Dzongsar Diary

Last Post

2010-03-06T19:50:00.001+05:30

So, it's been just over a month since I got back to Germany. It was a difficult time. I feel very slow, and I didn't want to take any big steps or make any big decisions. I didn't know how my time in India had affected me and how that would affect my decisions for the future.

I still can't really describe it. I feel that my meditation experience, in particular the 10-day Vipassana retreat at the end of my year, has granted me a glimpse into "equanimity", but that I still don't fully understand it. Much of the time I feel something close to indifference. And I know that those two are not the same!

I've made one decision. I am not returning to full-time teaching, because I cannot face teaching the "normal" classes that I would have to teach in the ESL world in Germany - one 90-minute lesson a week in-company, with participants who are so stressed and can't come to half of the lessons anyway because of work commitments ... After teaching the monks at Dzongsar, full of attention and coming every day, I just can't imagine doing the 'standard' thing here anymore. So I want to save my teaching energy and come up with some better ideas, but that will take time. In the meantime my energy will be invested in the translation side of my business. The timetable as a translator is more flexible, allowing me more time in the mornings and evenings for my yoga and meditation practice (as an ESL teacher in Germany the main work times would be early morning and evening - just when I want to meditate!). And there are some interesting areas of work where I want to build up my experience and become a real translation specialist - such as peacebuilding, development work and all things spiritual, of course!

This is the last post I'm planning to write for this blog. It'll take some time before I really know what long-term effects the year in India had. But by the time I find out, no-one will be checking this blog anymore, so it wouldn't make sense to post them here! I hope you enjoyed reading this, have fun and thank you for your attention.

Funny Video

2010-03-06T19:21:00.002+05:30

Just found this version of the Buddha's life story - it's so kitsch, it's great! Enjoy:

Buddhism from Yeimi Salazar on Vimeo.

Winter Greetings from Cologne

2010-01-30T16:15:00.001+05:30

On Thursday evening I arrived in Cologne, flying in from England. My friend Dave picked me up from the airport and I'll be staying with him and Eva for the first few weeks here. This morning the snow is several inches deep - unusual for Cologne! Real wintry greetings for me, welcoming me home.

The next few days will undoubtedly be full of tales - my tales from India and my friends' tales from the past year in Germany. And I already have a little work, but I have to take the first steps towards reestablishing myself here as a translator and finding teaching work as well. So it'll be a busy time, but I'll be taking care not to forget the lessons and experiences of the past year, trying to keep a little 'masala' in the mix.

Bodh Gaya, Delhi, England

2010-01-24T03:23:00.003+05:30

I started the year with a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat - going in on the 1st of January. We came out into the real world again on the 12th and since then I've been on the move - quite a contrast to the silence and fixed routine during the meditation.

One night in Bodh Gaya, then an overnight train journey to Delhi (counting the bus to Patna to catch the train and the delay in the train because of fog in Delhi the journey was 24 hours in total). Two nights there and then the plane to England, where my parents met me at the airport and took me to Oxfordshire where they live. A few nights there and then a 6-hour journey up north to Bridlington where my brother lives. If you've never heard of Bridlington, don't worry, it's not that famous. A small northeastern seaside town, somewhat in decline because most people go to the Mediterranean now if they want a seaside holiday, instead of north England (I wonder why? :-))

After a few days here my parents will join us, reuniting the family before we travel back down south and then I depart for Cologne.

So it's a mix of memories from the past and recollections of the year in India, combined with anticipation of going home to Cologne and picking up the pieces there, work and personal, catching up on what has happened for my friends in the past 12 months. An interesting time, luckily the daily mediation practice helps me not to feel too unsettled.

Pilgrim

2009-12-26T18:24:00.002+05:30

So I've had a few days in Delhi. It's enough. Delhi must be a great place if you like to spend money shopping or going to clubs, but I'm not in the mood for that and so it's just a big, dirty, noisy city!! I've enjoyed visiting the temples and museums. And I visited some publishing houses and bookshops to help out the English Program at Dzongsar. But now I've had enough and am happy to leave tomorrow.

I will take my first long train ride in India - to Bodh Gaya. That is where the Buddha gained enlightenment. There will be lots of pilgrims there because the Karmapa has been and the Dalai Lama will be teaching.

I will also do a 10-day Vipassana meditation course at the Goenka centre there. So you won't see another blog post for a while! Its over 15 years since I first heard about these Vipassana courses, so it's about time I actually took part in one. Expect my report to be full of complaints about pain in the legs and knees :-)

To all of my readers who are celebrating the festive season (unlike me): Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Hopefully I'll manage one more post before I leave India on January 16th. See you i 2010!

Temple Tourist

2009-12-22T00:13:00.001+05:30

I left Himachal Pradesh last night! Goodbye to the wonderful hills, the views of the snow mountains, the clean air, the trees, the peace and quiet, the clean water.

Goodbye to the classmates on the Tibetan course and to the wonderful teacher Gavin Kilty and the great conversation partners (Nyima, Bu Chung, Yonten, Pema, Abu).

And hello Delhi.

After a cold 12-hour overnight bus ride with not too much sleep I found a cosy little Tibetan tea shop that was already open at 6am - with Nyima sitting outside it - one of the conversation partners from McLeod Ganj!! So two cups of butter tea and a little breakfast of Tibetan bread and spicy potato later I set off out of the Tibetan colony here where I am staying. Into "India proper" and Delhi's shiny new Metro subway system!

In the space of about 7 hours I visited: a small Hindu temple with suspiciously Greek-looking statues and frescoes; a Catholic cathedral; a large Hindu temple from a Hindu tradition that worships Vishnu, and thus count Buddha as one of the incarnations of Vishnu meaning there were lots of Buddhist-like quotes and shrines to be seen; and a very large very old mosque. I also walked past a medium-sized Jain temple and the construction site of a very large Sikh temple.

Don't you just love India?!!!

What did they all have in common? Well, there was an atmosphere of contemplation and reverence in them all. They all had beggars outside. They all had lots of different people inside visiting.

You had to take off your shoes to enter all of them except for the Catholic cathedral. Only the mosque charged entry(*), the others requested donations. The mosque had no idols - I believe it is against the Islamic religion to depict Allah as a person, so the prayer wall was absent of the colurful sculptures and paintings so loved by the Catholics and Hindus.

I had left my camera in my other luggage so once again, there are no photos. But next time I have more online-time I'll see if I can find some links to photos that other people put up for us.

I'm here in Delhi for a week, then pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya and meditation course, and in less than four weeks I fly to England, in Feb I'm back in Germany. But I'll write again before then :-)

(*) A couple of days later I found out that I was the victim of con artists. They pretend to be guards and charge Rs 200 for entry. Actually the mosque is free to enter and I should have known better because there were prominent "Donations" boxes around!!

A Taste of Normality

2009-11-18T22:32:00.000+05:30

Somehow this past week I've been living a fairly 'normal' life. By that I mean - more like my life in Germany. Firstly, I'm not in a monastery in the middle of the Indian countryside, nor am I in the confined environment of the yoga course. Instead, I'm living in what must be the most Westernised town in Himachal Pradesh - McLeod Ganj is pretty extreme. There are so many tourists and the businessmen here offer them (or should I say: us) everything they/we want - internet, coffee (in every conceivable latte, capuccino and espresso variation), souvenirs, books, international food etc. Secondly, I'm not in a monastery (!) - which means my daily routine is not characterised by prayer ceremonies etc. Instead I get up, do my yoga or meditation, eat breakfast, go to class, eat lunch with other course members, go back to class, hang out after class .... fairly normal Westerner-stuff!! And thirdly, I've had some real work to do on top of that - one of my regular translation clients contacted me and also I met a professor here (from Germany) who paid me to edit a talk he is giving at a conference on Tibetan culture and history to be held soon in Delhi. So I haven't hung out too much after class, instead returning home to my room and sitting at the computer doing work into the late evening. Just like I do back home in Germany!

And it continues: two friends from Germany will be visiting me this weekend. For me they represent "the real world" and it will be the first time in ages that I engage with "the real world" like this. I'm looking forward to that pleasant challenge :-)

The Teacher is a Student

2009-11-12T18:31:00.000+05:30

The second week of the Tibetan course is nearly over and I'm having a great time! During the introductions at the beginning of the course I said it would be difficult for me to sit in the students' places because I was used to standing at the front of the class, but actually it's not that bad. Occasionally I find myself thinking "I would have done that differently", but that's fine, I just think the thought and then let it go, and get back to trying to understand the teacher.

He talks a lot in Tibetan to introduce new vocabulary and illustrate the language functions that he is teaching us. It's a great way to present the language, and then we have to practice it ourselves, often working in pairs to come up with sentences like the ones that the teacher was using.

In the mornings we have conversation practice with a Tibetan conversation partner. They are mainly students who have been trained how to help us with conversation; they speak slowly and ask us questions to prompt the use of the language we are learning. The first two have been great and I assume they all are, since they have quite a lot of experience.

Slowly, slowly, I'm getting used to hearing the language and with the conversation partner we can even have a 2- or 3-line conversation!

I'm staying in a little village above Dharamsala called Dharamkot. It's at 2200m altitude and I walk down to McLeod Ganj (1800m) every morning for class, and back up again in the evening. The weather here is mainly dry, and when the sun comes out it is warm. (But when the sun goes down, it gets VERY cold!!) So the walk is fun (it only rained once so far) and I'm enjoying the exercise. The views are excellent - some of the high peaks behind us even have snow on them already.

Autonomy from ideas and philosophies

2009-10-30T18:08:00.001+05:30

The "Dhamma," or path to liberation, for which the Buddha was a spokesman, is not an idea; it is a mode of conduct and a way of life that leads to personal realization. Its goal is to release its practitioners from authorities and ideologies, not anarchistically or capriciously, but through training, by deepening their personal experiences of the nature of their true self and its ethical implications. It is through these long-cultivated, gradually deepening experiences that the Buddha led his followers to autonomy from ideas, philosophies, scriptures, even from himself. His classic similes focused on direct tangible experience. Like one from whom a poisoned arrow is removed, the student of Dhamma will experience relief from pain.

