On the last day of Burning Man, 2007 I had a vision. I literally saw myself hiking in the Himalaya of Nepal, studying ayurveda and yoga in India, and massage in Thailand. I felt it was my destiny and my path to follow this vision. I was so moved that I rode my bike back to the Motherhship, said goodbye to my friends, drove 2000 miles to Texas, said hi to my family, bought a ticket and left on Monday for Nepal.
I hit the Himalayas for three weeks and then unexpectedly was magnetically drawn in by Tibetan Buddhism and spent much of my trip living in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries studying. I also studied ayurveda and yoga at BHU, Benares Hindu University, in Varanasi and studied with a Tantra master. It was not an easy trip. Below are a compilation of my emails collected by a friend in Spain. I would like to share them with anyone interested in reading about the journey.
You have an e-mail from India
(Phoenix’s e-correspondence from sep’07 to apr’08)
A friend sent this photo today; it was taken the morning Phoenix rose up out of the ashes yet again in his incarnation as Electric Sky. I am on my way to Nepal, India and Thailand to trek, study yoga and ayurveda and Thai massage and cooking.
The sky's the limit.
INDICE
The Birth of Electric Sky 5
SOS Ticket 6
Four things 7
Foaming bath salts 8
The Grand Miracle Grand 9
Monastery 10
No Hate, No Enemy 11
How its Works 13
Meaningful Live 14
Baby Monks and Ice Cream Cones 15
Unsurpassing Beauty 16
Offering of light 17
Love 18
The Four Year Old Rinpoche 19
Fotos 21
Kindess 22
Cold Death 24
Sublime Altered State 25
New Fotos 27
Quickly Unusual 28
Is This My Life? 29
Teacher of Monks 30
Real Buddhism 31
Tantric Temple 33
Buddha’s Birthday 34
Sand Mandala 36
Tantric Monks 37
A Week in the life 38
Compassion 40
Death, …and Life 42
Beyond Dogma 44
The Project Begins 46
Pure Love 48
Present, Fresh, Wakefulness 49
Coundn`t Be Better 50
River of Hunger 51
Good Seeds 52
One to One Hundred 53
Holy is Inside 55
Possesion 56
1000 Rupees 57
Turning of the Wheels 58
And Thou Shalt Worship at My Feet 59
It’s a Blog 60
Why Good isn’t Too Bad 61
Confesión/Request, SOS, Please Read 62
Just Love 66
Matters of the Herat 67
Cracy Luck 69
Magical Illusion 71
Royal Treatment 73
Crashing Pianos 74
Delhi 75
Fashionable Yoga 76
Facts 77
Phase II 78
Phase II Plus 79
Briefly but important 80
Damage ina Lonely Place 85
Krishna Das 86
Life, Now! 87
In the End 88
Only One Love 89
The Best Christmas Ever 90
Something Has Changed 91
Final Morning 92
Postrations 93
Princess 94
Man Caught in Human Stampede 95
Chain of Karma 96
Bingo! 99
Benares Hindu University 100
Very Nasty 101
Monsoon Wedding 102
News from Abroad 103
Tea and Death 104
Heretic in the House 105
Exquisite 106
Watching the Days Go By 107
I Got the Fever 108
Falling in Love 109
It’s in the Stars 110
A History of the Divine 111
A Rose By Any Other Name 112
The Pit 113
A Slight Retraction 114
Brother From Anotehr Planet 115
The Other Side of the Coin 117
The Housekeeper 118
A New Home 119
Sunday Morning 120
My Apartment 122
The Return of the Housekeeper 123
Could This Be The Magic At Last? 124
It’s a Bike 125
Wheels With Wings 126
Is It Getting Better? 127
Shoot Out at the OK Kitchen 128
I Got the Music in Me 129
Open Heart 130
Wondrous 131
Good Vibrations 132
Adventure Sports; Extreme! 133
Ayurveda Today 134
The Exact Quote 136
Sharing the Practice 137
Recipes from India; Cooking Under Presure 139
Absolutely Mind Blowing 141
Absolutely Mind-Blowing II; The Good Stuff 145
Step Into the Light 148
Practice Makes Perfect 149
Plain Talk; Practical Application 150
Adopted Son 151
Fundamental Difference 153
My Dead Girlfriend 154
What I Like About India 155
Infuriatingly Incompetent 156
Home is Where I Want to Be 158
Larger than Life 160
God 162
Happy About the Sad Guru 164
Naked Man et al 166
Realizations 167
Home! 168
The Birth of Electric Sky
lunes, 10 de septiembre, 2007 4:58:55
A friend sent this photo today; it was taken the morning Phoenix rose up out of the ashes, yet again, in his incarnation as Electric Sky. I am on my way to Nepal, India and Thailand to trek, study yoga and ayurveda and Thai massage and cooking. The sky's the limit.
Avanti!
“The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. H hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.” - Zen Buddhist Text
If you have time to chatter,
read books.
If you have time to read,
walk into mountain, desert and ocean.
If you have time to walk,
sing songs and dance.
If you have time to dance,
sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot.
- Nanao Sakaki
Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue. -- John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra
SOS Ticket
lunes, 10 de septiembre, 2007 23:29:42
Amigos,
I need a ticket from San Antonio TX, to Kathmandu, Nepal, to Delhi, India, to Bangkok, Thailand and back to San Antonio. Does anyone have ideas of how to get that type of ticket? Also I need a camera; preferably one that is somewhat water and weather proof; again, anyone have ideas on a good camera?
Thanks,
Phoenix
skype phone: 831 706 2750
Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
William Blake
Four things
miércoles, 19 de septiembre, 2007 2:48:09
I am in Taipei after 16 hours in the air. It is raining, cool, grey and beautiful. A two hour layover.
Last night on the plane I had the thought that the four most important things in life are:
Freedom; following my heart, my dreams and my path in life with open-hearted love.
The love I have for my family; my parents, brother and relatives.
The love I have for my friends and being selflessly true to them.
And the most important thing is the love of your *own* family--finding someone who *I* love with all my heart, raising my own children, and loving them and my partner with unconditional love every day for the rest of my life; there can be no greater joy in life than the one you have for you wife and your children; what a beautiful love that must be to experience.
The first three I know; the fourth is on the way.
Open-hearted, healing love.
Phoenix
(on the way to Nepal, India and Thailand)
--
Heart of Freedom
Foaming bath salts
jueves, 20 de septiembre, 2007 5:29:35
I wake up long before dawn in my luxury hotel room, 12 floors above Bangkok and watch the colored lights far below spreading out across the city. I slip into a hot bath and pour in foaming bath salts which bubble up and spill over the tub. I turn up the AC to as cold as it gets (which is frigid) and then crawl in the deep tub and luxuriate in the hot, silky water juxtaposed against the cold air. I find a loufa along with all the other luxury items beside the bath and scrub my body roughly. I feel so good and warm and safe and happy floating in the tub in the darkness and heat while the world is still asleep outside. This hotel room is ridiculous. The bathroom is enormous and has a deep tub and a separate glass shower, a second TV and phone next to the tub. The rest of the suite is also enormous and has a giant leather chair that looks out the glass windows to the city far below. Compliments or Royal Nepal Air, free hotel and meals.
It is 4 am and jetlag, my old friend, has come to visit me and I am tired but wide awake waiting for daylight to come. I don't know when they will get me on a flight to Nepal but with this room and delicious meals all comped, I can afford to be patient.
Love,
Avanti!
--
Heart of Freedom
The Grand Miracle Grand
viernes, 21 de septiembre, 2007 2:24:48
Yesterday Yasmin and I were driven around Bangkok in a airconditioned blue Mercedes with a chauffeur and a private guide. Everytime we stopped anywhere the driver would catapult out of the car and open the door for us and when we'd return he'd do the same and hand us scented damp towels he kept iced for us to wipe our necks, faces, hands and arms to cool off and get Bangkok off our skin. They took us to the King's Palace and the Emerald Buddha and the two of us were given a private tour. Later we were driven to a gem factory where I considered buying a sapphire for the reason that my real name, Zafiris, (Zafiris Dimitrious Vamvakias--named after my grandfather of course) means sapphire in Greek.
Later that evening we returned to the Miracle Grand Hotel and sunk into huge leather chairs in the lounge, drank red wine and listened to the lounge singer play the grand piano and sing songs for us with a voice so beautiful that she made me watery eyed. No one else was there but us. A wild storm was raging outside with wind that bent the trees over, rain pelting against the windows and lightning flashes. It was beautiful.
Eventually I retired to my room for a bubble bath in the deep tub and then laid on my giant bed watching the city lights far below and the storm howling in the night.
Just lucky I guess. I don't know why, but I'm glad.
Kathmandu by tonight. Avanti!
--
Heart of Freedom
The Asian Sojourn
Monastery
domingo, 14 de octubre, 2007 6:31:30
The bus lists hard to the left and all the little boys riding on the roof with me shout heartily and gleefully as we lean out over an abyss looking down to the river a thousand feet below. The little boy behind me tugs my shirt and says to me happily, "Very dangerous road here." I climb to the right side of the roof to try and counterbalance the bus. Eventually we level off and pass a crest and then drop steeply nose down and all the boys yell joyfully again as though we were on the best Disneyland ride ever.
Hours later I arrive in Pokarha and check into a Tibetan hotel with a clean room. My happiest moments in Nepal are soaking in the hot shower, then lying naked in the giant bed, in the clean room with the big ceiling fan revolving and the rain pouring down outside, reading a good book, relaxed, safe, utterly content.
The next day I make a 9 hour bus ride to a taxi for 30 more minutes up the Kathmandu valley to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery for a 10 day course in Mahayana Buddhism. The monastery is perched high above the valley and the air is sweet as nectar and there is only peace vibrating here.
This morning I rise at five am and join the monks for puja. For two hours they chant in the beautiful temple, swaying from side to side, mostly young boys, the chanting rhythmical and beautiful. I sway and smile and am reminded of the time I spent in the Greek Orthodox monastery in Holy Mount Athos Greece and how very different the monks and practices were there. And the summer spent in the Zen Center as a guest student and how different the zen practice. And the six months living alone with the swami New York and the two years at the Shiva ashram. The differences and similarities of monastic traditions. I think of Joseph Campbell and smile.
I am about to begin something amazing; this is why I came here, to learn and to deepen my practice.
This morning I slipped out of the monastery (the course does not start until 5.30) and slipped away into town. This was my first experience of "real" Nepal without tourists and tourism and it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.
Light
--
Heart of Freedom
Yoga, Ayurveda, Masage Asian Sojourn
Winter Fall 07/08
No Hate, No Enemy
viernes, 19 de octubre, 2007 4:48:06
This morning in my meditation I imagined I was eating a fresh, crisp, cool red apple. It was delicious. Then I imagined I offered an apple to someone and they ate it and they enjoyed the fresh delicious apple so much. Then I imagined I offered red apples to people everywhere, to all the hungry people in the villages in Nepal, people all over. And then everyone offering other people red apples. Handing them to everyone everywhere and all people receiving and enjoying fresh red apples. Then I saw all the soldiers in Iraq stop fighting and walk across the rubble to offer fresh apples to the enemy. And these fighters coming out from their respective sides to give and recieve fresh red apples. And then glasses of cool, fresh water. And I saw everyone in the world offering each other cool, clean glasses of water to drink. And then the soldiers were embracing and weeping with joy and regret at the killing and harm they had done and tears of love and compassion as they embraced their 'enemies'. And all the people who had been killed came back to life and were healthy and hugging and weeping with joy. And the soldiers and the people made hot showers for everyone and rebuilt all the things they had destroyed.
Then all over the world people who were fighting stopped and embraced and wept with regret and with love. The Israli's and the Arabs, all embracing, arm in arm, crying with joy and regret at the madness they had been engaged in and the compassion and love they felt. In Africa and Afghanistan, all enemies hugging, embracing, full of love and regret for their past madness.
And then I saw Bush and the Dalai Lama and the leaders of Iraq and all world leaders sitting together, holding hands and at peace. And the hearts of the leaders, of Bush and the rest, were changed and opened and full of compassion. And the leaders of all countries in the world, of Burma, of every nation, were filled with only love for their people so that their motives were creating the best for all of their subjects. Education, health, food, housing. And I saw Hitler and Sadam Husein and all the past dictators who had done so much evil, all brought back to life and their hearts were changed and they were filled with regret and they were in the center of a giant circle of humanity and world leaders all praying for peace. And their sins were washed away and they were reborn filled with love and compassion and regret.
And then I saw all people in Nepal who were about to slaughter goats for the festival all stop and set the goats free and the people were all singing and dancing in the streets like a Bollywood movie and the goats were frolicking and dogs wagging their tails and the whole city was dancing in the streets in unison.
Then I saw the entire world, all the people in Los Angeles, just stop their cars on the freeway on the way to work and get out and all start embracing each other. Everyone embracing. Then all people sitting down and joining hands, a chain of people, on the freeways, on the hoods of their cars, in the offices, all the prisoners in prisons holding hands with the guards, everyone sitting and holding hands and chanting Om Mane Padme Hum, all over the entire planet at the same time, a chain of people holding hands and chanting. And there was love. The yogis in their caves high above the world meditating and sending out pure light to the world below and everyone becoming points of radiant, blissful light. Love and joy and regret. Rebuilding the world. No enemy, no hatred.
And I knew this could be true and that it must start with me.
Om Mane Padme Hum. No enemy, no hatred, no anger. Love.
Heart of Freedom
Yoga, Ayurveda, Masage Asian Sojourn
Winter Fall 07/08
How its Works
domingo, 21 de octubre, 2007 5:05:57
When you care about people; people care about you.
When you are generous life gives you abundance.
When you have compassion for all beings, not just your friends, then life gives you health and long life. ;-)
In Buddhism there are some core principles or understandings. One of them is the impermanence of all things. One is the nature of emptiness. The Buddha says "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." I have mediatated on this a lot here and last night discussing this with a lama and meditating on it I had what to me was an 'insight' that caused a wave of energy to release in my body. It might not mean anything to anyone else but me but I will share it for fun as something to think about:
Nothing exists without the mind. In which case though, the mind cannot exist without the objects of its observation. ie, the chair cannot exist without the mind, but then the mind could not exist without the chair. So, then, they are the same. If they cannot exist without each other, then the underlying nature of all things is the same, no difference.
I have gone on from there with my analysis but I'll stop at that. ;-) It's a new way to experience the nature of reality. ;-)
More on Buddhism later.
Phoenix
--
Heart of Freedom
Kopan Monastery
Yoga, Ayurveda, Masage Asian Sojourn
Winter Fall 07/08
Form is emptiness; Emptiness is form.
Meaningful Life
domingo, 21 de octubre, 2007 9:48:38
At some point in life one realizes what matters most and what is a meaningful life. Being in the monastery here makes me realize that I'd rather be living here, with the monks, studying dharma and meditating, than just being down there 'out in the world' fulfilling my sense pleasures. But, on the other hand, I also realize by being here, that for me the most fulfilling life I have known, is surfing, living on the beach, sleeping on the ground, swimming naked in clean, cold rivers and drying out on granite boulders in the sun, doing yoga, playing my guitar and singing, meditating, teaching about things that help change people's lives, like yoga and ayurveda, and helping people in some way to become happy.
Once this learning sojourn in Asia is over, however long it may be, once I've deepened my yogic practices and my understanding of ayurveda and Buddhism, and Thai massage, then I think I want to retreat to New Zealand and surf, live on the land and teach what I know to anyone who asks to learn. Share the dharma through teaching people and through living it and above all spend my life surfing and living on the earth, sleeping under trees beside rivers and mountains, swimming naked, walking on grass, watching the sun set and rise from my surfboard, and laughing with my friends and with all human beings. Everyone should spend a couple weeks in a Buddhist monastery; life will never be the same afterward, but each person has their own path to follow and mine smells like surf wax, salt water, wetsuits, yoga mats, meditation cushions, love, laughter and the beach.
Om Mani Padme Hum
--
Heart of Freedom
Kopan Monastery
Yoga, Ayurveda, Masage Asian Sojourn
Winter Fall 07/08
Form is emptiness; Emptiness is form.
Baby Monks and Ice Cream Cones
lunes, 22 de octubre, 2007 5:06:17
According to Buddhism desire and attachment lead to suffering. Desire is wanting something you don't have. Attachment is the mistaken belief that something outside yourself will make you happy; that something is "mine", belongs to me. For example, "She is *my* girlfriend, *mine*; she makes me happy, if she left me I would be heartbroken." This is an illusion due to ignorance of the mind. All happiness and all suffering come from within ourselves.
Since my 18 days in the mountains I have been craving sweets. It's a backlash to the lack of food I had while hiking and no matter how many sweets I eat I am never satisfied; it is a hollow pleasure. Yesterday I came to the cafe to get some ice cream to relieve my craving and as I was about to get a scoop a little monk walked in and suddenly I had a much greater desire to do something nice for the little monk than try and fulfill my own craving. So I grabbed him and we went and gathered up all the little monks we could find, about 8 of them, and I brought them to the cafe and sat them down and got them all a scoop of ice cream. They are unimaginably cute. And I felt so happy and satisfied by doing kindness to the little monks that I was completely satisfied and had no desire for ice cream myself. Every act of genuine kindness and generosity leads to an opening and purifying of the heart and is a step on the path to real happiness for you and for all beings.
;-)
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified in all beings)
Unsurpassing Beauty
martes, 23 de octubre, 2007 4:38:46
The world has transformed into something unsurpassingly beautiful. The
sun is a shimmering red ball disappearing behind the clouds. In the
distance, the stupa of Boudinath, in it's holy power, settles into
pale blue shadow, bright and ragged prayer flags drape like banners
across the pines and a vine burdened with beautiful purple blossoms
climbs a tree trunk beside the infamous Shiva temple with its evil
spirits. In the east the clouds are banked up like mountains above the
actual mountains, the wind is sublime, colors are soft, children fly
kites from rooftops far below the lofty heights of the monastery
perched on top of the world. The gompa is beautiful, the stupa alive
with color and meaning. I can see each individual leave on the trees
trembling and hear them whispering. The water fountain sings, the
monks are chanting from different parts of the monastery, like
singing, some walking solo chanting their texts out loud to memorize
them. The monastery has truly never looked so unsurpassingly
beautiful.
I have never felt so alive here before, so much like I belonged here.
Today was transformational. I was invited to have an audience with the
abbot, a high lama and rinpoche. What transpired is too much to write
about now. I can only say that something happened, something
transformational that neither of us expected to feel and that we both
felt and shared. At one point I was down on my knees holding his hand
with tears of joy in my eyes. And we were walking together, holding
hands, I was praying to Buddha. It was a meta experience. He gave me
teachings, he told me I needed to stay in the monastery because
something was happening inside me and if I left now it would be lost
and wasted. I agreed to stay for a while and he appointed me a guide
and teacher and sent me to meet with a geshe to arrange for me to help teach the monks and to live with them, the way they live. Tomorrow I will take lay vows.
When I left the world was different, colors vibrant, I was radiating
joy. Someone approached me and said "You are radiating joy inside and
out like light shining out of you." It was true.
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Offering of light
martes, 23 de octubre, 2007 4:52:50
Last night we gathered at the stupa for an offering of light. A stupa is an edifice that is filled with holy items and then sealed. One circumambulates the stupa in a clockwise direction and by doing so acquires merits. One can chant om mani padme hum and imagine that the radiation of all the holy objects inside is penetrating into one's self and then radiating outward into all beings so they become enlightened. The Mahayana path of Tibetan Buddhism is not just to become enlightened yourself but to develop boddhichitta, a loving compassionate mind for all beings, so that you bring them all to enlightenment so they become free from suffering.
In the offering of light we lit candles and dedicated them to ones we love, ones who have died, our teachers, etc, so they may have a higher rebirth. When you light each candle you chant to yourself Om Ah Hum, as you make the dedication. The Om purifies your dedication, the Ah, magnifies it, and the Hum multiplies t a 1000 fold. I lit candles and made dedications for my mother, father, brother, grandmother, my aunt Becky, the Abbot, Dalai Lama, Shakyamuni Buddha, my teacher here, all my friends and all beings. When we were done there were hundreds of candles lit giving light and heat. It was beautiful. The nuns in their maroon robes, the light, hundreds of lights around the stupa and the statue of Buddha, around the fountain and floating in the water--light everywhere. I circled the stupa chanting om mani padme hum and was absorbed in the beauty. I would stop and sit at my candles and think of my beloved family and friends.
Eventually I grew sleeping and went to my little room and as usual since I came here, slept deeply and peacefully.
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Love
martes, 23 de octubre, 2007 4:54:39
to all my beloved friends,
even though I am far away there is never a day when i do not think of you all and send my heart-felt love to you all and meditate and pray for all of you. ;-) just so you know. ;-)
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
The Four Year Old Rinpoche
martes, 23 de octubre, 2007 5:20:50
A few years ago a very high lama rinpoche here at the monastery passed on. He is very highly respected and beloved here and at the time of his death his students begged him to come back. Before he died he told them where he would reincarnate so they could find him. When he died the stupa was built here in his honor; it is a beautiful stupa.
In Buddhism it is believed that death is part of the cycle of rebirth and is in fact the most important moment of your life. Buddhists monks and also yogis all spend their lives preparing for the moment of death. According to Buddhism (in a nutshell) at the time of death a white light descends from the head to the heart chakra (in Buddhism the mind is located where we locate the 'emotional' heart--in our chest) and then a red light ascends from the base of the spine to the heart and they both are absorbed into a tiny white light that is also absorbed and disappears into a black darkness, a shell. At this point yogis and lamas, although apparently dead, can sit for many days, their bodies not decaying or smelling bad, meditating until they let this subtle consciousness go, at which time their heads slump and a slight trickle of blood comes out of their nose. Yogis and these lamas leave their body out of the crown chakra, not out of the lower doors like an average person.
At this point one will experience a little white light, which is the subtle consciousness that has been encased in that seed of darkness in the heart. This consciousness now goes to the Bardo and takes on the subtle form of its next incarnation. The Bardo is the place where we go while we wait to be reincarnated. We can stay there a maximum of seven times seven days, 49 days total, before we have to reincarnate.
Depending on our past life karma we may reincarnate with a perfect human form, which we all have now in this life due to past very good karma, or to lower rebirths, or a god realm. Once our new parents have a fertilized egg then our consciousness enters that egg and we are reborn.
An advanced rinpoche can actually decide where and how to be reborn and so this is what the rinpoche here did. His students found him where he said he would be and he is now here as a four year old reincarnated rinpoche.
Yesterday I went to visit the four year old rinpoche. I was ushered into his home by his attendant and into his room with his big throne and all the trappings and photos of him in his past life here. He is the cutest kid in the world. I wasn't sure what to do but I thought it would somehow not be so good for his character to have me prostrating to a four year old. So instead of prostrating, I picked up the little tike and started tickling him and tossed him on his throne. I'm not sure if the attendant was horrified or not by my act but the rinpoche and I sat on the floor after that and dug through my bag until I found a piece of candy and then we hung out for a while wrestling. I told him I had to go to class and he whispered to his attendant. The attendant said "He wants to know when you can come back?"
I said I'd come the next day after lunch. I asked the attendant if I could bring the rinpoche anything and the four year old rinpoche said out loud. "Chees!" "Chees?" I asked the attendant. "Cheese; he wants cheese." "OK, cheese."
"And lollipops!" said the rinpoche in his cute Tibetan accent. "And banana and strawberry!"
I started to leave and the rinpoche whispered to his attendant again. "He doesn't want you to leave." "Sorry rinpoche I have to go." The little squirt stood up on his diadem and started shaking his fists in a little baby rage at his attendant. What a spoiled little rinpoche I realized. I picked him up and tossed him on the couch and said goodbye. He said goodbye too, he couldn't stay mad because I was laughing at him.
What a place this is; what a place.
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Fotos
jueves, 25 de octubre, 2007 12:45:07
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14970230@N08/show/
try this.
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Kindness
viernes, 26 de octubre, 2007 7:22:22
In the past I would not intentionally hurt an animal. But if a mosquito landed on me I would swat it, and if I was in a room with a lot of flies I would swat them, and when I walked if there were ants or tiny bugs I didn't pay that much attention to whether I stepped on them or not. I wouldn't harm something intentionally but it didn't seem like a big deal if I inadvertently stepped on an ant. Now, after the 10-day, course I would never kill or harm any insect of animal and I go out of my way to step around even the smallest of things.
Before, I didn't like beggars; I felt uncomfortable and aversion for beggars. Now, after the course, I get such happiness from giving to them. When a beggar approaches and I give them money with a smile and look into their eyes with loving kindness it makes me feel so good inside and I create a bond of loving kindess with that person. I begin to know the beggars; they are not objects of aversion but opportuities for generosity. They have become my friends in a bond of compassion. I give to the people who are crippled and blind, handicapped, not to the begging children. Compassion resting in wisdom. Promoting a child to beg is not kindness; helping a handicappe person is. In giving to others the real gift is to ourselves; we help them with both kindess and with money but we help ourselves 1000 fold by our own kindness because kindness is what melts and heals our own hearts and cures all our own ills.
I think we all want to be kind but sometimes we are embarrassed to be kind in public. This morning I snuck out of the monastery before dawn and slipped out into the morning mist and off the giant hill overlooking the Kathmandu valley and made my way down the trail toward Boudha, the holy stupa far below that always calls me and draws me like a magnet.
On the way down I passed a group of women filling their water jugs from a spigot and I noticed and old woman carrying two big jugs of water. I wanted to help her but I felt embarrassed in front of all the people to offer to help. But then I didn't care what anyone thought and I gestured to her to take her big jugs. And she smiled and handed them over. I was surprised at how heavy they were. She smiled and talked to me in some langauge I understood not a word of and I felt so ridiculously happy because I was doing something kind, because I was helping her. Nothing in the world is as satisfying deep down inside as helping someone who needs help. Acts of pure kindness for no reason except a natural inner desire to help are the most self-rewarding acts we can do.
