--SECMOL, Phey Village, 18KM south of Ley--
I arrived only five days ago, but it feels longer and deeper than any such period I have ever known. Speaking in superlatives does not help to dispel the fear that it’ll disappear, but that type of language seems to flow forth easily. Anyhow, this is Ladakh in January. It’s minus 20 almost all day long, there’s been only two sunny days in the past week, and now it’s snowing again. The snow puts a reassuringly familiar – and beautiful mask – on the otherwise harsh and foreign craggy landscape. The Ladakh physical environment is usually characterized as either moonscape or high mountain desert. Many people would say it’s a barren, dusty, wasteland as well. Others might more generously say the landscape is austere. For me at the moment it is nothing but the most serene beauty I have ever laid eyes on. There I go again with the essentializing. Speaking this way feels doubly silly because so many others have tended to say the same thing. But fortunately, those many other (tourists) are not here in January. In the warmer months, Ley is literally swarming with them, now there are about 8 westerners in town, and from my contact with them, I would say almost all are here for some other purpose then touring – be it photography, volunteering, business, or whatever, it certainly does not feel like a tourist town. This makes it easier for me to focus on what I need to be doing. And indeed I am very happily focused. My time here, prior to the arrival of my students next Friday, is a combination of simple experience, exploration, and prep work. For the first three nights I stayed at SECMOL and experienced the daily happenings of the school, with its 35 foundations students (high school age kids who are studying for there 10th standard exams) and 60 additional elementary age kids who are at SECMOL for a 15-day enrichment course. Ladakhi schools have their three-month “summer vacation” during these the coldest months of the year. This means many students are basically stuck at home doing nothing, as there is no major farm or family work during this time. And NO tourists, hence most businesses are closed and as we said before, it’s damn cold. So what better thing to do, then come out to SECMOL for 15 days of combined ice hockey, academic enrichment and all the good old fashioned camp fun like group singing, talent shows, big communal meals, chores, but no greased watermelon…or other pool games. When I’m not working on sorting through books or typing up lesson plans for the Vermont students, I’m caught up with the program. The foundation students are up at 6AM to do a few exercises, chores, and drink tea. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to join them for the exercise period, but I could only manage to pull myself out of my warm sleeping bag once the sun had risen around 7. Soon enough, the sunrise will coincide with the exercise period and hopefully there might actually be some sun to heat the soar powered campus. Then I’ll definitely be up to lead them in some yoga which they’ve been asking for ever since it came it up in conversation class that I’ve been known to do a few asanas. After breakfast, midmorning brings a double rotation of alternating chores and ice hockey practice. I lucked out and was given the only big (size 11) pair of skates on the campus and a brand new stick freshly imported by two volunteers from Alaska. I wobbled out onto the ice for the first time in ten years and promptly remembered that I never actually played learned much how to maneuver a stick puck and skates at the same time. And the Ladakhis are highly skilled and intense about the game, so naturally I was benched for the first period. Eventually I subbed in and got me hustle (wobble) on up and down the rink, mostly not in control of my feet but managing to coordinate the movement of the skates with the stick and the puck for long enough to pass, shoot, and even score once. It’ll definitely take some practice but for the time being it’s all I got to get the blood flowing and stay warm until my skis arrive. After and hour and half of serious skating, I self-assigned my responsibility as library clean up and organization, which requires a heavy dose of dust inhalation. Then lunch which is the traditional Ladakhi fare. In fact so is breakfast and so is dinner. Basically we’re talking about rotating combinations of rice, lentils, barley, fliur, wheat flour, turnips, carrots, onions, potatoes, occasional smatterings of soy protein nuggets, and tea, lots of tea. Butter tea, sweet tea, and hot water tea sans tea. It’s good, neither here nor there, just flavorful enough to be edible, but not to get you excited about eating, enormous vegetarian portions of fairly balanced nutrition, by no means rich, but sufficiently satisfying. Especially with the help of some homemade spicy pickle. After lunch around 2PM the foundation students come find me and kindly ask that I lead the English conversation class – this is usually more of an English lecture class with me improvising long spontaneous responses to short questions from the students. The other day a student asked what New York city was like and specifically if we had many factories. I said no most of the factories left a long time ago, but that we do have some very crucial infrastructure industries that remain, such as waste management. After that, I spoke for an hour about New York’s sewage processing system, in which all waste flows into one pipe, including rain water. The students found it hard to believe that the whole purpose of the factories was to remove the water and dry the solids. We had a big laugh when one student asked if the final product could be called “poop biscuits.”