[Found at this page where it is quoted from this essay]

21 Taras

2009-10-29T14:52:00.000+05:30

I'm enjoying a week at Deer Park studying and chanting the Praise to the 21 Taras in Sanskrit. It is being led by a charming Sanskrit scholar who's leading us through the words in the praise and telling us about their meanings and associations within an Indian context. She then helps us with the pronounciation of the Sanskrit.

The goddess Tara is the most common (and sometimes she seems to be the only) female goddess in the Tibetan pantheon, but she is not originally Tibetan, having been worshipped by Indian Buddhists before the main introduction of Buddhism to Tibet. This is reflected, for example, in the Praises we are studying which have quite a few references to things and concepts that are distinctly Indian. In fact, she seems to be a deity who features in non-Buddhist ideas and deitie, and today in class we had an interesting discussion with no conclusion as to whether she was originally Hindu, Buddhist or neither. She may well have originally been Buddhist, entering the Hindu pantheon and then during the flourishing of Tantric ideas re-entering Buddhism in that form. There are a couple of good books around for those interested in knowing more (see for example In Praise of Tara by Martin Willson).

It's fun playing with language - you know I like to do that. I've previously only heard the prayer in Tibetan or translated from Tibetan, so it's interesting to discover the original Sanskrit meanings.

And as you may remember, Deer Park in Bir is where my journey began in February, so it's good to be here, feels a little like home - familiar place, some familiar faces, familiar routine. On Sunday I'm taking all my belongings (too many, accumulated since Feb!) to McLeod Ganj, where I'll be studying Tibetan for 7 weeks. But before that we've got Halloween and believe it or not, one of the expats here is throwing a Halloween party on Saturday. He won't let us in unless we're in fancy dress - where can I buy ghoulish face-paint here out in the sticks!!?? Happy haunting to you all.

Impressions of Yog

2009-10-17T15:36:00.001+05:30

So, the yoga course is already over - that went fairly quickly! It's amazing how a fairly strict daily routine helps time fly by. For this course it looked as follows: 0545 rise and meditate, 0645 shower 0715 walk to yoga centre and limber up 0800-1030 morning class 1030-1200 brunch (either at home or in Tibetan restaurant) 1200-1400 midday nap or reading or e-mails or quick shopping 1400 individual practice in yoga centre 1600-1800 afternoon class 1815 evening chai on way home 1900 evening meal at home and then chatting with other residents of house until drooping eyes forced us to bed (usually around 2100 !! if not too tired then a little meditation or maybe watching some of a DVD before sleep).

Some days there was no afternoon class or there was a philosophy talk instead, but the routine was similar. If I felt like a real treat then a free afternoon would see me doing my individual practice as early as possible (2 hours after brunch to allow for digestion) and then jump in a shared rickshaw taxi to travel the few kilometres into the city and head for a coffee shop. (The modern India has embraced coffee shops and espresso/capuccino/latte. But I also frequented the traditional chai-wallahs as well!) A couple of times I also headed for the Sakya Centre, a large monastery and home to the head of the Sakya lineage of Tibetan Buddhism - I may have been here to study Hindu yoga, but I didn't forget my Buddhist 'roots' !!

Our accomodation was a luxurious house owned by a former civil servant from Delhi. The 6 of us staying there had our own cook hired in to cook evening meals and wash up for us, and the house servant would clean our rooms and wash our laundry. Of course we paid for all that, but it takes a bit of getting used to - I wasn't brought up with servants !! The evening meals were amazing - Indian home cooking at its best - and the 6 of us really enjoyed eating them together and getting to know each other during the post-dinner chats.

The end of this particular course coincided with the birthday of Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sutras (around 3rd century BC) and considered by many as the 'Saint' of Yog. Our teachers like to celebrate this in style so we experienced making 'Rangoli' - floor paintings made by sprinkling a mix of paint powder and sand into elaborate designs - and the tradtional garlands of leaves and marigolds. There was Indian classical music at its finest and Indian cuisine at its best too.

All in all a great experience. I've tried to capture some of it in photos but they are just a humble attempt and don't do it all justice really. Now I've a few days free (as I write it is Diwali - a bit like the Indian equivalent to Christmas!!) and then will head back up to Himachal Pradesh to attend a short Buddhist course on the Praise to the 21 Taras before starting my Tibetan language course in November.

Climate Change = Suicide

2009-10-05T13:16:00.000+05:30

Amongst Europeans there is sometimes a tendency to joke about climate change. For instance, how we'll be able to sunbathe on North Germany's beaches instead of holidaying in the Mediterranean, or grow tropical fruits in Europe ... This year in India we are seeing some strange weather which makes everyone speak of climate change. But it is no laughing matter.

Farmers in India are suffering a marginalisation which is different than but comparable to what agriculturalists in Europe suffered over the past century or so. In Europe it's tough being a farmer nowadays, unless perhaps you are a huge agribusiness. In India it's tough, and climate change is making it tougher. There are constant newspaper reports of suicides in the rural communities. I haven't seen this film, but I hope it's viewable in Europe, too.

"The Damned Rain" is just one of several films relating to this issue. Here's a report from the BBC about them. Check out if any of them are showing near you.

Variety is the Spice of Life?

2009-10-04T13:29:00.001+05:30

Since I left the monastery I seem to be exposed to many different things and I can understand very well why monastery life is a good idea for someone trying to dedicate themselves to spiritual practice: it simply removes distractions. And those distractions come in many shapes and sizes. While critics may argue that it creates very narrow-minded people, I think that it is a good thing if the person has really chosen their path. Why keep on considering alternatives if you have already made your choice.

The yoga course keeps me busy for the best part of the day (2 hours class in the morning, 2 hours practice in the early afternoon and half the days 2 hours pranayama class or a philosophy talk at 4 o'clock). Our teacher pair are very different, with Swati the morning classes are an almost never-ending sequence of asanas flowing from one to the next. With her husband Rajiv the lessons take on a more philosophical line and are half lecture half physical practice. Nevertheless both stress that the physical asanas (postures) are only the external superficial aspect of yoga - it really is a comprehensive philosophical and physiological system preparing you for the higher stages of meditation. I have to admit that I'm struggling to keep up with the asana class because I'm really a yoga novice. Most of the practice I did in the past was very informal - I almost never went to a real yoga class. So either I'm not supple or stable enough or I just don't follow what is going on. But I like steep learning curves!

On our first day off most participants opted for external distractions and went off exploring - I went with an Englishman, a Macedonian and a Canadian together to one of India's foremost Hindu pilgrimage sites, Haridwar. I didn't take many photos myself, I was in a more 'contemplative' mood and less focussed on external things such as taking photos.

This week has also been a sequence of anniversaries: first one of my housemates here had his birthday, then there was Gandhi's birthday, then German Unity Day and today another course participant's birthday. As I write a non-seasonal heavy rain shower - the monsoon season should have ended - has spoilt his plans to go for a hike to a local waterfall (the water is falling from the sky instead !!) So whatever you are celebrating, have fun!

The End, pt1

2009-09-22T09:20:00.000+05:30

So, today, Sept 22, I leave the monastery.

Although I'm leaving because of some discontent living here (see my previous post), I also enjoyed many aspects of teaching and being here, and I give thanks that I was fortunate enough to have this opportunity.

I'll still be in India until January and returning to Himachal Pradesh as well, so I'll visit the shedra here once or twice before I go back to Germany. But for now it's off to Dehra Dun (my bus leaves at 4pm, overnight) and off to do a yoga course. So this is 'The End pt1' - part 2 will be in January! I'll continue to blog my impressions until I leave.

Bye bye Dzongsar! See you soon!

Rain Retreat Ends

2009-09-20T10:46:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was party day! It marked the end of the rain retreat. According to tradition, the Buddha recommended his monks to do a three-month retreat during the rainy season. For this time they would remain in one place instead of wandering around, they would not come out of their chosen hermitage. One of the reasons was to protect the sentient beings - in the rainy season there are far more little creatures around who you could tread on or whose habitat you could damage as you wander around.

Dzongsar Institute has a modern version of this which lasts half the time: 45 days or one and a half Tibetan calendar months. For this duration the students were not allowed out of the monastery at all and studied 7 days a week (instead of 6, being allowed out on the one free day). Yesterday there was a wonderful ritual where they all 'broke the boundary' together, going out and performing a puja on a sports ground in the middle of the village where we are, Chauntra. Then they returned together and the holiday began - 45 days' of pent up energy released with sports matches, music and good food!

Laypeople can gain insight before monks!

2009-09-19T20:58:00.000+05:30

An inspiring and (for me) timely post here in the well-known Buddhist magazine Tricycle from the well-known Buddhist teacher Ajahn Chah. Starting with the following quote:

Laypeople live in the realm of sensuality. They have families, money, and possessions, and are deeply involved in all sorts of activities. Yet sometimes they will gain insight and see dharma before monks and nuns do. Why is this? It's because of their suffering from all these things. They see the fault and can let go. They can put it down after seeing clearly in their experience. Seeing the harm and letting go, they are able to make good sense of their position in the world and benefit others.

And including this reminder for Westerners (I'm thinking of the 'Dharma tourists' here and the 'New Age Supermarket' back home!)

You might hear that certain teachers are really good, and so you go to receive teachings from Thai ajahns, Zen masters, Vipassana teachers, and others. It seems to me that most of you have probably had enough teaching, but the tendency is to always want to hear more, to compare, and to end up in doubt as a result. Each successive teacher might well increase your confusion further.

Karma and other things we cannot see.

2009-09-18T13:17:00.001+05:30

It's one of the BIG questions: Why are we here? In Mahayana Buddhism as I understand it (i.e. very limited, I'm probably wrong) there isn't an answer in the sense of "Why? - In order to". There is no ultimate goal or aim to existence. We are not here 'to do something'. Existence (at the conventional level) simply is. It is a result of the natural laws of karma which mean that everything within this realm of existence cycles around and around, continuing to exist in one life after the next. Actions in one life 'cause' the existence in the next. Again and again. Round and round.

So the "Why" question could be answered with a "Because" answer: We are here because in our previous life we engaged in actions or had intentions (both are karma) whether good or bad. These actions were the causes, the result is our present life and its contents (and some karma will only ripen into results in future lives).