I thought she must live down the street and I'd be carrying her heavy water jugs for a block or so but we walked and walked all the way into town and I began to realize what it must be like to be her. She was an old woman, by the time we got to her house my back and arms were aching with the heavy jugs, she must do this everyday, this old woman, just to get water for her house, walk a quarter mile. The realization of what her lfe must be like by literrally walking in her shoes was an amazing experience.
At her house we gave each other namaste and we laughed; I was so happy at having done something nice. I went into Boudha and gave money to beggars and felt so happy, so happy to be giving to others.
Life is amazing; life is wonderful. If you are feeling closed or unhappy, self-focused, if you are thinking about me me me, mine mine mine, I I I, then go do an act of kindness to someone who needs it. You will heal yourself 1000 times over of anything that ails you by your own generosity and kindness to others. You will be happy deep in your heart and your happiness will spill out and all beings will feel it and be beneffitted by it.
Cold Death
sábado, 27 de octubre, 2007 9:33:50
At 3 am I was pulled out of a dream about Burning Man by the cold realization of death. Not the thought of death, and nothing to do with the dream, but the actual realization of death that was so strong it pulled me out of sleep. I lay there with the realization of death like a cold, heavy pit in my stomach. The realization that my life will be end, that I will get old, that I will die, that I will get sick, no longer be able to surf, to hike, to do the things I do, I'll lose my sharp mind, my body and mind will degenerate and I will die. And this is certain. *When* is uncertain but that it will happen is certain. LIke a heavy cold ball of concrete in my stomach, the realization of death.
I have always heard that I would die "some day", but I never really truly "got it". I thought that I'd stay young forever and then one day at age one hundred I'd go into meditation and leave my body through my crown and move on. But I never really considered that I'd get old one day, not be able to surf or do the things I do now. It was so real, I could feel what it would be like to get old, to be helpless, to die, to be alone and die, no one can help when death comes, no one but you.
I thought of all the old surfers I know; how old are they? How long will they be able to surf? Are they happy and healthy?
I Mediated on death until 5.30 am. What do I want to do with my life? How do I want to prepare my life now to be ready to die? What is *me* anyway? Clearly my body will die, and my brain will die with it and as it degenerates then my memory, my cognition, all will go. So then what is my mind; who am *I*? Is mind part of body, part of the brain, are mind and body one entity?
I won't go into my hours of logical pathways of following what is an what isn't the mind, of who I am. I will only say that a spiritual path is important and that there is much more to life than "partying" and empty idle conversation and getting ahead. On the other hand, knowing what you love and what gives you the greatest joy in life, along with a spiritual practice and a good, kind, honest life, is not a bad way to go.
--Kopan Monastery
Om Mani Padme Hum
Sublime Altered State
sábado, 27 de octubre, 2007 9:59:10
Payer flags whip in the wind draped on the pine boughts and a glowing red ball sinks into the banked up clous in the west. I finish my chai and like a shadow I slip past the monks singing and chanting. Down the mountain into the evening, through the village where sweet children are playing and call out to me shyly, people are in the streets living their simple lives, Hindus and Buddhists, happy and gentle dogs play in the street, reflecting the nature of the people who own them. I look up to a lemon yellow moon rising over the mountains as I hear the horns and drums and chanting from a Tibetan monastery I pass in the dark.
At another monastery a young monk takes us up some stairs in the gompa to a locked rooftop with a buddha statue and a glass room filledwith butter lamps. It is the full moon night, a very special night for Buddhists. All the major events of Buddha's life occurred during full or new moons. Buddhists believe that whatever prayers or dedications you make on a full moon will be multiplied and magnified 5000 times (give or take a few).
I lit butter lamps with an incense stick and splashed three drops of saffron water on them. I prayed of course for my family and friends and all beings, enemies, all people of the world until I went into a sublime altered state of love, sadness, bliss, emptiness, I could see each person, fill them with light, see them perfectly happy and then I could see their pain, feel their pain and take thier pain into my own heart. Everyone's pain in the world until the pain and sadness was unbearable and I wept. I could feel my father's pain at my mother's death, my ex-girlfriend's pain at our break-up, the pain of all the crippled beggars in the street, of people being tortured and beaten to death, of children starving to death and dying in the streets, all the horror and suffering in the world taken into my own heart into a little black place that represented my own ego, my own I grasping self, until that little bindi of black light suddenly exploded into a million pieces and underneath it was a brilliant blinding white light that filled me until I became light and poured out of every pour in my body into all beings until each person was enlightened, healed, happy.
I left in an altered state of sublime bliss and then I circumambulated the holy stupa of Boudha four times in the night with the incense Theresa gave me and I prayed and chanted om mani padme hum all the way, looking up at the stupa, the Buddha eyes, the full moon and the prayer flags, the people circumambulating the stupa doing prostrations on bare hands and knees, the oceans of butter lamps shimmering like mirages around the stupa, the beauty, the chanting, the surreal, altered state of bliss.
Entering a beautiful monastery I climbed to the very top and looked down on the night, filled inside with something I have no words to describe. I walked home for an hour in the night, up the mountain to Kopan Gompa, sweet and cool air and pine trees, warm and glowing in the night with my little monks chanting still as I fell asleep in my little room.
Something powerful is happening here, more and more every day.
--Kopan Monastery
Om Mani Padme Hum
New Fotos
sábado, 27 de octubre, 2007 11:26:48
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14970230@N08/page4/
check these 66 photos with catchy titles. nepal--himalaya and gompa, thailand--king's palace.
--Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Quickly Unusual
domingo, 28 de octubre, 2007 3:54:40
This morning it occurred to me how quickly my life has become so unusual. Three nights in a row I was awakened from a deep sleep by dreams of rinpoches instructing me, the last two nights I was awakened from sleep by the cold realization of death like a cold, damp ball of concrete in the pit of my stomach. I spend most of my days in silence, or meditating, praying, studying and hanging out with monks. I have met with three rinpoches in the last week or so and play regularaly with a reincarnated four year old rinpoche. For fun I walk down the mountain to Kopan to Boudha stupa through a village where the sweetest children are playing, people are living their lives in the streets and it is as far from the life I know back at home as you can get; but I love that walk dearly; it is my joy and entertainment. At night I circumambulate a holy stupa and chant myself into a surreal state of sublimity.
Every morning bell rung by a monk awakens me at 5 am and I step into the cold, misty darkness to brush my teeth in an outdoor basin under the pines beside prayer flags. I enter the gompa and prostrate and meditate in front of a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha while monks in saffron robes chant and sing and percuss drums, blow horns and clang symbols, and this seems more normal to me than the world back home where people and drive cars in traffic to sit in offices all day to get money to buy things they don't need to try and fill a hole inside. I see a red sun rise over a misty valley and set into cloud banks. I circumambulate the stupa and chant om mani padme hum, I make offerings of light, I read books about Buddhism. I live in a monastery with Tibetan monks.
How did this all happen? And where is it going?
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Is This My Life?
miércoles, 31 de octubre, 2007 4:29:59
I sit on the steps of the gompa in the cool, breezy darkness. To my left the monks are sitting in the courtyard doing what we in the west refer to as *tuvan* chanting--that deeply resonant chanting that sounds like a digereedoo. To my right a waterfall fountain is flowing. I hear the chanting in my left ear and the waterfall in my right. Behind my back is the elaborate and beautiful gompa. In front of the me the flgstones of the courtyard seem to dissappear into infinity and fall off the edge of the world. I see the leaves on the flowers trembling.
It occurs to me that the rest of the world, my friends, everyone, are driving in cars right now, going shopping, out to dinner, having drinks, going dancing, all the things that people do, and I am sitting in a Tibetan Bhuddist monastery on top of a hill, high above the world meditating with monks chanting beside me and that this is my world, this is my evening. This is what I do for fun. It is almost shocking to think this is even real.
My eyes fix on the infinity of the flagstones and the sound of the chanting and water in opposing ears cancel out my brain waves and my mind finds the empty space between thoughts and I go into meditation. It's like being locked in on a tractor beam. My breath stops, my body is frozen and doesn't move, it would be almost impossible to pull myself out of the depths of meditation even if I tried. There is just the space between the thoughts, infinite, like falling into eternity.
This is my life now. Amazing, just amazing. It occurrs to me there are reasons for this--reasons I have come here, reasons the abbot has 'adopted' me and given me personal practices, reasons the baby rinpoche and I are friends, reasons I have been asked to stay here, to live here with monks, to teach the monks. It is karma. I don't know why, or what it means, but I know there are reasons and they go back to past lives.
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Teacher of Monks
miércoles, 31 de octubre, 2007 6:21:55
The head monk asked me to make my classes interesting and to get the students to speak. He has the right man for the job. Yesterday morning I had my class of monks up on the roof of the library and we role-played. I told them we were in Santa Cruz, California, walking down the beach and I had them act out with dialog the scene. We saw the waves, got in our car, drove home, got our boards and wetsuits, strapped the boards on top of our cars, drove back to the beach, waxed up, paddled out and caught some waves and rode them, UNTIL, we saw a shark and we all paddled like mad for the beach and then went out for breakfast at the Chill Out Cafe.
We acted this out on top of the monastery, running with our boards and jumping in the waves and paddling and catching waves and standing. The monks were going crazy they were having so much fun and when I looked down all the other monks had gathered far below to watch our class in awe. It was great.
Today we went back to Cali to Pleasure Point Pizza to role-play. One monk was at the counter, another was the cook, one was a mother and one was her spoiled little boy ordering pizza. It was hilarious. The spoiled boy at one point said "I want milk!" and the counter monk said "We don't have milk." and the spoiled boy monk said "I want mommy milk!" at which point we all fell down laughing.
Afterwards the headmaster found me and said "Can we use your curriculum please?" I said sure. ;-)
We had an earthquake here a couple days ago, spooky. I am now invited to eat meals with the head monks here and get served Tibetan tea and other special things. It's nice.
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Real Buddhism
jueves, 1 de noviembre, 2007 13:15:24
Today I had a wonderfully insightful conversation with the head of the monastery school. I had stopped in to thank him for the opportunity of allowing me to live with and teach the monks and he said, no, the thanks was to me. He invited me in and we begin talking in earnest and I mentioned to him that I had been told that the monks could do a puja to purify my karma so that I could start over with a clean slate. He said that only I could purify my own karma and that depended on my own motiviation and intention and that yes, monks could do a puja that would help with the conditions of purifying my karma, but only I could purify my actions.
I told him about all the practices that kenrinpoche lama Lundrup, the abbot, had given me to do and that I was a little overwhelmed by it all. He then told me told me this and it was wonderful to hear:
It is not the practices you do but your motivation (ie, your intention, what is in your heart) that matters. He said I know many people who don't think they're Buddhists who are true Buddhists because of their pure actions and their motivation and intention and compassion and I know a lot of people who call themselves Buddhists who aren't Buddhists at all. It's not how long you can sit and look like you're meditating, or how many prostrations you do, or malas or circumambulations; it's your motivation, what's in your heart. There are peope who are blindly doing thousands of prostrations because they were told to but without the proper motivation and understanding and so all that is wasted and does no good. You don't have to chant and do malas and prostrations to purify your karma or be a true Buddhist; it's what's in your heart that matters. If your heart is filled with compassion and you do your actions with mindfullness and awareness and with the goal of helping all beings to become enlightened, then you are Buddhist.
The mala and om mani padme hum, the prostration, the chanting and visualization are all things that are designed to help us remember each minute that we are focusing on compassion and on helping all beings to become enlightened. It's not the act, but the motivation of the act that matters. Blind faith, or action witout understanding, or for the wrong reason, does no good no matter how many prostrations or malas you do.
This was wonderful news to me. I was delighted. He also told me that Om mani padme hum means this: Om is the goal--enlightenment. Mani is compassion, Padme is wisdom and Hum is the unity of compassion and wisdom to reach the goal o fenlightenment and that is why we chant om mani padme hum, to stay focused on the goal and to remind ourselves of the goal--helping all beings become enlightened. He said that every act you do can become an act of mindfulness and make you a true Buddhist; when you eat you can dedicate each bite to making yourself healthy so that you can help all beings become enlightened. He told me when I teach class I can dedicate my class so that I am teaching the monks to help them and all beings become enlightened and by doing that, and by every act of mindfulness focused on helping all beings become enlightened, I am burning past karma and purifying my karma. It was wonderful to hear and what I have always felt myself. All religions are one once you get past the surface veneer--all true religion has one goal, that all people will be free of suffering forever. It doesn't matter what you call yourself or how you worship; it matters what is in your heart. The rest are all just different vehicles to get you along the path to liberation. But when you arrive you'll all be at the same place.
I am very lucky to have had the karma to bring me here to this monastery, to bring me to become close to the abbot and brought under his wing, to become friends with the baby rinpoche and the headmaster. For some reason of past karma I have been brought here to learn and to go beyond anyone's dogma to a true and simple understanding of what life is about--compassion for others so that all beings become enlightened.
Today is the day that Buddha descened to earth, 2,500 years ago and so I am doing a pilgrimage down to Boudha to light butter lamps and pray and circumambulate the stupa which for me is a deeply heart-opening, spritual experience and I will be joined by hundreds and hundreds of monks and Tibetan Buddhists because this is such an auspicous day. Om Mani Padme HUm, may all beings become enlightened.
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Tantric Temple
viernes, 2 de noviembre, 2007 3:39:59
Imagine a spiritual Disneyland and you'll know how I feel at this place. This morning I woke up in my beautiful little cell already chanting om mani padme hum out of my sleep. I circumabulated the stupa praying for all beings to become free of suffering. Then I found myself drawn to the tantric temple. As I grew closer I heard chanting, the kind we call tuvan chanting, the deep resonant, digereedoo sounding chanting. Inside the monks were doing a tantric puja, with cymbols, bells, the works, and best of all they had made a sand mandala. Because of my unique position here at the monastery I have an open door policy with all things, even the things that are restricted or closed, so I am welcome to join in with whatever is going on. I came in and immediately went into a meditative state from the chanting. The mandala is beautiful. Mandala's represent the abode of the buddhas, the pure land, but they have secret and deep layers of meaning known only to those initiated into that deity. But just seeing one gives one merits if one has faith. (of course seeing a flower or sunset or baby or puppy gives one merit if one has faith)
I left the tantric temple and had breakfast with the geshe, we were served Tibetan tea and Tibetan bread. I ate dedicating each bite so that all beings could be free of suffering and internally chanted om ah hum with each bite. Then I wandered the monastery where all the monks are memorizing their sutras by walking around chanting them out loud. A little monk was turning the giant prayer wheel. The morning mist is cool and it is time to prepare to teach my monks.
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Buddha’s Birthday
viernes, 2 de noviembre, 2007 4:06:17
Butter lamps shimmering like mirages in the darkness. The grape-koolaid sweet scent of the purple and white blossoms of the tree growing around the stupa. Circumambulating, and in my mind and heart wishing that all beings would be free of suffering. Four times circling the giant stupa, everywhere oceans of butter lamps shimmer like mirages in the desert. Entire families, including little children, throw themselves on their knees and prostrate their way around the stupa on the hard ground. Everywhere Tibetan monks chanting and spinning the prayer wheels, we all circle so that all beings will become enlightened. To live in a world of such devotion and spirituality is moving, is a blessing and a joy. For 'fun' I go circle a holy stupa and pray in the night for world peace with hundreds of others. The night and the experience, as always, is deeply surreal, passing monasteries that lay around the edge of the stupa, beautiful with color and sound and the scent of incense.
On this day, 2,500 years ago Buddha descended to earth. And so Ani Kerin, the nun who is one of my teachers, sent me to do a pilgrimage to Boudha. She said "Every step you take will be holy." And she is right.
Eventually I am complete with my circumambulating and I know it is time to go home. I light one more butter lamp and pray for all beings and then with a sweet feeling, leave the stupa.
Late, in the darkness, I make the long walk back up the hill to the monastery. Shops are closing as I pass, I missed dinner and feel hungry, the dirt streets and people look beautiful to me, the night smells delicious. I have my mala and I pray'tayatha om muni muni maha muniye soha.'
Back at the monastery, late, I am surprised to hear loud chanting and find a puja going on in the main gompa with all the monks and the abbot on his throne. I walk in and immediately begin to meditate. I am no longer hungry, i am no longer tired. I see geshe Shereb at the head of the senior monks, I see Lama Lundrup on his dias, I see my student monks in amongst the golden robes, and the little tiny monks who are adorably cute. The chanting is so loud, mesmerizing, the horns, drums, cymbals all so loud, so easy to go into meditation to the chanting.
At some point I notice that I have been poured a cup of milk tea and given a cookies. I drink my tea and roll my cookies over to a little tiny monk who starts smiling and poking his friends who all look back at me smiling.
Finally the abbot puts on his big golden hat and all the monks bow low to the ground as he leaves and then they all leave. I stay behind, high as a kite from it all. I feel so much love for these monks, so much gratitude and so surprised that I am here. One of my student monks approaches me and says "Here sir, for you." and gives me cookies. I smile and put my hand on his shoulder. I am just plain happy and touched.
On the way to my room I hear a booming sound and look on top of the main gompa to see monks playing long horns and instruments I have never seen before, loud loud loud, playing into the night on top of the world as all the monks go to bed.
Happy birthday Buddha.
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Sand Mandala
viernes, 2 de noviembre, 2007 8:47:21
More on the sand mandala. These are tantric practices. The mandala represents the abode of the gods. Each deity has their own mandala. One must be initiated into a certain deity to be able to make that mandala. One is given an initiation, an empowerment, transmission of energy and permission to work with that deity. Along with this initiation and permission come responsibilities, practices, retreats that one must do. Without initiation one is not allowed to do these practices.
The sand mandala that the monks built here represents the abode of a deity and the outer rings of the mandala represent the eight worst cemeteries in the world, which are said to actually exist. Then there is a ring of fire. There are many levels. The outer levels are to protect the inner abode and keep out demons and evil. Inside there is a ring of lotus and eventually one comes to the inner realm. The monks take up to two weeks to build the sand mandala. It also represents impermanence and after two days they knock it down.
They don't just come in and build it, but do pujas and prayers and sadhana, practices, each day in order to build it that day. They are allowed to visualize themselves in this realm and as the deity themselves, getting tremendous benefit from their practice. But anyone who sees or circumambulates a mandala will also receive very great merits. It is a powerful thing. This is a very basic bit of information based on my questions to the lama earlier today since I thought there may be interest.
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Tantric Monks
viernes, 2 de noviembre, 2007 12:58:06
Tantric Monks, Fire Puja, Deconstruction of Sand Mandala
There are 40 something tantric monks at Kopan monastery. They live, eat and study apart from the rest of the 400 or so monks and have their own teachers who live with them. They study tantra, mandala and amitaba.
Today they had a fire puja in the courtyard. They wore elaborate head-dresses and richly embroidered robes, played horns and drums and other instruments and carried out an elaborate ritual with the dorje and bells and intricate hand movements and offerings of rice, grains and other different things on the fire they had built. I sat behind them and as usual went into a trance-like state from the chanting and the entirety of the ritual.
When it was over the monks invited me to come with them to the tantric gompa for a separate puja and I came along.
Inside the beautiful tantric gompa they laid out a cushion for me beside them by the sand mandala and then they donned their golden robes and began the tuvan chanting and the ritual gestures. I began to meditate and at some point a monk came and poured me milk tea and gave me biscuits as part of the puja. Then the head monk got up while the others continued chanting and donned his big golden head-dress and with another monk he began to ritually deconstruct the sand mandala. Then a few other monks joined him and with brushes they deconstructed the entire thing. I was actually able to film it.
After they finished they took a kata, the silk scarf used for offering a lama for blessing, and they filled it with the sand from the mandala and gave it to me and told me it had very special powers for healing and blessing.
Afterward I stepped outside and the world had turned cold and the sky gray. I walked back to the courtyard and stood by the fragrant puja fire in the wind and cold, under the heavy threatening skies and I heard the flames rippling and I felt a solitude like the high, lonely Tibetan plateau. It was amazing.
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
A Week in the life
lunes, 12 de noviembre, 2007 12:42:28
A week ago I fell down the stairs in the dark. I blame it on the death dreams. The one about my mother woke me up at 1 am and the one with the big bill board that said I was going to die and the only thing that would save me was living my life for others woke me up at 5 am. I couldn't shake the feeling of dread and it grew all day. At 6 that evening I knocked on the door to the private quarters of a rinpoche. A monk answered and said the rinpoche didn't see people at night and closed the door. I meditated on the landing and a little later a girl opened the door and told me to come in out of the cold. She brought me lemon tea and a candle because suddenly there was a blackout.
The monk called me in to see the rinpoche who was seated on a kind of high dias. The room was dark and lit by candles. The rinpoche said "I know you." when I walked in. It seemed strange. I told him about death and he pulled my forehead to his and started chanting, a blessing I think. Then told me, "Repeat after me. Moment by moment, I am calm, I am kind, I am clear. As much as I can be." He made me repeat it several times with him. Then we started laughing.
I left him and fell off the bottom of the stairs in the dark. I couldn't walk. He came down a few minutes later and laughed. His monks came and got me and told me to spend the night at his monastery but I had to get home to Kopan so they drove me up and my monks carried me to my cell.
For five days I was in bed with my leg up, people brought me meals. I read books on tantra. The nuns came to convince me to stay at the monastery.
On Saturday I left the monastery and came to Boudha and checked in to a hotel. I was so happy that I stayed awake the first night reading a novel (Vernon God Little--everyone must read it immediately) and took a hot shower, slept on clean sheets. I was as happy to be out of the monastery alone and clean as I had been to be in the monastery for a month. I was too happy to sleep.
The next day the monk who had taken me up to the monastery the night of my crash landing took me to meet someone in Boudha.
From this point on you are going to stop believing my story.
The person was the mayor of Boudha and the upshot of the meeting was that I would move into his house today. (which I did) The house is four stories high and brand new. This morning the monks came and got my things and carried them to my new house. The house is brand new. In fact the room I had seen on Saturday was bare. By Monday morning it had a Persian carpet, bed, table, sheets and comforter. My own private bath. All new.
Wait, there's more:
Yesterday the monk (who happens to be the assistant of some sort of the rinpoche who I saw that night who is the head of the monastery) took me to the mayor's house (the mayor is the sponsor of the monastery. this monastery is the white gompa and the rinpoche is chokyi nyima rinpoche, you should google it) and the mayor's wife performed this elaborate ceremony on me where she put tica on my forehead, gave me all these gifts, held beer to my mouth and I had to take three sips, held different foods to my mouth and I had to take three bites each time. She draped a garland of fresh flowers over my neck and put flower petals on my head. She touched her head to my head and my shoulders and my knees. She gave me gifts and food.
Afterward her daughter said "My mother wants me to tell you that she is now your sister and you are now her brother."
The daughter has been in Australia for the last seven years getting her degree. Today she is borrowing her brother's car and getting a driver and taking me to the mountains to watch sunset and spend the night in a resort and in the morning the driver is going to come back and get us. She told me her family is one of the richest families in Nepal.
Today the mayor told me my sister wanted to see me upstairs so I went up and they had made a meal for me. After he asked me to come to his office and he spent hours going over all his projects with me, sewage system, paving the roads, lighting, world heritage regulations, problems, budget, and so forth. Then he took me around Boudha to show me his projects.
Right now I am writing from their computer cafe overlooking Boudha stupa.
Don't ask me. To be honest, I don't know what's happening or why. It's happening so fast and it changes every day so fast. Honestly, I want to be surfing and studying yoga and ayurveda; that's why I came here. But I am on some wave and I am going to ride it I suppose. The rinpoche said I needed to stay. ;-)
--
Kopan Monastery
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Compassion
lunes, 12 de noviembre, 2007 12:59:02
This morning at 6, around the stupa, there were so many beggars, so many poor people, crippled people, blind people, people with leprosy, filthy people, burned, maimed people. I was doing circumambulations and chanting om mani padme hum, the matra of compassion along with all the other people doing kora and it seemed very ironic to me that everyone was chanting and circling to get compassion while avoiding all the poor people and actually being compassionate. I stopped my counting of mantras and chanting and walked to the blind people and gave them 50 rupees. (typically I give beggars 5 rupees). Then I started looking for people to give to. I found th lepers and gave them the fine gifts of special food I received yesterday from my sister. Then I had a great idea and went and bought fresh bread and started giving it to everyone I could find. I bought fruit for a crippled man. I woke up people sleeping in the dirt to give them money. I gave away all the money I had and all the food I could buy.
I did it spontaneously because I felt it and I acted on what I felt. And then I felt wonderful. I felt so good it made me cry and it made me pray. All those beggars that we can't look in the eye, who we avoid, who make us feel so uncomfortable. I can look them all in the eye. I can look them in the eye and I can smile at them and touch them because they have given me a chance to open my heart and not be afraid to give to them. They are not invisible to me; they are people I know and they know me.
It's not beggars who make us uncomfortable. We are uncomfortable with ourselves because we are afraid to be generous with the beggars. But once we start giving then we find reasons to give, we go out of our way to give, we look for people to give to. Helping people, giving, generosity, is why we are here. There is nothing as rewarding, heart opening and healing for anyone as helping someone else who really needs help.
If you are feeling selfish, unhappy, unsatisfied with your life. Then go out and find someone to help. And don't think it's hard. Just walk outside and don't be afraid to help. There are people everywhere who are starving for help, for kindness, compassion, love. Just look and you will find. And you will become bigger than yourself and you will find a joy and love for yourself that you never knew. Because you are doing what you were truly born to do--help others who need help.
This is the only reason we are here; this is the only way to "beat" the inevitability of death.
--
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Death, …and Life
martes, 13 de noviembre, 2007 14:32:22
These cold realizations of death. They wake me up. There is a big difference between a realization of death and thinking about death, or imagining death. A realization is a certainty, a finality, a knowing, it's in your body, not in your mind.
