Small Lunch, Big Thoughts

So yesterday I ate lunch with a new friend. He is a well educated Tibetan from Amdo (Qinghai), north of Sichuan. Although he does not wear monks' robes, he does have a great propensity for the Dharma. Yesterday he was wearing a gray, long sleeve T-shirt and some blue jeans. One distinguishing feature, though, is that he was wearing (what I later identified as) a rosary (Tib. phreng ba, pronounced drengga) made from Rudraksha seeds around his wrist.

His profession is to write and edit Tibetan-Chinese-English dictionaries. He is quite well spoken in both Tibetan and Chinese, but his English is a little clumsy. He knows many words, but cannot always put them together into sentences quite properly. I suppose that is a result of working with dictionaries. Thus, we spoke a lovely hybrid of Tibetan and English.

I came to the lunch strictly with business on the mind. I wanted to introduce this friend, who makes dictionaries, to another friend, who works for a school which wants to buy some of these dictionaries. I thought I would meet with the buyer, bring him to visit the maker, and then we could talk business. This, however, is not how things worked out.

The potential buyer of the dictionaries was busy and needed another hour or so before he could come to lunch. Before I knew this, however, I had talked to the maker of the dictionaries and had already arranged to come to his neighborhood in the northwestern part of town. It was a very long bus ride and the potential buyer just didn't have time to make the trip. So, it would just be me and my dictionary-making friend.

We went to a really nice Chinese restaurant where they would pour tea for us as soon as we would finish our small cups. They would take away used bowls and replace them. They even covered my friends jacket on the back of his chair with what looked like a velvet pillowcase. It was really quite over-the-top.

We talked about the prior days' events, friends, and food. He said that he does not eat meat at Chinese restaurants because he thinks that it is unclean. We talked about living situations. He said that he likes this part of town because, although there are not very many of his friends here, he is able to concentrate on his work. At first, one must have a quiet place in order to develop wisdom. Then, after sufficient practice, wisdom becomes unperturbed by surroundings.

He said a quiet place is important for mediation as well. I liked this comment. I had sat down to meditate a little that very morning, but I had left the window open and could hear the constant chatter of roosters, dogs, and ducks. I asked him a funny question; Does meditation have a goal? He thought for a little while, and may have even taken a phone call while thinking, and replied that there are many kinds of meditation. Some kinds do have goals, but many do not.

He then asked if I was familiar with the state of calm abiding (Tib. zhi gnas, zhiné), i.e. being able to focus one's attention on a particular thought or mental object with full clarity for indefinite amounts of time. I had heard of practices leading up to such a state in various classes I had taken, so I replied asking about the Six Perfections (Skt. pāramitā, Tib. pha rol tu phyin pa, paröltu chinpa), i.e. the perfection of generosity (Tib. sbyin pa, jinpa), ethical discipline (Tib. tshul khrims, tsültrim), patience (Tib. bzod pa, zöpa), joyous effort (Tib. brtson ’grus, tsöndrü), concentration (Tib. bsam gtan, samten), and wisdom (Tib. shes rab, sherap). Was the fifth perfection, concentration, the same as calm abiding?

He said that they are similar, but not the same. Calm abiding is certainly a type of concentration training, but the fifth perfection is a much broader category. He then started to speak more about the second perfection, ethical discipline. He stumbled on the English word which he was looking for, making many "w" sounds in the process. I have heard other Tibetan Lamas have trouble with this word before, so I knew that he was trying to say "vow" (Tib. sdom pa, dompa). He said that a vow is like the ground, space, or a foundation upon which other virtues can be grown. We then discussed the various vows of body, speech, and mind.

He said the most basic vows pertain to body and speech; to abstain from killing, lying, stealing, sexual misconduct, and taking intoxicants. He said one should not kill other beings, speak untruthfully, or take from others. He said it is fine to marry but, once one has married, he should not sleep with other women. And then he said that drinking is not good for you; it does not do anything positive.