Beings who reach the level of a buddha have wisdom which enables them to perform "karma-neutral" actions. So they are not causes. Therefore they have no results. Which means theses beings can escape the endless cycle of existences. That is nirvana.

'Unfortuately' only such buddhas can see the workings of karma and understand it fully. So that counts me out! But it would be another item on the list of 'things we cannot see' which this comedian John Lloyd recounted in a TED talk recently. In doing so he touched on many a Buddhist theme - can you spot them?

One was compassion. He asked the question "Why are we here?" and quoted an answer from W.H. Auden "We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know." :-)) Enjoy the video.

9/11 Forgive and/or Forget ?

2009-09-12T14:21:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was September 11th but I didn't notice until I read the newspapers today. Admittedly, living in the monastery I often have no idea of the day of the week, so forgetting the date is no rare occurrence. However, I was a little shocked this morning to realise that I'd 'forgotten' this terrible day. So when I saw that one of my favourite blogs (The Big Picture) was remembering the day with photos of then and since, I hurried on over, and urge you to do the same.

There was a comment which struck me, from someone who sought to remind his fellow Americans how much they DO forget. I'll share that with you here and simply urge everyone not to remember only such atrocities, but also to remember that compassion and wisdom are just as ever present, within us and manifesting in the world. So let's remember both the 'good' and the 'bad'.

We'll forget.

Galveston Hurricane, Sept. 8, 1900: 6,000 dead.

Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862: 4,300+ dead.

San Francisco Earthquake, April 18, 1906: 2,500 dead.

Lake Okeechobee Hurricane, September 16, 1928: 2,500 dead.

Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941: 2,403 dead.

Battle of Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863: 2,358 dead.

Battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863: 2,353 dead each day for three days.

Johnstown Flood, May 31, 1889: 2,209 dead.

9/11 would be third down on this list. How many of you stop to remember these days each year? How many of them have you even heard of?

A different view of the Heart Sutra

2009-09-10T14:51:00.001+05:30

There are many many translations of the Heart Sutra. It is one of the most famous Buddhist texts. But I'll bet you've never seen it like this before?

(created with Wordle, an amusing and beautiful little toy for creating word clouds from any text you enter)

Leaving early

2009-09-04T22:48:00.000+05:30

The frequency of my posts in the past couple of months was fairly low, which might have led some of you to ask if everything is OK. Well, to be honest, I wasn't having a great time and this has led to a difficult decision: in a couple of weeks' time I'm quitting my work here early and ~~coming home~~ doing something different.

It's a fully selfish decision and I'm disappointed with myself because I wasn't able to resolve my disappointment in an inner way, seeking instead to change the outer situation again. But outer and inner are linked and as a beginner in Buddhist practice I have to acknowledge that the outer world still plays a huge role in determining my moods and level of contentment. So by adjusting the outer world to make it more the way I want it, this is then conducive to my inner practice and helps me make progress there. At some point in the far-flung future I may be able to recognise that everything is within me and be more stable, whatever the outer circumstances, but I'm not there yet.

In short, I'm still at this stage: When I'm happy and content I meditate more, when I'm not happy I neglect my practice.

Everything I read from the experts suggests that meditation in the long term will help to make me more happy and by not neglecting my practice (or: by having a habit so strong it survives my mood swings) this practice itself will ensure that I stay more content. Roll on those days, please!

So with that in mind, here are the 'outer' reasons for leaving. Firstly, I found it difficult to adjust to the monastery situation - how do I respect the monks' need for isolation from the distractions of the outside world whilst being a piece of that outside world? There's a big high wall around this monastery and punishments for leaving the walls without permission, and there are good reasons for that - it's the outer 'assistance' to reflect the inner vows that the monks have taken but may occasionally find difficult to keep up. However, as I put it to a colleague, "We, the Western teachers, are permanent holes in that wall. Everything we say and do is like a breach of that wall." That's how I felt and I couldn't find a solution, despite reassurances from the khenpos that indicated I was overreacting.

Secondly, even though everyone here is friendly, there are not enough people with similar backgrounds to me with whom I can have a relaxed, familiar conversation as I would do at home, without having to stop and explain things every two minutes or ask for explanations.

Thirdly, I want to learn but here I'm only teaching. Selfish, but true. So I wasn't learning much Tibetan and also couldn't find the type of philosophy instruction I want.

And fourthly, I was simply homesick, missing Germany much more than I thought I would.

So my first reaction was that I would come home fairly soon. But my friends soon pointed out that everyday life there is, well, everyday life. And although from here it looks attractive, I really ought to take advantage of my situation - being in India already, all my stuff safely in storage in Germany. So I listened to them and decided to stay. There are a couple of opportunities to learn on the horizon - yoga and Tibetan. And I'll go do the museums in Delhi and see a couple of other tourist-must-see-places in India. Watch this space.

Buddhism and homosexuality

2009-09-01T14:06:00.001+05:30

Misunderstandings abound when it comes to Buddhism and sexuality. Some people seem to think that all Buddhists are monk-like celibates, others believe that Buddhists like suffering and dislike all pleasure, so won't be fond of sexual pleasure, and at the other extreme there are the Tibetan deities portrayed in sexual union leading some people to believe that all Tibetan Buddhists are fornicating their way to freedom. All of those beliefs are wrong! Another very confusing issue for liberal Westerners is whether Buddhism has anything to say about homosexuality. This article from a site devoted to religious tolerance is simply the best, most balanced summary that I have ever read of that issue. It begins:

People's beliefs are greatly influenced by many factors; two of the most important are culture, tradition, and religion. Culture often trumps religion. For example, in the case of the worldwide Anglican Communion, many believers in the U.S. and Canadian provinces feel that the denomination is in a state of sin because it does not grant equal rights to homosexuals. Many believers in African provinces believe that Anglican Community is in a state of sin because some Anglicans support equal rights for lesbians and gays. Here we have a single religious movement, using the same Bible as their holy book, sharing the same rituals, sharing a common history for many centuries. Yet they take opposite views on homosexuality because of their differing cultures.

The same cultural overlay phenomenon may be happening in Buddhism as well. ....

'Western' Buddhism

2009-08-30T15:56:00.001+05:30

Here's a link to a very interesting post summarising some of the developments in thinking about Buddhism in the West. The post assumes some knowledge of the debates, such as 'Is Buddhism a religion?', 'How should we adapt the ancient teachings to be understandable in modern times?' etc.

For those who need some more background, there was also recently a very interesting podcast dealing with 'Buddhist History 101' from the Buddhist Geeks podcast team. They interviewed Dr. Lewis Lancaster, who describes Buddhism as 'the first world religion' and identified why the teachings of the Buddha were particularly suitable for the very early form of globalisation that it underwent. They also discussed the current transition of Buddhism to the West in light of this historical background.

Buddhist Geeks seeking support

2009-08-30T15:52:00.001+05:30

If you're interested in Buddhism and use modern media, you probably already know about the Buddhist Geeks Podcast. If you don't - check it out. The geeks themselves are seeking to expand into a digital magazine and organise a Buddhadharma 2.0 conference next year - to do so they are seeking micropatrons. Please consider supporting them!

Questions, questions

2009-08-29T08:45:00.001+05:30

Teaching English to Tibetan monks using a coursebook designed for international students is sometimes a challenge in the cultural sense. For instance, in order to teach the sort of phrases you need for ordering food, the authors of the book chose what they considered to be the most generic form of eatery possible - a fast-food restaurant á la McDonalds, Burger King etc.

Unfortunately, about 5% of the monks here have ever seen a McDonalds. (Lucky them!)

In addition, teachers have respect here and are thought to be an authority on all sorts of knowledge, so the English teacher is a prime person to ask about the world. Which means my casual stroll from one side of the monastery to the other can turn into a lesson on who-know-what.

Examples from yesterday, which seemed to be charged with inquisitiveness:

"Is this a pizza?" (pointing to a picture of a burger in the coursebook)

"Chili sauce, ketchup - same?"

"Why do some months in the English calendar have 30 days and some 31?" (over dinner)

"How do I know if it is Monday or Wednesday or whatever?" (the Tibetan calendar is linked to phases of the moon so they know. The background to this question was a famous story about a Buddhist master meditating for seven days ... he wouldn't have known how many days he had meditated in England???)

"What is SENSEX ?" (Luckily I, too, had read the financial pages of Indian newspapers - this is the Bombay Stock Exchange index, but this answer led of course to ..)

"What is a stock exchange?" (My turn - "Do you know what 'company shares' are? - No)

"How do they measure if the world is in recession?" (And here I was saved by the bell - it was 6.30 and the evening puja was about to begin so the monk in question had to run off.)

What about you all, dear readers? Any questions?!

Leh and Tsak Tsok

2009-08-28T09:08:00.001+05:30

So you saw the photos of the breathtaking (at times literally!) journey to Leh. Here are some photos of the first days there. Well, the first days were spent in bed with bronchitis, so those photos wouldn't be very interesting. But these photos are from the first days when I was back on my feet.

Leh, the capital of Ladakh, is a small 'city' - apparently abou 20,000 full-time residents with the population swelling up to 75,000 in the summer due to the influx of seasonal workers and tourists. There are green, leafy suburbs which give an impression of the 'wealth' in Ladakh: before the conversion to a cash economy most families lived in quite comfortable houses surrounded by their fields and hardly anyone thought of themselves as 'poor'. Now these suburbs in Leh have been built up, with houses taking the place of fields and all those houses now being converted into guesthouses. You stay 'in the family', eating in the dining room where they eat etc., but I couldn't help wondering how this influx of foreigners for a few months of the year really affects family life!

One of the first monasteries I visited was Thak Thok because they were holding the 'chaam' dance and it was easy to reach by public bus. I was very disappointed after experiencing similar events in Kathmandu and here in India. This event was purely and simply a tourist show (both for international, paying tourists, and local people). I don't know the dances well enough to know whether they changed the dance to cater for the tourists, but I hear they have started to 'select' certain scenes to make a show that lasts one afternoon instead of the traditional two days ... Anyway all around the monastery there was a big market set up with food and drink and trinkets and the usual Buddhist souvenirs and 'antiques' ... All in all a disappointing affair for me. But I did get to see the shrines in the old part of the monastery and the setting, at the top of a valley, was certainly a good choice for my first day out!!