We all know we are going to die someday but we don't *know* it, we say it but we don't believe it. In fact we all really think we'll live forever and never get old or sick. But we are all going to die. Everyone alive in the world will be dead in a hundred years. We will be dead, at best, in the blink of an eye, maybe sooner.
And at the time of death, the only thing that can save us is the life we have led. When death comes it will be too late. Now is the only time we have. Buddhists say the only way to live is to live dharma. But I think the way to live is beyond any religion's exclusive jurisdiction. Dharma is another word for living your life for others, giving your life for others' happiness. Because in fact at death what will become clear is that the only thing that satisfies and saves us from death is knowing we've given our lives for the happiness of others. And the irony is our own happiness can only be fulfilled by giving our lives to help others. The very thing we desire by our selfish nature is what it denies us--peace and happiness and ultimate satisfaction. Ironically we create our own happiness by giving ourselves to others. Mother Theresa and Saint Francis of Assisi come to mind as two classic examples, not to mention Jesus as the ultimate example. And the Buddha.
I have had realizations in the past. In Assisi coming out of the Cathedral of saint Francis with my girlfriend, suddenly the world stopped, like in a movie when the sound goes off and everyone stops moving except the protagonist. Just like that. And in that moment I *knew*, I didn't think about, I *knew*, I had a knowing of, a clarity, an epiphany, a revelation, that I had to give my life to the path of yoga, a spiritual path. I didn't even know what it meant but I knew it's what I had to do.
The lights came back on, the world started back into motion again and my girlfriend was looking at me oddly. I told her I had to change my life, I had to give my life to the path of yoga and I had to do it now. Not some day, because someday would never come. Not after Venice, or after my MS, or after my next good job, but right this now. And so I left and moved into and ashram and that changed the course of my entire life. I wouldn't be here now if not for that epiphany.
Years before that, on the Rogue River on a rafting trip. A revelation, epiphany, knowing, realization, out of the blue, descending: I knew that death is a bridge to the next level. Death is a doorway. I knew this. I didn't think about, it came to me, landed on me, a revelation, a complete knowing. That death is a bridge to the next level. And how we live our lives in this life will determine where we go on the other side of the bridge, which level we will go to.
And the most important point in this revelation was this: that the true purpose of life, the true reason we are here, is exactly opposite what our society teaches us is the goal of life. Our society teaches us the goal of life is to get ahead. To make money, to have things, to step on people to get to the top. That success is getting to the top of the ladder. The more you have, the more power you have, the more money, the more things, the better standard of living, the better and more successful you are. That is absolutely the antithesis of the real meaning of success and why we are here.
We are here for a very simple reason--to give to others. To live our lives to help others, to ease the suffering of others, to give our lives for others. This is the actual goal and purpose of this life. This life is a test. Depending on how we pass the test, so we will graduate. You don't want to be held back or sent back a grade.
And that revelation, all those long years ago, descending on me out of the blue, I realize now is exactly the teaching of Buddhism. Buddhism calls it karma and dharma, but the labels don't matter, the reality matters. You don't have to be Buddhist or anything else, you don't have to do 100,000 prostrations or visualize the Buddha on your head. Those are a way, Buddhism offers a methodology, a tried and true one that works. But it is the goal, not the path, that matters ultimately.
The goal is love and compassion, the path is love and compassion. The goal is generosity, the path is generosity. The goal is surrender, the path is surrender.
This is all there is. Time is now. Go.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Beyond Dogma
miércoles, 14 de noviembre, 2007 4:03:15
I sip the hot chai and melt into a moment of sublimity. It is dawn and I am doing kora around the stupa with the Tibetans. The chanting, the incense, the sunlight glimmering on the gold, the faith, my God, the faith of the people around me. A Hindu shop owner calls me over for chai. At first I think I shouldn't let anything interfere with my om mani padme hum, then I think, if it makes him happy then I can sacrifice a few minutes. I sit down on a stool looking out at the Tibetans circling and he turns on the Gayatri mantra, sacred to Hindus. Immediately I go into a moment of sublime bliss. I melt into it out of the blue, the chanting like sweet nectar, takes me somewhere into peace, into now.
And I realize my own judgments and closed mind. And I realize that the path doesn't matter; it's the state of mind attained that matters. If it is Buddha, Jesus, sunrise, nature, it doesn't matter the pathway; it matters the state of the mind that one realizes.
I begin to realize with time what I already knew as a child--that all paths aim at the same goal. Enlightenment, which means compassion and wisdom. That all beings will be free of suffering. And I realize that enlightenment is free of concepts and labels and is beyond dogma. The opening and melting of the heart is beyond any path, beyond words, beyond all dogma and teachings.
It is a state of being. The heart just melts, love flows, love flows equally to all beings. In fact there are no "things" at all, there is just love, pure love, like an ocean. The experience of this state comes and goes, we find it and lose it; we're human. But when it is there we know it is beyond any dogma. And we know the love is always there, underlying all things at all times and all things resting in it and it pervading all things, always. It is only walls in ourselves that separate us from the love that is the eternal, underlying nature of all.
But finding a path that works for you, having a strong motivation and intention for liberation for all beings, to free all beings from suffering, is essential to keep yourself on the path to come to the moments of pure love, to arrive at a state where you can feel the compassion. You can't just sit around and wait for enlightenment to come. You have to really want it and then you have to find a path that opens the doors inside you and opens the doors in the outside world to remove the obstacles that block you from the experiencing the ocean of love in your heart at all times.
So yes, the goal is beyond all paths and concepts and dogma and teachers and religions, but along the way to the goal find a path that you can give your heart to and find a teacher you love and then follow the path and the teacher. The road will be up and down and winding and thorny at times, but you have to keep walking. Even when it seems like you are a hopeless failure and you want to give up, that might just be the time where, if you persevere, you are on the verge of a big breakthrough. So never give up. Just keep practicing. Results will come. The heart will open and the love that is always there will be experienced in bliss and you will give and give and give to others to end their suffering, and this selfless giving is what will end your own. This nectar, even little drops of it, are worth every bit of walking to get to taste them.
Just never give up.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
The Project Begins
sábado, 17 de noviembre, 2007 9:12:54
Preface: It began at Kopan Monastery with a nun saying that beggars could be an opportunity to practice generosity. Which led to a shift in my mind, and thus in my actions, with respect to beggars. I began giving small amounts of money to them at first, or food, spontaneously. A week ago I left Kopan Monastery and moved to Boudha where within a few days I found a home and began to give more money and food to beggars, still in a spontaneous way.
Until the owner of my house, the chairman of Boudha, told me the beggars were part of a scam and I was contributing to the problem by giving to them. This led me to question my compassion. Buddhism says that compassion must rest in wisdom to be effective. So I met with the director of Shechen clinic, a clinic run and funded by the Shechen Monastery whose mission is to serve the poor. 60% of the clinic's patients don't have money to pay. Isabelle, the mangaer told me that it is true that most of the beggars in Boudha are run by the mafia and are from India. But, she said, they are still miserable, squallid people who are suffering, so it is wrong to squelch my desire to help and be compassionate and that the best thing is to give food they could eat. And to be sure to break the bread, peel the bananas, open the packages, so they can't return them for money.
She also suggested that there were people who really needed help who were upstanding citizens, single mothers, struggling to survive, working and trying to raise their families. And she knows those families and could use the money wisely.
So I decided to give 50% of the money to Shechen Clinic and the other half to directly feed the crippled and squallid beggars of Boudha. Now the question became how to generate funds for the project.
THE PROECT began three nights ago when I taught my first English class to a group of students at the Tanka painting school. I charged these Nepali kids very little for the class but was able to earn 600 rupess in an hour of class. The next day I gave half of the money to Isabelle at Shechen clinic and divided the rest up and began buying fresh hot bread at sunrise from the Tibetan women at the stupa and then breaking it and distributing it to the crippled beggars. And the project was born.
Tomorrow morning I begin teaching rooftop yoga classes for westerners and will donate that money as well. And I am starting to offer massages.
I decided to call it the Sunrise Project because it is at sunrise when the Tibetan women come and I buy the bread fresh and hand it out while it's hot.
Here in Nepal, a little money goes a long way, the average income is 80 rupees a day. So to be able to buy 100 rupees of food a day and pass it out and to donate the same amount to the clinic per day, is actually really doing something to help. The key is compassion with wisdom and not foolish compassion. The idea is that as I generate more and more income with yoga, massage, english, to be able to contribute a substantial amount to the clinic and find a wise way to directly distribute food to people who need it.
The project begins! Karma, a nun plants a positive idea which generates compassionate thoughts and actions. When you want to help, you find a way to help.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Pure Love
martes, 20 de noviembre, 2007 8:42:14
I am sending everyone pure love.
Phoenix
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Present, Fresh, Wakefulness
martes, 20 de noviembre, 2007 8:44:19
Present, Fresh, Wakefulness. Pure love, free of fear, free of ego, pure gratitude.
Present, Fresh, Wakefulness.
Moment by moment, I am calm, I am kind, I am clear; as much as I can be.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Coundn`t Be Better
miércoles, 21 de noviembre, 2007 6:38:05
If I was any happier I would pop. Life couldn't be better. The sun is radiant and the Himalaya are glistening white. The sky is blue and the air is cool. Life here just gets better and better everyday.
Today I woke up at 4 am and did my meditation practices and then made my way in the pre-dawn to a room at the top of a monastery where I lit a butter lamp and said prayers and monks invited me in to their tantric puja. They did the same yesterday. So I sit right next to them in a row while they blow horns, bang drums, crash symbols, ring bells and make intricate mudras and women come in and worship the altar. It is more than I can describe.
Then I circle the enormous, beautiful stupa of Boudha and chant om mani padme hum with all the Tibetans and pilgrims until while the sun rises when I buy fresh hot bread from the Tibetan women and walk home to my house and pass it out on the way to the poor people who I have come to know and who greet me and smile when I come with my hot bread.
My home and my room are beautiful. I wake up feeling safe and warm, content and like I belong. I have a beautiful room, private bath, a big Indian rug, a dog I am crazy about who sleeps outside waiting for me to wake up. My room smells like nap champa incense. I have a wonderful family who make me tea and food and who I hang out with when I am home.
This morning I taught beautiful yoga on a rooftop in the sunshine to four girls and all the money goes to the Sunrise Project which is going so well.
After yoga we sat in a cafe and I played guitar and sang all morning and it was just nothing but wonderful.
Life is fantastic. Life is sweet but short for certain.
Avanti.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
River of Hunger
viernes, 23 de noviembre, 2007 14:03:55
In the morning, after I do kora (circumambulations) around the stupa chanting om mani padme hum, I buy fresh, hot bread from the Tibetan women to feed the poor people at sunrise. Ultimately, I just walk home with the bread and give it away to any random poor person on the way. The last few mornings I began to notice more and more people lined up along the wall of the little lane on the way to my house, some sitting, some standing, some families, some blind, some crippled. And yesterday it dawned on me that they are there because of the food. They were never there before. Somehow, in just a week or so, like magic, these people have begun to appear. Today there was a river of hungry people lined up all the way down the street. It's amazing. Each day I buy more and more bread to feed more and more people. It is amazing. Wherever I go now in town I know all the poor people. It is an amazing thing. I am teaching more yoga, more English, giving more massages, to make more money to buy more food. And half of it goes each day to the Shechen clinic for the Sunrise fund and the other half to feed the poor. Amazing. Scary almost. Bigger than me, that's for sure.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Good Seeds
viernes, 23 de noviembre, 2007 14:13:14
Two days ago during breakfast I noticed some street kids attacking and torturing a dog they had cornered. The poor dog was terrified and snarling as they poked it and hit it. I went outside to stop them. They were dirty, filthy, with brutish expressions, faces full of anger and ready to fight. My first reaction was to react. But I didn't. In fact I talked to them kindly and went back inside. A few minutes later they were torturing the dog again and I went back out. The littlest one and the meanest one shook his first at me and said "Bad! Bad!" Probably his only English. I went over to him and patted him on the head and said "Wait here." and went and bought oranges and bananas for all the boys. I came back and gave them to them and told them they were good boys. I saw them later that day and went and said hi to them.
Today I saw the same little boys and as soon as they saw me, the little, dirty, mean one came running up and jumped into my arms and started hugging me. I patted him on the head and I could see all he needed was love. I realized these were the kids iId heard about
from a friend, four or five little homeless boys who live on the street and sniff glue. I decided that I would make a special point of making sure these boys get food and love everyday and maybe by the time I go who knows what could happen.
For me the point was that my first reaction was to have aversion for them which would have created enemies and pushed them further into alienation. Instead, because I was able to overcome my own aversion, now I have made some friends and have an opportunity to offer love and food to some sad, children with very hard lives that are starved for both love and food. Compassion is a miraculous thing.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
One to One Hundred
sábado, 24 de noviembre, 2007 3:38:19
This morning I slipped out of the back gate and dropped my thermos off at the little tiny tea shop and asked the owner to fill it with two cups of milk tea and I'd be back to pick it up in a little while. He smiled so much to see me that I felt immediately happy and good. Other people in the Tibetan community greeted me with 'good mornings' and smiles. I felt so happy. The day was fresh and things come alive, very alive, so early here in the morning. Much more alive than back home. This is a world of little lanes, and people selling fruit and vegetables, everything, in the little narrow lanes. There are no cars in Boudha as such.
I didn't see the usual beggars at their usual places and I felt a tiny twinge of disappointment. I was going to buy them hot bread for the Sunrise Project and I wondered if there wouldn't be anyone around today; maybe I had come too late.
As I turned the corner in the lane that leads to the stupa I got a little jolt up my spine and a wave for just a second, that almost felt a little like fear. There was a line of people sitting beside the wall down the entire length of the lane. I put on a calm face and nodded impartially as I walked past them. I counted over 100 people. I felt a little sick in my stomach; they were waiting for me to feed them.
I didn't do kora; I went straight to the Tibetan ladies and first I bought 10 loaves of hot bread for my family (I was planning to surprise them this morning.) Each day I give half of the money I earn teaching yoga, english and giving massage directly to Isabelle at the Shechen clinic for the Sunrise Fund. The other half goes into my left pocket and that is the money to feed the beggars each day. This morning I pulled the day's allotment out of my left pocket and then I got out my own wallet and I asked for 50 loaves of hot bread. I took the loaves in a bag and walked back to the lane. I didn't do kora; I just walked back to the lane and looked at all those people and started at the first one, breaking loaves in half and handing them out down the line.
There were so many smiling children, so many smiling people, so many namaskars. And today for the first time they started asking me my name. I passed out all the bread and there were still more people who had come and I expected them to be upset or swarm me, but no one did. I just smiled and patted a little boy on the head who followed me, gave away the plastic bag to a poor woman who asked for it. Then I went and got my thermos of tea, went home and gave my family bread and then sat in my lovely room by the window, eating my own two loaves of bread with honey and ghee and drinking my tea.
This was part of my morning.
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Holy is Inside
domingo, 25 de noviembre, 2007 9:50:01
Getting off the phone with the rinpoche and his daughter I feel such a happiness. I circle the stupa chanting and feel a deep devotion that is stronger than my ego. I place my head on the stupa, on the statues; I don't care what anyone thinks; I don't care about my ego. The devotion is so strong.
At the very holy shrine at the door to the stupa people are worshipping. I stand back and watch and feel their devotion. And in a moment I realize that *holy* is inside. Holy does not exist in things; it is a state within us. All these things we think of as holy, the stupa, the shrine, all of it, are just ways that we use to get the feeling, just things we focus on. We say they are holy and we feel such devotion, such holiness. But in fact the feeling of holiness exists in us, not outside us. We unconsiously use thise things as a pathway to open up what is in us all the time and then ascribe the holiness to them. Holy is inside. The feeling of devotion and holiness comes from inisde us. External objects are objects. A rock is a rock, a stone is a stone, a building is made of mortar and stone, a human is made of flesh and blood. Where is the holy in mortar and bone? Holy exists within us; holy is an inner state.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Possesion
domingo, 25 de noviembre, 2007 9:52:36
I Have three tee shirts, one pair of pants, three pair of socks, on jacket and a pair of long underwear and a beanie for the cold. A pair of sandals, sunglasses, a little pocket knife, a towel, and not much else. And I already feel like I have too much stuff. Ah, the simplicty of traveling. It is amazing really. Just amazing.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
1000 Rupees
martes, 27 de noviembre, 2007 15:00:28
Sun rising to the east; full moon setting in the west. The Himalaya glowing white in the north, the Boudha stupa flushed with sunlight to the south. Prayer flags backlit by rising sun, luminous. Fresh, cold morning air. Rooftop yoga from the 'rooftop of the world'. I make 1000 rupees for the class. 1000 rupees buys 200 loaves of fresh, hot bread from the Tibetan women and feeds 400 hungry people. Yoga in action, compassion at work. Everyone wins; everyone is stoked.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
Turning of the Wheels
jueves, 29 de noviembre, 2007 2:21:00
My favorite memory of Boudha I think is going to be circling the stupa on full moon nights, the sound of the prayer wheels clacking in my ears as I lean in close to them, the melodious and varied chanting of Tibetans' "om mani peme hum", the smell of the Tibetan incense, and especially the fragrance of the tree that blossoms only at night and smells something like grape koolaid, and the hundreds of little candles that light up the stupa in every little niche and alcove. Mmm. It has been a wonderful experience. Like a dream.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
And Thou Shalt Worship at My Feet
jueves, 29 de noviembre, 2007 2:31:06
Yesterday I made the walk back to Kopan monastery for the first time since I left to play with the baby rinpoche. He was excited to see me and we played for almost an hour, wrestling and laughing and playing fire monsters and you name it. He is five years old and obviously extremely intelligent and extremely intense. In fact those are gross understatements.
When I tried to leave he shut the doors and held on to my leg and said "No! You can't go!" His auntie brought me coffee and cookies so I agreed to stay a little longer. Then suddenly a monk came in and said "Rinpoche ....." (I don't speak Tibetan so I only caught the rinpoche part.) The rinpoche was not interested in whatever it was the monk was urgently telling him, but then auntie came in and they started dressing the very reluctant rinpoche in his robes and then scooted him into his 'throne room' next door. I finished my coffee and then looked in to see what was going on and there was a line of about 30 people waiting to bow down to the little rinpoche, one at a time, and offering him silk scarves (katas) and envelope of money. He was reluctantly putting his hand on each person's head, giving them a blessing and not paying much attention. We gave each other a look and I headed out the door to leave.
The line was stretching down the stairs and out into the yard. It's funny that the little kid who I like to play with and who tells me he is putting ka ka rocks down my shirt is the same person that is being worshiped by these people. Life is strange.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
Om Mani Padme Hum
(may compassion and wisdom be unified within all beings)
It’s a Blog
domingo, 2 de diciembre, 2007 4:02:34
http://asiasojourn.blogspot.com/
this is not meant to be good writing, more of a journal so read if you want to with a grain of salt.
Phoenix
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Why Good isn’t Too Bad
lunes, 3 de diciembre, 2007 2:57:10
Doing good things isn't such a bad idea. Here's why. When you do something nice for someone it makes you feel really happy and it makes them feel really happy. It gives you both a genuine feeling of happiness inside. And that good feeling makes you want to do something else nice for the next person you meet. And those people you did nice things for, because they now feel happy, now want to do nice things for someone else. And it creates a domino effect of good and kind deeds. Especially first thing in the morning doing something nice for someone is the best start you could possibly have to your day; it makes you feel happy and glowing inside.
Everybody wants to change the world and make it a better place; everybody wonders how to do it. It's really the simplest thing you can imagine. It begins right this minute right where you are with you. Politicians and organizations aren't going to make the world a better place. Even the Dalai Lama isn't going to make the world a better place. You are. And when? Right now. Because making the world a better place isn't something that someone else is going to do for you. It's depends on each of us taking responsibility and taking action, right now, this minute, by doing good for others. And if you want a miracle, if you want miraculous change in the world, then you can radically transform the world, right now. YOU can. Right now. Just do it.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Confesión/Request, SOS, Please Read
martes, 4 de diciembre, 2007 3:41:44
I didn't sleep last night thinking about what I am about to write. I am embarrassed to write this, but I have to, so here it is:
In September 2004 I was diagnosed with an incurable, degenerative lung and heart disease. I had a checkup before knee surgery from a surfing injury and the doctor found a heart murmur, postponed the surgery, did a series of tests and then we had a conversation that went like this:
Dr: I am looking at your CT scan and you have b-lateral loss of lung tissue.
Me: So that means both sides of my lungs are deteriorating?
Dr.: That's right.
Me: So how do we fix it?
Dr.: It's incurable.
Me: So, what's the prognosis?
Dr.: We can't really say for sure, but looking at your lungs you could have a few years left.
Me: A few years until what?
Dr.: Until you won't get enough oxygen into your lungs to breathe.
Me: (in shock) whoh! that was too fast, start again and let's go slow.
Dr.: We can put you on oxygen when it gets too hard to breathe but that's all.
We did a lot of tests then and the upshot was wait a year and do the tests again to see how much things had progressed.
So I spent the first year with a sense of dread and foreboding hanging over me.
One year later we redid the tests and then I went to see some different specialists and went to another hospital in Palo Alto and did a battery of tests for a few months including being injected with and breathing in green glowing radioactive gas.
The upshot was: Pulmonary Hypertension. For some reason my lungs are deteriorating and I can't get enough oxygen which makes my heart have to work overtime which causes the heart to enlarge and one valve to stick and one to leak. No one was really crystal clear about anything except that it is incurable and as it progresses the rate of degeneration can accelerate. They told me if I lived at sea level and in clean air I would live longer and if I lived at altitude and in polluted air I would live less long.
At the same time a friend of mine arranged a meeting for me with a rinpoche who told me to forget all about my disease. He said that what you focus on grows so just forget it ever happened and live my life as usual. He said that out of 100 healthy people and 1 sick person the healthy people might die and the sick one live so you never know.
From that moment on I forgot about my disease. I told my doctor in Monterey that we were not going to do any more tests or think about and he agreed with me.
That next year I felt stronger and healthier than ever. I really secretly thought to myself that maybe the rinpoche had secretly healed me somehow.
But this last summer in Yosemite there was no way to deny that teh condition had digressed noticeably no matter what I believe. It was hard to breathe at elevation. I was getting exhausted and falling asleep at elevation because my body and brain don't get enough oxygen.
In the Himalaya I consulted with a doctor from NYC working for the Himalayan Mountaineers Association. I sat in his office and he said that sometimes the disease goes along for years with little change and then sometimes it takes quantum leaps in deterioration. I told him the year before I could backpack at 12,000 feet and now I was having trouble breathing here. He said so now you know that your lungs have degenerated that much since last year. If you were having labored breath at this elevation (10,000) while hiking with your pack on that would be normal, but I am watching you sit at rest and talk to me with labored breath and that is a very big red flag. You need to get out of the mountains; you have a degenerative condition and it's gotten worse; you can die suddenly at this altitude and that will cause a lot or trouble for a lot of people. The closer you live to sea level the longer you'll live; stay out of the mountains. You have to face it.
That's the confession. Now the request:
There is a famous ayurvedic doctor here in Kathmandu. His father and grandfather and family for generations have been practicing for 700 years; they make their own medicine at their home and in the last few days many westerners and Nepalis told me this doctor is miraculous. So yesterday I went to go see him about my twisted knee injury that isn't getting better.
He asked me what was wrong and I told him about my knee and foot. He looked at me in a kind of odd and piercing way and said, and what else? So I thought and said, well I have had stomach trouble for years but I take medicine for it.
He looked at me oddly, 'and what else?'
What else? Hmm, well, I told him about a couple other things that came to mind.
'And what else?' Then he went over a list of symptoms and told me 'you have these too don't you?' I was surprised. I said yes I do. And he said, 'what aren't you telling me? you look good on the outside; your spirit is bright, but your eyes say that you are sick and the way you are breathing tells me something is wrong with you. Your heart?'. he gave me the piercing look.
I said, 'oh, I have an incurable heart disease called pulmonary hypertension but that's not important.'
Then he looked at me very piercingly and said, 'so your knee injury that effects your lifestyle is important but your heart disease that is threatening your life isn't important.'
I said, well, because it's incurable so I just pretend it's not there.
He said 'it is curable. I can cure it.' and then he told me some heavy things: he said 'i can cure your disease; it would take at least one year of medicine. but i don't think you'd do it. you are always moving around aren't you? what are you running from? you created this disease in your heart by the hard lifestyle you used to live and now you are causing it to get worse and to kill you by the action you are taking and you are running away from your heart disease. you are running away from something that is going to kill you and making you ill right now instead of facing it and doing something about it. why are you running? I can cure your heart but I don't think you'll do it.' he was so direct.just the kind of guy i like.
He said, 'normally a doctor would never talk this way to a patient and I would never talk this way to a patient, I am sorry for being offensive and talking to you this way, but something tells me to talk to you this way so I am. You are sick, you have a heart disease that is obvious to me and going to kill you and you are running away and not facing your own disease and telling me it's not important.'
I asked what would we have to do to cure it? He said I'd have to take 8 pills each morning and each night for at least one year and that he would make the medicine for me.
'But I'm leaving in a week or 10 days.'
Dr.: 'I could make the medicine for you by then. It would weigh less than two kilos and take up not that much space. You can carry it with you.'
How much would it cost? He calculated and then we converted to dollars. One year of medicine would cost $500. I told him I *would* take the medicine but I didn't have 500 bucks to pay for it. He told me to take a few days and think about it. He said again, 'I don't think you'll do it to be honest with you; i think you will keep running. but i can cure your disease. call me if you decide to do it.'
So I left and came home and stayed awake all night thinking about this. He is right that my disease is getting worse; It gets harder and harder to breathe and I get tired, etc. and all the other things he said were true too; he was spot on with all the symptoms that i don't even think about. He is right too maybe, that I am running from my disease, from something, and that I caused it by the lifestyle I lived when I was young.
