20 July 2016 Took a cab with Jeanette and her learning partner to the waterfall trailhead. Then we hiked up. Realized I committed yet another faux pas when I touched a Sikh man and offered to take his picture with his camera. He had been taking pictures with his three friends, but wasn't being included in the pictures. But we finally communicated—I offering to take his photo. Then at the waterfall he was taking pictures of his three friends balanced on the rocks. Again I touched his shoulder and motioned for him to be included, which he did. Finally, he asked me to take a picture with him and his friends after he saw me offer to take a picture of an Indian man and his wife (girlfriend?) who were also dangerously posed on rocks in the middle of the flow. So everyone was taking everyone else’s picture by the end. Still, I realized I should not have touched him—perhaps saying “ji” instead. Tsering and I had lunch at a fancy new hotel. It was okay and over-priced. We were the only people there at noon. We agreed that it probably catered to the weekend Punjabi crowd. Back to the guys at the waterfall: three wore turbans, so were undoubtedly Sikh. It helped that the three women in my group were either: 1) 65 years-old; or 2) Tibetan; or 3) Hispanic. In other words, we weren’t young and blond. I guess there are some advantages to growing old. 18 July 2016 (I think) I asked Tsering if there were a shortage of marriageable Tibetan men because so many became monks, and he said there was. He said H.H. addressed this problem a few years ago in a talk. To me, Tibetan “ethnocide” is somewhat assured if Tibetan women marry Chinese or Indian men, due to a dearth of eligible partners. There can be too much spirituality, I guess. The rinpoche of the Sakya Monastery on San Juan Island is a married nun with children, since I think it was her brother, who is head of the Sakya lineage, told her her to marry. Tsering took us to the temple of Mandarava this morning, and we watched the puja there. As I contemplated the statue, I thought how similar to depictions of the Virgin Mary. All of the statuary and imagery in India is similar to that of Europe in its depiction and veneration of saints and holy people. All the stupas with relics are akin to the cathedrals, which, by tradition, must contain the relics of some saint or other. (N.B. new cathedrals in Rwanda and El Salvador contain the bones of individuals killed in the genocide or civil wars there.) I was put in my place yesterday when I went with Jeanette [my roommate] in search of henna. As Jeanette was being painted (by a woman who had been phoned by her husband and told to get over to the shop), I got out the money and placed it under Jeanette’s shoe [which was on a chair]. One of the youngish women asked me, in good English, something like where I put my money in America. I didn’t really understand what she was asking, until she said in India they touch money to their forehead. Then I realized my faux pas: putting the money under the shoe (in order to keep it from blowing away). I thanked her for reminding me of the custom, and removed the money and the shoes. Her point was definitely to put me down, and though I thought of several retorts (like, we have a different attitude about money in the U.S.), I was very polite. She was very interested in the fact that we were staying at the Raj Mahal—they all were—and they wanted to know how much it cost, who was coming to our party (the dinner we’re having tonight) and other things. I had a conversation with the six-year-old grand-daughter of the woman doing the henna, who did not speak English (the grandmother, not the grand-daughter, who spoke English in complete sentences). Jeanette and I agreed that we had an adventure! . . . At the Padmasambhava cave yesterday I talked with a man from Bhutan, whose brother is a kenpo of some monastery in New York. Not clear on all the details. We had an interesting conversation about Buddhism, or rather, he talked to me about Buddhism and said our meeting was karmically-driven. I said “I agree,” but then he said it didn’t matter if I agreed or disagreed, he was talking about truth. He asked if I were a Buddhist, and I said now, but I meditate. After talking a while he said I would become a Buddhist. . . 13 July 2016 [I was wondering why my journal was missing some entries. That’s because much of what I wrote comprised a personal, private series of letters to Mac. Here is a letter that I thought was worth including.] I can’t believe I missed a day, but we met with learning partners in a.m., cleaned up, packed out of Dharamsala, drove a couple of hours on winding roads to Bir (a small town, relatively speaking), toured Tsering’s monastery, had a late dinner, then I returned to the monastery with Tsering to see the baby monks (well, boys aged 4 or 5 to teenagers) still in class after 9:00 p.m. The younger boys had all carefully traced a picture of Mickey Mouse or Peter Pan, while the older boys were learning how to do butter sculptures, which are these amazing, colorful objects that they place on the altars. The temples here make the Catholic churches in Europe look fairly plain and simple. Today we hiked over to another monastery, trekking through farms, villages, mountains, streams with boulders, etc. We passed by a Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) where 800 kids live. Some are orphans, some are refugees without parents around. They live in dorms or houses of about 30 or 40 kids with an adult supervisor. The grounds are covered with inspirational slogans, like “Others Before Self.” Yes, Jonestown without Jim Jones. This just indicated to me that you can live collectively if you have enough money, dedication to the cause, and don’t have a crazy leader. I s’pose you could say the same about the monastery schools: they are essentially boarding schools, where they really run the kids. I mean, as in Bob Boze Bell, “run ‘em,” not abuse them. It really is possible, though they’re not permanent: just boarding schools. 15 July 2016 Pretty much spent the afternoon at Deer Park [in Bir], one of my favorite places so far. We had a great lunch buffet (more Indian than Tibetan), a nice tour given by Trilok, who seems to be in charge of educational programs. Then I meditated in the temple hall, which was nice. Then I went and hung out with Trilok as he made little wallets on his treadle sewing machine. We talked about a lot of things. His father died 20 days ago, so I asked him about various death rituals. He described his father’s death in a lot of detail (it was a good death). I had thought that the eldest son had the most responsibilities, but he said that his brother (the eldest), himself, and his nephew and two others handled the cremation. Apparently you can have 1, 3, 5, etc. perform the rituals, but not 2, 4, 6, etc. We talked about religion and about Christianity. He said a friend of his invited him to church to pray, and at first it was friendly, then it was for the purpose of conversion. When he, Trilok, started criticizing his father’s deities, his brother told him to cut it out. At that point he said he stopped going to church. I went into the library to hang out until tea time. It’s a nice quiet place. I read out of a book by Pema Chodron, which I had not seen before. Then tea with Trilok and two visitors, one a sailor in the Indian merchant navy and the other an Italian woman traveling on her own. We talked about vegetarianism, veganism, travel in India, and other things. It was nice to have an adult conversation with some non-Americans. Always interesting to hear what other people have to say. I have appreciated the times when I have been able to meet “actual people,” like our learning partners, Tsering’s sister Chokey, Trilok. Just hang out with them in a human way over a cup of tea. . . |
Author Rebecca Moore is Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. She is currently Reviews Editor for Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions and Co-Director of The Jonestown Institute. Archives
December 2021
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