Manali to Leh - Close to the Edge

2009-08-25T21:21:00.002+05:30

One of the key lessons in Buddhism is impermanence. Everything changes, nothing has real inherent existence because it changes from one moment to the next. Am I the same person that I was 5 years ago? Or just a similar but changed collection of atoms that wears the same clothes and uses the same name as 5 years ago?

The 2-day minibus trip from Manali to Leh provided me with a lesson in impermanence. Our bus driver had a lapse of attention at the wheel and didn't notice that the road was narrow at the point where we would meet an oncoming minibus. So he had to swerve into that minibus and force it into the cliff so that we could stay on the road. Very close to the edge. Very close to the end. Impermanence.

I only have photos from the first day because I stupidly left my spare batteries in my big bag, which was on the roof of the minibus, and the other batteries ran out in the morning of the second day.

It was an amazing journey, the colours of the rocks, the glaciers, the pebble-covered mountains, the valleys, the high-altitude tea stops, the company in the minibus (Hi Nick, Steffi, Jonathan - wie geht's Euch wieder in DE?), the contrasts from the barren passes to the lush green Indus valley.

My photos don't do a good job of conveying the feelings and impressions. But here they are anyway:

Manali pictures

2009-08-20T21:20:00.003+05:30

Sorry about the long wait before this post.

Although I didn't let on when I wrote the previous post (after arriving in Leh), actually when I wrote it I was quite ill. On the bus ride to Ladakh I developed bronchitis and spent the first few days either completely in bed or mostly in bed with high fever and no energy.

The illness meant I couldn't really do anything in Ladakh - no trekking, only limited sightseeing. And then when I got back I still needed 4 or 5 days before I felt really healthy again.

Then I was busy with the restart of courses here and I also had no private internet access. Problems with the company I bought my modem and access from meant that I only got reconnected three days ago.

So please be patient - the few photos of monasteries and mountain valleys I took in Ladakh will soon be online. Meanwhile here's the first collection - from Manali, which was the first stop on the journey.

Paradise with Side-Effects

2009-07-29T18:55:00.002+05:30

I'm in Ladakh now and will write only a short post. It's beautiful here but the tourist economy is ruining the place. Look up the movie "Ancient Futures" to see what I mean - it's a great portrayal of what is happening here.

Will write more in a couple of days - photos will have to wait until I'm back. But many better photographers have taken better photos than I have, so just search at the photo-sharing sites and you'll get a good impression. The rocks have many colours, the deserts are lifeless, the valleys are lush and green. The people are amazing.
I found a wonderful ecological guesthouse that provides pressure-boiled water for free so you don't need to buy lots of plastic bottles of mineral water and it even has a compost toilet - well actually most houses do because they aren't allowed to use flush toilets in the winter - the snow is frozen and therefore there is a greater water shortage than in the summer - when there would be enought water frm the mountains if it weren't for the 75,000 tourists on top of the 20,000 residents in Leh!

OK, enough for now. Enjoy life - you don't know how lucky you are to be alive, really!!

Off on Holiday

2009-07-21T20:44:00.003+05:30

Tomorrow I'm off for two weeks (hard earnt?) holiday. In August the 'rainy season retreat' will start here in the institute. And before that the students have to sit exams. So over the next two weeks they don't have classes, just a few days revision time, then exams, then some holiday and then the pre-retreat pujas.

So the English teachers have no classes to teach for that time = Holiday!

I'm off to Ladakh.

First stop is Manali. That's a seven-hour bus ride from here and a favourite spot for Indians from hotter climes to come and see snow for the first time. It's where the pass through the Himalayas starts. I'll stay there a day or two, enjoying the fruit and fruit juice that the region is famous for (but not the apple cider and the hashish, for which it is equally well known!)

Then it's a two-day bus ride up to the capital of Ladakh - Leh. About 450 km I think and passing over two passes that are higher than 4500m. I'm a little worried about getting altitude sickness - this will be the first time in my life that I have been at such high altitudes. Leh itself is 'only' 3500m or so, but most foreigners end up in bed for 24hrs when they get there, apparently. We'll see.

I'll set off early tomorrow, but not until the solar eclipse is finished - we only get to see a partial eclipse here, but further south in India it is a full one.

It's cold - wonderful!

2009-07-20T13:30:00.003+05:30

I was pretty surprised this morning when I woke up and felt ... COLD !! Yes, the monsoon rains have been with us for a few days now, and they've brought the temperature down to a tolerable, human level (for this weakling European, anyway!)

Often you can see the rain coming as the clouds accumulate over the mountain tops or creep their way up the valley. The wind changes quality, getting colder and stronger as a sign that the rain is coming. But you never know quite how strong the rain will be and how long it will last - sometimes more of a heavy shower, sometimes a strong downpour, and sometimes hours and hour of rain.

If I have a reason to go somewhere, my initial feeling is, "Well, I'll wait a while and see if the rain lessens." But I have a suspicion that this attitude has to change: after all, if I wait for the rain to cease, it might be hours before I can go out. So, the lesson I have to learn seems to be: take an umbrella or wear waterproofs, expect to get soaked anyway, and just make sure that you get back home and change out of the wet clothes before the evening when it gets cold.

VIP Visit to the Institute

2009-07-18T15:01:00.000+05:30

Here are some photos from the end of June, when a former Indian Defence Minister visited the monastery. He was welcomed with the traditional katas (white silk scarves) and shown around the shrines and temple. Later he was also shown some monks’ rooms.

Funny: Zen Motivation Poster

2009-07-16T09:40:00.003+05:30

Finding this poster made me laugh out loud - it is just what I need at the moment. It's more or less halfway through the year now and sometimes life in a monastery does seem, well, boring. Until you remember that it is not !

Hot, hotter, hottest

2009-06-30T21:39:00.002+05:30

Yes, there is a cliche that British people talk about the weather. Here in the monastery this British teacher has developed a ritual with his beginner students: they are waiting for me on the temple steps every day after lunch (our class is at 12).
"Good afternoon!"
"Gud avtanun, teecha."
"It's hot today."
"Yes, verree hott."
And then we walk up the steps together to the classroom.

It's not just hot, it's hotter than hot here. India is having a heatwave and the monsoon is late. So no relief. The Tibetans here aren't happy either, they prefer cool mountain breezes.

The other day I used the weather to teach comparatives (it is hotter than yesterday, yesterday was cooler than today) and today one of them asked what the 'water on his body' is called, i.e. "sweat". That lead to a quick lesson on pronunciation (sweat is not sweet!).

And yesterday we had half a lesson prompted by the news about Michael Jackson, in which I taught some basic grammar, i.e. noun (death), verb (die) and adjective (dead). From Michael Jackson to dead Indian cows or sick ones (prompting the future 'will die'), in Germany it would have been considered morbid. But in a Buddhist monastery it's fine. The Buddha taught that life is impermanent, so talking about death is perfectly natural!

Dalhousie Photos

2009-06-20T09:54:00.001+05:30

Here are some photos from my recent holiday in Dalhousie.

First, some views of the town:

Secondly, photos from my first day walking in the hills:

Buses, Sikhs and Hotels - Holiday in Dalhousie

2009-06-20T09:33:00.001+05:30

Long awaited – my first holiday since term started in March. I took four days off, combined with our 'weekend' meant that I had five days to get away and relax. The past few weeks have been quite tiring for me, I'm missing my home and friends in Germany and it's simply 'too damned hot' (even though Himachal Pradesh is very mild compared with other parts of India).

We live on a particular range of mountains here and although we can see 'snow mountains' as part of this range, it's more than a day's walk to get high enough to see further, beyond this range and into the 'real' Himalayas 'behind us'. So I had decided to visit Dalhousie, a former British hill station situated at the end of this mountain range, where I knew that I would be able to see beyond. It is at the border of Himachal Pradesh and the next Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as being very close to Punjab (which borders HP to the west).

Wanting the 'authentic' Indian experience I refused to pay some 2000 rupees (EUR 35) for a taxi there (some 180km) and instead opted for the local buses. This meant a short bus to Baijnath, then on towards Pathankot (down in the Punjabi plains) and at some point hopping out of that bus and into a bus to Dalhousie (2000m altitude). All in all that took 10 hours – including over 3 hours standing up and half an hour with an Indian child on my lap throwing up out of the window (these local buses travel very fast along the twisty mountain roads).

So I guess you can call that the 'authentic Indian experience'!

Dalhousie itself turned out to be a major holiday destination for Punjabis (who are very often Sikhs, so lots of turbans in view). It was also the start of their school holidays, so very crowded and the hotels were full, which led to some problems for me, having to change hotel room every night …. But the place is beautiful and I can fully understand why the Brits chose it as a summer retreat – very cool and in part very European flora and fauna. I went walking both days I was there and then ate Punjabi food in the evenings. Met a nice couple on the second day (German woman and Indian man) and exchanged impressions of India and Germany. And I employed a local man as a guide on the second day (after getting lost on the first) to take me to a Hindu temple and then through the forest to Kajjiari – known as 'Indian Switzerland' apparently – beautiful clearing on a hilltop with a legendary lake, but now little more than a popular place for a family day out, complete with restaurants and all sorts of amusements for all ages.

To break up the return journey I took a 5-hour local bus to Dharamsala and then up the hill to McLeod Ganj where I stayed for one night. Although I go there occasionally on a Friday to buy Western food and eat in good restaurants (as well as visiting the Dalai Lama's temple), I had never really gotten to like the place. But his time I did. Not only because I found out about a reggae night that was coincidentally happening that evening and was able to dance the evening away for the first time since I left Germany!

I bumped into Sandhup, a young Tibetan man from Bir, while I was there and the next day we caught the bus together back to Palampur and then back home – I had planned to spend the day walking around McLeod Ganj but the heavens opened that morning and it felt as though the monsoon season was starting, so changed plan and simply came home earlier).

As it happened, the rain was only for a day. So it's still 'damned hot' here :-)

The Life of Buddha

2009-06-08T08:38:00.002+05:30

Yesterday was a special day in the Tibetan calendar, celebrating Buddha's birthday.

I think.

You see, we had Vesak a couple of weeks ago, which is a fairly universal holiday among Buddhists, celebrating not only his birthday but also his enlightenment.