My decision is to get the medicine and try to cure this. And to start living at sea level someplace with clean air and not pretend that nothing is wrong.
I am embarrassed for what I am about to ask but my desire to not die is greater than my embarrassment:
I don't have 500 dollars. I have enough money for my plane ticket and for my studies and to get home and start working. 500 dollars is a big part of the budget for this entire trip and that's a reality.
So if anyone would like to contribute anything to this 500 dollars that would be amazing. I am embarrassed to ask but I thought about it all night. I need to take the chance and opportunity that this doctor can really cure my heart. He is famous here in Nepal and I believe him. i am willing to feel ashamed at asking for help i guess more than i am willing to not try and cure this disease and to let myself die out of stupidity or shame.
So if anyone feels inclined to help out I think western union is the fastest and best way here and you can email me to work out the details.
Whoosh, do I dare hit the send button on this one? yes.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Just Love
sábado, 8 de diciembre, 2007 4:14:44
Just send love; the rest is taken care of. More soon.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Matters of the Herat
domingo, 9 de diciembre, 2007 2:43:29
A quick synopsis of the situation. First of all, I am not someone who grasps blindly in desperation to false hope. I had two interviews with the Ayurvedic doctor and found him to have penetrating insight into my condition and nature. I was impressed both times we talked. He is highly respected by Nepalis and Westerners alike; everyone I spoke to knew and raved about him. Finally, two people I know personally, one of whom is the director of Shechen Clinic have been treated by him for conditions they had been flying repeatedly to Europe to treat without success and had immediate success with him. They both insisted that I allow him to treat me and follow his advice. Those factors on top of western medicine saying my condition is incurable and hopeless and ending in death, and it seeming to take a noticeable downslide this year were enough to motivate me to decide to go with this doctor and to come 'out of the closet' so to speak and ask for some help.
What the doctor told me made sense. Stay away from anything cold. Avoid all cold food, cold drinks, don't eat yogurt or fermented foods. Stay away from anyplace cold, avoid all cold weather, live someplace warm, stay away from the mountains because of the cold and the elevation. Eat five small meals a day, avoid all heavy, fried, roasted, spicy food; liquid food is best, soups for example. Ginger is good. He said cold will weaken my heart; heat is strength and cold is the opposite. He also said because my heart is not getting enough oxygen to my body and there is not enough circulation that creates exhaustion, feelings of fear and anxiety and confusion, indecision etc.
And he said I should not spend my life traveling from place to place and being alone all the time, but I should stay in the company of good companions and live in one place and that best of all if I could find a girl who loved me and got along with me then I should settle down and that would be the best, but if it was a girl who didn't love me and get along then that would be bad for me. ;-)
That's the doctor's report. ;-)
I have just about one week here before I fly, I have gotten a week of medicine three days ago to try it out and see how it works until I get all the money I need. Meanwhile it *is* cold and ironically all the things the doctor said have been happening this last several days--insomnia, anxiety, cold all the time, loss of appetite, worry about my heart, the medicine, the money, the visa, afraid that I won't be allowed to take the medicine across the border at customs in India or especially the US. (The two countries he is not allowed to mail meds to). The happy, peaceful Phoenix I have been the last two months is not the one I have been for the last several days.I want to move on and start my studies of yoga for healing diseases and ayurveda and get to work focusing on healing my heart and I want to get out of this cold and this air pollution. I got an allergic reaction yesterday morning that got worse all day and I am hoping, oh so hoping, it has nothing to do with my new medicine. Ahhh. This morning the line of beggars and crippled people lining the wall was too much for me to take, completely overwhelming in fact. It is time for me to leave.
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Cracy Luck
martes, 11 de diciembre, 2007 3:54:51
5 AM the taxi drops me off in front of the Indian Embassy. I approach two soldiers in a little pill box connected to the wall of the embassy and tell them I am there to get my visa. They hand me a flattened tin bottle cap with the number 26 written in marker on it and tell me to come back at 9:30 AM to claim my place in line for the visa debacle but tell me 26 is good. As my taxi disappears it occurs to me that 9:30 is a long time from now. The embassy district is shut up tight as a drum at 5:15 AM and it is freezing cold and pitch black. I walk up the street and talk to some soldiers in front of the British Embassy, each one with two automatic weapons around his neck. They have no idea where I can find anything open to get some tea. Then I spot a light on in one building and an open door. Being me, I head straight for it, stick my head in the door and say "Does anyone know where I can get some tea?" I see a Nepali woman sweeping the floor with a Nepali broom looking at me in surprise and then a man's voice says (in English) "Do you speak English?" and a man walks into my view and invites me in. I can't deny that I do speak English and that's it's my native tongue, so I make a full confession and add to this that I am an English teacher also. The man seems very excited about all this and offers me tea. Bingo! Then he asks me if I'd like to teach a private English class at 6 AM. Since I have nothing better to do I think 'what the heck; why not." and agree.
At 6 AM, for one hour I teach a very enjoyable English class to a man I really enjoy teaching; we have fun. When it is done he tells the owner of the school, "He is not a good teacher; he is the best teacher." and asks me if I can teach him everyday. I tell him I'm leaving for India and he invites me to his house for lunch on Saturday and then invites me for breakfast. I accept.
During breakfast when he realizes that I am flying to India on Monday he gives me his card and writes his mobile number and says, "Call me when you get ready to go to the airport and we will receive you on Monday." His name is Karki and he is the senior superintendent of police for Kathmandu and is charge of airport security as well. ;-)
When I walk back past the school after a very good breakfast the owner comes out and says "Do you know who your student was? He is the head of police in Kathmandu! And he invited you to his house for lunch! Nepalis don't invite someone to their house unless they really mean it; I am the owner of the school and his teacher and he would never invite me to his house, but he invited you. You must be very lucky and you have to accept or it would be very rude. Would you ask him if I can come too?" ;-)
So, looks like I'll be having lunch on Saturday and have a reception at the airport on Monday. ;-) After a while I just learn to accept it; life is just crazy this way. ;-)
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Magical Illusion
miércoles, 12 de diciembre, 2007 7:01:25
5:15. I pull slowly out of sweet dreams with the realization that my life in Nepal is charmed and in so many ways so much nicer than the US--no driving, no buying gas, everything right here where I live, a short walk out my door, everything rosy. I wake up warm and happy.
I glance at my watch and rocket out of bed; I am over an hour late to get to the embassy! I pull on my clothes and step out my door where Julie, my beloved dog, sits curled up on the floor. She licks my hand and wags her tail; I am crazy about her.
I slip out the back door and down the alley where a column of soldiers in full combat dress come marching out of the darkness. This is so surreal I say "Wow!" out loud and they smile and I walk and talk with them, doing my mala and chanting om mani padme om in the midst of the soldiers. They say they are going to 'fight'. I can't suppress the urge and start calling cadence to them, "Left, right, left right!" Although it sounds like "Adelph right, adelph right.", like back in Marine boot camp. We are all having ridiculous fun doing this around the stupa and I am completely caught up in it until I realize the Tibetans doing kora are probably horrified that soldiers are marching around the stupa. But my thought on the matter, and on life in general, is this: for one it is purifying the karma of the soldiers to do kora around the stupa, and two, life is, more than anything, ultimately, about being happy, being light, enjoying yourself. Being light! That's what enlightenment is. Taking life way too seriously, taking anything way too seriously, especially your self, is just the opposite of what enlightenment is about.
I was so happy by the time I got to the taxis that the first driver I met agreed to a cheap rate and took me to the Indian Embassy to get my visa. I tipped him and we smiled. And the soldier in the pillbox at the embassy gave me number 2 and I gave him 100 rupees as a thank you. Everyone was already happy all over the world as far as I could tell and it was only a quarter to six in the morning.
More soldiers invited me into the British Embassy to wait out of the cold and we talked and laughed, just happy to be alive I think. People here are just nice.
At 6:00 I taught the senior superintendent of police again and then another class who took me out for breakfast, then strolled up to the India Embassy at 9:30 AM to the head of the line, strolled right in and up to the window to get my visa and the man looked at my paperwork and said, "Today is the 12th; your visa will be ready on the 13th. You came a day early." And he was right. All I could do was laugh at myself and he said, "No worry. You come tomorrow straight to my window, don't wait in line, don't get a number, I'll take responsibility."
So with that, laughing at myself wholeheartedly at my blunder, I got a taxi back home to my lovely Boudha on this lovely day and will go for a hike in the hills.
And life is just a magical illusion and when indeed when we become enlightened some day we will laugh at ourselves when we realize that all along the answer could not have been simpler--enlightenment means being light, being happy, deeply relaxed in your belly, enjoying every moment of this great, short life. After years of following gurus and whatever you follow you'll come back to where you started as a child and realize the answer is just being present and light now, relaxed and present. Here and relaxed. Seeing what *is* free of the projections of our mind. Of course when we do get there and laugh at ourselves we'll also realize that's what the gurus were trying to point out all along. ;-) and that's what all the practice helped us to finally understand. ;-)
--
Boudha
Nepal
Fall 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Royal Treatment
lunes, 17 de diciembre, 2007 16:41:47
My family had a ceremony for me before I left Kathmandu and draped silk scarves around my neck. Then they drove me to the airport. Because my Nepali 'brother' works for one of the government ministries we were waved into the airport. Once there, Karki, the senior superintendent of police, was waiting for us and took me straight into the VIP entrance to the airport. While he and I sat in the VIP lounge he had one of his officers take my bag and passport and ticket. The official came back with my boarding pass after checking my bag for me and taking care of the details. Then they took me through the diplomatic queue while everyone else waited in long lines, they took me through the security checks without waiting and filled out my immigration forms and had me waived through every line and took me right to my plane. Man, talk about cool! It's another world. And now I am in India and excited as can be.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Crashing Pianos
lunes, 17 de diciembre, 2007 16:51:52
I returned to the Indian Embassy to get my visa and there was a line a down the block. I went to the head of the line as I had been told by the official the day before but the man at the gate told me to take a number and go to the end of the line. I tried to explain to him that I was told to go to the head of the line, but he wouldn't even let me finish; he kept saying 'take ticket and go to end of line.' Just as I was about to lose my patience I heard a voice behind me say, 'Open the gate and let him in.'. It was the official from the day before who just happened to walk up at that moment. We entered the embassy 20 minutes before it opened and he told me to meet him at the window. I am sure he was Buddhist and he knew I was 'Buddhist' because I was doing my mala. As I walked across the empty embassy while the mass of people waited outside I realized there is something distinctly unusual about the way things happen in my life. I felt like baby grand pianos were crashing down out of the sky all around me and I was gliding smoothly through them and nothing could touch me. He gave me my visa and as I left the embassy all the people were still lined up outside waiting to get in. Life is amazing; it's like some kind of game, movie, book, something fun, something you can create to be the way you want it to be.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Delhi
lunes, 17 de diciembre, 2007 17:03:37
I made it! I am in Delhi I have a bag full of a year of ayurvedic medicine! I have been sick for the last week, had diarrhea like water for the last 48 hours, a fever for the last 24 hours but I am excited. I have a shitty hotel room here that cost more than a really nice hotel room in Kathmandu. Tomorrow I will get a train to Ram Dev's yoga ashram in Haridwar to begin studying yoga for healing diseases and ayurvedic medicine and soon I will be studying with Mingyur rinpoche in Bodhgaya. I am excited! So far, smooth as silk.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Fashionable Yoga
martes, 18 de diciembre, 2007 9:18:16
Today after changing money in the up-scale part of Delhi for the train and the yoga ashram I was paranoid that the money changer had somehow set me up to be robbed because he made a phone call and I know enough Nepali, which is similar enough to Hindi, that I heard him say to someone the amount of money I had and that I was a foreigner etc. Then he took forever giving me my money as though he were stalling and then I saw a pair of eyes looking in a little peep hole in the wall and then he called in another man to 'count' my money fo me and when I left I thought I was being followed.
So I stepped into a chi chi bakery to think and inside there was a stunningly dressed blond woman with pale blue eyes. I asked her if she knew the quickest and safest way back to the part of town I was staying in and she asked why and I told her. She was with a beautiful Indian woman also obviously very well heeled and impeccably dressed. They told me to come with them. I followed them out; I thought they were going to take me to a taxi, but instead they took me to a giant black SUV witha chauffeur and we all got in. They told me they were in the fashion industry and I told them I was a yoga teacher and a massage therapist from California and they drove me around and we talked and then the woman, Nila, said, 'Would you like to come to my house tonight and teach me yoga?' and I said 'Sure.'. I asked her if she had a yoga mat and she said yes, and told me she wanted to be a yoga disciple. She said 'You can call me on my mobile or just come over anytime you like, the servants will let you in, everyone's gone so I'll be home alone tonight.' She gave me her address and number.
So, I don't know how these things keep on happening, but they keep on happening. Looks like I'll be teaching yoga in Delhi.
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Facts
miércoles, 19 de diciembre, 2007 11:17:51
Some facts: By age ten children in Kathmandu have black lungs comparable to someone smoking for 20 or 30 years. (according to the head doctor at Shechen Clinic).
The difference between the horrible air pollution in Haridwar and the horrible air pollution in Kathmandu is that in Haridwar you really feel that under that horrible pollution there is fresh, clean air; in Kathmandu the only thing under the horrible air pollution is more horrible air pollution. When I say air pollution you back home can't really 'get' what I am saying here. Driving in a taxi at dusk with the headlights on you think you are driving through fog, or mist, or haze; but you're driving through car emission exhaust. It's as thick as a cloud, and it's in your face and you can wipe it off your face like grey dust and your snot is black.
India: At the train station at 6 AM, in the dark, a railway official posted at the gate asks my destination and if I have a ticket and then informs me my train is delayed by fog and I have to proceed with him to the international booking office where they will give me another ticket for the train leaving at 7 AM. At 6 AM with no sleep it all sounds very plausible, trains are often delayed for hours due to fog, until suddenly my red flag comes up. I don't even acknowledge him and walk away. Around the corner is the big board that has my train and platform number and no mention of delay. It was plausible, in fact all *too* plausible for India. The Indian Railway System would never have the infrastructure (or care enough) to post someone to personally escort foreigners to get new tickets. AND I knew for a fact there is no 7 AM train to Haridwar and that the tourist ticket office doesn't open until 8 AM and is not across the street from the train station. Strike four.
Welcome to India baby; watch your back.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Phase II
miércoles, 19 de diciembre, 2007 11:42:04
I get up at 5 to make the station by 6. Cold and dark; the town is alive and buzzing. The flight, the lack of sleep for so many nights now, the stress, culture shock, residual effects of fever and diarrhea all take a toll on my nervous system but I stay shift in to calm, cool, going the distance mode and glide through obstacles neatly. People are helpful. I make my platform and I wait in the booth that says "Information" because that is the only place with a chair and no one is manning the booth. I have about 10 Indians come up and ask for information. I do my best but they seem confused. I can only really offer them cough drops and send them on their way.
I make my train; everything has been so smooth since I came to India it's uncanny. I have been here 36 hours without violent illness or being robbed or even accosted. On the train it is clean and warm and spacious; comfortable. They bring me a newspaper in English, then two cups of milk tea and biscuits. Later an omelet and toast with butter and jelly. Yum! Then mango juice and finally another meal. Which passes the six hours. The landscape rolls by, sugar cane and palm trees, huts, cow manure stacked up in discs (for the cow dung Olympics or god knows what), people crapping on the train tracks, (beside them actually thank goodness) sunrise in the mist, monkeys, temples, giant trees. The young business man next to me finds out I am yoga teacher and tells me about his anxiety and worry and I give him a 20 minute yoga routine and teach him about basic Buddhism, karma, impermanence, compassion and emptiness and I feel like I have done something good and I feel so fortunate that I had the karma to learn about Buddhism and that I am here to study yoga. He lives near my destination and gives me his card and invites me over on Sunday to teach him yoga. ;-)
On arrival in Haridwar I glide past the hordes across the street to where I think there will be a bus station but in fact I walk into the barracks of the army where they are cleaning all their automatic weapons and am accosted by their commanding officer. As soon as he finds out I am going to study yoga he orders me a chair and some food and we talk for half and hour while he has someone fetch me a ride to the ashram. My luck runneth over. It seems that every time an India finds out that I am not just a tourist here to party, but have come to study yoga and to visit the holy sites, they are immediately extremely respectful and helpful. It is really something.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Phase II Plus
miércoles, 19 de diciembre, 2007 11:55:50
Ramdev is a probably the most highly respected yoga teacher in India today and has *revitalized* yoga here. He is a national phenomenon. Every time someone finds out that I have come here to study with him they become immediately respectful. I am very fortunate to have come in contact with him. He specializes in teaching yoga for healing diseases and ayurvedic medicine. My plan is to concentrate my time here on learning as much as I can and then bringing this back to America and creating a career for myself helping other people to be healthy with yoga, ayurveda, basic Buddhist principles and practices and to earn enough money with this career to have a family and children and a home someplace warm where I can surf and raise my kids and love my wife and have a happy life. That's the plan. Now it's time to do the work.
I have just arrived at the center and it is a brand new, enormous complex in the countryside outside of Haridwar on the Ganges. He has an ayurvedic hospital, yoga school, gardens, lodging, everything. It is like a brand new resort or Disney World for yoga and ayurveda. And best of all it is absolutely *not* for tourists. In fact not only am I the only westerner here period but no one even speaks English. I feel like I have come to the true source. Now I will study hard, use my memory and brain, learn Hindi to communicate, learn ayurveda and yoga and also get a treatment for my heart here if I can.
So, let life unfold, the future is beautiful, I can already see my wife and children out there somewhere waiting for me. In fact, if I had my choice, I already know just who she'd be. ;-) But I guess in this one thing I may not get my choice this time. Such is the great mystery.
Avanti!
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Briefly but important
domingo, 23 de diciembre, 2007 12:43:17
i am going to quickly recount the current events for the sake of time but will write a more interesting story about it all, god willing, soon. but first i want to say this:
it doesn't matter what religion you are, hindu, buddhist, or what race you are, Indian, American, whatever. What matters is to have a mind absolutely free of judgment and preconceptions about people, about anything. the thing that matters is to have an absolutely open mind, free and empty of ideas, just allowing and letting be. the thing that matters is loving all people, whether friends or family or strangers, whether *your* people, your religion, your countrymen, whatever, just loving everyone and everything equally while you can. we have no idea when the end will come and when it gets close you realize that the only thing that matters, the only thing that hasn't been a waste of your precious time and precious breath, is loving everyone and everything equally and openly without any preference and without any prejudice. that is my christmas message to the world; take it to heart.
now quickly, i find myself in rishikesh, a holy place for the hindus, beside the ganges, a holy river for them as well. i find it strange to be here under the circumstances i am going to quickly recount for now, in detail later.
on the 18th I arrived at ramdev's place in haridwar, which turned out not to be a yoga center but actually a hospital, and ayurvedic hospital where people with diseases come to get cured, yoga is part of the program.
my second day there i developed a migraine-like headache. the second or third day, by the afternoon, the pain became so unbearable that I became nauseous, and then i became delirious with fever until my legs collapsed.
by around 6 that night i was on a table in the operating room with 10 doctors around me in a circle including the chief medical officer of the hospital and the director of the hospital. the pain was unbearable in my head. they put a blood pressure cuff on both of my arms and i heard a doctor say to the cmo, 'no detectable blood pressure.'. then they tried to get the blood pressure on my thigh, the same comment, 'no detectable bp.'. next the tilted me head down on the table to keep the blood in my heart. my face and head and hands became freezing cold, and then my feet became freezing cold and the cold started going up my legs. i heard a doctor say, 'we have lost his pulse.' then: 'he has gone into hypo..(something) shock.' then i heard someone arguing saying, 'get him in a taxi and get him out of here; we can't be responsible; we can't treat him.' I looked up at the cmo and i said 'what's wrong with me?' and he said, "absolutely nothing, you're perfectly fine.' and it was such a baldface lie i got scared. i could sense how helpless and scared the doctors were. i remember taking his hand with both of my ice cold hands and holding his hand against my heart and staring into his eyes, tears started streaming down my face. i said "am i going to die?' he said. 'no there's nothing wrong at all; you'll be fine in 10 minutes.' but he was lying and that was worse than and honest account of what was happening. i kept his hand and my eyes were locked onto his the entire time. they had me covered with blankets and i was freezing, the pain in my head was unbearable. i thought to myself: this is one of the stages of death in buddhism, the cold moves up the body and the heat leaves; it's happening to me. and i thought: at least this isn't painful; it's not so bad; the pain will stop in my head when i die. and i then i thought: but i don't want to die like this, alone, in a room full of strangers who don't care about me, in a strange country; i want to die at home with people i love around me, my wife and children; i want to die with loved ones, not strangers. and then i thought: but in the end we are all alone, it won't matter in the end.
the doctors stood around me helpless, ten doctors, just arguing about getting me into a taxi and out of the hospital so they wouldn't be responsible. they were helpless, standing there with no idea what to do at all to help me. i thought: god, if i was in america they would have medicine, equipment, they would take action, know what to do, save me. these doctors are just going to stand by helplessly and watch me die.
then someone finally came up with a paracetamal and within 20 minutes the fever began to drop and the pain in my head began to be tolerable. they gave me hot water to drink and then after a while they put me on a stretcher and took me to the recovery room and covered me with 3 heavy blankets and put heaters all around me. i was wearing long wool underwear top and bottom, wool socks and hat, and a down jacket and I was still freezing. they kept taking my pulse and eventually they gave me a cup of tea, then i began to get more warm and eventually they said my bp had stabilized.
they carried me on a stretcher to my room and almost slid me out of it headfirst on the stairs and almost dropped me twice. in my room they covered me with a lot of blankets and put in heaters around me. then the cmo and the director of the hospital argued about getting me out of there or me staying. the cmo said i should stay but he said i definitely had an infection somewhere in my body, the director said, get him out of here we can't be responsible; we don't know how to treat him, he needs injections and antibiotics.
i was scared to death to go alone to an indian hospital in the middle of the night in this remote, poor place; it wouldn't be like going a hospital in delhi. and i was also scared to stay there and not get treated. they had given me a panchakarma treatment earlier in the day and they had given me a mistreatment and they said that's what caused my fever. the director got the receipt for the panchakarma from me so there would be no evidence. i could tell he was worried about one thing only and it wasn't me.
in the morning no one came to my room and the headache was terrible. finally i managed to get up and check my email and a friend of mine from new york had sent an email that he was in rishikesh, 40 kms away and was leaving at noon for delhi. it was 10 am when i got the message. i called his number and explained to him what was going on; that i was sick and in a place alone where no one spoke english or gave a shit that i was really ill.
he came in a car with two friends a few hours later. i had been laying on a table in the doctor's office all day and no one had brought me water to drink or a advil or anything; they just left me lying there saying 'you'll be fine in just another hour.'
my friends brought me advil and one of them had a friend in rishikesh who was the head of an ER in the states. i was so happy to see someone i knew, it was like a dream, i had tears in my eyes. he arranged for a taxi and gave me the hotel address.
at 4:30 i packed up and left the ramdev yog peeth and took a taxi to rishikesh to the doctor's hotel. i was so glad, so relieved to be there. i was at wits end and my fever was burning again. my nerves were shot and i was shaking and exhausted.
at the hotel the doctor was still out but two american women my friend had told me would be there and help me were there so the owner took me to them and i told them my story. when i was done they looked strangely at each other and one went and talked to the owner. i went back to the lobby to get a room and the owner said, 'you have to leave here, the doctor isn't coming.' i said, 'what? of course he's coming, mickey will call him and this is his hotel.' then the american woman said, 'we want you to leave here now or we'll call the police. you have to take your bag and go.'
now i was in total disbelief. twilight zone. i said 'what?' she said, 'get your bag and go or we'll call the police, the doctor isn't coming back.' i lost my cool at that point, i was feverish, scared, sick as hell and the person who mickey had said was going to help me had somehow told the owner to make me go and was threatening to call the police. in the end i went. i was shaking. i couldn't believe this was happening. outside all the hotels were full. it was like being in some strange twilight zone hell. i did find a hotel though and got a room. later that night i called the doctor's hotel and the owner said there is no doctor staying here.
but in the morning i called again and they didn't realize it was me and the doc came to the phone, he was very hesitant because he had gotten the story already from the american women. i told him my symptoms though and he said, 'not good. it sounds like it could be spinal menigitus. a headache for 5 days, a fever and now pain going up the back or your neck and the back of your neck getting stiff. very bad. you have to get to a hospital asap. he gave me the name of a hospital and said goodbye.
i got in a rickshaw and started to go to the hospital but them i took one the other way to the doc's hotel. fortunately the person who received me was not the owner and he went and got the doc. when he came i just said, 'will you come with me; i'm scared.' he said yes.
he took me to the hospital and thank go he was there. this is the 'best' hospital in this state. it was horrible, unbelievable. the doctor was like a kid with a medical certificate from a cereal box. the us doc, thank god he was there, had to lead her to understand what was going on, tell her which tests to do, everything. if i had gone alone i would have just been absolutely sunk. we went to the lab and did every blood, stool and urine test imaginable, then a chest x ray and then an ultrasound.
even though i was sick the happiest time i have had in india was with that doctor this morning; we laughed, we had fun. i had a friend with me. he told me the two women had told him i was a crazed drug addict who had come to the hotel looking for free drugs.
the doc had to leave so i stayed and finished the tests and then he was supposed to go back at 1.30 and get my results and call me at my hotel. i went home and waited. i got a shower for the first time in three days of fever, i read, i tried to relax. he never called and his hotel wouldn't answer so i went for a walk here to write this quickly.
i had a funny thought walking here. first of all, even being sick (and the paracetamal makes the headache and fever much less) even being scared, even feeling this hollow cold pit in my stomach, and this weird ache in my heart, i still realize that this is a special place, i can still feel it and i am not hindu (i am not any religion). i thought to myself walking here, forget about yoga; you know yoga, just have fun here, stop trying to study, to find something new; you know yoga by heart, just start enjoying yourself. give up trying. and i thought: i never had to leave home; there was nothing to find; it was all there all the time, right where i was, there is nothing more to learn; i know it all by heart. and i thought: if only i could just go home and have a family, just have a family, children, a wife, just have a home and be normal and come home and love my wife and kids with all my heart every day of my life. and then i thought: love everyone equally, let go of all concepts, let go of all concepts, preconceived ideas about people and life and just love everyone with an empty open mind without pre-ideas. and finally i thought, how strange this is: so many times in my life people have said to me, you were a yogi in your past life, and now without meaning to i find myself in rishikesh, by the ganges, a holy place for yogis. and what if i die here? i have had so many premonitions about death lately, and here i am in a holy yogi place and what if i die here? good god. i didn't want to come to india to die by the ganges in rishikesh, but what if this is beyond my personality, what if this is some deeper past life karma, something deeper inside me that i can't fight. but god i do not want to die here by the ganges in rishikesh so far away from everything i know in this lifetime and oh god i do want to have a family and a life and love them and i do want to be well. i do want to go home to where i belong and to the one's i love and i do want to have my family because life is running out.
so that is the quick version. tomorrow is christmas eve. how strange this trip is. i want the doctor to call.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Damage ina Lonely Place
lunes, 24 de diciembre, 2007 14:43:27
The best Chirstimas eve ever! The results are all negative! The Indian doctor thinks the headache is from needing glasses and the ayurvedic doctors thought the fever and blood pressure loss was from the mistreatment they gave me. When I got the negative test results I felt a relief I can't describe. I felt a weigth go off of my chest and heart and shoulders. I felt alive and that life was so precious! I put my forehead to teh photos of lama Lundrup and the baby rinpoche and Mingyur Rinpoche, I kissed their photos, I did prostrations. I felt so much love and such relief; I felt happy for the first time in India.