I had heard these vows before. I had even tried them for a time; very rigidly avoiding all these different types of misconduct. But not lately. It made me think of mosquitoes. Jen and I leave the window in the bathroom open when we shower. There is no proper shower or bathtub, but merely a drain in the floor, so the entire bathroom gets wet. There is no fan either, so opening the window helps air things out a bit. But it also lets bugs in. So Jen has gotten some pretty intense mosquito bites in the past few weeks, swelling up to the size of a penny at first, and then just itching like hell afterward.

I had this in mind when I saw a mosquito flying away from my dresser. I followed it into the living room and swatted it down, out of the air and on to the floor, with a folded up map. The swat felt quite satisfying; taking this pest out from mid-flight. I looked at it, stuck to the ground, moving its legs slightly, not sure what had just happened to it. I hit it again, to put it out of its misery. There was a giant blood spot on the floor, probably Jen's or my blood, but it looked like it came from the bug. It was kind of an awful sight.

The next day I found another mosquito. This time I chased after it, trapped it with a cup, and carried it outside. I liked this solution better. I thought about these things as my friend described these vows and building virtues upon them. It really made me think. In the recent past I have thought of vows as an extreme and unnecessary rigidity in one's behavior; one which will ultimately lead to frustration. This conversation reminded me of a time when, long ago, I wanted to find wisdom and happiness unaltered by the world around it. Although my aspirations have changed quite a bit over time, building virtue upon a foundation of saving lives, even pesky ones, seems like a very good start. Will I stop drinking now? Probably not, but we will see what the future holds.

Kangding and Back Again (Part II)

Dardo/Minyak/Rongdrak/Lhagang Photo Album

I can say with confidence that I grew a little bit this past week. My mind and body were contorted and my world was turned upside down. It all started with a seven-hour bus ride from Chengdu into my future home city of Kangding (Tib. Dartsedo). Jen and I were greeted by heavy rains, honking cars, and shouts of "Hello!" Although I have not heard it very much in Chengdu, such shouts are a common greeting from curious Tibetans and Chinese. It is like a hook that pulls your attention to the speaker (usually a child or vendor) although there is not generally much follow-up conversation.

We stayed in Kangding for several days, adjusting to the slight, but significant, increase in altitude. We dined, we hiked, we soaked, we saw sights, we visited old friends, and we made new ones. I could write more about our lovely time here, but perhaps you could (eventually?) consult Jengdu for a more in-depth account. I may write more about Tibetan tourism later on, but not now. Now I will describe only a few days from our trip, but they were very eventful ones. Some of the more eventful and impactful days I've had in some time. They were the kind of days that play through your memories for some time, stinging, but imparting understanding.

One morning, Jen and I decided to take a day-trip to the great Minyak Gangkar Mountain (Ch. Gongga Shan). I had done a great deal of work describing the tourism work and prospects of this area while I was back in Charlottesville; detailing hotels, hiking routes, and restaurants for the geotourism portion of the THL website. I felt like I had already been to the little villages, walked the circumambulation route, visited the monastery, climbed the mountain passes, and seen the illustrious White Snow Mountain. I was rearing to go.

On that fateful morning we found a driver from the area, a native to Minyak and a speaker of the unintelligible Minyak dialect (very different from any form of Tibetan that I knew; Minyak and Central Tibetan dialects are mutually unintelligible, perhaps comparable to French and Spanish, but probably even more distantly related, like English and Spanish), and tried to set up our trip over butter tea. Luckily he had been to Lhasa before and was somewhat versatile in his Tibetan dialects (and, of course, quite good at Chinese). Thus, through a combination of his broken Lhasa-dialect and my broken Chinese we could communicate with some success.

As I wrote previously, I was excited to go on a nice day trip, see the mountain, and return; but when the driver informed me that the trip there takes on the order of seven hours, the situation changed a little. It was Friday morning and Jen had to be back in Chengdu by Sunday night at the latest. She had to work on Monday morning and we would be driving in the opposite direction of the city. Upon learning this information, Jen passed me an uneasy glance.

