. There are about 4 platforms hovering over the Bagmati River where they burn the bodies, and we sat in the room for relatives just behind to watch. You can tell how long a body has been burning by both the degree to which it has burned and which elements have already been added to the fire. For example, after about 3 or 4 hours, they had packets of butter and piles of hay (?) to the body to create a lot of smoke. I think the butter is meant to be some kind of organic fuel (my friend told me the cremation must take place with all-natural ingredients).

This might sound weird, but I was lucky enough to see a body that had only been burning for about 45 minutes. The skin around the skull had burned away so I could see the boldly white bone, and inside I could still see the brain matter burning. As the priest moved the body a bit, I saw the intestines fall out to the side, and as one leg wasn’t burning enough, the priest broke it off and brought up even with the torso of the body. The foot was unburned and clear as day. I say I was lucky to see this because there can’t be a better reminder of impermanence, and of how we should treat our precious human body—it is said in the 37 Practices of the Bodhisattva that the body is just a hotel, and the mind the guest. When you see a body without the mind in it, burning emotionless on the pyre, this becomes perfectly clear. And we never know when our time will come, when our mind will leave and our bodies will become lifeless logs for the fire. Practice is urgent. I cried.

After we left the cremation site we continued around the Pashupatinath temple complex, which was very beautiful, and we also climbed up around mountains on the edge of the river where we could see the sadhus living in the side of the mountain (in Nepal there are legally allowed to smoke ganja). We also crept around the outside of the monkey/deer zoo up to an ashram in the middle of the forest where they play classical Indian music every new moon. I never would have found this place without my guide, so I was very grateful. He also took me to some house where people get married and I think there was another place though I can’t remember now. He was a very thorough guide. Oh right, we came around to a different site on the river where there was a great statue of Hanuman, the monkey god. I really like that name.

After we parted ways I walked the 45 minutes back to Boudha and then the 20 minutes back up to Tinchuli. It was quite a day, and well worth the adventure.

Here in Nepal I live an uncluttered life. I have no phone, there is no TV, the internet rarely works. I have few clothes, no furniture of my own. The items supplied in my room are spare (a small, hard bed, a desk, a wardrobe) they are even ugly—I would never have chosen them myself. I hang my towel on my chair, and my incense burns in the handle of the window. Why buy hooks and clips and pretty little incense burners? It is only that many more things to take care of. The bathrooms are shared, the kitchen communal, the dishes not mine. The floors are simple tiles, no carpets or rugs. Our shoes are flip-flops, our clothes whatever is most comfortable, not hot and least revealing. Most things are dirty, usually hot, and often uncomfortable.

So why do I love it here? When belongings matter little to you, desirous attachment to them does not arise. If the ugly curtains get wet in the rain, become stained or ragged, why should I care? They do not arouse my attachment in the first place. If my clothes are ruined in the rain and mud, why should I care? I can buy more cheap t-shirts at a shop on the corner. If the floor is dirty, it is simple to sweep. If there are bugs or dirt or whatever unpleasant things in the bathroom or the kitchen, it is not my personal space in which I must deal with the problem—we share that problem, and it doesn’t reside, stressful, in my mind. If I leave my bag in a store—why should I care? It has only a few books, which I can replace. No expensive gadgets, no favorite pens or pins or whatever else of which we choose favorites. No favorite anything means no stress over its loss. Eventually we will lose everything, even this precious human body. Why add to the inevitable suffering with more and more attachment?

The simple life is a necessity for the spiritual mind. I write this in the hopes that if I forget these feelings, and one day desire a place of my own and many lovely things, that I will read this and remember that those things way us down, tug and pull at our emotions, keep our mind from feeling free and instead fill it with worry—worry over protecting them. There are so many other thoughts which deserve our attention. To busy our brains with such mundane matters, this is a real tragedy. To own nothing at all would be a carefree dream.

In Nepal

I arrived in Kathmandu 3 days ago—it wasn’t an easy journey. After the long flight to Delhi, the airline I flew on confined us to some strange dingy waiting room until it was time for our connection to Kathmandu. I promptly fell asleep in a chair as I didn’t sleep well on the plane, and when I awoke everyone from my plane was gone! After sprinting through a not-very-clearly-signed Delhi airport I just made my connection without a second to spare. But the struggles were far from over. On arrival in Kathmandu, I searched for the “pre-paid” taxi booth as instructed by the academy’s website (the International Buddhist Academy, where I am staying for the summer) but it was nowhere to be found. I located the information window, where luckily one man spoke enough English to explain to me that there was a strike and no taxis or buses were running (thanks Maoists!). He asked for a phone number of the academy or a map that could help, because apparently no one even knew where IBA was and they were trying to get someone to meet me somewhere. I of course had neither, and as a crowd of leering Nepali men gathered we struggled to figure out how to get me out of the airport. Despair approached momentarily, but I managed to suppress it. Finally someone decided he might be able to take me on his motorcycle, so after they tied my pack to the back of the bike I hopped on behind this stranger and hoped for the best. As we cruised out of the airport, I wondered if were headed to some slum in the outskirts of town where I would be mugged or murdered, but what else could I do? There really was no other choice.