Today I saw how beautiful the Ganges is, how beautiful Rishikesh is. I felt alive. Alive! Life is a precious, gift, so fragile, so short; there is only one way to use this gift--to love other people, to love all beings and to love your self and your dear life.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Krishna Das
lunes, 24 de diciembre, 2007 14:48:39
This morning I was invited by the doctor to the Neem Karali Baba ashram, the Hanuman Mandir. This is the place in the sixties where Ram Das met his guru, where Baba Hari Das became Ram Das' teacher and where Krisna Das was given his dharma of playing bhajans. This morning I sat in the Hanuman temple with a few people and with Krishna Das and we chanted and chanted and at last when he began chanting the Hanuman Chalisa all my hair stood up, I felt bliss. Two or three winters ago I taught yoga at a retreat in Wisconsin and every morning at 4 in the morning the woman running the retreat and I would put on a bootleg cd she had of Krishna Das playing the Hanuman Chailisa. It's the first time I ever heard it and it gave me chills; I got addicted to chanting it each morning. And now, to be chanting it, with Krishna Das and a few friends, in Neem Karali Baba's ashram the day before Christmas was just to much to belive. And I was alive!
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Life, Now!
lunes, 24 de diciembre, 2007 14:56:05
You can only spend so much of your life reading books, studying, looking for masters and seeking advice. One day you wake up and realize that you knew everything all along. You were born with it and it's always been inside you. And now it's up to you to do the work and practice what you already know. You realize it was right there under your feet the whole time, you never had to leave to go find it somwhere; it was with you all along. And when you realize that, then you have no excuse to keep lookingl; you have to start practicing and sharing.
--
India
Winter 2007
Gampopa
In the End
lunes, 24 de diciembre, 2007 15:14:07
Life is fragile; life is tenuous. In the end we have only one thing--love. All we have that we can keep in the end is love. Nothing else is real. Our egos and our minds are just illusion, stories. Open love, equally for all beings is the one thing that we have that is ours. Cultivate love and forget everything else and in the moment of death, there will not be the feeling of a life wasted on nothing. But of a life lived for the one thing that is real--infintie love for all beings.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Only One Love
lunes, 24 de diciembre, 2007 15:46:02
As long as we call ourselves Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Americans, Indians, whatever, there will be seperation. There is only one love. There is only one love equal for all beings, with no separation and no differences. There is only *one* love. There are no dfferences. The path, the goal, the method, is to let go of all preconceived ideas about anything. The ego is an illusion, the body just a shell. The only thing that is real is the pure light, the one love, that is sheathed by the shell. Let go of all preconceived ideas about everything and anything. Let go of all thoughts and ideas about differences, us and them. None of that is real. The only thing that is real, that will last, the only thing you have, is love. Universal, equanimous love for all things. Cultivate this now. Chersih all beings more than yourself with tender compassionate love and live life truly now, free of the bondage of your own prejudice and preconceptions. Live in this moment, now, free of all judgements.
Live now, life is to love.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
The Best Christmas Ever
martes, 25 de diciembre, 2007 13:16:07
This may be the best Christmas of my life. Because I am alive! And I realize what a precious fragile gift life is. I am so grateful to all my friends, to Mickey, and Govinda and Radha, Dr Rick, everyone back home. I send so much love this wonderful Christmas day.
I spent Christmas eve with a girl named Lyla from San Francisco watching the sun set like a big red ball over the Ganges and the moon rise and a candle ceremony on the Ganges. It was beautiful.
Christmas morning was amazing. I was sitting in a little Hanuman temple in Neem Karoli Baba's ashram, right next to Krishna Das, with a small group of people chanting for about two hours. There was a steady stream of Indians coming in the entire time to pay homage to Hanuman with the bell ringing. I kept thinking this is the best Christmas of my life. The chanting was just wonderful, to be sitting literally two feet next to KD and chanting. It was magical. The hair on my head and arms stood up; I felt bliss. When we sang the Hanuman Chalisa my spine went straight and tears came to my eyes, I was so happy and so overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. Magical, just magical. When it was over I stayed after everyone left, praying with all my heart for all my friends, for all beings, sending pure gratitude and love to everyone I know, so much love to each friend, to my dear family. Overwhelming gratitude and love. Heartfelt prayer of gratitude and love.
So dear friends, dear world, thank you, thank you that I am alive, thank you that so many people love me, thank you, thank you, thank you. AND, I bought myself a wool shawl for Christmas; I've been dreaming of having one for meditation. ;-) Pure Love to my dear precious friends and family from Rishikesh India
The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Something Has Changed
miércoles, 26 de diciembre, 2007 11:07:45
I don't know if it was the fever, the six day migraine, the very near death experience, or the utter relief and gratitude that I didn't die, but something inside my head, inside me, has changed. Before, some things were good, some were bad, some I was indifferent about. I hated the noise, pollution and chaos of India for example. I compared people and religions and practices. I compated myself and others; I created differences. And now, something has changed, inside me, without me trying; it just happened. There is no good or bad, everything is the same. There is no difference; everything is the same. It is only the mind, with its prejucice and preconceived ideas, its labels and concepts, that sees differences. There is no difference. Now all the things I once had aversion for I don't even notice; because it was in my mind. Impurities in the mind create the concept of seperation when in fact there is no seperation. Rishikesh is beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I am alive. Everything is one.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Final Morning
miércoles, 26 de diciembre, 2007 11:18:19
This morning I went to the Hanuman Temple and meditated in a little room where Neem Karoli Baba used to meditate. As often happens to me in holy places I felt my heart open and I began praying spontaneously for all beings. I came out and walked into the main temple and Krishna Das was setting up his harmonium. I sat behind him and he started to play and sing and it was just us, and then a couple others walked in until soon his small group of friends were gathered and we sang and chanted. There is something about his voice, his soulful style, that is so pure, that puts me in a bliss state. Afterwards I started to ask him a question and he said, "Will you come for lunch?" I was surprised at how down to earth he was. I accepted and we went into a little room at the ashram where some of his entourage were seated and we were served kichari and curd on a leaf plate and kheer in a leaf bowl for desert. I ate with my hands. It was delicious.
Afteward I chatted with Krishna Das and I was absolutely taken aback at how unpretentious, kind, compassionate, humble, warm he was. I told him that when he was playing it came to me that I have to learn to play harmonium and chant and I asked him if he had ideas. He told me about how he had first started playing because he had loved singing at the ashram back in the day and it had just developed. I told him, 'well, when you look for something it comes your way.' and we said goodbye.
On the way home there was a detour and I left my rickshaw to walk down a back street and I walked right into a little shop with musical insturments. It turns out that it is a father and son shop. They make harmoniums. The father has been making fhem for 40 years, and his father before him. He told me he could make me a custom, lightweight, portable harmonium and told me of a teacher in Rishikesh. Looks like life is giving.
I leave Rishikesh today but I can see I will be back. I have found a place I already love.
Peace to all; more soon.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Postrations
miércoles, 16 de enero, 2008 10:31:49
Today I did the first 100 of 10,000 prostrations that I am doing as a preliminary practice along with 10,000 chantings of the 100 syllable mantra. This is part of a vajrayana practice. I did my first 100 at the mahabodhi stupa beside the bodhi tree where the buddha realized enlightenment. It was something special. Hard to explain.
It's hard to write these days. Too far behind in too many things that have happened to catch up with my writing. I am teaching yoga at the course, also teaching english and yoga to the little monks and I receiving teachings from Mingyur rinpoche, but if you're not Buddhist it probably wouldn't make much sense or mean much. India has never been fun or happy really, more like survival and relief, but it's what's coming my way so I am riding the wave. My life is changed by this trip, that's already a fact.
Phoenix out.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Princess
miércoles, 16 de enero, 2008 10:35:06
I was having tea with my friend Cecile in her room the other night and I looked at her passport and it had her name and it also had in German, 'Prinzessa du ....'. I am a little slow on the uptake and I asked her if that was her last name and she said no, it was her title. Still slow, I was trying to understand and so she told me: she is a princess, a real princess. Her great grandmother was queen Victoria and her father is first cousins with Prince Charles. Cool. I am hanging out with a princess. Ka-ching!
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Man Caught in Human Stampede
miércoles, 16 de enero, 2008 10:41:08
The other day at the monastery I noticed a huge crowd of poor people pressing against the gates and a French woman with a face mask on jabbing them and screaming at them through the bars of the gate with a long pole with a point on the end. I decided to intervene so I had the guards open the gates and let me out into the mob. I was actually having fun, I told everyone 'shhhh' and made motions to sit down. The people in the front started getting quiet and sitting down and then the wave moved backward and people began sitting and shhhing up. I think it might have been my english that confused them, or just the fact that I was having so much fun getting them to move back and be quiet as opposed to the madwoman with the spear. Things were looking good and I was feeling pretty cool when suddenly the weird French woman had the guards start tossing fruit over the gate, which is why the mob had gathered in the first place. But the problem is that I was between the mob and the iron gate and as soon as the guards started tossing fruit over the gate the mob charged the gate with me in the way. Scary. Like being up against the stage at a Bowie concert in the sixties. I climbed up the gate quickly and just held on above the heads of the people. There was no way to get over the spikes and no way to go down into the crowd that was now mad fighting for the food that the guards were now hurling by the box over the fence onto to people (and past my head). In the end I got down and back inside. It was humorous. Nice woman.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Chain of Karma
miércoles, 23 de enero, 2008 7:28:06
Ok, take a breath and let me fire this off quickly. It's so hard for me to write nowadays. Miss one day here and it's impossible to catch back up.
A little reiterated preface:
I took the overnight train from polluted Bodhgaya to Delhi to try and get away from the source of my lung infection and chronic cough aka the 'Bodhgaya Blessing'. Arriving at 5:30 AM I had a porter carry my bag out to a bicycle rickshaw and headed into the main bazaar (which more accurately be called the 'main bizzare') I actually found myself smiling and feeling happy to be coming 'home' to someplace known and familiar. I had been here a month before, my first two days were in Delhi.
Finding a hotel was like being Joseph and Mary with child; turned away from each place out into the cold. No one had a room for me. Until I scored a room at the StarView hotel, unloaded my bags and slipped out into the dark to have a chai and porridge at the Ajay cafe and bakery then hit the street. The first thing that happened was a rickshaw came by with a western monk on board. I knew that face and I called out "Hey Monk! Stop!" He did.
Here's a brief history of this monk and I: In Boudha, playing guitar in my fave restaurant one morning with a fever, he was there and he complained about the service to the waitress (my friend) and I immediately judged him and put him in the "i don't like" box. But lo and behold I saw him again a few days later at none other than Dr. Madhu's office (the ayurvedic doctor who gave me my heart meds). We chatted a bit but I was cold and distant with my judgmental mind about him. And then on my flight to Delhi he was there again and we shared a taxi into town and again the next day I saw him and we broke bread together. Now, the same monk was passing by just as stepped into daylight my first morning back in Delhi.
He put me on his rickshaw and took me to breakfast. I said "Weird to keep running into you." He replied, "Not, weird, karma. We were friends in past lives." Hmm. This was strangely familiar because a few days earlier in Bodhgaya a Hungarian girl I'd met earlier in Kathmandu was giving me body work and in the middle of the session she suddenly said "We were very bad to each other in past lives and have karma to clean up." I thought to myself, "Weird."
In the corner of the restaurant where the monk brought me was a woman eating alone in the shadows. The power went out three minutes after we walked in plunging her into darkness (we had the entering ambient light illuminating our booth). I asked the waiter to take her a candle so she could see.
After brekkie, at the internet cafe, just about to write and the power crashed. The girl next to me at the computer cursed and I looked at her, she was about to cry. I asked her if she was ok and then I recognized her: 'You're the girl from the corner in the cafe.' She told me she had gone to the airport last night to fly home to Hawaii and her ticket had been canceled by someone and she had missed her flight and all her friends left without her. She was distraught. I told her not to worry, I'd help her. So we spent that entire day and the next trying to get her a flight home and finding out that my flight (because the only reason I'd come to Delhi was to get a flight asap to Thailand) was not able to be changed until mid-March.
In the next two days we became friends and we got her a plane home. The final morning at breakfast I said "What good luck we met." and she told me, 'The minute you walked into the restaurant I knew I had karma with you and I had to meet you.' Hmm. Lots of karma going around these days. A little background is during the two days of trying to get her home I myself woke up depressed thinking how am I going to get out of India and I am sick and exhausted and can't keep going like this. I need a break and India does not ever give you one. It slaps you down and then sits on your chest until you can't breathe. But through her I met an Indian boy at the Pilgrim Bookshop who told me he wanted to have a conversation with me. The three of us sat in the back and he told me about his yoga ayurveda teacher in Varanassi, an Indian man who came from a long heritage of yoga, ayurveda and jyotisha (Indian astrology) in his family and did not accept students except by special circumstance. The boy, Mahendra, told me he had been watching me in the shop and wanted to know what I knew, if I would be willing to teach him. He also asked me if I would meet his 'master' and come to Varanassi. Laura (from Hawaii) said 'Phoenix, this is the dream you were looking for, a real teacher, real yoga and ayurveda, not tourist stuff, you have to go.'. So Mahendra left for Varanassi to talk to his teacher.
Now, follow me on this convoluted tail of karmic connections: Laura left, I stayed on the rooftop restaurant. This was the morning I woke up depressed and feeling lost and trapped in India. Sitting there, I noticed a blond girl with blue eyes kept looking at me and looking away. So I walked over and sat next to her in the sun and ordered a chai and just let go and took in the warm sun on my face. She spoke to me and we began a conversation. Her name was Petra, she was Swiss but living in Oz, had come to India to study Iyengar yoga, was a massage therapist and also surfed. It was an instant connection. We talked for hours about yoga, massage, India. We had come to India on the same day, had both been in Rishikesh at the same time and had actually seen each other at the same restaurant we both ate at each day but never thought much about it. She told me the reason she had been staring at me is that when I walked in she knew she had some kind of karma with me and had to meet me. ;-) ! What the heck?
Since then things have changed. We met another girl here studying yoga and had a rooftop dinner party and laughed all night and talked about yoga and had a massage party. Then Mahendra emailed me to say his teacher would accept me and wanted to meet me. Meanwhile Petra and I started trading healing sessions, focusing our attention on yoga, energy. And then we met Zhara, a girl who is here writing a book about Derrida and Sufism. This girl was brilliant and heading to Varanassi. She wanted to learn yoga. So in the end we made a plan. Petra and I are leaving for Varanassi today (after all my ticket isn't going to take me anywhere any time soon, and I came here for yoga and ayurveda and specifically the real thing and this could be a chance to find that) We are meeting Zhara at a hotel on the Ganges where the three of us plan to create a program for ourselves to teach yoga, Buddhism, energy work, massage, ayurveda and Zhara will teach us Sufi meditations and practices. Meanwhile I will study with secret doctor and try and find a harmonium teacher since Varanassi is the music capitol of Inida. I want to see my dreams for India come to fruition. I have been paying a high price and want to get some return for my suffering here. Ie, I have paid my Indian dues and now want to get my studies underway.
And that is the chain of karma that is binding me to India. There is more but I don't want to throw anymore into this long missive.
The sun also rises.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Bingo!
lunes, 28 de enero, 2008 12:53:02
NIght one:
We connected with Mahendra and made it to the home of the tantric master ayurvedic doctor who agreed to take me on as a student. He said "It was your karma to meet Mahendra who tells me you have things to share with us, so I will teach you if you will agree to teach me what you know." I told him honestly that I know nothing, no kidding or modesty, just really I don't know anything. But he said he didn't believe me.
The next day he began my studies. I am not allowed to tell anyone what I am learning for now. I think one thing that helped was the first night when he and his brother were trying to test my mettle so to speak I told them the reason I want to learn is to share it and help people, not for my own power or gain. That helped.
This man is not an ordinary man. I am no fool when it comes to people or teachers. He does not accept students normally. He is of the royal family of Nandi. His grandfather was written about by Paul Brunton in the book, In Search of Secret India, as the holy man of Benares I think. His grandfather was a famous jyotisha who transmitted his knowledge to his son who became a master of many things with 13 PhD's and mastery of yoga, tantra, ayurveda and jyotisha. He has two twin sons, born five minutes apart. One of them became a jyotisha master and the other and ayurvedic and tantra master. These are my teachers. Just sitting in the room where we study sends me into meditation.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Benares Hindu University
lunes, 28 de enero, 2008 12:56:25
Mahendra took me to BHU to meet with the head of the yoga department at his home. BHU has a degree in yoga and in ayurveda. After asking me why I wanted to learn about yoga and ayurveda and about my current knowledge he agreed to meet with me once a week and teach me yoga and give me a course of reading and then a chance for query during the week. He also agreed to arrange for me to study with some of the ayurvedic doctors at the U and to study with the man in charge of making the medicinal concoctions from the herbs. I started my first class with him yesterday. He has me studying the unpanishads as well as yoga texts.
It's falling into place.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Very Nasty
lunes, 28 de enero, 2008 13:03:27
Our first day here we were calling Varannasi very nasty. But not now. We have a great hotel over the Ganges on the ghats, a lovely, sunny room. I am teaching yoga on the roof and giving massages. I have my own practices to do which take up a good part of the day between yoga, tibetan, tantric and so on. But no clashes (don't worry JC).
Each night I study with Sree Jayant. The rest falls into place. The ghats are amazing, the Ganges amazing, all amazing. Impossible to describe but amazing. LIke nothing else ever. Intense all the time. I found a guitar shop in the little maze and I go play the guitar there and sing and the owner jams with me on his drums and it's good for business. It is just crazy here. I have been sick sick sick sick but today I am better. The air is bad but India is polluted, no way around it. And I am here to study and I have found a jewel that is so rare I can't even tell you. It's the thing any seeker would look for, the true hidden India, the hidden teacher. We'll see how it flows.
On my mantle is the photo of Mingyur Rinpoche and just seeing him makes me feel safer in this chaotic world. I don't think my life will be the same again as it was before, nor will I. I don't know what the future will hold but I know I have to learn. I have to learn as much as I can for as long as I can and learn the real knowledge, the deep knowledge and then use it.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Monsoon Wedding
martes, 29 de enero, 2008 11:10:08
In five days in Varanassi I have found a good harmonium and bhajan teacher, have arranged studies with the head of the yoga department and professors in the ayurveda department at BHU and found a *real* tantra master who has accepted me as a student. I am teaching yoga classes every morning from the roof of my hotel looking down at the Ganga. And now I have been invited to an Indian wedding tomorrow night (thanks to Petra's blonde hair and blue eyes). Wow.
The view from my room and the rooftop restuarant is really amazing. The Ganges, the architecture, the holy everything, kids flying kites. Just something else. Everything is hazy this time of year. The maze of back alleys that take you into the heart of the ghat area of Varanassi, the amazing food. Everything. Intense, amazing, very different from normal.
News from Abroad
miércoles, 30 de enero, 2008 9:51:27
Today I woke up and things were almost pretty good. Maybe the best they've been in India so far. Morning light on the Ganges, the sound of all the Shiva pujas going on up the river. I love my hotel room; I've started turning it into my *own* sacred space and that's a big part of being happy for me--stability. My altar and candles and incense. I did all my practices (which are daily increasing) and then showered and the morning ritual was nice. Wake up and light candles, do the morning purifications, the different secret practices, the exercises and meditation, self massage with sesame oil and then the bathing. The first two hours of the day are important.
Then up on the roof to teach yoga and it was a fresh day, almost warm and just felt fresh and good. The monkeys were up and out, the Ganga was beautiful, the yoga class was deep and meditative, the students were happy. Then rooftop breakfast and off to BHU to meet with Dr. Drivedi to start my course in Ayurveda. The first talk he gave was fasntastic; excellent lecturer, great and clear information. He is also arranging along with Tripathi for me to do studies with the other departments of Ayurveda, especially in the preparation of herbal medicines. He told me the reason they are going through the trouble to give me a special course is that they want me to bring it back to America to help people. ;-) That's also what the tantric master told me, I am going to teach you these things so you can take them back to the West to help heal people. Pretty amazing.
I got to hold a two day old baby this morning. I held it for about an hour and it was the happiest time I have felt since I left the US. I felt utterly at peace. I was born to be a father. Ahh. But I have a feeling life has had other plans for me all along.
--
India
Winter 2007
"The true lama is your own mind; there is no need to look for another."
Gampopa
Tea and Death
sábado, 2 de febrero, 2008 10:20:09
Our second morning in Varanasi Petra and I were escaping from the Hell Hotel and making our way along the maze of narrow alleys when a man stopped us and offered us chai. We accepted and he sat us down on a stone shelf in the wall covered with a cloth and made us the nicest chai we had had in India. It was the most at ease moment I think I had had up to that point, relaxing almost, enjoying the little children and their parents at the chai stall and the proximate shops. And then I heard what sounded like a marching band or a parade and saw some people coming along singing and I was feeling so good I started singing along with them. Then they passed and I realized they were carrying a dead body to the river to burn. Four dead bodies passed in the time we drank two cups of chai. Just not something you get in Santa Cruz in front of the coffee shop in the morning.
--
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Heretic in the House
sábado, 2 de febrero, 2008 10:31:01
I was attracted to a temple next to our hotel only to find out that the grandson of Lahire .....(I don't know the name but he's famous) the man who Parmahansa Yogananda writes about in Autobiography of a Yogi was there giving initiation into Kriya Yoga. I actually walked in and met him by chance and he told his peeps to give me prasad and then invited me to take initiation. As a yoga teacher I thought, 'the more I learn the better'. So I showed up the next morning with the required 6 flowers, 5 pieces of fruit, 1 coconut, 3 milk sweets, an offering of money and a box of incense. I got there early and sat down and meditated by the altar. It was all pretty nice and peaceful. Then it got pretty packed and about two hours late it started. The man came in and sat down right in front of me and then he started ranting. He referred to himself as "the speaker" as though he were chanelling some higher power. He made very little sense, he cursed, he was angry, he talked bad about people. I sat for maybe 20 minutes or half and hour and then I thought about MIngyur Rinpoche and all the saintly people I know and I just got up and walked out. This man was sick. I had to pass in front of him to leave and he began cursing at me and said "Get the hell out of here!" and so on. But before I actually could take him up on his offer his guards grabbed me and asked me my name and started pushing me from behind and trying to twist my arm. I thought to myself "Cult." He kept screaming "Get his name!" The funny thing was I wasn't flustered at all. I didn't feel embarassed about getting up and walking out; I didn't feel on the spot that he was yelling at me in front of all the people. I just felt calm and a little sorry for everyone who wasn't walking out. Cult. So I left and as soon as I stepped out the door I could feel the difference in the air and the energy. Cult. No thanks.
--
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Exquisite
sábado, 2 de febrero, 2008 10:34:17
The last two mornings at breakfast from the rooftop restaurant of my hotel the Ganges has been exquisite. Peaceful and quiet with boats slowly lapping their oars in the water, the water itself alive with the subtle pattern of wind and ripples radiating in all directions. The temples along the river are ancient and also exquisite. The mornings calm and cool, misty, sun rising over the Ganges. I felt the close to happiest I have felt so far in India. I am beginning to fall in love in a strange way with Varanasi. It is rich and endless. It is something unlike anything else I have known.
--
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Watching the Days Go By
sábado, 2 de febrero, 2008 10:42:12
I have landed well here in Varnasi. I have a regular course of Ayurveda and Yoga at Benares Hindu University with two excellent professors and they are arranging for me to have a study in ayurvedic herbs and medicine preparation as well. I am studying harmonium and bhajans with a music teacher and above all I am engaged in the study (which really means the practice) of Tantra with a true and rare master. My days are spent with my practices which take hours each day and then classes and study time. Each day is compltely full. The amazing thing is I got what I came here looking for! I came looking for real yoga and ayurveda and not tourist fluff. And I have found some top professors and a master; I could not have asked for more! It is like a dream come true. I have learned more in 10 days than in 10 years. And also big changes are happening inside my life. It is not easy to be here, but it is what I asked for and it is going to change my life in ways that I could not have forseen. Nothing will ever be the same.