I, in a moment of relative unreasonableness, felt that we could drive down, see the mountain that day, spend the night in one of the hotels which I had researched, hike out to the monastery the next morning, and return the following night with ample time to return to Chengdu by Sunday night. Jen, however, was less sure. After a long discussion with the driver in which, of course, Jen could not partake, she went along with my absurd scheme in order to appease the spirit of excitement which had temporarily overcome my wits.

We started on relatively smooth mountain roads, traveling south (see map below; very approximate rendition of our course). As I mentioned earlier, there was a heavy language barrier between our driver friend and I. Thus, communication regarding our plan was never quite clear. I knew that we were going to see the mountain, but exactly where we were going was never quite clear. I just assumed we would stay in one of the small hotels found in the village to the east of the monastery.

As we traveled further and further away from Kangding, the roads became steadily worse. The potholes became more gaping and frequent, the rocks became more jagged and numerous, and the turns became sharper and blinder. Jen and I were thrown about the worn Nissan van, hanging on for what quite literally felt like our lives. Such was not new though, not to me. I had been on worse roads before, I thought, when in Lhasa. I'm an old hand at all of this. And the driver was quite skilled at finding the best route; swerving, honking, and off-roading.

After several hours, we came to a mountain pass. The driver greeted his fellow Minyak driver friends in their alien tongue and Jen and I joined the other Chinese tourist groups atop the pass. The winds were blowing sharply and we took out our warmest gear. Looking south, there She was, staring back. The great White Snow Mountain decided to wink at us past Her veil of clouds. It was a glorious sight, I thought, intimating what was still yet to come. As the winds began to blow more bitterly, the Mountain's cloudy veil came to cover her completely. I was left wanting more.

We did not stop very many times after that; only to eat and gas and pee. As we made our way down, the rest of the drive was not nearly as cold as the pass, but was certainly rivaling its beauty. The valleys were littered with three-storied stone houses with beautifully painted facades. There were tents and nomads and yaks and sheep. It was glorious. I looked back occasionally and saw that Jen was no longer worrying about the absurdity of our plan; enraptured by the beauty of the regally towering mountains. It was not until I started asking the driver more about our plan that the spell was broken.

I tried to verify with him that we would go south, stop at the village, stay the night, and then return back to Kangding the next evening. He shook his head, though, and said that we did not need to go back to Kangding. There was a better way to get back to Chengdu. We would go around the mountain to the west, travel north past Kangding, and shoot east from there. This sounded absurd to me. The little village I had invisioned was far to the east. To go around the mountain sounded like a terrible plan. Jen heard us discussing these details and could feel the tension in the air. She probably could also make out words like "Chengdu" and "Kangding" and, quite understandably, became concerned. What were they talking about?

The driver was quite resolute in his plan and I eventually stopped trying to convince him it was a terrible route. I, after all, didn't really know what I was talking about. We eventually came to a stop; what I thought was a restaurant, or some kind of pee break. We talked to the other Chinese tour group and one man in a bright red jacket offered for us to go back north with them, through Luding, and back to Chengdu on Monday night. This was similar to the route I had envisioned, but it would make Jen miss a day of work, and I was already skating on thin ice with her. I was still sitting in the front seat of our van and the driver began to make us take off in the middle of my conversation with the Chinese tourist in the red jacket. I shouted back "We can talk more at the mountain, right?!" but I did not hear a response from him. We never saw them again.

Thus, even before we got to our yet-to-be-determined destination, we had begun brooding over the yet-to-be-determined details of our return. We drove on a little bit and our driver began stopping to yell out to pedestrians in his peculiar language. We must have arrived in his valley, I thought. We stopped and picked up a woman carrying some kind of produce. We then stopped and picked up a group of three young Minyakpas. They were smoking cigarettes, had well-kept hair, and one even wore a neckerchief. It was like we had just picked up three Minyakpa greasers. I looked back at poor, asthmatic Jen as they crammed in next to her, blowing smoke out the window and ashing carelessly. I asked if she was OK. She looked back sharply and said that she just wanted to punch something. She did not look happy. I shrunk down into my seat for the rest of the ride.