I’ve been staying now in Ley for a couple of days and today am preparing to return to SECMOL campus (18KM from Ley) for the final four days before heading down to Delhi. Today is India’s Republic Day and there are parades all over the country demonstrating the strength of the Indian nation. This morning I sat around the kitchen with my Ladakhi (guest house) family watching the Delhi parade and being astounded by the spectacle of it all. Being astounded by how convincing the concept of secular democracy and nationhood is for the Indian people, and for the foreign observer (myself and Nick Sarkozy). Nobody can deny their overwhelming enthusiasm for the idea and practice of it, the communalism of a billion people and at least six thousand distinct ethnicities. In this collective pride the nation actually seems to manifest itself as COMMUNITY. It’s all a bit hard to swallow if you’re not accustomed to it, but admittedly somehow kind of uplifiting and hopeful.
Then there is the main event, literally a parade of India’s most expensive portable military technology; tanks, missile launchers, helicopters, armed personnel carriers, and even the GI Joe style bridge layer, all followed by hundreds of military marching bands representing the countless regiments and divisions of the massive Indian armed forces. And the same thing on a much smaller scale is happening today in almost every state and regional capital of the vast country, including right here in my very own Ley, Ladakh. So I think I’ll wander around town some more and gaze at the spectacle, wondering to myself what exactly are these people thinking. And how much faith can these illustrious ideas really hold? When does the looking glass crack and the projection stop? If it’s not nationalism, then it’s globalism or cosmopolitanism, or some other novel concept for enabling our inherent ignorance. This is a terribly difficult predicament to try and articulate, and it feels horrible. I do not want to feel separate from it and will not. In fact, I really (hate) this EFING computer right now. Wrting actually makes me depressed and I don’t enjoy the real world as much afterwards. I (hate) being inside trying to express abstractions to people I cannot see. I am sorry but that’s it. So much anger is not the goal, but at this moment that’s all that comes out. To speak about overcoming ignorance in an entirely positive and not accusatory way, I’d have to be the Dalai Lama or some other similar being. For the time being, I do recognize how fortunate I am to be in such close proximity to the teachings, and with that in mind, there is really nothing else to do but take them up whole heartedly.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
January 10, 2008
--Delhi--
Sitting in my hotel room in Majnukatila, the Tibetan refuge colony of Delhi, watching the Guns N Roses’ classic Welcome to the Jungle on VH1. This is India, land of contrasts and this is urban contemporary pop culture on the planet Earth; a big beautiful mess and it really doesn’t matter where on the planet you are. That is not to say Indian contemporary pop doesn’t embody its own vastly complex traditional identity, because like every other striving-to-be-modern society on the planet, there is no escaping the past. I read today in the Times of India newspaper that one language of the world becomes extinct every 14 days. This to say that tradition is being devoured, being driven to oblivion by an ever encroaching modern consumer. The Consumer of consumers, with its pervasive dream quest is perhaps nothing more than the ancient desire itself, that which gave life to growth, that which animated the human spirit to go beyond itself and to give birth to the ego. Now it is that this primordial child had grown up and is eating its parents alive. But this is a good thing in the paradoxical world of human development; we must constantly destroy that which feeds us and kill the Buddha when we see him on the road. So here in India, the Buddha is slain every day, and tradition is feeding innovation and the planet is welcoming everyone. There is no shortage. The dogs are getting fat in the streets. The cows are gods and the elephants roam freely. On the news, people are promoting automobile ownership as a basic human right.