Then I saw Kathmandu for the first time—nothing could have prepared me. I expected something like Thailand, with locals staring at foreigners, a sea of motorcycles, and food vendors in pushcarts on the side of the road. The first is mostly true for Kathmandu, and the last is present but not so common. There are not too many motorcycles because everyone is walking…everywhere. There are people everywhere! There are no road signs (or any signs for that matter), no traffic signals, no rules at all—you can drive anywhere at any time. There are dogs and cows, and the roads aren’t paved. And by not paved, I mean its like someone was demolishing a house somewhere and the tractor came and dumped all the rubble on the “road” to get it out of the way. It’s dirty, and dusty, and impoverished. Don’t look up while you’re walking, or you’re going down!

Finally we arrived at IBA after getting lost many times. I was so relieved, so exhausted, this place was like a golden oasis. It is actually like a gem on top of this mountain—it’s open and breezy and relaxed, uncluttered and quiet. I very much enjoy it here.

The next stay I woke up early—I had wanted to wake up at 5:30 for yoga at 6, but I changed the time incorrectly on my phone so I woke up at 4:30! Still, it was not a ridiculous time to get up—Kathmandu truly rises with the sun. And, for the first time ever, I woke up to an actual rooster crowing. Like cock-a-doodle-do crowing. I swear. The sun comes up around that time, and you can hear the gongs and chanting from the nearby gonpas. The traffic sounds begin, the cows wake up and do their thing, and the city slowly comes to life. My windows are always open and the sounds of the city coaxed me out of bed-- totally fantastic. After a simple breakfast of chapatti and rice porridge, we started the teachings. The Khenpo gives us philosophy teachings every morning at 8. We are starting with Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara, for which we received the initiation yesterday. It’s tiring and sometimes boring, but overall very rewarding. My Tibetan classes haven’t started yet, but hopefully tomorrow…

I walked to Boudhinath Stupa yesterday. It is spectacular. It came out of nowhere as we were walking down an alley—splendid and glowing white, with all-seeing eyes painted on all four corners of its crowning pillar. I almost cried from the beauty. We started doing khora when my friend recognized a lama in one of the nearby gonpas, so we watched in there for a while. Then the lama (Lama Zopa Rinpoche) came out and also started doing khora. We followed him around and around for hours. The most moving part of the khora for me was when the parade of khor was started swinging out to the side, with everyone pointing at the ground. It seemed like there was a great big deal up ahead. When we approached the same spot, I looked down—there was a very tiny little gray beetle crossing the path of the khora. I was so struck by the way everyone took so much care—an old Tibetan lady actually picked him up and brought him to [supposed] safety. All this Dharma might mean something, or it might not, I’m a bit in a crisis of faith. But still, such care, compassion, and mindfulness is inspiring no matter what tradition produces it, if any. I was truly moved. Finally I bought a khatak and offered it to Lama Zopa Rinpoche, after which he kindly asked my name and where I was from. Then he ascended the stupa, and as we followed, he gave spontaneous teachings on the way to offer prayer bells, rice and other dharma teachings. It was extremely kind of him, and though I was tired from doing khora for four hours by then, I appreciated him very much.

I am slowly starting to find my way, but I see that it will take time—Kathmandu is a little crazy. It’s hectic, hot, dirty, and there is no blending in as a foreigner. Still, I am so happy to be here.

I’ve been in Oxford for a week now. As one would expect, that period was spent adjusting, a process which is far from over. It’s so difficult in the beginning—not knowing where things are, how to get around, how to respect the local culture while maintaining some identity. And there’s no respite, for when I come home from “out there” I’m still alone, still lost in a strange place. But this is how it is whenever you start a new thing, and it would be far worse indeed never to start a new thing.

Let me focus on the positives. There’s of course the University itself. Established in the 1200’s, the oldest English speaking university in the world, it offers up a fascinating history and an incredible array of gothic buildings. Christ Church College is perhaps the most famous and arguably the most beautiful.

Oxford is made up of 38 colleges and 7 private halls (I haven’t figured out what the difference is yet). I’m a member of Wolfson College, one of the newer, graduate-only colleges. While it gets great reviews in terms of it’s social life and accommodation, it is laughably the only college off a map of the center of Oxford (about a mile north). Still thinking positively, it provides good exercise on my bicycle. By the way, EVERYone in Oxford bikes. If you’ve ever been to Amsterdam, it’s like that, and it is really one of my more challenging tasks every day to find a place to lock my bike—every inch is taken by someone else’s!

The center of the town consists of 2 main intersections, which, believe it or not, are as heavily populated as the streets of New York. It is decidedly unenjoyable to walk around there, but thankfully most of my initial shopping is complete. Other areas are more pleasant—there are tiny cobblestone alleyways and beautiful gardens throughout the city. One thing England gains from its obnoxious constant drizzle is very lush greenery; nothing looks like an English garden, bursting forth with life, climbing up walls and buildings, reaching for the sky.

Class hasn’t started yet, but I had a chance to meet a few people at the Fresher’s pub crawl last Saturday. It’s amazing, I haven’t talked to a single person either from the same country or in the same department. Apparently 63% of my class is international, representing over 140 countries. At least I know I’ll learn a few things about parts of the world previously unknown to me. I’m looking forward to meeting my department though—my supervisor has arranged an informal gathering at the Old Bookbinder’s pub tomorrow night (pleasingly typical of people in my field!) and I hope I get on with them well.

What else? Well there’s my accommodation, which is a surprising plus. My room is WAY nicer than any undergraduate housing I had in the States (that’s luck though, I submitted my request for accommodation super early, and some people at Wolfson got totally shafted). It’s really quite comfortable here.

I guess that’s all to report for now. More to come when I actually start my program. I’m trying not to miss anyone, but come visit if you please! Oxford is actually pretty cool…