Anyway, we knew that 'Buddha's birthday' was coming, so we carefully asked if any special events were planned - often English classes and other classes get cancelled on days like this.

But there were not any special events. It was noticeable, however, that many Tibetans from the local colonies did visit the monastery and sat outside the temple while the day's big puja was happening. So they seemed to expect some special events as well.

This seems like a good occasion to give you another video tip. I recently heard about this documentary from the BBC "The Life of Buddha". I was impressed when I watched it. Enjoy.

"Is There a Whole in my Sock?" or "Trigger's Broom"

2009-06-04T22:20:00.002+05:30

Buddhism questions our usual concepts of existence and identity in a very strong way. What does 'inherently exist' mean? And does anything exist as we normally believe it to? Is anything 'permanent'?

The same questions get asked in the Western world. The philosopher John Locke considered his favourite socks. If his sock has a hole in it, and he repairs it with a patch, is it still the same sock? Of course. What if the sock gets another hole, and is repaired with another patch, and then another hole (he wears them every day …). If there are so many patches that there is more patch than original sock, is it still the same sock?

Another similar example was delivered in an unlikely format: the comedy television series in the UK "Only Fools and Horses". This was a favourite program in my family when I was growing up. Trigger (a road sweeper) is awarded a medal from the council for saving money by having the same broom for 20 years. He proudly tells his friends, "It's only had 14 new handles and 17 new heads." Sid, the café owner, responds in colourful astonishment: "How the 'ell can it be the same bloody broom then?"

So, where is the 'whole' in your sock? And are you the same person you were 30 years ago, even though modern science claims that not one single atom in your body remains from that time – they have all been replaced by new atoms. And how can you be the same person as the 5-year-old you once were – he couldn't do half the things you can now? Surely you have a different personality. Are you a different person?

Tashi Jong Monastery

2009-05-23T08:53:00.003+05:30

Yesterday, Friday, was my day off, and I had arranged with a 'dharma friend' from Bir to do a little 'dharma sightseeing'. Another friend of hers joined us and we set off fairly early to Tashi Jong monastery - about 40 minutes' drive from here.

As usual, I forgot to take any photos :-) So I've linked in a YouTube video to give you an impression of the place - excuse the somewhat 'exaggerated' musical background to the video :-)

The old yogi in the video, Tokden Amtrin, die a few years ago, and his body is preserved in his old room. We went and meditated there for a while, then spoke to the lama who was his attendant (and still is ...). Very interesting.

There are currently about 16 tokden yogis living in their retreat huts above the Tashi Jong monastery. They are all fully ordained monks who then decide and request to become yogis for the rest of their lives. If given permission by their teacher, they enter a 12-year closed retreat. During this time they do not cut their hair any more, but still wear their monk robes.

After completing this 12-year closed retreat, they change their clothes and wear the white robes of a yogin. They remain in retreat for the rest of their lives, but it is no longer closed: they come out now and again to give teachings or to lead the pujas in the monastery.

On a personal note, I particularly enjoyed seeing this monastery and the young monks there because it was the first monastery of my good friend Khenpo Ramesh - where he lived when he first became a monk.

Funny: Zen Crossword

2009-05-21T20:11:00.001+05:30

Goodbye, Safe Journeys!

2009-05-18T14:32:00.000+05:30

Goodbye Lucie! (She suddenly had to go back to the Czech Republic because her father is ill.)
Goodbye Debora! (Off to Rinpoche's teachings in Nepal and then back home to Brazil.)
Goodbye Michael and Linda! (Michael was the second teacher here for the first two months. Thank you for your help and maybe see you again when you come back, before you go into retreat.)
Goodbye Fiona! (Off travelling and then back to Ireland.)
Goodbye Pung! (Off to Rinpoche's teachings in Nepal and then further travelling before returning to China.)
Goodbye Dimitri! (Back to Nepal, his home for the past few years.)

And "See you in a month, Peter" (Going into retreat here in Bir for four weeks.)

Oooph, that was a hard week. Just about all of my closest friends here have gone. So who am I going to walk up the mountain valleys with now? And who's going to drag me out of the monastery for a cup of tea or plate of momos? And more importantly, the 'normal' conversation that can only happen between 'Inji' (Westerners) who speak enough English?

Kiva - make easy micro-loans

2009-05-18T08:52:00.003+05:30

I have just discovered an innovative project linked to the concept of 'micro-finance'. This is where entrepeneurs in developing countries receive small loans to help them work their own way out of poverty. Many hard-working people are simply trapped in poverty because they have no access to capital. A skilled carpenter, for example, cannot help himself if he does not have the tools he needs. But where does he get the money to buy the tools - the bank will not lend to a poor person, and the local village moneylender or 'loanshark' charges interest at a rate which means the poor carpenter will spend more time paying back the interest than working to feed his family. Trapped again.

So take a look at the profiles of the entrepeneurs all over the world here and see if you can help one or two of them with a small loan.

Khenpo Kunga Wangchuk

2009-05-14T22:07:00.002+05:30

Today was a special day at the monastery. It was the anniversary of the death of the founding abbot, Khenpo Kunga Wangchuk.

The first philosophy classes of the day were held, but were shorter than normal and included a tribute to Khenpo-la. But everything else was cancelled (including English).

There were pujas in the morning and after lunch, with lots of people from the community coming and offering their respect as well. And later in the day there were sessions where all the monks were in the temple and then selected students from each of the academic years gave some short teachings, read some memorial poems or conducted a debate - an opportunity for the best debaters from each year to show their skills.

Unfortunately I never met the abbot, but everyone I know who did meet him says that he was an amazing man. You can get a litte impression of what they mean by watching this video.

Mani stones

2009-05-13T21:48:00.003+05:30

The Tibetans have many innovative ways of offering their prayers: prayer flags, prayer wheels and mani stones are three of them.

Mani stones are often found in large piles at the roadside, with each stone bearing a mantra, most commonly the 'standard' mantra of the Tibetans, "Om Mani Padme Hum".

One of my friends here is Fiona, an Irish woman who is one of the long-term foreign residents in Bir. She is a sculptor of such stones, and here is a link to her photo gallery.

The Friday hike: a dog, a snow leopard and a chicken

2009-05-08T20:52:00.003+05:30

As regular readers know, Friday is my day off. Today wasn't completely free, because Khenpo Choying Dorje from the institute is giving some teachings on meditation at Deer Park. He hasn't given many teachings in English before and I had given him some extra coaching this week and last, so I went this morning and listened with one ear as an interested meditator and one ear as his English teacher :-)

Then after lunch I went for a hike up the valley to the waterfall with Lucie (Czech Republic), Peter (Australia), Peng (China) and Patricia (USA/India). It is our regular route - the valley is so beautiful! The next valleys are also beautiful, but do they have waterfalls? We haven't found out yet.

Today was special because Lucie had discovered a dead snow leopard in the river, which Patricia and I hadn't seen yet. The cold mountain water is preserving the body well, so it hasn't rotted, and although very sad because it is dead, it was a unique chance to see such an animal, because the live ones are very elusive. (Click on the photo below for one set of information, and here for some other wonderful photos.)

Snow leopard portraitHeather Angel / naturalvisions.co.uk

When we go on such walks, Kalu, one of the Deer Park resident dogs, often comes with us. Today he was more mischievous than usual. Not only did he chase the goats and annoy other dogs (usual), but on the way back through Bir he nipped off into a farm and caught himself a chicken!

Some of the neighbours saw him and chased him with big sickle-like knives (it's wheat harvest time here). So he dropped the chicken and ran. We went back to the farm to apologise, but there was no-one home, so we left 200 rupees (the price of a hen, apparently) and our apologies with the neighbour, an honest-looking man who promised to pass them on!

One teacher, two teacherS

2009-05-03T08:19:00.002+05:30

My beginners are struggling a little with the plural – in the Tibetan language there are plural indicators but they aren't used if not necessary. For example, "I ate three apple" – why do we need to put an 's' on the word 'apple'. There is already the word 'three' which indicates how many, so for a Tibetan the use of the '-s' is a bit 'doppelt gemoppelt'.

Anyway, now they have a practical example, because there are now two teachers here. Johan from South Africa has arrived to volunteer here for four months.

So my quiet little 'hermit-like' routine has changed a lot – firstly, I have to show him around and introduce him to the nature of the classes here, make him aware of the special features of teaching in a monastery and teaching to Tibetans.

And secondly, we'll be working as a team from now on, so I have all of that 'extra' stuff to do that you have to do when working together and sharing resources.

As part of his induction week we went to McLeod Ganj on Friday together with Eugene, the Australian who is studying here in the monastery in the preliminary year. The highlights were visits to the Dalai Lama's temple and to the best pizza restaurant in town (located within His Holiness's temple complex!). However, my stomach hadn't seen a pizza since I left Germany 3 months ago and it didn't know how to digest it!! So a little while after I had to rush into a café and make an emergency trip to their restroom!

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva

2009-04-30T08:10:00.002+05:30

Last weekend I attended teachings from Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche on the subject of the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva. He is a very respected teacher and the Manjushri Hall at Deer Park was once again very full with many people who came from afar for the weekend.

His teaching style was very 'straight': not a lot of humour and quite long discourses on different key topics relevant to the text itself. 'Shedra-style', as one person described it: either take this seriously or leave – nothing for the 'dharma tourist' :-)

Once I had adjusted to the tone of the teachings I found it a very valuable weekend. The text is well known as a very good short text summarising the principles of bodhicitta and the Bodhisattva Path in Mahayana Buddhism.

The text is quite short and easy to read, despite the profound meaning. Here is one translation from Lotsawa House, and here is another from Alexander Berzin which is more poetic. The Tibetan original has a very beautiful poetry to it.

Here is a video with Dzigar Kontrul Rinpoche, not the same subject, but interesting nonetheless.

Photos of an English lesson

2009-04-23T21:59:00.001+05:30

I'm sure you're curious to know what it looks like when I teach?

Here's the direct link to the photo album:
http://picasaweb.google.de/craigmeulen/DZEnglishLesson?feat=directlink

Thanks to Cory and the Khyentse Foundation for the photos.
Thanks to Mikel Dunham for permission to use the photos of Tibetan refugees' daily life which I am using in these photos.