But: sexuality is so conflicted in the swamped version of modern India, that men are compelled to desperately grope (and worse) unsuspecting women on a crowded street. “Eve teasing” they call it. Some how that name provides legitimacy and also serves to isolate the act from the broader environment that spawns such behavior. And depraved sexuality is only the beginning. How about last week’s fun story of a Tamil Nadu village mob that had gauged the eyeballs out of one its teenage sons for attempting to elope with an upper caste girl. Or the two inch box in yesterday’s Times of India that casually mentioned a wedding party’s tour bus that had plummeted into a ravine killing all 38 members aboard. A billion people all living and dying together in close quarters; add cultural fundamentalism and a uniquely vicious form of populist democracy and there you’ve got the not so cheery side of 21st century India.
But then: Economists report a three fold increase in the size of the middle class in the past 15 years, from 4% of the population to 14. Some say it’ll be 50% by 2030 but that may be a lusty projection of the mood, or perhaps not. Nobody really knows what the beast has in store. In fact nobody really cares, because like everywhere, it’s everybody for itself. Women support selfish men, even if India and now the US can have one as a president. Top dog is the goal, but for men it’s easier to hold the illusion as reality. In Buddhism the illusion is the proof of reality. But this must be recognized in order to move forward in development. And who really believes in spiritual development anyways? How do you measure someone’s commitment to the path? How genuine is the desire? How present is the path? Religion is convenient, devotion occasional when needed… Suffering, the first noble truth. When do you move on to the second, identification of the cause, let alone the third identification of the solution and finally an impulse to act, the fourth and final noble truth. The temperature has increased over the last few days in Delhi – from the dog days of 2 Celsius - and now it smells like the sewer in my hotel, instead of just on the street.
Now, in the mountains of Kashmir: I’ve found a little cabin where I can settle – for a week. Life is very comfortable. It has just snowed four feet and I am getting ready to ride 14,000 foot Himalayan powder tomorrow. But right now, I seem to have been caught watching the boob tube – ain't no running water or heating but there’s satellite TV with 1300 channels. And what do I find but the worst best horror flick ever created, The Grudge 2. How long will I sit through it and its rapid fire commercials. I should really turn it off but my TV karma is very strong indeed.
Yes I know what it is now. “Reliance Mobile Blog, I share the my diary with the whole world, because in my world there are no strangers. What’s your world?” Commercial interrupted my thought stream. Literally, it coincided with my exact thought. The blog. The diary. In my world there are also no strangers only gadgets. Things that make me closer to everybody and farther from myself. Myself. The first noble truth indicates that suffering is the result of ignorance. Ignorance means believing that the self exists; that the self can be indulged by the satisfying of its cravings and desires. The self that craves is the ego. The ego is the purveyor of this ignorance. The fear of being alone. The fear of being all one. The Buddhist way of seeing requires me to make a major leap. Perhaps this is why I’ve come here to Ladakh and Kashmir, not to sit in this cabin and watch TV.
Later, everything is resolved. The mountains take care of everything. After five days of continuous activity skiing eating and sleeping, I'm headed down to Srinagar, the Kashmir Valley, Clinton dubbed most dangerous place on earth for writing, relaxation, and meeting people. That also turned out well.
Sitting in my hotel room in Majnukatila, the Tibetan refuge colony of Delhi, watching the Guns N Roses’ classic Welcome to the Jungle on VH1. This is India, land of contrasts and this is urban contemporary pop culture on the planet Earth; a big beautiful mess and it really doesn’t matter where on the planet you are. That is not to say Indian contemporary pop doesn’t embody its own vastly complex traditional identity, because like every other striving-to-be-modern society on the planet, there is no escaping the past. I read today in the Times of India newspaper that one language of the world becomes extinct every 14 days. This to say that tradition is being devoured, being driven to oblivion by an ever encroaching modern consumer. The Consumer of consumers, with its pervasive dream quest is perhaps nothing more than the ancient desire itself, that which gave life to growth, that which animated the human spirit to go beyond itself and to give birth to the ego. Now it is that this primordial child had grown up and is eating its parents alive. But this is a good thing in the paradoxical world of human development; we must constantly destroy that which feeds us and kill the Buddha when we see him on the road. So here in India, the Buddha is slain every day, and tradition is feeding innovation and the planet is welcoming everyone. There is no shortage. The dogs are getting fat in the streets. The cows are gods and the elephants roam freely. On the news, people are promoting automobile ownership as a basic human right.
