Minds for Momos

I just came back from a weeklong fieldtrip with the grade 8 students to a Tibetan refugee settlement in Karnataka, India known as Bylakuppe. Because we lived in a monastery for a week straight, I was not able to blog regularly. Thus, I have pieced together a few snippets from this wonderful week of monks, Buddhism, momos, relaxation, and piece of mind. At first, I thought about apologizing for the length of this entry. Yet, knowing that monks spend twenty-two years memorizing over 1,000 pages of scripture puts certain things into perspective.

Novice Perceiver

Initially, I was a little nervous about heading to a refugee settlement. Naively, all I had ever presumed about these ‘camps’ was dry arid land with lots of people living in very difficult and primitive conditions. Once in Bylakuppe, I quickly altered these judgements. Pulling into the area, I suddenly felt I was no longer in India as all around me I saw a huge clean beautiful landscape with little clusters of developments and industry neatly erected underneath slews and slews of prayer flags. The Tibetans in this community have done an unbelievable job creating a living environment that both satisfies their needs and adheres to their beloved culture and tradition.

Chosen Path

On the way to Bylakuppe I was told to sit in the middle of the bus in the middle of the row so I could blend in with the children and escape the problems that could arise from me being a foreigner in citizen-only part of India. Fortunately for me however, the police seemed to be conveniently diverting their eyes this time. Even here in India there is no avoiding this whole ‘Free Tibet’ business.

Mind Games

During the rainy season, Tibetan monks meditate for three months straight. After this time of serious devotion and practice, they get precisely eight days off. Coincidentally, we are visiting during exactly those eight days. What does this mean exactly? Well, in short, there will not be any meditations, rituals, or debates to witness. Rather, this week is about watching monks play ping-pong, squirt water guns, watch the latest Korean flicks, listen to their ipods, and take part in a feature-length documentary film starring Miss Tibet. I plan to meditate on this paradoxical span of one short week just long enough to figure it all out.

Soul Survivors

One morning I went to the Tibetan Children’s Village in Bylakuppe. After watching 1600 students drill through their morning assembly, I had the opportunity to meet and chat with some of the young ladies from grade 8. Their stories all go something like this:

“When I was eleven years old my mother told me to leave Tibet. So I went with a group of other children, all strangers, on a month-long journey across the Himalayas on foot. Some of the kids died and many suffered from frostbite along the way. When we finally reached Dharamsala, India, someone split us into three groups: future monks, nuns, and students. Thus, I went by bus to Bylakuppe to study until I am twenty years old. Then, hopefully, I can go back to Tibet see my family and serve my country by being a teacher. I only get to talk to them here once a year, on Tibetan New Year’s. Maybe one day I’ll get to see them again."

These brave young teenagers are not bitter, angry, or scared. Rather, they accept their responsibilities as young global citizens and playfully ask if I will come visit them once Tibet is free. I would love to be able to oblige someday.

Materialisms

Visiting the Golden Temple includes the following rituals: spinning hundreds of prayer wheels, sitting in front of an enormous gold Buddha, and being summoned to prayer by fifty monks blowing into various instruments crafted from conch shells and animal bones. All this takes place amidst a rainbow of bright reds, blues, yellows, greens, and whites of the prayer flags and the maroons and oranges of monks, nuns, baby monks and nuns going on with their daily lives.

Life, Death, Life, Repeat

At one point I had the opportunity to have a debate with a real live monk. Thus, I sat down for a few hours with a Lama (teacher) named Sonam. Rather than getting into the deep complexities of the eight-fold path and four noble truths, I’ll briefly reflect on the complexities that boggle my mind on a regular basis. That is, the eccentricities in life.

Firstly, at the start of out meeting, upon entering the meeting hall we awkwardly interrupted a monk on roller skates practicing on the marble floors of the large space. This vacation for the monks, at many points, started feeling quite unusual for me. However, like the Lama spoke about later on, the best way to focus the mind on things that truly matter is by distracting it first.

Another memorable moment occurred when a fly landed on the Lama’s shoulder. One of the other listeners in our little group brushed it off of him, feaux pas number one. Then, when the fly landed on the floor next to him, she went to swat it dead with a pen. In an instant, the monk’s hand flew down to protect the fly from imminent death with more determination and compassion than I have seen in a long time. Naturally, the woman was quite embarrassed. The Lama just relaxed back into his cross-legged position and smiled.

Road to Enlightenment
Despite the overwhelming peace of this lovely community of Bylakuppe, the sense of impermanence is ever-present. With this, I do not mean to conjure up any Buddhist ideologies but rather note the face that these Tibetans are simply waiting until the day they can head back to their Tibet. Yet, with Tibetan Buddhism as the main player of Tibetan tradition, this sense of impermanence perhaps takes on a whole new meaning. For now, shoontenjaago (goodbye).

Soggy September

Greetings from 7,000 ft. above sea level, where in Kodaikanal, I am pleased to inform you, the start of monsoon season no. 2 is officially underway. In true South Asian style, the rains of the monsoon make European drizzles look like a sunny day as here in India, when the rains do finally come, everything and everyone gets doused in a nice layer of torrential downpour. Fortunately, I just heard the rains are due to last through the middle of November, so I’ll have plenty of time to get the melody to “rain, rain go away…” branded as the soundtrack to my autumn.

Whistle While You Work

This morning I visited another orphanage near Kodaikanal called Shenbaganur. Actually, it’s not quite an orphanage but a type of day care center or kresh where single parents can leave their children while they go off and seek work elsewhere.

Walking into the dark two-room building, the children are all standing, heads bowed down and hands folded together, reciting Tamil Christian prayers in perfect unison. The discipline here is unbelievable. The same goes for snack time, as once again, these little children sit in perfectly straight lines, girls on the left, boys on the right, patiently awaiting today’s delicacy.

After playing basketball, cricket, monkey bars, boat sailing in the well, coloring, and reading and writing with the kids, I decided to get my hands dirty and help some of the older girls plant their garden. After a lot of hard work and song singing, we finally got the job done and hopefully, within a few months, these children will have grown their very own beets and cauliflower, which they can then consume with pride. There’s no telling how long the dirt will remain under my fingernails. Yet, the thought of homegrown veggies and full bellies makes it all worth it.

After just one morning of playing and working with these children, I truly admire the patience, enthusiasm, and love the owners and workers (in this case Sisters) of such an organization possess and share all day everyday. I guess in the end maybe we could all use a bit more discipline after all. 

Natural Beauty

A recent bout with a bacterial infection reminded me quite fondly of a few weeks ago when I learned one of my first Tamil words.

It’s just like any normal day in a pre-school art class, where at any moment a child might be stabbing a peer with a pair of scissors or you turn around and find ten children under a table playing 'animals', meowing like cats and dogs with unyielding passion. Today, the project was to draw things from their outside environment. Walking around, one of the little girls excitedly squeals, “Teachah, teachah! Look it’s poo in Tamil!” Clearly confused, I look at her neighbor and assume she’s commenting on this young gentleman’s brown squiggles all over his paper. Real mature, I think. But no, she is pointing directly at her paper and says again, “it’s poo in Tamil”. All I’m seeing is what I presume to be a flower. And then suddenly it hits me that the word for flower in Tamil is in fact poo! So yes, in this innocent sequence of events, I learned that there finally is a way for poo and flower to exist as one in the same.