Avanti!
--
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
I Got the Fever
domingo, 3 de febrero, 2008 3:08:16
After my last four-day bout of diarrhea and intestinal cramps I was well for an entire day before getting a nose, throat and chest cold which I've had for the last several days. Yesterday a headache began and by last night I had fever. I got into bed wearing my long wool underwear, wool socks and hat, down jacket and inside my down sleeping bag and I was freezing. I got up to pee and my legs were like rubber; it was like the night in Haridwar and I realized my blood pressure was dropping fast. I got scared. I didn't want to recapitulate the night I almost died in India. And then I remembered what Sri Jayant had said to me the two days before--"Forget about fear!" and what the homeopathic doctor had told me that very day--"Don't be afraid of death; welcome it." And then I was no longer afraid; I felt strong. Eventually the cold went away and I began to burn up with a regular fever. This morning I am weak.
--
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Falling in Love
domingo, 3 de febrero, 2008 3:14:41
I am slowly falling in love with Varanasi. This morning when I woke up after my night of fever and mosquitoes I thought to myself that back home in the US I was almost always very happy; I felt joy and bliss much of the time, but I felt like my life had no real direction. I worked for the NPS in the summer to earn money and I spent the winter surfing, going up and down the coast and to Baja, being with my friends and learning new things. But there was no direction in my life; it wasn't leading somewhere. That's what impelled me to come here on this journey.
On the other hand here I can't say that I have ever been what I would call happy. Mostly I am trying to survive. There have been very few moments, if any, of real joy and bliss, of relaxation. But I have found a direction, a purpose, the things I was looking for. I have found excellent teachers on Ayurveda and yoga, and I have found spiritual teachers of the highest caliber, like Mingyur Rinpoche. I am no longer having fun, but I have found a direction and a path that I believe will lead to the career, to the life I want to create.
--
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
It’s in the Stars
domingo, 3 de febrero, 2008 3:29:00
Sri Jayant, the tantra master, and his brother the vedic astrologer offered to give a reading to Petra and I. Her reading was very clear. They told her she should have children in March, she should move to the west of Australia, be careful of electricity and lightning until a certain date etc. It was all very precise. But for me it was very different. He told me to forget all about my heart, to never think of it again. He told me to forget all about fear. The conquerer is the one who is brave he told me. He told me that getting married would be a very good thing for me and that for secret reasons he could not tell me I had to quit using the name Phoenix and use my legal name immediately. I told him I had been having premonitions of death and he said forget about it. He told me "All things are coming to you very soon.You will get many things. Everything will be ok. Don't be confused. Follow a spiritual path, the profession of spiritualism if done properly will be very good for you and you will be benefitted from it. The knowledge that is full of benefits and pure, perfect and holy; that is the knowledge that is very good."
The next day I got to meet the homeopathic doctor. Mahendra told me I had very good karma to be able to meet such esteemed people who usually would refuse to meet people. He said the professors at BHU who had agreed to give me the special courses in yoga and ayurveda would normally have refused to even meet with me so for some reason I have very good karma and all doors are opening. He said especially I was lucky the old homeopath would agree to treat me. I met him yesterday and he told me, "I have no animosity or enmity toward you so I will do my best to help you, but it is only God who can decide to help you or not, not me." He gave me medicine and told me to return in three weeks and then he would tell me what he thought was wrong with me. He told me "Why have you come to Varanasi?" and I said, to study. He replied, "No, you have come here for moksha, mukhti. How can you fear death? Death is liberation. I am 78 and I am waiting for death; I have my ticket in my hand and I am just waiting for the vehicle. So you should have no fear of death, you have come to Varanasi for moksha, just accept God's will and don't fear it." I wasn't sure if this was very encouraging news or not. I told him I wanted to have a family. He said maybe that's not what God has in mind for you. You have to let go and surrender. There is no reason to fear death.
--
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
A History of the Divine
domingo, 3 de febrero, 2008 3:43:21
I want to introduce the story of my tantric teacher briefly to give a little perspective. His family is from the royal family of Nandi and his grandfather was invited to Tibet and taught secret practices and was known as the great sage of his time in India and has been written about in the book In Search of Secret India by Paul Brunton. At age 60 his grandfather decided to produce offspring and had a family. His son, by age 5, had memorized 10,000 mantras and at age 13 when his father died he was already fully ripened. He went on to get 13 master's degrees, 3 PhD's and to become a lawyer and doctor. But most of all he was one of only 5 tantric acharyas in all of India and has a secret knowledge. His two twins were born five minutes apart and one of them became most adept in tantra and ayurveda and the other in vedic astrology. These are my two teachers. Mahendra asked them if they would meet me and they agreed and after grilling me for a long time they agreed to teach me. Sri Jayant said I can transmit to you but it is up to you to take in what I will transmit. When they asked me why I wanted to learn I told them to help others and that is why they agreed to teach me.
They have told me since then that they never go to people, they wait for people to come to them. And that now I am part of a secret chain for doing good in the world and that secret powers will now always be helping me and that they will always be helping me. The told me they are teaching me practices for concentration, for gaining power and for controlling the power, but the power is only to be used for helping others, never for my own gain. He once asked me, Why are we teaching you these things? and I answered, So I can help others. and he said, 'No, so you can help yourSELF. We want you to join us, for the good of all people and to be part of this secret chain.' The practices are secret but they are like nothing I have ever learned before. I am in the prescence of masters of a type that I have not known before and of a very occult and secret power and path.
It also turns out that the three of us share the same birthday, June 3, and there father's birthday is the same as my brothers, February 2. We shall see where it all leads but I think I will be in India for a long time and that when I come to the West I will be a different person and my focus will be on teaching what I have learned and helping people wth this knowledge.
--
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
A Rose By Any Other Name
domingo, 3 de febrero, 2008 3:58:01
About ten years ago I had major life-changing events in my life and I became Phoenix. At the time I thought my life was over then I realized my life wasn't over, but a new life was beginning. In fact I did a ceremony at the Inipi lodge (stone people's lodge, ie, sweat lodge) where I had done ceremony for about two years monthly. In the ceremony I cut all my long hair off with my knife and wrapped it up with my name written on a peice of paper and then burned it in the fire at the Inipi lodge, then I cut my finger with a knife and let the blood drip into the fire and then I prayed to the trees and stars, the fire, the grandfathers and tankashilas, the night and the lake, to all beings and spirits, that I was starting a new life. Then I dug a little pit and laid in it on my back with my arms crossed on my chest and Francesca covered me with leaves and dirt and then she said "Zepherous is dead; Phoenix is risen!" and I got up and I was Phoenix. I went and swam naked in the lake to wash myself clean of my past.
But now ten years later, I am going to change that. I am now returning to my legal name Jeffrey James Vamvakias. This was precipitated by Sri Jayant telling me that for secret reasons he can't tell me that I cannot use the name Phoenix anymore and that I need to use my legal name. Originally I was named after my grandfather as is the custom with Greek first-born sons and I was baptized as Zafiris Demetrios Vamvakias (Zafiris means sapphire in Greek) Then legally my name became Jeffrey James Vamvakias. I think my mom foresaw trouble for a kid with a weird Greek name growing up in Texas. But Jayant said that name would not work either, but it had to be Jeffrey James Vamvakias. So that is who I am going to be now.
One other piece of news for the world--I am going to get married and have children. I am going to create a career and I am going to have a family. I have always been afraid that I would be trapped if I got married because my lifestyle doesn't earn the kind of money that is needed to support a wife and children. But now I am going to suspend my fears. So I am making the official notice to the world that I am not looking for a girlfriend, or a partner, but I am looking for a wife, someone to have children with, create a family with, to spend my life with, to build a life with. And that I will have a career helping people with the things I know. So this is a new phase in my life and I am excited to get married and have children.
Avanti!
--
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
The Pit
domingo, 3 de febrero, 2008 15:56:57
The difference between California and India is that in Cali I almost always feel joy and happiness. Even before I wake up and open my eyes in the morning I am already smiling and excited about the day ahead, making my tea, meditating, a sunrise surf, riding my blue beach cruiser around Santa Cruz, getting a latte, hanging out with my friends, doing yoga; all the things that make up my leisurely and pleasant life. Here on the other hand most of the time there is a hollow, cold, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach and a feeling that something bad is about to happen. It almost never goes away, like always waiting for the axe to fall.
One thing that gradually dawns on you here, at least with respect to the middle class and above, is that no one has your best interest in mind. Everyone is trying to get what they can get from you. As a westerner you are one thing--money, and everyone wants to get your money. Period. You realize that no one is on your side, no one is looking out for you, no one, even respectable people, are acting altruistically toward you; everyone is trying to get your money in whatever way they can. Everyone is cheating you at any opportunity they can get. As far as they can take advantage of you they will. You can't get angry, you just learn to accept that this is the way life is, it's different than home, lying is accepted here, cheating is accepted here. You learn to accept it and you never relax and you trust people to be the way they are going to be because India will never give you a break. Ever. It will knock you down and then keep kicking you.
And then you realize you are absolutely alone without a friend or an ally in an enormous country full of strangers so different from your own culture you might as well be on another planet, and not a really friendly planet. And that is a hard place to be. But there is a reason to be here. There is something, something to learn, something to be attained, that cannot be had back home in that pleasant, leisurely life. I belive.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
A Slight Retraction
lunes, 4 de febrero, 2008 13:01:30
I was exhausted last night and I feel I was unfair to India so let me clarify a bit. In India you expect to be lied to and cheated by shopkeepers, the people in your hotel, rickshaw drivers and the public at large. It's not about you so you don't take it personally, you don't get angry, you let it slide off your back. And you take counter-measures and defensive action to protect yourself. It's just part of life. But I thought that the people that I study with, the professionals, the people who are sharing with me about integrity and higher things are people who at least have altruistic intentions towards me. But I realized last night that across the board in India I am a commodity. Period. That's all. Just how it is.
I just met a journalist here making a documentary about Indian women being burned to death by their husbands or mother in laws so the husbands can get new wives and bigger dowrys.
The air pollution after a while becomes just part of life, the incessant sound of horns, of generators, of things that you can't imagine back home, all become the norm in a world where nothing is normal, nothing makes sense.
I walked out of the tantric masters house this morning. I just left. I can't help but use Mingyur Rinpoche and other people I trust as a reference point, a yard stick. Secret knowledge and power are great but there is nothing like people you trust, friends, people who are looking out for you, not trying to get from you. Give me a family and two kids and some waves and I'll trade it all in. I have nothing good to say about India right now.
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Brother From Anotehr Planet
martes, 5 de febrero, 2008 8:57:18
Imagine one day you are taken out of your world of blue skies, fresh air, sunshine, green nature, good food, dear friends, and happiness and dropped off on another planet where the atmosphere is grey and thick; all the colors are washed-out and pale from this grey, hazy atmosphere, and the most fundamental act of life, breathing itself, fills your lungs with air that is so full of particulate matter of all sorts that you almost never breathe, you try and hold your breath most of the time and still you develop a chronic cough, lung cold, sore throat and nasal inflammation and blockage. Where drinking the water and eating the food is cause for dhiarrhea and intestinal cramps. Where the rivers are full of filth and dead bodies, the earth is buried in garbage and filth and people deficate on the sidewalk while you walk past. Where your only option is to drink water out of plastic bottles which are then burned and contribute to the air pollution. Where the filth and squalor and rats are just esthetically unpleasant and weigh on your psyche compared to the food, water, and air that are causing actual diseases in your body. A place where the noise pollution is so loud as to be inconceivable, the incessant generators running and belching black smoke because the electricity never works, where the water never works, where people lay on their car and motorcycle horns and never lay off, somehow thinking that the more noise they make the better things will be. The noise is heinous, heinous.
And the people are so foreign to you that it is complete culture shock, where husbands and mother in laws pour kerosene on their wives and daughters in law and burn them to death for money, where people beat filthy, scabbed dogs for pleasure, where everyone lies to you and tries to cheat you, where people live in abject squalor and filth and tell you they are a 'superior' race to westerners.
Yet where you feel you must be, you must stay, to achieve goals there that you can't achieve at home so that you can return with skills to create a career that will help others and earn enough money to have your own home and family. That is the way I sometimes feel in India. Not always, but sometimes. I eat less and less the more I get sick from the food, I sleep less and less from the mosquitoes and noise, I wake up already tired, not wanting to get out of bed, not because I have no reason to get out of bed, but because I just don't want to face that grey, cold, alien world. I think things will pick up. I know they will. I miss the ocean on my skin, my surfboard, food I enjoy eating, human touch of friends, riding my bike, above all air I can breathe, water I can drink, people I can reason with. Colors that are bright, trees that are green... I miss the world I know.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
The Other Side of the Coin
miércoles, 6 de febrero, 2008 10:38:26
The last two nights I almost popped. Like Neo in the Matrix when he just can't handle reality and he pops or like people who suddenly lose it in India and pop. But I didn't pop and last night I made it home to my hotel and sat on the rooftop restaurant with one of my new yoga students and someone I met on the way home. We looked at the beautiful Ganges, the boats gliding by far below us, the beautiful architecture and suddenly we were all smiling and feeling so peaceful and that Varanasi was beautiful. And then we all 'got' it. Being at the hotel is like a sancturay, looking down on the river and life passing by below. What makes me crazy is the traffic, the noise pollution, the endless runaround down below.
We had a delicious meal and my appetite came back: I actually enjoyed eating. And the night was so lovely we went down to the Ganga and I got us a boat and we drifted down the river in the darkness listening to frogs chirping on the other side and looking at the river-front sky-line of Varanasi. It was sublime. It was perfect. I felt happy, relaxed and at peace.
Then this morning as soon as I got on the street and was assaulted by the grey air and noise pollution, as soon as I got to class and my prof could barely speak english and was 25 minutes late and then quibbled over his rate of pay, then once again I felt exhausted and sick of India. So it's not India, it's how you work it.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
The Housekeeper
lunes, 18 de febrero, 2008 6:36:42
The owners of my new flat arranged for a housekeeper to come each morning and evening to clean my place for 200 rupees, about five US dollars, per month. Yesterday she came for the first time, a tiny little woman with bangles and rings on fingers and toes, jewelry in her nose, and covered head to toe in a sari. Even though she spoke not a single word of English, nor I Hindi, she made it clear to me to make her a cup of chai, which I did, while she squatted on the floor. She continued to squat while drinking the chai, seemed pleased with the way things were going, and then walked me over to the little wooden bed in my bed chamber and directed me to take off the single sheet, which I did. And then by signs and motions she told me to take it to the bathroom and wash it. I thought the best thing was to fake a lack of understanding. At which point she took the sheet and tried to dunk it in the bucket of water I had just heated for my bath. I insisted she not do this and we reached a compromise by her leaving the sheet on my bedroom floor.
She then stared at me until I gave her my papaya and my liter of milk which I had bought for breakfast, at which time she seemed satisfied and left. I had a suspicion something hadn't gone off exactly right.
The next morning I was prepared for her and had her chai waiting when she arrived. This seemed to get us off to an immediate good start. After her chai she did the dishes and then I showed her the rest of the flat to be cleaned. In the bedchamber she told me to give her my wristwatch and to buy a wall clock for 50 rupees. I declined to give her my wristwatch and once again she looked at me for a while and then left. I think she likes me and we're off to a smashing start.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
A New Home
lunes, 18 de febrero, 2008 6:44:07
I woke up yesterday morning with a smile on my face to the sound of a train whistle in the distance. (I love the sound of trains) Half an hour later I heard a rooster crow. Otherwise there was silence. Silence! When was the last time I heard silence? I can't remember. And when was the last time I smiled? I can't remeber. Later that morning, during my tonglen meditation, sending light to all my friends, I found myself smiling again, but that irrepressable smile that comes from within and overflows outward. And I thought I am *really* smiling, this is amazing! I can't stop smiling! This is the me I remember.
The first night in my apartment I did yoga by candlelight and then went to sleep in my little wooden bed. This morning I made chai and then kheer (Indian rice pudding) and I felt so happy and peaceful to be cooking my own food in my own kitchen; the best feeling you can imagine. A feeling of *home*. I sat in my little chair and studied all morning and then went to the barber for a shave and massage for fifty cents US. Wow. Wow. I have a home at last, at least for a while. Cheers!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Sunday Morning
lunes, 18 de febrero, 2008 6:59:15
Sunday morning I woke up to train whistles in the distance and roosters in the foreground. It was pitch black and I got up and did my purifications, meditations, all my practices and then yoga by candlelight. It was wonderful, wonderful. I heated water in a bucket and bathed. I studied my fascinating ayurveda and yoga texts. And then doctor Singh (he told me to call him Singh) took me to the market to shop for vegetables and fruits and spices. I got five papaya for 25 cents US. (Imagine getting five ripe papaya in Santa Cruz for 25 cents) In fact for all my groceries for one week I spent only about five dollars US. It is amazing the difference between the prices of things in the real India and the tourist India. When I went for my first shave here on my first day the barber charged me 100 rupees for a shave and a massage and I thought that might have been a little steep. I told Singh and he told me it was only 20 rupees and he wrote a note saying I was his guest and to charge me the proper price which I took them today.
Dr. Dwivedi, my favorite professor, was going to get me a used bicycle yesterday so I took a rickshaw to his house and we strolled through his neighborhood to the bike shop. Everyone knows him and he knows everyone and I like the way he teases everyone but you can tell that he cares for everyone and that everyone likes him and his sense of humor and that he is highly respected. We can't walk twenty steps without someone running out to touch his feet.
We sat with his friends and drank chai and I watched the wind moving the leaves in the branches of some giant Pipal trees, (ficus religiosa, the tree under which Buddha became enlightened) and I felt happy. Just sitting there in the sun I felt happy with the four men who were teasing each other and doing nothing much at all I felt happy. Winter had ended suddenly two days ago, just like that, and it had become warm and fresh overnight. Breezy and blue sky and sunny after two months of grey weather and cold.
Of course the bike never came through (after all this *is* India), and so he walked me down to the Ganga just beyond his house, to an ashram and introduced me to the guru there who also has an ashram in Sonoma, CA! This ashram was the first place I have been in Varanasi that was almost perfectly peaceful and pure nature. It is far, far away from the tourist Ganga that I knew for my first three weeks here. It is on the banks of the Ganga and here the Ganga is serene and the air is fresh. The guru told me to come anytime and meditate and hang out, that I was always welcome and I volunteered to come and help the orphans that he is teaching there.
Llife here is starting to take hold and grow gently at last.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
My Apartment
lunes, 18 de febrero, 2008 7:10:43
I have a home. It is 7 minutes from BHU in a neighborhood called Brij Enclave Colony. It is brand new; I am the first person to move in. There is a bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom, a nice rooftop, 15 foot walls, beautiful marble floors with inlay and design, cabinets. The owners are Dr. NK Singh and Mrs. Rita Singh. He is a doctor and professor at BHU and she is a gynecologist. They have rented it to me for less than I was paying for my hotel room and it is a dream. They furnished it with a little bed, a bedside table, two plastic chairs and a plastic table in the living room, a faux-bamboo floor mat, and in the kitchen a two burner gas stove, (just like the mothership has) and some cookware. That's my home. They will send a woman to clean my house each morning and evening for 5 dollars a month and woman to wash my clothes twice a week for two dollars a month. A boy will deliver fresh cow milk to me each day and I can use the phone in the house next door. They told all the local shops that I am their guest and not to cheat me. ;-)
The neighborhood is quiet and peaceful, mostly populated by wealthy professionals like the Singhs but even still to get to my house I walk past cows, in fact an entire village by the time I get down my street.
Rita taught me how to make kheer and kitchari and dalia. I cannot tell you what a joy it is to have my own place, to be able to study, to cook, to sleep, to do yoga, to do my practices, all in my own space, in my own home. It is the best feeling in the world. Now I just need a bike and I am set to roll.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
The Return of the Housekeeper
martes, 19 de febrero, 2008 11:34:19
Due to a night of nightmares and a stomach ache I had not prepared the housekeeper's chai when she knocked on my door so as soon as I let her in I handed her my oranges heading off her request for chai. I could see she was not overly-enthused. I told her in plain english that I was late for class and had to leave asap and she responded in perfect hindi that she'd get right on it. I relayed to her that Rita Singh had told me to tell her not to use the sink but to wash the dishes under the sink so as not to clog the drain again. Rita must have already told her as this seemed like old news to her already. I went in my room to give the dear woman space to work her craft and it was only after some time I realized there was a dead silence in the kitchen; not the sounds one would associate with industrious dish cleaning and so forth. I stepped into the kitchen to find my housekeeper squatting on the floor doing exactly nothing. When she saw me she told me to take the dishes and wash them on the roof. I told her that was not on my agenda this morning so eventually she washed my dishes (in the sink), took my oranges and left. I think we are coming to an understanding.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Could This Be The Magic At Last?
martes, 19 de febrero, 2008 11:42:46
This morning I attended my first harmonium/music/vocal lesson with the professor from BHU. It was amazing. He was not only an obivious true artist and lover of his craft but a warm human being. He served me chai and sweets and gave me an absolutely professional and exceptional class. After I left I was ecstatic. I realized I was smiling; I was happy. I couldn't help it; I was just completely happy and smiling. Like the me I used to know. It was wonderful. There is something so wonderful about music.
I am more and more fascinated by my studies every day; they are growing and synthesizing and overlapping more and more. I like all my profs and especially Dr. Dwivedi who has done so much for me. This morning I was getting some mita pan (sweet betel nut) at the stall by his house (he introduced me to betel nut a couple days ago at the same stall) and one of his cronies came up and shook my hand and insisted on buying my pan and it was so nice to feel like part of the neighborhood. Things are getting better. The studies are amazing. Soon I will give a mini exposition on the vedic period of Indian history which is absolutely fascinating.
Avanti!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
It’s a Bike
miércoles, 20 de febrero, 2008 11:01:55
Last night I got my bike. Once I told the salesman that I was leaving in two months he told me that he would give me a two year guarantee on the bike and that if I kept it in the cardboard and plastic he would buy it back from me for half price. I thanked him and thought he should meet my house keeper. I am overjoyed to be freewheeling.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Wheels With Wings
miércoles, 20 de febrero, 2008 11:07:15
On my new bike, rolling into the pollution and utter chaos of the street for the first time, heading home in the near-dark from the bike shop. A telephone pole blows up and catches on fire. We all have to drive past it as it flames over our heads. I am on the street in a milieu of bikes, motorcylces, auto and bicycle rishshaws and SUV's. Everyone has their horns blaring, smog is thick and heavy, everyone weaving in and out of everyone else; utter chaos. I am ecstatic with an ear to ear grin on my face. I hit the main highway and am passing other bikes and singing to myself. An Indian man comes abreast of me on his bike and looks at me and says "Nice bike." (In Hindi, but I get it) We are smiling and he starts singing and life is grand on a bike. Wheels with wings.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Is It Getting Better?
miércoles, 20 de febrero, 2008 11:13:52
I find myself smiling and feeling happy. My music study is just fantastic. I am making ayurvedic medicines the ancient way. I am learning about medicinal ayurvedic plants, and all about diagnosis and treatment, the history of yoga and vedic philosophy. My studies are stellar. My daily practices are also just something special. Getting up at around 5 AM and having a solid 4 hours to do my Tibetan Buddhist practices, tantric practices, pranayamas, asana practice, and meditate. Then breakfast and bathe and a day of class and study. In the afternoon prostrations and meditation for another couple of hours. Then evening study and dinner and final yoga asana and sleep.
I love cooking, I love studying, I love my practices. I love that I am dedicating all my time to something I came here to do. I love learning and how the learning is starting to come together. After so much trouble in India it is getting better; I am feeling happy for the first time since I got here. I am getting what I came here to make happen. Avanti!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Shoot Out at the OK Kitchen
miércoles, 20 de febrero, 2008 11:35:14
Rita Singh told me she was going to teach me to cook dahl fry this morning. I couldn't wait. Actually she told me the last three days but she said absolutely this morning. But she didn't come. Instead the house cleaner showed up and started cooking. I assumed Rita had instructed her to do so. The good woman spent 30 minutes while I watched and used up most of my vegetables and all my rice. The more I watched her the more doubtful I became about her ability to cook. When she was done she had a pressure cooker full of uncooked lentils and vegetables she had thrown in whole, without cutting up and used more salt than I would have used in an entire week. She tried to crush it all with a spoon and then offered it me. Meanwhile she cooked my rice into a giant glop. I declined her kind offer and told her to help herself. It was at this moment that Rita Singh walked in and asked in horror, "What the hell is going on?" She looked at the food and said "What the hell is this?" and picked it up and hurled it in the garbage in anger. For the next 30 minutes she yelled at the housekeeper until the little woman began sobbing and wouldn't stop. It was horrible. They were yelling in Hindi and I could see it was all getting somehow blamed on me.