Teaching Tales

2009-04-19T08:56:00.002+05:30

Imagine the following, and you are allowed to laugh: Yesterday I had to explain to the 20 adult monks in my pre-intermediate class the meanings of the following words, and "the order in which they normally occur":
meet, fall in love, go out with each other, get engaged, get married, have children, get divorced
:-)
(Did I get the order right?!)

Morning Meditation

2009-04-18T09:05:00.002+05:30

Morning Meditation

A week flies by

2009-04-16T20:13:00.004+05:30

This week flew by. The teaching is going well and I was working on a special project for Class 4 – Intermediate Grammar. And I had a lot of contact with 'Westerners', so that helped as well.

The 'Language Section' office

My students are very motivated – they all know that they need English when they leave these monastery walls. Many don't even have the special limited 'refugee passports' that Tibetan refugees can get in India, but even travelling within India is a lot easier if you understand some English (even Hindi-speakers in India use English when travelling to some parts of India where Hindi is not commonly spoken).

Slowly I am learning how to teach to big classes (I have nearly 30 in Class 2 Grammar), and the volunteer teacher for Class 5, Michael, has agreed to help out in that class as assistant teacher twice a week, which helps with all the communicative activities I like to use.

In the smaller, more advanced Class 4 we are looking at "Continuous vs. Simple" and now I'm expanding it by taking a detailed look at the verbs in English that are related to the five physical senses and to emotions and mental processes. This is interesting because of Buddhist teachings on the 'Six Faculties'. To give you an idea of the English grammar involved:
Perception: I see smoke over there. Do you think that house is on fire?
Focussed Action: Where's the smoke? I'm looking for the smoke.
Describing the Object: That dust storm over there looks like smoke.

[Your homework: Use the comments function here to write some similar examples for the other physical senses: ear - hearing, nose - smell, tongue - taste, and hand/body - touch.]

A very Good Friday

2009-04-11T09:54:00.003+05:30

Last week wasn't very easy for me. It's now my third week of teaching and fourth week living down here in the monastery. The teaching was very challenging this week – there were two lessons which simply didn't work (cultural and technical reasons – will write more about the teaching in another post).

On a personal note, after the special tasks involved in setting up the lessons and all of the 'nerves' of the first two weeks and getting to know each other here, this third week felt more 'routine'. And because it is 'routine' and not 'nerve-wracking', my life here is beginning to feel a bit normal. But it is normal without my friends, colleagues and flatmates, normal without the distractions of a big city in the evenings, and normal without even a handful of international people to have a really good conversation with!

And on top of that, the weather changed and it was simply cold and miserable. I like the storms because they are dramatic, but fog in the morning and rain all day is not dramatic! It's just annoying. Even running across the compound here to go to lunch is enough to get really wet.

So I was VERY happy when I woke up yesterday morning and saw a cloudless sky. As the sun came up it blazed with its full early morning glory and I remembered that it was Friday – our free day. It was also Good Friday (which of course means nothing here in Hindu India and Buddhist Bir).

Doris from Manjughosha Editions arrived in Bir this week for a two-week stay and I had a lunch appointment with her – I only knew her from our e-mail correspondence and it is always good to put a face to an e-mail address! We met at Deer Park and she handed over a bright yellow bag full of goodies: the Süddeutsche Zeitung (a German newspaper); "Der vortreffliche Pfad zur Erleuchtung", the first book published by Manjughosha; a copy of the schoolbook about Buddhism that I am helping to translate into German (I'm doing the first proofread), and … an organic German sausage! Hmm, that should help cure (sic: cure = pökeln) the homesickness for a couple of weeks!

Together with her friend we spent a German-speaking afternoon together and went up to Billing. The weather was great so we had a very good view, it felt like we were face-to-face with the 'snow mountains'. And we had fun watching a large group of paragliders taking off, landing and taking off again before they flew into the distance.

Looking over the Kangra valley, everything felt fine. I had the feeling that I am in the right place. Even if there's a little part of my heart and a little part of my rational mind that refuse to accept that.

Easter - The Big Picture

2009-04-11T09:23:00.003+05:30

In English, to see 'the big picture' is an idiom meaning 'to understand the context', or to realise that what you understand is only a small part of the whole issue. Maybe you don't understand why someone is in a bad mood, but then you hear that their mother is ill so you 'get the big picture' and can understand why they are tired and grumpy ...

A newspaper in America has taken this idiom and makes a play on words (a pun), using it as a title for collections of photos from the world's media. These photo collections come from all over the world and therefore they really do present a 'big picture'.

Since it is Easter weekend, take a look at these photos Holy Week of Easter celebrations in different countries. The pictures surprised and shocked me, and if you read some of the comments you will understand that many readers were also surprised at some of the ways people around the world mark this important Christian festival.

The Matrix and Buddhism

2009-04-08T10:16:00.004+05:30

The Matrix is, probably, the most Buddhist film ever made so far. Almost too good to be true... It deals with many essential topics connected with discovering the full potential of mind, speech and body — our true nature.

For all those who know and love the film "Matrix", click on the picture and find some wonderful comparisons between quotes from the film and Buddhist quotes. The author of the website is obviously a Diamond Way Buddhist (the organisation based around Lama Ole Nydahl), which I am not, but Lama Ole does say some wise things, even if some of his followers give the impression that they don't like monks.

[edit: I originally wrote 'he gives the impression', but in reality I've never met him and my limited impressions of Diamond Way Buddhism were formed from a few weeks attending events at one of their centres in Germany. Lama Ole's intention, and as far as I know the request from the 16th Karmapa, was to establish an organisation for lay buddhists, which he did. Some of these lay buddhists that I met seemed to have the impression that being lay was better than being a monk, which I'm sure is not the intention of Lama Ole. Indeed if you read this FAQ and other posts, he quite clearly states the need for the monastical life as well as the lay population, and he makes very interesting comments on the differences in culture between East and West and the implications for monastical-lay relations.]

The Essence of Buddhism

2009-04-05T21:12:00.002+05:30

I was allowed to take the last two days off because a famous Buddhist teacher was in Bir at Deer Park giving teachings in English: Sogyal Rinpoche.

It was the first time I had seen him, and I was impressed. He is a man with heart, he spoke clearly and frankly with lots of humour and lots of quotes from Western thinkers, and his message was both simple and profound.

To give you a taste, here's a video you can watch about the Essence of Buddhism.

The Toy Train (in German)

2009-03-29T22:17:00.003+05:30

Ich habe gerade diesen Artikel aus Spiegel gelesen, zwar ist er nicht der Zug, den ich von meinem Fenster sehen kann, der ist aber sehr sehr ähnlich, wie ein Spielzeugzug und nicht so weit von hier, im gleichen Bundestaat.

This is very similar to the train I can see from my window. The link is to a German article about another train line in the same Indian state, Himachal Pradesh.

Serf Liberation, or not

2009-03-29T02:29:00.001+05:30

As I was settling down to a little study after dinner this evening, I heard the loud voices of children chanting. Nothing unusual, since there is a TCV (Tibetan Children's Village) a few hundred metres away. But these voices were getting closer, and closer and then they were right outside my window: a whole procession of hundreds of children with candles chanting something I unfortunately couldn't understand.

It turns out they were protesting against the new public holiday being celebrated in Tibet today: Serf Liberation Day. The Chinese government is claiming that its invasion of Tibet in 1959 (50 years ago) was a great liberation for the serfs who were suffering at the hands of the authoritarian, hierarchical lama-based feudal government before.

Teaching at last!

2009-03-28T15:52:00.000+05:30

Now I have taught the first classes of the 2009 English program! At last, I'm in the classroom doing what I love to do – teaching – instead of sitting in the office all the time preparing and administering!

The very first lessons were special: I hired in a translator and gave a little lecture about the English language and the pronunciation or the grammar, according to the focus and level of each of the five classes.

And then the next time I taught the first 'normal' lesson. I feel quite relieved having done this: now I have a much better idea what it will be like this year.

Photos from Sherab Ling - Mahakala Dance

2009-03-26T11:00:00.003+05:30

Here are some photos of the Mahakala ceremony at the Sherab Ling monastery which is not far from where I am staying.

For some people, these dances appear to be a very strange form of Buddhism. They are, in fact, a very Tibetan thing and therefore perhaps not directly linkable to Buddha's teachings, since he lived in India. However, it is a very interesting expression of Buddha's teachings. Here is a link to a page from another monastery explaining similar dances and how they express our desires to clear away all obstacles on our path to enlightenment and helping all other sentient beings.

Those of you who have known me longer may remember similar sights from my trip to Nepal in 2007-2008. Here's the link to those older photos.

Photos of Bir Valley

2009-03-26T10:57:00.002+05:30

Here are some photos taken a few weeks ago. It was one of our favourite places for a Sunday walk during the course at Deer Park.

Places, Faces and Placement

2009-03-22T18:57:00.000+05:30

In German there's an expression 'fehl am Platz' (I hope I remember correctly!) which more or less summed up my feelings during my first week here – in English I would say 'like a fish out of water', in other words, I didn't feel at home, I felt like I was in the wrong place. The only Englishman amongst over 500 Tibetans (plus a few Indian workers and one Brazilian monk!)

However, 'this place' is now slowly beginning to feel like home. I'm getting used to the routines, to the way that things are done, and I think the monks are getting used to seeing me around. A few of them are even beginning to try out their English or prompt me to try out my Tibetan. So we are beginning to understand each other, even if quite a lot has to remain non-verbal.

Yesterday, Saturday, we carried out the placement interviews for the monks wishing to study English. 'We' being: Pema Maya, who set up the English program here a few years ago and taught the first two years, but is now mainly busy with other activities for Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche and the Khyentse Foundation (which funds the English program here); Suzie, who taught half the classes last year and is now managing the English program as part of her new responsibilities here helping with the finances of various projects supported by the Khyentse Foundation; myself, responsible for the day-to-day admin and teaching 4 of our 5 courses (5 different levels from Beginner to Intermediate); and Dargye and Thutsop, two of the intermediate students who helped us by translating for the others.