But: sexuality is so conflicted in the swamped version of modern India, that men are compelled to desperately grope (and worse) unsuspecting women on a crowded street. “Eve teasing” they call it. Some how that name provides legitimacy and also serves to isolate the act from the broader environment that spawns such behavior. And depraved sexuality is only the beginning. How about last week’s fun story of a Tamil Nadu village mob that had gauged the eyeballs out of one its teenage sons for attempting to elope with an upper caste girl. Or the two inch box in yesterday’s Times of India that casually mentioned a wedding party’s tour bus that had plummeted into a ravine killing all 38 members aboard. A billion people all living and dying together in close quarters; add cultural fundamentalism and a uniquely vicious form of populist democracy and there you’ve got the not so cheery side of 21st century India.
But then: Economists report a three fold increase in the size of the middle class in the past 15 years, from 4% of the population to 14. Some say it’ll be 50% by 2030 but that may be a lusty projection of the mood, or perhaps not. Nobody really knows what the beast has in store. In fact nobody really cares, because like everywhere, it’s everybody for itself. Women support selfish men, even if India and now the US can have one as a president. Top dog is the goal, but for men it’s easier to hold the illusion as reality. In Buddhism the illusion is the proof of reality. But this must be recognized in order to move forward in development. And who really believes in spiritual development anyways? How do you measure someone’s commitment to the path? How genuine is the desire? How present is the path? Religion is convenient, devotion occasional when needed… Suffering, the first noble truth. When do you move on to the second, identification of the cause, let alone the third identification of the solution and finally an impulse to act, the fourth and final noble truth. The temperature has increased over the last few days in Delhi – from the dog days of 2 Celsius - and now it smells like the sewer in my hotel, instead of just on the street.
Now, in the mountains of Kashmir: I’ve found a little cabin where I can settle – for a week. Life is very comfortable. It has just snowed four feet and I am getting ready to ride 14,000 foot Himalayan powder tomorrow. But right now, I seem to have been caught watching the boob tube – ain't no running water or heating but there’s satellite TV with 1300 channels. And what do I find but the worst best horror flick ever created, The Grudge 2. How long will I sit through it and its rapid fire commercials. I should really turn it off but my TV karma is very strong indeed.
Yes I know what it is now. “Reliance Mobile Blog, I share the my diary with the whole world, because in my world there are no strangers. What’s your world?” Commercial interrupted my thought stream. Literally, it coincided with my exact thought. The blog. The diary. In my world there are also no strangers only gadgets. Things that make me closer to everybody and farther from myself. Myself. The first noble truth indicates that suffering is the result of ignorance. Ignorance means believing that the self exists; that the self can be indulged by the satisfying of its cravings and desires. The self that craves is the ego. The ego is the purveyor of this ignorance. The fear of being alone. The fear of being all one. The Buddhist way of seeing requires me to make a major leap. Perhaps this is why I’ve come here to Ladakh and Kashmir, not to sit in this cabin and watch TV.
Later, everything is resolved. The mountains take care of everything. After five days of continuous activity skiing eating and sleeping, I'm headed down to Srinagar, the Kashmir Valley, Clinton dubbed most dangerous place on earth for writing, relaxation, and meeting people. That also turned out well.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Off I go, no longer getting there, but arriving and in a matter of a few hours, BEING there!
Happy Happy and Hopeful New Year to all!!
Stay tuned and perhaps I might someday soon write something of substance once again. Until then, may all beings be happy and free, especially when they go back to work from the long holiday.
Happy Happy and Hopeful New Year to all!!
Stay tuned and perhaps I might someday soon write something of substance once again. Until then, may all beings be happy and free, especially when they go back to work from the long holiday.
Namaste from Beirut...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