The housekeeper told Rita that I had *told* her to cook for me and Rita accused me of using the house keeper as my cook. (I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was actually cooking for the house cleaner. ;-) ) I said maybe we had a language barrier. Rita Singh yelled and yelled and then she told me to never let that 'stupid' woman cook for me again. She also told me she was never going to teach me to cook again since I had let the servant cook for me and wasted her precious time. The whole scene was absurd. The house cleaner left sobbing and said she never wanted to clean my house again. I told Rita maybe she could go easier on the poor house cleaner and she told me to mind my own business. The laundry woman came in and dumped all my clothes on the floor in a big pile, damp and unfolded. I said, 'Um, isn't customary to fold them and dry them?' and Rita Singh said something to the laundry woman who then made a feeble attempt to pretend to fold my damp clothes and left. I left feeling a little doubtful about the Singhs' good intentions.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
I Got the Music in Me
miércoles, 20 de febrero, 2008 11:40:58
This morning I road my bike to my music class by a route that gives new meaning to the word 'circuitous'. I wound my way on a rough cobble and dirt path through villages and it was amazing. Eventually I actually navigated to my music class. The class was stellar. Stellar. I wanted to learn simple chanting but my teacher is teaching me true Indian music. He is demanding but he told me I have a power to capture things very quickly. I left there feeling high as a kite; joyful. I love singing and playing and learning so much. Once again I navigated back through the most winding of ways through villages that I never dreamed were just off the main road. I was happy. Now I need to find a harmonium to practice; he is piling the homework on me. It's good. Learning is good. I feel like I am getting what I have come here for and struggled so hard to find.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Open Heart
miércoles, 20 de febrero, 2008 11:59:50
For the first time almost since I came to India, and since I almost died in the first three days, I feel happy again, happy inside, and I feel my heart opening the way it used to be open back home all the time and the way it was often open in Bodha. It is wonderful to have a home, stability, to cook, to do yoga and my practices in my own space, to study and learn something that fascinates me and matters to me and that I can use to help people. I am going to suggest that I take the orphans for a full moon environmental hike at the eco park across the Ganga in a couple nights. I am sending love and feeling love. Again. So don't forget me ok? ;-) I'll be back one day with a lot of new things to share and a lot of love for my friends. I think there are times when we are all open and times when we are closed; that we all have a light side and a dark side and that no one is perfect. But we try, and we try, and we try. Like Oscar Wilde said: We are lying in the gutter, but we are looking at the stars. ;-) Shine on!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Wondrous
jueves, 21 de febrero, 2008 11:23:38
This morning during my meditation it dawned on me just how wondrous it is to have a continuous practice. The benefits of doing a continuous practice are truly wondrous. By practicing daily, over time, things happen all by themselves. One gets more and more sensitive to certain vibrations, to something deeper, just behind the thoughts, there is a vast ocean of stillness. And without doing daily continuous practice one would never know it's there or be able to get close to touching it. But by practice one begins to find that place on one's own, as a product of practice. And that is someting wonderful. In fact to be able to create a life, even for a short time, centered around learning and practicing is also an absolutely wonderful thing.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Good Vibrations
jueves, 21 de febrero, 2008 11:36:42
In a strange coincidence it turns out that a friend of mine from the US has been a friend of the swami I met at the ashram a few days ago for thirty years; he told me he was a wonderful man.
How strange are the connections in this life; it's all karma. Dr. Dwivedi randomly decided to take me to the ashram by his house one day and the swami is an old friend of a friend, and I was immediately drawn and called to this ashram.
Today I was drawn back to that ashram beside the Ganga; I have felt a strong pull there ever since my first meeting. This morning I bicylced there after music class and as soon as I sat with the swami I felt myself going into that state I don't really know how to describe. Maybe I could say that I am sensitive to spritual energy. In any case sitting beside him, next to the Ganges in the sunlight suddenly I felt the energy crawling up my spine and flooding through me; tears started running down my face, I felt my heart opening, I felt overwhelming love and bliss. It is hard to explain. But it happens sometimes when conditions are right. I told him I was feeling a very strong energy and he told me the place was very auspicious and had a very good and strong energy. I fell instantly in love with this swami as we just sat there in silence. In the end I told him I would like to be near the ashram and take the kids on a full moon nature hike and maybe teach them music and yoga.
Within three minutes I was on the back of a motorcycle and at a house a couple blocks from the ashram and withine fifteen minutes a family had prepared a room for me, a bed, a big room, private bathroom, rooftop yoga, and three meals a day, and living with a family; all for a little less than I am paying now for my apartment. Of course it is not so luxurious and nice, but it is near the ashram and the Ganga.
So I think that when my rent finishes for this month I will move to the new place. Funny how life rolls along. Karma; it is all karma. I seem to be drawn like a magnet and steel to the right swami and right spiritual place at the right time.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Adventure Sports; Extreme!
jueves, 21 de febrero, 2008 11:41:47
If you have thought about joining one of those extreme adventure sport teams back home where you pay thousands of dollars and do some hardcore adventure challenge of some sort, forget it. Save your money. Just buy a thirty dollar Indian bike and try and find Durgha Kundha in Varanasi. It makes the Baja 1000 look like candy. I have gone back and forth a total of four times now and have never found the same path twice. But all roads lead to Durgha Kundha...eventually. More twists and turns than a maze, cobbles, rocks, dirt, bridges, goats, monkeys, cows, narrow winding lanes in all directions, and villagers everywhere going about village life in bizzare ways. It is nothing but straight up fun to bike through this lost world.
So get on your bike and ride.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Ayurveda Today
viernes, 22 de febrero, 2008 6:39:06
I am falling ever more in love with my studies of ayurveda. What I am coming to believe is that the ancient potential of ayurveda, which is mind-blowing, is not being achieved today as it is practiced in India and in the West as well. Most doctors I meet who are teaching it or practicing it arten't actually living it, nor practicing it as it was meant to be practiced; they are using the abbreviated allopathic version.
Ayurveda is vast, profound, probably takes lifetimes to master, similar to the way it is believed enlightenment takes lifetimes to achieve.
I remember the first time I ever heard the word ayurveda; it was in Texas and I was probably about 20. The moment I heard the word I asked what it was and instantly I felt an affinity, a connection, with it and I knew I wanted to learn it and that it was going to be part of my life. Years later when I came into contact with it I rembered that moment and wonder if there isn't some past life connection.
The first time I ever studied it was about ten years ago in India when I met doctor Jay Sanghvi. At that time he was (and still is) a very highly respected and well known doctor in India. I stayed in his clinic for a 10 day treatment of a lung virus I had contracted from air pollution in Kathmandu and during that time I developed a fantasy that he would ask me to study with him and that he would teach me all he knew.
My last day at the clinic he asked me if I had time to talk to him that evening. I said yes, of course. (This man had such a saintly vibration that I used to feel utterly content just sitting next to him in silence)
That evening this is what he said to me: "I have been waiting to meet the right person to teach everything I know to to take it back to the west to share it. But not like Deepak Chopra for rich people, but for all people. And you are that person."
It was my secret fantasy come true; I was vibrating. I asked him, "Why me?"
He answered, "Because you have the power to learn it and you have the power to share it. You have no idea what I am offering you; it will change your life forever."
I went back to the US, got my things in order and returned to India for my first round of studies. That was almost 10 years ago. On completion of that round of studies I returned to the US and began a career teaching ayurveda, yoga, meditation at workshops, retreats, lectures etc in New York and the east coast and Canada. I began a practice in upstate New York working with doctors. Soon I had a manager and I began to do just what I had promised doctor Jay not to do. I was bringing ayurveda to rich people who could afford it. And I was not fully cooked as they say in Ayurveda. One day I had an epiphany in the snow and I said goodbye to my manager and New York and returned to Cali to become a climbing guide. and teach kids environmental outdoor education. :-)
This current time around what I understand is that I want to focus on the preventive aspect of ayurveda, which classically is the most important. I want to specialize in preventive ayurvedic medicine and rasayana (rejuvenative therapy) and to create workshops that focus on learning and living, the practical application, of preventive auyurveda, longevity, and yoga, pranayama, meditation, chanting and kirtan.
And that is the focus of my studies and my goal for India.
I am also applying to the Ayurvedic University in Jamnagar for their course in ayurveda for foreigners beginning next October. There are only ten seats available and I will try and earn one of those seats by hard work and dedication to actually practicing and living ayurveda and bringing it to the world properly.
Avanti!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
The Exact Quote
viernes, 22 de febrero, 2008 7:06:07
According to the British authority: "we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" is the exact Oscar Wilde quote.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Sharing the Practice
sábado, 23 de febrero, 2008 6:23:56
Since I have been raving about the joys of my practice and how fortunate I feel to have this opportunity to practice and study full time I would like to share the practice I have been doing and some of the ayurvedic and yogic techniques that you can also try at home. You can take any part of this that works for yuo; any of it will have immediate and profound benefits on your life and health. So, enjoy:
Most of the practices can be easily found on line or in a book or you can ask me.
Nowadays I wake up naturally around 5:00 or 5:30
the first thing I do when I wake up is scrape my tongue and then drink a cup of very hot water and have a bowel movement.
(the reason for this is simple and important--at night your body is cleansing, purifying, healing and mending. The by-product of this is waste products that are accumulated on the tongue and in the intestines. If you do not get rid of these waste products first thing in the morning they re-absorb and become toxins which will cause disease)
next wash my eyes with cold water
then jala neti (cleansing the nasal passages with warm salt water and then coating them with a few drops of sesame oil)
nauli--this tones and stimulates the digestive organs. (all diseases have their root in a weak digestive system so many things in ayurveda are aimed at strengthening this system)
This finishes the purification section.
Then the next stage is pranayama. I do about 5 or 6 pranayamas in a row.
(I tend to mix up my practice to some degree, always looking for the perfect balance. Most of the time I do my Buddhist practices first because in a sense they are my core practices and my spiritual path. On the other hand sometimes I do the pranayama first since some of them can be considered purifications. By the time I am done with them I go into a naturally meditative state without trying.)
I do them in this order always:
kapalabhati: 5-7 minutes (this I consider to be more of a purification. It is hard to draw the line, if there is one, between meditative practices and physical health practices with yoga and especially with pranayama)
bhaya with three bandhas: as long as I can hold
nadi shodana: 3 minutes
brahmi: 11-20 times
anuloma viluoma: 10 minutes or more (this is my favorite one)
This finishes the pranayama phase.
The first part of my vajrayana practices take about 20 to 30 minutes; these I can't share.
The next part is tonglen meditation which is my favorite practice in the world and can be easily learned. In the middle of the tonglen I usually naturally insert my meditation practice and that can last for any amount of time but usually not more than an hour. Finally I dedicate my practice.
The final practices are always the tantric practices. These take about an hour and again I can't share them.
I also do a ceremony on the roof just after sunrise which doesn't take much time.
Here it is warm enough that I give myself an abhyanga (ayurvedic self massage with sesame oil) while I heat water in a bucket and then bathe.
After all this I do my asana practice on the mat. ;-) Lately for fun, to break up my practice, I have started practicing Iyengar yoga using some of the 'yoga courses' in the back of his book, Light On Yoga, which is a wonderful book by any standard.
Then it's time to make chai. The next practice is an hour of music practice and then the rest of the day is studying and going to classes.
In the afternoon for about an hour and a half I do my ngondro, prostrations and meditate again.
Before bed I do one more light yoga asana session. ;-)
I also fill a copper pot with fresh water evey night and drink it during the next day.
Pretty cool. Let me tell you my days are full and boredom is not a threat. And the practices get results almost in a way without even trying, just do them and things happen and things change.
I used to think India was going to kill me; now I think it has made me stronger. I am getting used to the pollution of all kinds, of the diseases and bacteria. I am getting stronger. You know what Nietzsche said: That which does not kill us makes us stronger. (I am sure the Brit will send me the exact quote.)
Avanti!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Recipes from India; Cooking Under Presure
sábado, 23 de febrero, 2008 6:36:51
Hre are a few things I've learned to make here:
chai:
I take one cup of fresh cow milk (30 cents a liter, delivered to my house straight from the cow in the morning) and 1/4 cup water and put it on low heat and start bringing it to a boil.
While this is happening I
add sugar to taste
1 or 2 cardamom pods, crushed
1 clove
a small piece of cinammon bark
a piece of licorice root
a pice of ginger root
once it starts to boil I add 1/2 to 1 tsp of tea. It is a kind of Indian tea I haven't seen in the US; very nice.
Let it boil about two or three minutes and strain. It rocks.
Kichari
This meal is easily digestible and builds ojas and strength.
In a pressure cooker:
put in a little ghee and turn on low heat
chop up half an onion and add
shell and soak a handfull of peas and then add them
chop and add one tomato
add cumin seeds
turmeric powder
salt
(all to taste)
wash a little rice (half cupish) three times and add the rice
all of this is being stirred and cooking on a low heat.
Now, add water,. a cup or two and then a half cup of green mung beans.
close the lid to the pressure cooker and let it come to steam three times.
then let it sit for a while and open. serve this amazing meal with fresh ghee.
Rocks!
Kheer
this is a healthy nurturing Indian desert:
in a pot add fresh cow's milk. a couple cups. add sugar to taste, a couple tsps and slowly bring to a boil. then add a little rice, 1/4 cup maybe (experiment). toss in a few golden raisins. keep stirring while it cooks on low heat until rice is soft and you have a kind of pudding. top this when serving with a little garnish of coconut shreds, crushed pistachio, crushed cashew and almonds. This is amazing.
Dalia
This is a breakfast food here; like oatmeal sort of.
first you need cracked wheat; and to prep it: heat a little oil in a pot and add the cracked oats, maybe 8 cups and just brown it very lightly. now let it cool and it's ready to make dalia any time.
for the dalia heat milk a couple cups and a little water in a pot with sugar to taste and when it comes to a boil add 2.5 Tablespoons of the cracked wheat and cook slowly until it's soft. you can add water if needed. IT's great.
that's good for now; next--subji and my secret Indian recipe!
start your pressure cookers!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Absolutely Mind Blowing
sábado, 23 de febrero, 2008 15:25:02
I am so utterly blown away by what I am learning that I am almost in a state of ecstatic shock. I can't contain these things. It is beyond anything anyone could even imagine and it gets richer, deeper, more profound and above all utterly and essentially practical each day.
I am not allowed to share most of the practices I am learning; they are truly secret, but I can share, in a roundabout way, perhaps some things. So let me try and blend in a quick narrative a little theory and history and hint at the practical aspects. I can't express the sheer excitement of the realization of what I am learning; what it means, what it leads to. It is like being introduced to a secret world, behind a secret door, of things you never dreamed existed; but they do. Like they told me, "We never look for people; they come to us. And now you are a link in a chain and there will always be secret powers protecting you and helping you. You are part of us now." (This is not a cult I'm talking about; it is another world.) It's almost like the Eastern version of the DaVinci Code, but it's real. I promise that if you follow me through this that we will get to some clues and hints about things that are just absolutely mindblowing, and actual. But let me wind my way there. Jump on and ride this with me. So let me begin:
An ultra brief and incomplete history of India.
About 11000 years ago, or so... there was the Agama, ethnic, tribal period in India. I will write more about this later, but let's say this was the time of Shiva. In India Shiva is not a metaphor, Shiva is real, Shiva is alive today.
Then the Aryans moved in. But in time they had to make adjustments to the existing culture which was a strong one with very powerful practices.
(Damn that I don't have my Macbook; it sucks to try and write anything worth writing in these sweat shop cyber cafes; destroys any attempt at intelligent writing, but let me throw this together quickly; forgive the gaps and mistakes.)
Here's a note: Ishavasha Upanishad says that you can't renounce until you've lived a life of karma, and that there can be renunciation *with* enjoyment of worldly things; they don't have to be exclusive. Point well taken and remembered later please. Also, our sense organs are limited to a small range of energy. We can only detect light, sound, touch etc, but there is much more scope, breadth, depth, range, varieties, of energy available, existing than we can normally detect; that we don't know but which we have the capacity to know. When we concentrate, conserve and channel energy inside us in a single path then we can grasp that which is beyond our grasp--that is called transcendance.
In Vedic culture there were different periods, evolutions; the Katha Upanishad marks a transition away from the time of fire sacrifice (yagya) which was causing so much environmental destruction, to a new period focuses on knowing the Self, the Absolute. This upanishad introduces it for the first time and begins to transition away from sacrifice, it is introduced but now expounded on until the Shvetashara Upanishad. Keep in mind that the Ishavara, Katha, Shvetashara Upanishads and the Baghavan Gita were all written within about a 500 year period (around 800 to 1200 BC) and were all reaction against the Vedic culture, and led India in a new direction you could say.
Vedic culture went through stages, the final stage being during the time of the Atharva Veda, the time of chemistry, ayurveda, jyotisha (astrology), military science, yoga.
As the local ethnic, Agama, culture mixed more and more with Vedic culture Vedic culture became more and more corrupted, diluted. Aryans had to adjust more and more to the local culture. During the time of the Mahabharata the great Aryan kings of India were marrying local tribal girls and the Agama system had more and more increase.
Originally there was no questioning the Vedas, but as cultural evolution progressed in stages the time of discussion came and this was the time of the upanishads. And this was profound discussion, Brahmins came to power in this time.
The Katho Upanishad is the migration point away from this period. In this upanishad Naciketa established yagya (fire sacrifice) as unimportant and put importance on life after death; does the self exist after death? And yoga was born as the science of being acquainted with death via the process of Self-realization. But it only gives a glimpse; it doesn't disclose it yet. But if you will know the Real Self then there is no fear of death. You become above the fear of death because you know your body is just outerwear and mind is the undergarment. You change your clothes in every birth. But the Self is immortal. The *color* of the Self is changed in each life due to the mental set up. The Self adopts a mental set up and according to that set up acquires a body (according to your mentality).
Now, in a reaction to the Vedic period there came the Shraman period. At this time in reaction to Vedic period people said that all of the Vedic hymns and rituals were nonsense. And then a group of people began to seek the meaning of the hymns to see if they were utter nonsense; to study them very carefully and find out that some of the things weren't nonsense, but very profound and had very deep meaning. That is when the upanishads came into being. But this period can be traced from the Katha Upanishad.
In short the Vedic culture made compromises with the ethnic culture which eventually led to an ecclectic culture, which led to chaos, which led to a reaction, the culture itself caused the reasons for its own destruction. The final destruction of the Vedic culture was master-minded by Lord Krishna and in the great battle of the Mahabharata all the Aryan nobles were destroyed and that was the absolute end of the Vedic period. (But Krishna preserved the knowledge of Vedic culture in the Baghava Gita!!!)
Then the Brahman culture flourished and then Shraman (as a reaction to Brahman). The shraman culture was very rigourous as a reaction to the chaos of the Brahman culture it had supplanted; in fact it was too rigorous for the common people.
In search of a middle path--Buddhist culture emerged! But after the death of the Buddha, with time, this culture tried to make compromises with the local culture again (like the Aryans) and was corrupted. This was the darkest period of Hindu culture. Everything was for sale, your children, your wife, boys, girls, everything was sellable and life was corrupt. There were no moral or social norms. This was around 600--800 AD. Buddha had said that his teachings would decay in 500 years and in a 1000 years it will be finished in India.
King Asoka was maybe the main influence in spreading Buddhism, around 300 BC. Eventually there was a Brahmin revolution that gave a great shock to the Buddhists. And around 300 AD another Buddhist king, from the outside, Kanoshk, invaded India and returned it to Buddhism. But once again in the Gupta period the Brahmins were back in power. The Brahmins have always been excellent at modifying themselves; their minds, the behaviour, to stay on top and change with the times.
Buddhas strongest and weakest point was that he wanted to find a path so that everyone could become liberated, the masses. But the masses are never interested in, or have an ardent desire for, liberation. The masses can easily become hypocritical and are not spirtually serious. Once the Buddha died his followers tried to follow his wishes and bring Buddhism to the masses, but to keep it alive they compromised with the local Agama ethnic culture until eventually there was nothing left but an utterly corrupt system.
At this time a two way attack was needed: A philosophical attack to contradict the teaching of Buddha and the methodology of Vajrayana and Mahayana.
(This is what I have been leading up to so I am going to jump to a new email for those who have followed this far and for all the rest to begin with. This is where it gets fascinating.)
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Absolutely Mind-Blowing II; The Good Stuff
sábado, 23 de febrero, 2008 16:09:16
Ok, if you are just joining this email, I have been giving a history of India and I am just coming to the part where it gets mindblowing and that leads to the practices I have hinted at before. So follow this because it gets fascinating at the end, but you have to have the context to get it.
We've just got to the point in Hindu history where Buddhism has compromised itself with the local ethnic Agama culture to stay alive and survive and in reaction to that utterly corrupted system a solution was needed.
At this time a two way attack was needed: A philosophical attack to contradict the teaching of Buddha and the methodology of Vajrayana and Mahayana.
(Now, this is going to get fascinating. Bear in mind that I am a Buddhist and my path is Vajrayana. Watch what's coming ahead and how this is all going to tie together with the present reality of my life in India!)
Shankaracharya did this. His teacher's teacher was in fact a follower of the Vamacharya path of tantra, which is the Hindu name for...Vajrayana, my path of Buddhism. Shankracharya's grand teacher we can say followed this path, but ultimately it corrupted him and he was saved by his own disciple, Shankaracharya's teacher. And later he assigned Shankaracharya the job of contradicting Buddhism. It is said that Shankaracharya was actually a hidden Buddhist; he contradicted the outer aspect of Buddhism but not the inner aspect.
Shankaracharya wrote the Manduka Upanishad to contradict Buddhism in reaction to the corruption and decay of society.
Now let me jump to the point: There is a path called Vajrayana in Tibetan Buddhism and Vamachara in tantra. And at the higher levels these paths seem to be, historically and practically, one in the same. And coincidentally I am studying with one of the only five kal acharyas (tantric masters) in India today, and my Buddhist path and root guru is vajrayana and a vajrayana master. This is *coincidence*; ie, this is karma. And this all happened since I came to India.
In vamachara the path uses five things: matsya, madya, mudra, mansa, maithun. ie, fish, wine, favorable woman, muscle control (specific exercises) and prolonged intercourse.
One who achieves this path is called a Siddha. Kriya are the higher yoga exercises. The path of Kriya has been evolved as an alternative to vajrayana/vamachara. The path of Kriya uses semen control and brahmacharya.
In these practices semen is the most important thing for life control and you must keep it. It is all developed around retaining semen and a system of exercises/practices with a favourable woman, and that is why marriage can be a very useful thing in this path if the path remains the focal point. Because then you have a 'favorable woman' to practice with. These practices are about releasing kundalini and when in union each person is trying suck up the essence of the other person and thrust so that each person is touching the other persons muladhara chakra, you are getting the benefit of both of them being opened at once and feeding each other. Creating a circuit. I am just touching on the barest of this right now. But the depth of it is mind-blowing, the connections, the higher path and enlightenment that this path is aimed at.
Nath Panth, the Nath System of yoga leads to the awakening of Kundalini and was developed as a counter path in some respect to Vajrayana. It is considered to be the first real science in the world. And as a science it does not consider anything as "good" or "bad", but whether or not it works or is effective. This Nath Panth can also be called the traditional system of Shaivism. This path used the things from vajrayana that work and so it has incorporated the "potent leftist methods, or left hand methods"
It uses nauli, which I mentioned in one of my emails about practice. Nauli is used to strengthen the stomach muscles in order to achieve the next practice.
Vajroli--the ability to suck liquid up your penis.
sahajoli--prolonged intercourse
amaroli--drinking of the middle third portion of the urine which is rich in the juice of the pineal gland. Because this is the fluid or nectar of life. And the reason for being able to suck liquid up the penis is to litterally suck up the nectar of the favorable woman during the prolonged intercourse.
So Vajrayana and Vamachara were integrated into Natha Yoga. Natha yoga plus tantra developed into Hatha yoga, which in an evolutionary path became raja yoga and bhakti yoga.
This is all the briefest of skeleton descriptions but even so it took way too much for the average email reader.
But if you can fill in the dots and follow the evolution from top to bottom you can see that it is absolutely, utterly mind blowing. These paths have evolved over 13,000 years or so, to what we have today, one after the other. And these things aren't myths, these practices are real, they exist, they are being taught and practiced and they are ultimately for the highest evolution in a spiritual sense. But the intracacies, the interconnections, the practical aspects, all of it is mind blowing.
And most of all is that back home it is what I was looking for; it was what was developing inside me, all my life it's been developing inside me; the talent I was born with in a way, this is why I came to India, hoping to find someone who could help me learn to control it, to use it, to channel it, and now I have a place, and people; teachers, real teachers, masters, and a path, to develop the thing that has been in me my whole life. It is a serious endeavor, not a game, it is a path, a serious path and a dedicaton. A responsibility. My life has changed since I came here. I want to learn as much as I can while I can; I want to come back; I want to learn to use it, develop it, for good. I want a family, I want to do something worthwhile with my life. So. A path is here. Now, the work is at hand.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Step Into the Light
domingo, 24 de febrero, 2008 5:30:59
I used to think India was going to kill me. I had a long, dark time here; a heavy time, from the very beginning. And since Nepal I had this premontion, realization, of death; I felt death breathing down my neck.
But now I feel that India has made me strong; my adapatability has increased, my immunity is greater. I have survived. I realized again this morning that I am happy again. I have come out of the dark period and I am healthy and strong. Spring has arrived coincidentally with my stepping back into the light. I feel alive again. The practices are paying off.
I have found what I came here to find and that amazes me; I have found the yoga, ayurveda, tantra, music that I dreamed of finding here--all in Varanasi. And I have found excellent teachers to learn from. Now I do not feel like I am going to die. I am going to live. I am healthy again; I will a live long time and I will learn and teach, learn and teach for the rest of my life. I will share what I am learning; I will have a family. Phoenix is gone now and Jeffrey James Vamvakias has risen; a new incarnation in my life. And this next phase is going to be filled with learning and sharing and strength and a family.
Step into the light!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Practice Makes Perfect
domingo, 24 de febrero, 2008 5:36:55
Usually I tell people that getting up around sunrise is fine for doing yoga, but I want to be more exact. In fact the best time for practice is around 4 AM. If you can at least be on your cushion or mat by 5 AM that's still good. That quiet, silent, still time of the morning is absolutely the best time for practice. The rewards are extraordinary.
Many people go to teaching after teaching and workshop after workshop; it's a lifestyle for them. And it's always good to get good teachings from a qualified master or teacher. But all the teachings in the world won't help that much without practice. Practice is the path and the path is practice. Practice will take you there and nothing else will. And the amazing thing is that when you practice you get results. It's a universal law.