At 12 we dealt with the students from last year, checked their wishes with the recommendations from the teacher last year and tried to make sure they understand the new timetable! That is a little difficult because our English classes run on alternate days in two different time slots, whereas they are used to an easy timetable for their philosophy classes: same time, same place, every day. In fact, as a monk here you don't really need a watch – there is no need to know what time it is because the wake-up bell, the class bell, the 'puja' (ceremony/prayers) horn or the kitchen bell all sound when the appropriate activity is about to start. So just listen out for them and forget the time!!

Then at 2pm the new students came. They are all in Year 8: before that the monks are not allowed to study English because it could distract them from their monastic and philosophical studies. We had a short placement test and conducted a very short interview with those who can speak a little English already.

And there was another very important part of the placement process: student photos! Somewhat reminiscent of a prison 'mugshot' ('mug' here is slang for 'face'), they held up a whiteboard with their name on and we took a photo of this and their face. This is very important for the volunteer teachers who come for 3 months – they need to study the photos and learn their students' names quite quickly. Imagine standing in front of the class of 20 students – how do you remember their names when all of them have the same haircut and are wearing the same clothes ?!!!

Russians at Lake Lotus Flower

2009-03-21T00:54:00.000+05:30

I took a few days off from the preparations for the English program and my 'settling in' to my new home and headed off down the Kangra valley to Rewalsar, also known by its Tibetan name Tso Pema, which means "Lake Lotus Flower". As well as being a little pilgrimage to a sacred Buddhist place, it was also a chance to meet up with Khenpo Ramesh, my teacher from Nepal 2007-8.

I walked up to the bus stop in Chauntra and waited for the local bus to Mandi, the district capital located at the "confluence of three valleys", some 80km from here (and thus about 3 hours' bus ride along the mountain highway nr 20). Much to my surprise there were two other 'Westerners' sitting in the bus and a quick "Where're you off to?" revealed that they, too, were travelling to Rewalsar. The overflowing bus wasn't conducive to much conversation, so I just concentrated on not getting travel sick as the bus wound its way along the side of the valley and tried to enjoy the breathtaking scenery.

In Mandi the three of us agreed we needed a 'masala chai' to settle our stomachs before the next stage of the journey. Margarita and Daniel were their names and they're from Russia – the country which proved to dominate my next few days! Everywhere you looked in Tso Pema there were Russians, and on the first night in the monastery guest house we were woken at about midnight as a loud group of people arrived, shouting up and down stairs to each other as they unpacked their belongings and sorted out room occupancy – shouting in Russian. As this continued beyond tolerance level I stuck my head out of my door and sternly but calmly lectured a couple of surprised new arrivals about how some people were sleeping and that they should be quiet. To no avail – a quick response in Russian probably meant they hadn't understood a word I was saying (the next day my friends interpreted for me as they did try to apologise!)

And then my Russian friend from the Tibetan course in Bir rang me to say he was coming to Tso Pema – although when he learnt that the town was full of his countrymen he almost changed his mind …

Anyway, why do people go on pilgrimage there? Because Guru Padmasambhava meditated in a cave above the town there. He was one of the key people who established Buddhism in Tibet all those centuries ago. But when he meditated in the caves near Mandi he had chosen the princess of the King of Mandi as his consort, and the local people all got the wrong idea, thinking he was a bad magician secretly having his wicked way with their princess up on the hilltop. So they told the King and he arrested the yogin, brought him down the hill, tied him up and threw him into a pit of burning oil. Leaving him for dead they returned to Mandi, but were surprised to see strange smoke still rising from the site days later. The King sent an envoy to check and found the yogin unscathed and sitting on a lotus flower in the middle of a lake that had appeared where the pit of oil was.

My new Russian friends and I agreed that the main thing we wanted to do was meditate and so we walked up the beautiful hillside to the cave, which is now lined with marble floors and walls and containing a huge gold statue of Guru Rinpoche (as he is also known). That day and the next we spent hours there meditating, drinking tea and eating Tibetan biscuits forced upon us by the nuns who run the monastery, and just sitting enjoying the sun and occasionally trying to have a conversation with the nuns in very broken English and very broken Tibetan.

Back down in town I spent some time with Khenpo, whose life is changing quite dramatically at present. Previously he was a simple monk and respected khenpo in India, but then Shangpa Rinpoche invited him to teach in Singapore and in Nepal and now he has invitations to Bulgaria and Portugal, and one sponsor is financing the construction of a meditation centre in Tso Pema. So now Khenpo-la is a property developer!

His faithful assistant for the past few years, Lama Sam Ten, is now becoming a teacher in his own right and will be based back in his home country of Malaysia and also in Singapore, where he can teach in his mother tongue, Chinese.

After a refreshing couple of days in those beautiful valleys I headed back to Chauntra, this time without any Russian encounters. The monks in the institute have started their philosophy courses now, so everything is ready for us to start the English program.

Moving

2009-03-08T23:35:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I moved down to the Dzongsar institute, where I will be teaching. It was the end of the Tibetan course and most of the international friends at Deer Park are leaving for other places - a tearful farewell to new friends, a parting of the ways as happens so often when travelling internationally, getting to know people who live so far away there is no real chance I'll fulfil those "I'd love to visit your country" promises ...

And down the hill to over 500 Tibetan monks just back from their annual holiday and ready to sit their exams - yes, the year starts with a test of what they learnt last year - must be a bit of a pain having that hanging over you during the holidays!!

I need to get back into the habit of working and being organised - after four weeks of just studying, eating, meditating and generally not having to do too much that has a deadline apart from the daily Tibetan homework.

My first attempts at spoken Tibetan had the monks laughing very loudly, so I'll swap the classical Tibetan books for the spoken Tibetan ones for a week or two, and I'm taking a little individual tuition with a teacher in town as well. But it's all very very slow progress.

Off to the shops now to buy some provisions for my very empty new room. Internet connection has been a bit haphazard recently so I haven't been able to upload the photos of the valley here and the Mahakala dance, but I'll try and find time to do it soon.

A Little Homesickness

2009-03-01T15:07:00.000+05:30

Almost four weeks away from home now, three weeks of the Tibetan course are completed and there's one week to go, then I move down the hill to the Dzongsar College.

I haven't often taken long holidays: I like to be busy! I can relax well for a week, but after that I get restless. And the stay here at Deer Park feels a lot like a holiday which has gone on long enough now. (In fact, in my more cynical moments this whole place feels like a Tibetan/Buddhist-themed holiday camp for stray souls from all over the world .. but that's only a reflection of my own inner cynicism, not an objective judgment.)

And I'm missing home, my friends and loved ones, colleagues, Germany, Cologne, familiar foods and places, the little 'mod-cons' (conveniences of modern life).

What do you do when you're thousands of km from home and you hear a friend has died? (Hermes, we will miss you. May your passage through the Bardo be a smooth one.)

My meditation practice and previous teachers have taught me to accept these negative emotions and not to suppress them or even try to immediately 'balance them out' by pointing out all the positive things around me that I wouldn't have if I was somewhere else. Just live them out, accept them and recognise that emotions come and go – both the positive and the negative ones. So I'm recognising them now by writing about them!

On a positive note, it was my birthday a couple of days ago and I got some wonderful presents which showed me that I have already made some good friends here! We had coffee and cake in the afternoon – two cakes from the amazing 16-year-old cook here at Deer Park and one wonderful German apple cake baked by another course participant, Katarina. I had invited about 15 people and as we all introduced ourselves with country of origin and country of residence (different for many of us), I'm sure we named at least 20 countries!

A Day in Dharamsala

2009-02-21T02:55:00.001+05:30

Yesterday I left the sanctuary of the Deer Park Institute and headed out into "civilisation" to Dharamsala – known to the world as the home of the Tibetan Government in Exile and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

I'm not sure how many kilometres it is – maybe about 80 – but here you don't measure distances like that anyway. It's more important to know how long it takes to get there: in this case, two hours by taxi or 4-5 hours by bus. I didn't want to miss more than one day of the Tibetan course so I chose the taxi option and found another visitor here who shared the cost with me – you pay the taxi driver for the return journey and to wait the day there for you, so it's quite expensive at around 1000 Indian rupees – about 16 euros.

The 'real' Dharamsala is not so high and is very Indian. The place that the world has come to know is actually called McLeod Ganj – a connected town high up on the hill. It was here that the Indian government offered the Tibetans some land and in the last fifty years the Tibetan colony here has grown and grown and taken over the hillside.

But I had to go to Lower Dharamsala first to register at the Foreigners' Registration Office – an amazing experience of bureaucracy at its best. I turned up at 10 am and filled in the four copies of the form I needed (yes, by hand, no carbon paper or photocopier ..). Then I had to wait for the senior officer to come out of a meeting to sign the papers. No-one knew when the meeting would end so I came back every half an hour to check. At 2pm I finally got ushered past rows of waiting Tibetans and received my registration certificate.

My patient taxi driver then rushed me up to McLeod Ganj where John was waiting for me to go to the Dalai Lama's temple. Then we were overdue to eat lunch. The restaurant in the Dalai Lama's complex is supposed to serve the best pizza in town (!) but we opted for a 'meat day' and headed to a recommended Indian restaurant for chicken tikka, tandoori chicken and saag – yes, chicken! In Deer Park we have very good vegetarian food and so it is nice to eat a little meat when you go out and about!!

I have to say that I was very disappointed with the town itself. It is a real tourist trap. Very crowded and not really a place where you would hope to experience Tibetans being Tibetan – here they just seem to be selling Tibet on T-shirts (I'll post a photo of mine soon ..) and every other type of souvenir imaginable. If you like shopping, it's great. And we had to do quite some shopping because everyone else in Deer Park needed something that you can't get in our village (I needed Marmite) and McLeod Ganj has supermarkets stocked with western goods, as well as very good bookshops, and an Osho health food shop with one of the friendliest shop owners I have met in a long time.

I didn't take any photos – sorry – but I am sure that if you check photo-sharing sites such as FlickR and PicasaWeb you will find a lot of travel photos from there.

On Sunday we'll be hiking in the hills again – there are some beautiful waterfalls nearby – and on Monday we're all taking a day off and heading over to Sherab Ling monastery to watch the traditional 'Lama Dance' which is always performed just before the Tibetan New Year.