The packed minivan eventually stopped and we all piled out. I sheepishly faced Jen and flexed my abdomen as she unbridled a few blows upon it. I had never seen Jen so vexed before. She was clearly overwhelmed with frustration by the whole situation. I was doing my best to reassure her when the oblivious Minyakpas asked us to come to the temple (dgon pa - lit. monastery) with them. This confused me. Was this really the Gangkar Monastery? But wait...the monastery is so deeply west into the valley. I thought we would come hike here tomorrow? Surely this must be a different temple.

The local Minyakpas gathered around us as we walked up the stairs. We entered the central temple with the driver and, sure enough, we had reached Gangkar Monastery. All around there were beautiful statues of various Kagyu saints. To the left there was Marpa the Translator and his heart-son, Jestun Milrepa, with his hand to his ear. To the right there was Guru Rinpoche and Rechungpa wearing monks' robes. I could not quite identify the central figure, towering above the rest. He was a great statue, twice the height and girth of the four other figures flanking him. He had wide-open eyes and a great beard. I thought it might be Tilopa or Naropa, but I was not sure. I asked the driver and he seemed unsure. He consulted the rest of the Minyakpas who had been steadily streaming into the temple doorway. There was a cute moment when a dozen Minyak locals were pointing with open hands, palm upwards, at the statues and postulating who their gods might be.

That moment was the lightest my heart had felt for some time. Jen even didn't seem to be fuming anymore. She pointed to a picture of a young Tibetan man on the wall and asked who he was. I couldn't see the picture very clearly and assumed that he was Gangkar Rinpoche, the local reincarnate lama. I asked the driver if my assumption was accurate and he agreed hurriedly. Jen then said "Are you sure? Isn't that the Karmapa?" I looked more closely and, indeed, it was. It was the young Lama who Jen and I had serendipitously been able to see in Boulder, CO, only four months previously. Recognizing his image made me shiver with electricity the same way his presence and voice and teachings did. I made a donation and a prayer after the driver and we left the temple.

The driver took us down the road a little futher and we stopped at a few houses. I had figured that there were not any houses around the Gangkar Monastery, assuming it to be quite remote. We got out and followed the driver past a menacing dog tied to the wall, through a dank lower level and up some stairs into the house proper. We were in the driver's home.

(to be continued...)


View Larger Map - A Loose Approximation of Our Route - Click Sat or Ter for the full effect

Kangding and Back Again

Right before I left to go to college, my Dad offered me an analogy. He said that, son, up until this point in your life, you've been like a tree planted in a pot. You've certainly been growing; progressing from a seed to a sprout to a strong young sapling. At this point, however, it is time for a bigger pot. And that was college. A bigger pot.

The bubble of Charlottesville was certainly big and scary at the beginning. Initially I would look back to high school and think about how comfortable it was. About how many friends I had there. How I missed it. There were so many people at college. And the classes were so hard. And I wasn't nearly as special as I used to be. There were people who would work harder, get better grades, and, dare I say it, even play frisbee better than I ever could. I don't fit in here, I thought. I'm nobody here.

But it took time. It took time for my roots to grow. It took time to learn how to play frisbee and how to get good grades and how to learn. It took time to make good friends. It took time for Charlottesville to shrink. I now look back at quaint, little ol' Charlottesville filled with love and stained with longing. Such are transitions, are they not?

Learning to grow can be so difficult some times. I suppose that's the nature of growing. If it weren't difficult, we would continually grow, regardless of space, proper air, or ample water and sunlight. But, as it is, we need these conditions, these finely tuned surroundings in order to grow. In order to become blooming magnolia trees of Charlottesville or staunch junipers of Tibet.

(to be continued soon...)