So find a practice to follow and commit to your practice. Watch what happens; watch the changes. Little by little, slowly but surely, until one day, out of the blue, if your persevere, suddenly things are different. Even if they were tough up until yesterday, maybe today is the day everything changes. And then the past is just the past. And Now is now. Practice now!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Plain Talk; Practical Application
viernes, 28 de marzo, 2008 11:37:09
Yesterday in Pilgrim's Bookstore having an intense converstation with the manager about Vedic history etc, I noticed a young woman and an older man who reminded me of a guru both watching me. When we paused our conversation the woman stepped in and said she was from a TV station and could she interview me so I said why not and she asked me to talk about Yoga and Ayurveda, so I did. Then the manager told me the owner of Pilgrim's would like a word with me, who turned out to be the older man. Again, another intense and exciting conversation ensued. At one point the owner told me he wanted to start a new line of books on Ayurveda and what would I suggest. I told him it depened on what his readers were interested in and if it were me I would want a bood on ayurveda that was simple and practical and written for westerners but with all the historical authenticity of ayurveda; not watered down and new age(y).
And he asked me if I would write a manuscript for such a book and submit it to him for publication. He gave me his private email address and said when he saw me he had a feeling there was a reason I had walked in to the store at that moment. So, exciting idea and something I've been wanting to do. Write a book on the practical application of ayurveda for westerners. It would cause me to consolidate and focus my knowledge and would be perfect for preparing lectures for the ayurveda workshops I'd like to create.
So fingers crossed, the plan is to create yoga, ayurveda programs, with kirtan at night, and travel around the US and teach the programs while living out of the (new) (yet to be acquired) Mothership, camping on the land, surfing and backpacking as I go, cooking out, sleeping on the ground under the sky, and teaching. Amazing yes?! And I will have an incentive to get all this information together in the form of a book. The only way to truly enjoy being free is to have a counterpoint. Drifting freely through life can only be joyful if there is a weight on the other side of the balance beam, something to cause growth, something to help others, something to create. Life is creativity and creativity is life. Life is nature, life is using your body, life is breathing, life is sleeping on the earth under the stars, life is friends and family.
Now I just have to get out of here and come home and get started on the plans. I'll need a quiet place to write and be in nature. The dream continues. And time will tell.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India - Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Adopted Son
viernes, 28 de marzo, 2008 11:54:30
When I moved out of my new flat and in with the family a month ago to be close to the orphan boys at the orphanage/ashram on the Ganges I had no idea I was going to become part of a family. It wasn't until the second night of my 25 day treatment when I collapsed with a high fever and a migraine in front of the house and the family carried me inside and laid me down that I began to understand. I was in so much pain that although I could hear them speaking to me I couldn't open an eye, or move a finger, or make a sound; I was completely debilitated. I was motionless. The mother poured oil in my hair and massaged my head, my face, eyebrows, neck, back and arms. And in my fever, the minute she touched me, I felt so much love pouring from her into me that it was almost heartbreaking. In that instant, in my delirious, fevered state, I thought to myself--this is what I am missing in my life--a family. This woman is not beautiful, but she is as solid as a rock, her love is like a rock; her heart is full of simple goodness; this is what I have missed in my life. A solid family love, a wife and kids. Someone to share my life with.
As I lay there truly debilitated I began praying for her because she has been sick since I've known her, and then praying for her husband, the father of the family, a good man, who has polio and is also suffering from some illness, and for the woman upstairs whose 20 year old daughter died two months ago of a brain hemmorage. I began to pray for all everyone I know who is suffering and for all beings and said If I could take the suffering of all people onto myself right now, if it would take their suffering away to take it on me then I would take it.
In the morning when I woke up the daughter told me that her mother said she saw me suffering and she felt so much love for me and couldn't stand to see me in pain. She said they were all scared for me that night and that I was a part of the family. I spent the next two days reappreaising the last 20 years of my life. At first I chastised myself for how I have spent my life, following my dreams, following my heart, living a life of adventure, going from one dream to the next and never settling down. Walking away from so many girls I *should have* married. But in the end I decided that I am the way I am; I can't change my spots. And in fact I love my lifestyle. I love sleeping out of the mothership, I love being on the road, I love surfing and backpacking and making campfires and sleeping under the stars and playing my guitar and doing yoga at sunrise.
There is only one thing I want to change with my life--I want to do it with a family. I want to fall in love, I want to get married and I want to have children; and I want us all to live this wonderful life together, as a family. I want to watch my kids grow up. So life moves forward!
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Fundamental Difference
viernes, 28 de marzo, 2008 12:06:05
There is a fundamental difference between Indian and US culture. In the US when our kids turn 18 or so we "push them out of the nest" so they can make their own lives. At that point the kids go away and usually get married and start their own families, often far away from their own parents. The new family grows up as a nuclear unit and the grandparents, when they get old, are often put in a home to be cared for. We have come to think this is normal.
In India families stay together. You never push your children out of the nest--the nest is for everyone. Your daughter leaves when she gets married but she moves in with her husband's family. Your sons on the other hand get married and their wives and then kids all stay in the original home. Often there are four generations at a time living in one home. As parents grow old they do so with their children and grandchildren as part of their lives. The mom and daughters usually spend the day at home cooking, and the boys and men work.
But in general working in India is much different than for us. Everyone comes home for lunch, there is no fast food or eating out or working late. You come home for lunch and then everyone takes a nap. You care for your parents when they get old, and amazingly you find 90 plus year old grannies in almost every household who are remarkably able and content, peacefully waiting for God to call them onward.
So I would choose the Indian system over the western any day. There's no question. What could be worse than putting your own parents away to grow old sepearted from their children; how horrid. Yet West is West and East is East and the two shall never meet. How can we radically shift our socitey to make it more healthy before it erodes beyong repair?
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
My Dead Girlfriend
sábado, 29 de marzo, 2008 3:08:14
Last night I awoke from and interesting dream. Unfortunately the details quickly faded but the feeling remains. The entire dream had a bit of a Tim Burton flavor to it. In the dream I was at a party with friends and there was a beautiful girl sitting serenely, almost motionless, on the bed. It was love at first sight. I approached her and talked to her but none of my friends could see her. We had an instant connection. When I tried to touch her she told me that if I touched her it would be harmful for both of us and the only way we could be together was for me to meet her in the land of the dead; and she gave me a location to meet her. In real life it has been over two years that I have fallen in love with someone and it was such a nice feeling in my dream.
In the next part of the dream I went to land of the dead to find her. The land of the dead was actually a pretty fun place and on my search for her I made a lot of friends and was enjoying myself, and my usual sense of humour was alive and well. In one scene I had come upon a place and given the name of the location I was to meet her but before I could be directed I met a girl and her family (who were all dead of course) who were doing a ceremony for their mother (who was dead even in the land of the dead) that they hadn't performed when she died. Everywhere I went people told me about how they died and their stories.
At one point I was getting out of a car with some dead friends I'd made and walking into a store or a cafe, talking about the dead girl I was in love with and trying to find and made this comment: "When I was alive I was afraid to get married, and now that I'm dead I'm still afraid to get married; I think I'm afraid of commitment." And I laughed at myself.
In the end of the dream some dead friend I'd made was rubbing mosquito repellent on my back because of the mosquito bites I'd gotten, and I woke up to the real mosquitoes. ;-) In all, I'd say the land of the dead was a fun and enjoyable place with a fresh climate and fun people, and where my true (dead) love is waiting. ;-). Avanti!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
What I Like About India
sábado, 29 de marzo, 2008 4:12:26
These are some of the unique and wonderful things that belong strictly to India:
Wherever my cheap bicycle may break down at whatever time all I have to do is walk for half a block and there will be a bicycle "repairman" on the side of the road with all the accouterments to fix whatever problem has occurred for less than 50 cents.
Anywhere, at any time, for about 10 cents I can get a cup of chai in a 'biodegradable' clay cup that you just throw on the ground when done.
Getting a shave with a straight razor and a head, neck and arm massage for 50 cents from barbers who are located every 50 meters.
Having a liter of fresh milk delivered straight from the cow to my house every morning by a boy on bicycle for less than 50 cents.
Bucket baths! Filling a bucket with hot water in the morning and then pouring it out of the cup over my head and lathering up and rinsing off. There is nothing in the world as nice as a bucket bath.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Infuriatingly Incompetent
domingo, 30 de marzo, 2008 14:42:08
Sometimes it seems that every time in my life I try to do the 'right' thing, the 'responsible' thing, instead of following my heart and doing what I 'want' to do, that it always leads to some kind of disaster. And that life, when I don't listen to its messages, starts sending me stronger and stronger messages, usually through my body, until it demands my attention and I have to listen to it.
My fifth day in India I almost died. Can you have a more loud and clear message that says, "Leave Now!" than that? But I kept thinking, "I have to achieve what I came to accomplish here. I can't leave until I succeed here. I have to study yoga, ayurveda; that's why I came here. Just a little longer and it will come together."
I went to Bodhgaya for the Buddhist retreat and got ill immediately on arrival and was sick the entire month or so I was there. Again, I said to myself (or Life was saying to me) 'Get out of here man; Now!’ And because of flight complications once again I vacillated and decided to give it one more try, to not give up my goal. And so I came to Varanasi where I have been now for two or three months. And true, I have studied and learned, but my God man, in almost 4 months in India I can barely think of a time when I was happy, when I was having fun, when I was someplace that wasn't horribly polluted.
Yet I kept telling myself, 'No, not yet, don't give up yet; you are getting what you came to learn; it's just a price you have to pay, so stick with it a little longer; don't quit. It's for your future.' And once again just a couple weeks ago, my flight date was finally here and I could leave and god help me for being a fool; I allowed myself to be convinced that these doctors here could give me a treatment in 25 days that would give me a 100% cure, guaranteed. I knew I should go; everything told me to get out of this place, the writing on the wall was in big, bold letters--"GET OUT OF DODGE NOW!!!!"
But I thought, if this works, then I could be cured forever. I have nothing to lose and so much to gain; I have to try it. It's just three weeks, and then I'll be forever cured. So said my logic when my heart said, 'Get out! Escape!"
The second day of the treatment I had a debilitating migraine and fever. The doctors assured me no problem; I had to continue at this point, it wouldn't be a good idea to stop. After the first main treatment they gave me, on the 10th day, I did not have a bowel movement for the next four days. They told me it was fine. We started the final seven days, the second major treatment, four days ago. And each day I told them something was wrong, and they laughed and said, no no, it's perfect.
Last night at midnight I called my doctor. Something was very very wrong. This morning they took me to one of the departments of the hospital and I met with a doctor who examined me and said, "You're fine." It took me an hour of arguing with this idiot to get to the point where I could reason him into understanding I was far from fine. Finally he made an appointment for me to get an ultrasonograph tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile during the day my symptoms got rapidly worse until my doctor and the head of the panchakarma department both came to my house and examined me. The upshot is this: It looks like my prostate is very enlarged. Because of this enlargement I have had liquid diarrhea for the last several days and a constant 'urge' and at the same time, increasingly, each day, I feel like someone has jammed a finger where the sun doesn't shine, as the prostate seems to be enlarging each day.
Tomorrow we do the ultrasonograph and then I will hopefully have some facts and can decide how to proceed. It is horribly frustrating to know that at home all I would have to do is go to the emergency room and in 30 minutes I would know and could get an answer. Here it has taken days, DAYS, just to get to the point to get an ultrasound tomorrow for something that could be potentially not the sort of thing you want to wait days to find out more about.
Once I know what the status is then I can decide what to do. That is, heaven help me not, if I have to get it dealt with here asap. (Please god no!) Or if I can get an emergency flight home and deal with it there.
God I want to come home and be away from here. Why has it taken me so long to listen? I do not belong here. I do not belong here. Every time I try and do the 'right' thing instead of the fun thing it seems I fail miserably and that life keeps talking louder and louder until it knocks me down to make me listen.
Home is Where I Want to Be
domingo, 30 de marzo, 2008 15:03:54
Last night I didn't sleep much; and I tried to stay cool and calm. I had gone to bed out on the veranda because of the oven-baking heat in my room and after a while I could no longer deny that something was very wrong in my bowels. Finally I had to come in and try and go to the bathroom and that is when I discovered something was very very wrong. Around midnight I called my doctor who told me to wait until the next day because unlike America, when you get sick here, you can't just run out to the ER--you're stuck.
For the next couple hours I played the guitar and tried to not think about myself, and not worry. But I was worried. And then finally without meaning to I found myself praying and I felt such a huge relief, such a love of God, such a warm, heartfelt love and gratitude for God. And I realized I am who I am and that will never change. I don't want any gurus, I don't want any secret powers, I don't want any secret practices. I am not Tibetan, I am not Hindu; I am me and I am my own teacher and I have my own inner compass that guides me. I was born in America.
I was born with and have always had a deep love for God; and I cannot deny that. And for me God is not somebody up there, in fact I don't think there is a 'God'; God is not a person that listens to you, or a force or a power, God is nothing. God is a feeling of love in your heart. You pray to God, with all your heart, you bare your soul to God, you share your greatest fears, your dreams, your hopes, you ask forgiveness, you ask to be a vessel, to do God's will. You feel a love for God that is so complete and perfect, that fills every cell of your body and gives you the greatest sense of peace and comfort in the hardest times---not because there *is* a God actually listening to you, but because of the ACT itself of loving God, of surrendering everything to God, your ego to God's love. That is how it works.
There is no God that can be described, personified, understood, conceptualized. God is beyond all conception, all understanding, all contexts. God is the love you feel in your heart for God; God is complete love and relief from suffering and surrender. God is love, as simple as that. And I was born to love God. That is my path--to love God with all my heart. I have sampled all paths, I have studied them, practiced them, find them to be good and useful, but I am not of them. I am only me, free of religion, dogma, teachers, masters, I have an internal love of God that sustains me and gives me peace. I am my own master and I follow my own path in life. I have everything I need already in me and I don't need anyone to give me something I don't already have. I don't need to do other people's intricate and elaborate practices that I half understand. I need only to love and to pray and open my heart and follow my dreams and my joy--and then I am healthy and happy and filled with love and peace.
All I want to do is get home. I give up and I quit. I have fought against life on this trip from day one thinking I had to be here for my career, my future, that I would learn things to build a career. But there is nothing I do not already know; I have what I need.
I want to come home, I want to surf, sleep on the ground under that stars, be with my beloved family and beloved friends. I want to smile and laugh and wake up joyful. I want to eat good food, ride my bike, hike the Sierra, be healthy, do my yoga practices and teach people what I know. I want to find a way to make a sustainable income doing what I love. Enough to keep on doing what I love and I want to get married and have kids. I want to come home now and never ever ever again allow myself to believe I need to go somewhere I hate being to get something I need, or to do something I hate doing to get something I need.
All I need is love, nature, ocean, stars, moon, wind, trees, sky, friends and family and to use my body and stay healthy. I came around the world to find out everything I ever needed was right there with me all along. I love my home, I love my friends, and I love my land, and I love the earth and nature. As soon as I can get out of here I am coming back to you my dear home.
-- Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Larger than Life
martes, 1 de abril, 2008 3:20:48
Lately, despite everything, I have actually been waking up smiling, (always a good sign) and even, in an odd way, "enjoying" Varanasi and the heat. But this morning I woke up out of sleep around 4:30 with a cold feeling of a kind of anxiousness, of fear actually. I got up and walked to the ashram on the Ganges because it is comforting to be near the kids.
Yesterday the report was that my prostate gland is more than twice the normal size. According to the doctors at the hospital where I had the ultrasonograph, the normal weight is 20 grams and mine is at 46.4 grams and is enlarged to what is known as the second grade. When my doctor saw the report I saw his eyes bug out for a second and then he and my other doctor had a rapid and somewhat heated exchange in Hindi and then he told me I should get home to America for treatment. He said it's not an emergency but you should get home and not wait a couple months.
The head of the 'ano-rectal' department (charming name) said not to worry, and that he also thinks I have amoebiasis. Today I get results of the blood test and urinalysis to see if there is infection.
Walking to the Ganga through the early morning heat and pollution of this strange foreign world I got tears in my eyes; I just want out of here. I feel so alone and cut off from my world. I am sure I have gotten sick by spending six months in places that were horribly polluted and where I was never happy; trying to 'build' skills to 'build' a better life, to earn a better income, to be more able to live in my own country doing things I love to make a living. But what I found is that there is never ever any reason to be someplace you don't belong, to be someplace you are never happy, to be someplace that is polluted and foreign and alien where you don't have friends or loved ones. Never a reason for that.
In honesty, I don't have a home, not even in America. I spend my life traveling in the Mothership, surfing, doing yoga, backpacking, earning money in the summer working for the NPS, but there is no home, no house and no real career. Even so, I can't wait to come home to America. I can't wait to land and go to my Mom and Dad's house and unpack my things in the guest room and sit in the living room; I can't wait to see my friends from grad school. I am going to cry just thinking about it.
Santa Cruz seems so far away. Once I arrive in Texas I still have to figure out how to get a new Mothership and drive west and how I will earn money and all of the things people have to do to survive. But god I cannot wait to be home, in my world, god bless it, no matter how much I don't like all the things that are 'wrong' with our world back home, the mass consumption, the endless buying of new things we don't need, the constant and effective brain-washing by marketing that makes us keep buying and depending on the system, the health-care 'racket'.
Despite all of that, it is my land, my people, my home and I love every inch of the Sierra, the coast, the ocean, I love Santa Cruz and my friends and family and I love all the wonderful things about our home. All the wonderful things we take for granted. Like being able to go buy some good bread and avo and tomato and make a sandwich and sit on the beach and watch the waves and wax up and paddle out. Like hopping on your beach cruiser and going for a ride for pure joy, like dancing with your friends or hugging them.
Like being able to get in your mothership and drive, anywhere, anytime, you want to move. To be in Baja and surfing in a couple days, to be up the north coast. All that we have and all that we are, good and bad, is part of the US and I love and miss my land and my home so much right now.
I want to be back there. I have tears in my eyes. I want to be someplace I belong again, where I am happy and safe and having fun and being healthy. What possessed me to stay here this long; I must have been blind.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing
nothing remains to be known.
God
martes, 1 de abril, 2008 4:01:23
A couple days ago I wrote my feelings about God. Telling people what you think about God and religion is like playing with dynamite. I thought a lot about it this morning and I want to specifically clarify some points.
I was born with a love of God; it has always been a strong part of who I am. For me god is not a personified deity, not a person up there listening and answering, not a power or a force. In fact I think god may be nothing, emptiness, no god in fact. God, for me, is Love. God *is* the very love I have for god in my heart. That is god. God is 'someone' I can open and bare my heart and soul to completely with absolute humility; who I can get down on my knees and pray to, to ask forgiveness from, to thank in gratitude for my blessings, and doing so heals my heart. Not because he, she, it, is listening, but because of the very act of prayer, of melting the heart, of surrender to something boundless. Of absolute egoless surrender to something that loves and accepts you completely and eternally. That is god.
And the universe works in subtle ways beyond our understanding according to some principle which maybe we can call energy or vibration. So that even though there may be no one listening, the act of faith, the egoless surrender and focus and love, somehow, without our understanding how, 'makes' things happen in this world, like what we think of as miracles. When people do their prayers, or sacrifices to their gods, or their prostrations or mantras, all of those methods which seem disparate, maybe in fact it is the act of focus, belief, faith, that is moving energy, working with the principle that is the ground of all this apparent being, to make things 'happen'. Only we just don't understand the 'science' behind what we're doing, so different ways and means and paths have developed, all effective, but each path different in methodology at the surface level and all followers thinking their path is right, the other ones sepearate and 'wrong'.
God does not negate all the good and wonderful spiritual teachers in the world, or the paths, it includes them and it is beyond them; it is where they all point. I still take the photo of Mingyur rinpoche and put it to my forehead and kiss it when I am troubled, because he is a real person, he is an actual human being who is advanced in this path of realization. I still have deep devotion to Sri Rama Krishna, the Dalai Lama, Lama Lundrup, to Tulku Orgyen Zangpo rinpoche. And if I had an icon from the Greek church with me, blessed by some priest, I would probably kiss that as well. It is the act of love that is the point. The objects of faith aren't even real; none of this apparent reality is even 'here'. It is the act of love, not the object, not the means, that really matters.
But I realize now that doing 10,000 prostrations and chanting 10,000 more mantras in Tibetan while visualizing the complex pantheon of the kagyu lineage is not something I really understand or that has meaning for me. With time I am sure it would get wonderful results but at this initial stage it takes me away from the real goal of pure love, because it is not 'mine'. I am not Tibetan. I was born in America from a Greek family and I have never followed or believed in anyone's religion and I have always loved God dearly and had a deep reverence for good people wherever I find them. And no amount of mediation or spiritual practice has ever opened my heart the way pure, egoless surrender to love does for me.
Love, god, is beyond all religions and all beliefs. I have only one religion, the one that I was born with, and that is the 'religion' of pure love in my heart for god. It is free of any dogma, it does not need a mediator, a way, someone to give me practices that I must do. It is not grounded in a cultural milieu or tradition that has evolved over centuries, it is not effected by cultural or political pressures and influences, it has not evolved over time. My 'religion' is pure love of god, in my heart. And it needs no one to instruct it, to give it practices to realize it's goal. My love for god is in my heart and is its own wisdom and knowledge. There is no power, no secret power or yogic siddhi, nothing, as important as pure and egoless, heartfelt, love of god. That is all there is and that will heal all things.
So home to my mountains which is my church; home to health in my body, which is my temple; home to happiness and all I love. Home!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing
nothing remains to be known.
Happy About the Sad Guru
sábado, 5 de abril, 2008 4:31:07
Yesterday when I got back to BHU hospital doctor Sujeet had just gotten off the phone with the ashram and called me into the treatment room so we could talk in private. He had some interesting things to say that made me smile.
This is what he told me: "Last night when the sadguru was talking to you he was scanning you, and in five minutes he knew all of your past lives, present lives and this life. And while he was teaching you he was giving you shaktipat. So that now you will be understand the teachings and the practice; without the shaktipat no one can really understand. And he initiated you personally which he never does. Foreigners come to see him all the time and he never sees them; he doesn't care how rich someone is or famous; those things mean nothing to him. If you pray to the gods they will give you what you ask for; but the sadguru will only give you what is best for you; never material things or powers or what you think you want.
I have been a disciple since I was eight and he has never talked to me. He never touches anyone or allows anyone to touch him or get near him. But yesterday he personally called you several times; he told the staff at the ashram just what to make for your meals, he told them to bring you hot milk and fruit at bed time to your room, to bring you a blanket because he knew you were going to be cold at night. He was thinking about you the whole time. And he let you touch him and he touched you several times, like he was your brother. He never does that! So you are a hansa; a master, and you have been with him in past lives. He said you will reach the fifth stage in this lifetime and it is impossible for anyone to reach the fifth stage in one life time. You have no idea what is happening to you or who he is. He told me you will return here in one year and I am responsible to bring you to him."
This was all very cool stuff, believe me. Everybody wants to think they are special. ;-) I could tell the doctor wasn't flattering me; in fact he was a little rankled by the special treatment. And I have to admit, when I was there with the sadguru something unusual was happening. It was just like the movie "Office Space" when the hypnotist puts the protagonist in a trance to make him relax and then the hypnotist has a heart attack and keels over and leaves the protagonist in a trance that lasts for several days, just being totally relaxed and himself. I felt like that--totally relaxed; totally 'me', just being myself and not caring what anyone else thought; doing what I felt, when I felt it, naturally. completely relaxed and natural with no pretensions or concern what anyone else cared about me or my actions. And maybe that is enlightenment, that would be good enough for me, that's for sure.
But in all honesty, I have a pretty good take on myself and life and although I didn't want to pop the good doctor's bubble I think the sadguru was a nice guy, something special for sure; but I don't think he was god, and I don't think he was many of the things the good doctor thought he was. And I can tell you from first hand experience that I am nothing like an enlightened master of anything. ;-) And if anyone thinks I am coming to India again, let me just laugh at you now.
But all in all a very very cool experience and a nice way to exit the country and Varanasi.
So be a happy guru. Avanti!!!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known
Naked Man et al
sábado, 5 de abril, 2008 5:31:30
In the ruins of Nalanda University, the oldest Buddhist U in the world, about three months ago, a naked man with very dark skin and white hair, carrying a big walking stick and followed by an entourage of people dressed in white, came walking briskly through the ruins. I commented to my companion that only in India can a naked man with entourage walk by and no one even notices.
A few days ago, walking out to the main street early in the morning, a naked man with entourage walked by. It took me a second to place him but then it clicked; the same man! I was tempted to run over and say "Hey buddy what's your story?!" But I was late for the hospital. And again, no one even looked up as he passed. Imagine the ruckus if a naked man with entourage came walking around your neighbourhood back home. India, ah India.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Realizations
jueves, 10 de abril, 2008 12:18:04
In the end, things won't matter. The bike or guitar you gave away; the things you gained or lost. In the end what will matter are the tracks you left on other people's lives. The acts you did and how they effected others. Acts of love and compassion, living for others; or selfish acts, living for yourself. Thinking of others, or thinking of yourself. In the end all we will have to show for this life is the tracks we leave behind. Nothing else will remain. Possessions aren't real.
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Varanasi, India
Winter/Spring 2008
To know your real self is to know the thing after which knowing nothing remains to be known.
Home!
lunes, 14 de abril, 2008 14:56:42
I am home and everything is fine. Just being home is enough. The air is chilly; I went out in the dark this morning and kissed the big tree in the backyard and then got down and kissed the ground. I didn't even mean to; I just did it. I am home. I love my dad. And I don't feel like it's all over; not at all. I feel like it's all beginning, again. The next phase is about to start. And I feel excited about that, happy. I feel like there is endless potential and unlimited options for what I do next; anything is possible. The fact is I am home and that's all I needed to be, home. Just by being home everything is fine. I can take a deep breath again; I can get young again, I can smile again and everything is OK again, because I am home. I send immense love to everyone. Thanks for so much support and love. I am home and I am ME again!
So let's get on that horse and ride!
--
Jeffrey James Vamvakias
Home At Last!
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