Tomorrow, Saturday I have to catch up with some preparation work for the English courses – amongst other things I'm trying to devise a pronunciation guide using Tibetan letters to help the monks with English pronunciation – in this respect English is much more difficult than Tibetan because it is so irregular. You all know there are 5 vowels in English, right? But how many vowel SOUNDS are there in Standard English? Answers in the Comments section, please! If you need a clue try looking up the words 'phoneme', IPA and diphthong. Yes, you get bonus points if you tell me what they are.

The teacher is a student

2009-02-14T03:26:00.000+05:30

For my ex-students: If you think of the lessons where I was trying to explain some strange aspect of the English language to you and I had to laugh or smile – I was not laughing AT you, but WITH you, because I DO know how difficult it is to understand how a foreign language works.

And now I'm experiencing that again – this teacher is now a student struggling with vocabulary lists and reading sentences aloud at snail's pace. Yes, I know what it is like to sit on the other side of the desk!

The Tibetan language is simply very, very different to English or German. Starting with the alphabet: the letters do not resemble the 'Latin' alphabet at all. The next step is to put the letters together and make a … no, not a word, but first a syllable. Tibetan is built on syllables, not words. If I try to illustrate that using English:

you.write.tib.et.an.with.sy.lla.bles.not.words //

The problem is that each syllable contains many letters that aren't actually spoken. Just think of the English word 'knight' – you don't hear the 'k' or the 'g' or the 'h'. But the 'gh' affects how you say the 'i' – it is not /nit/ but /nai:t/.

Words like that are not too common in English. But in Tibetan syllables are very often like that. Then words are built from one, two, or three syllables (I think), but there are no gaps between the words to help you!

And then the sentence order is very different to English. I'll write the above sentence again the way I think it sounds in Tibetan – but it might be wrong – I'm just a beginner:

you.ag.sy.lla.ble.by.not.word.by.ti.bet.lang.uage.write //

Here I have written 'ag.' and 'by.' where special little words like our prepositions (in Tibetan they come after the words and can be called 'postpositions') are written.

So that's about as far as I have come – we have already read our first little prayers and understood them. Next week in class we will take a closer look at more complex sentences (with relative clauses etc.).

I'm writing this on Friday evening, will go to an internet café in the next day or two to send it. I think there is a plan to go for a long walk up the hill tomorrow if the weather is good – if you saw the photos in the "First Impressions" you'll know that behind this institute it just goes up and up and up !

Hope you are all well.

First Impressions

2009-02-08T21:16:00.002+05:30

(Here are some photos for First Impressions

I think I chose the right location for my first visit to India – Himachal Pradesh. (This is one of the federal states of India.)

There are mountains and green hills, the air is clean and they are environmentally aware – an example of this is a ban on using disposable plastic bags, so shopkeepers put your items in a paper bag made of old newspapers. Everyone I speak to says that it is very relaxed here in comparison to the plains of India, and that the federal state has low levels of poverty compared to others.

Today I went to Palampur – this is one of the nearest medium-sized towns where you can find a well-stocked supermarket, some office supplies, clothes shops etc. And, of course, that vitally important international ATM – or as the Brits say, a 'hole in the wall'. It was a nice morning out and Pema Maya (my 'boss' here for the teaching) knew which restaurant to go to for some good Indian food, too. My search for rechargeable batteries was also successful – the fourth electrical shop I asked in actually had some :-)

The other participants for the Tibetan courses are also arriving one-by-one, so I'm not the only guest in the Deer Park Institute anymore (I arrived a day or two before the official season start). So far there's a Brazilian woman who spent the past five years in Taiwan, a Canadian student spending eight months in India, a woman from the Czech Republic and a couple more who I haven't spoken to yet. And I will also get a chance to keep my German language alive chatting to Irwin, a philosophy teacher from Austria.

So as more people arrive and once the classes start tomorrow, I'll have less time to feel lonely and far from home – feelings which are inevitable considering the busy life I was leading in Germany. I've got my "Cologne is a feeling" towel hanging up in the bathroom and the big smiley sun with sunglasses smiling at me from above my mirror, and my Cologne Cathedral brooch pinned to my collar – all gifts given to me in my last days in Germany and which help to make my room here feel like home!

I've been down to the 'shedra' (the monastic college) twice already and got to know a couple of the monks and the lay secretary – he seems to be very friendly and will help me settle in when I move down there in March. And I drank the first cup of salty Tibetan butter tea on this trip – somehow that also felt like "arriving" (yes, I actually like drinking it!)

So lots of mixed feelings, I'm looking forward to the start of classes tomorrow and will be busy because I'm probably going to try to attend both the beginners and level 2 classes – there's nothing like a little challenge!

Arrived safely

2009-02-05T19:06:00.002+05:30

I have now arrived in Bir.

The journey was a long test of patience: I had expected India to be a little chaotic, but I hadn’t expected the chaos to start before I left home :-)

On Monday London had had its deepest snow for 18 years and Heathrow had cancelled some 900 of its 1300 daily flights! On Tuesday, BA cancelled some of its flights from Duesseldorf to Heathrow, but not mine. However, even though the flight landed at Heathrow almost on time, the effects of the previous day’s delays and a little powdery snow were too much for the airport authorities and there was complete chaos. So our plane stood for almost two hours before we found a gate to park at and they sent steps and buses to get us off.

Those were the two hours I wanted to spend with my family, who had come to London to meet me! In the end there was just enough time to drink a coffee together (and spend some time together standing in the check-in queue!!)

The flight to Delhi was only delayed an hour or two, and in India everything went fairly smoothly, as my contacts here could tell me where to go and how to get there. I spent the early evening in an amazingly hectic inter-state bus station (an intense introduction to India) and took the overnight bus to the northern state of Himachal Pradesh. Couldn’t really sleep much, especially in the second half because the driver swung the bus around the hairpin bends at such a speed I had to keep my eyes open and on the road ahead in order to avoid getting sick (I don’t like rollercoasters!!)

Bir is beautiful. The high mountains are visible behind the medium mountains and the high 'hills' and in front of us are the lush green lower hills. They say there is very little snow up on the higher peaks this year, which could cause water and power supply problems soon. The temperature is also quite mild (outside – inside my room I need my thick pullover and long underwear!!)

Tomorrow I am being taken to see the institute where I will be teaching in March. And on Monday the Tibetan course here starts.

So now I have to slow down and get used to the quiet life - a big change after German city life. I hope you are all well.

Craig

A Picture

2009-01-06T02:53:00.000+05:30

Here's a picture of where I will be living, just to brighten up this blog a little :-)

Destination Dzongsar

2009-01-05T04:23:00.003+05:30

So where am I going exactly?

The Dzongsar Institute is a monastic college in Himachal Pradesh, northern India. It is a Tibetan Buddhist college where adult monks study a nine-year philosophy course. At present there are some 500 monks there, aged between 20 and 35. Each year they study two major texts or commentaries, together with other subjects such as logic, grammar, monastic discipline, and poetry. And English!

The English program was set up a few years ago and currently 90 of the monks are enrolled in it. So that's why they need an English teacher. In fact, there are two teachers – although the second teacher doesn't live in the monastery (it would be a bit difficult, mainly because she is a woman!)

The college bears the name Dzongsar Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö Institute, because it was originally set up by the Rinpoche with the same name in the distant past in Tibet. However, the original college was forced to close during the period when the Chinese authorities closed a lot of monasteries in Tibet, and the current Rinpoche decided to re-establish the 'college-in-exile' in the 1980s. Here's a link to a video about the story that you can see via YouTube.

And another video(this time in Chinese) about the first abbot who helped set up the new college and directed it until his death last year.

In 2004 the college moved a few kilometres down the hill from a town called Bir into a bigger monastery in a place called Chauntra. Here's a link to Google Maps to help you find that :-)

And you can get an idea of the impressive size of the buildings and grounds, as well as the beautiful surroundings, by looking at a photo album from one of my future students with some great photos of daily life there.

The new academic year starts at the beginning of March, but I am travelling to India a few weeks earlier in order to do some learning myself – I am taking part in a four-week Tibetan course at the Deer Park Institute. This is very close, in fact, it is Bir in the monastery buildings where the Dzongsar Institute was until 2004. It is now a place for international students to come and learn about all of the classical Indian wisdom traditions:
" The core vision of the Institute is to re-create the spirit of Nalanda, a great university of ancient India in which all traditions of Buddhism were studied and practiced, alongside other schools of classical Indian philosophy, arts and sciences."

Background

2009-01-04T23:15:00.002+05:30

As most of you know, in 2007 I decided to take some "time out" for the first time since I had "settled down" in Germany all those (eight) years ago. The destination was Nepal and to be more specific, a course in Buddhist Studies at a small institute for international students (Kirtipur Institute of Buddhist Studies).

In February, 2008 I returned to Germany after a wonderful twelve weeks in the institute and in Nepal. I set about enacting my plan to set up my business in a new part of Germany - in the wonderful, friendly city of Cologne. Or, rather, I waited a while because I got offered immediate work as a proof-reader and teacher at a friendly translation agency and thought it would be a good idea to let all those impressions from Nepal sink in before starting any large projects.

After a couple of months it became clear to me that something had changed deep within me – there was a peace and clarity in my heart that had a new quality. My "material" ideas of becoming a freelancer again no longer seemed to be the right thing to do. What would be the right thing to do? Return to that state of meditation for a longer time.

In Buddhism we talk about "going into retreat": withdrawing from the outside world and meditating for a while, be it a week, a month or, in the case of the Tibetan lamas, three years! My idea was to try and organise my work so that I could do a longer retreat (e.g. one month or three) every year.

My professions (teaching English in adult education and translating) unfortunately do not provide me with a very high income, so it was quite difficult trying to figure out how I could make this possible.

I had just started a new job as a full-time teacher at a great language school here in Cologne in September when I was reading some news from Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. He is a respected teacher from Bhutan who is also well known internationally and who teaches in a very modern way. One of the things I read caught my eye: the Khyentse Foundation was advertising for an ESL teacher (English as a Second Language) for one of the institutes it supports. More specifically, they were looking for a male teacher who would live in the monastery.

"Perfect!" I thought – it is not a retreat, but what could be more similar and opportune than living and working within the sheltered walls of a monastery? So I applied for the job ....