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. . . Comments are closed.
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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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