Namaste

Hello,

well it’s been a while. I am sorry for the long gap but as you may imagine things have been pretty busy!

I arrived with little hassle into the pre monsoon heat of Delhi (45 Celsius at 7pm at night!) that’s more than 113 Fahrenheit for my North Atlantic friends.

Due to the heat I spent my day there hiding in the hotel and paid for an extra nights so I could stay right through till the bus left at 6.30pm I was pretty nervous about taking the bus by myself, I had some really bad experiences last time I was in India but luckily it was very uneventful and I was surrounded by a family of a lady, her children and niece so I just stuck with them for the whole journey!

As soon as I got to the nunnery I got to work, I hate being new and not knowing what is going on. And more recently I have been attending a 10 day teaching given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his monastery Namgayl in McLeod Ganj. It’s really tiring spending the whole day sitting on the concrete trying to listen to the interpreter on the radio going at a hundred miles an hour. But really I shouldn't complain!

I don't know what to write really, I don't want this blog to be a journal I want it to be about dharma and yet I thought I should probably give an update about my situation because its been a quite a journey so far. I had a really funny dream a few nights ago where someone drove me back to my old house and I said I don't live here anymore, I've moved. But I couldn't remember where I'd move to. For the life of me I couldn't remember where I lived so I just spent the night on the couch in my old house. It was a weird dream but no interpretations are necessary!

I think I already spoke a lot about identity and how I felt that most of identity was formed around my home and environment. When I didn't have a home I felt like I had no identity. If you’re not sure what I'm talking about check the last blog!

Anyway the moral of the story is trying to make an internal realization of emptiness. Buddhism and emptiness: the worst translation in religion! What I'm talking about again is the whole idea that we lack and inherent, unchanging, permanent existence. I've read many books and could sit here and talk about why in reality we are always changing and never the same but it would all be a very intellectual understanding.

The tricky bit about Buddhism is reaching a deeper understanding and acceptance, like its not some theory you have to convince yourself about it just is. So in a way all this moving around has been really good because all my stuff is gone and I keep changing homes and lifestyles and I can see how I really do change everyday and as long as I'm able to give up the person I was yesterday then I will be able to let go a bit.

The important bit is ... how is this going to make me a happier person? Yesterday the Dalai Lama said that if you practice Buddhism and are not getting happier you’re doing it wrong!! So I guess coming to see that you are always changing and never the same makes you happier because you can really relax.

I mentioned in my last blog the quote from the very first verse of the Dhammapada.

"what we are today is because of our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow; our life is the creation of our minds."

When we let go of ourselves and see that we are always different, then we can be happier and more relaxed as we don’t need to hold on to the hang ups that we seem to get so caught up in. For example you go out to a restaurant and someone orders fish and I really hate fish and they offer to let me try it but I won’t because I hate fish. If I think to myself well, Erin from yesterday hates fish, maybe today I'll like it and then I try some. If it’s good I've just gained a new experience, if not I just wont order it. I know this is a lame example but I hope you get my drift. It’s like if you get really hung up on yesterday you never get to enjoy today.

So many people I know get to this sad stage where they keep going to the bars they really liked when they were younger but now they find no enjoyment there. They're older, they've changed or the bar has changed and they find it really depressing. 'What happened? I used to really like this place and now its so crap.' They don't see that they are not the same person they were a few years ago, they need to let go of that person and not try to hold on to it. It’s like trying to hold water in an open hand. What ever happened in my childhood is in childhood. As I am no longer a child I have to admit that it is not me.

There is a really good quote from the 48 scriptures sastra from the Chinese tradition which talks about impermanence and non-self and says you have to look at things and say, 'this is not mine, it is not me it is not the self.' So you could look at your favorite piece of jewelry that your dead someone gave to you and say, 'hey this really isn't mine, I can't take it with me when I die, it’s not me, who am I really anyway and it isn't self.' You can still treasure it but then when it gets stolen you won’t fall apart.

Another example is photos. I really think that some of my friends take too many photos. I have a friend that has piles of photo albums full of photos from nights out, dance parties everything. Hundreds of photos of her and various friends drunk, hugging each other and smiling for the camera. What a waste. As soon as the photo was taken the moment was gone and just because she has a photo doesn't mean she will be able to hold onto it. People are so afraid of forgetting moments. They don't want to forget anything because then it will be like it never happened and that person and that moment will be gone forever. What they don't realize is that it is already gone. So just let go of it, when your dead those photos will all be thrown away. If not sooner.

I'm a real photo anorexic. I only really take photos if I’m on holiday and even then not that many. There are years of my life where there is no photo and I was still doing interesting things. I feel like if I can't remember it then it wasn't that important anyway. Everything you experience gets logged in your mind even though you may not recall it. If you have a bad experience with fish then next time you come across it you may automatically find aversion to it even thought you don' t know why. So everything you do leaves an imprint even though we may not remember the specifics and these imprints are really more permanent than a photo because we can carry them from life to life. So nothing is really ever forgotten or wasted, the deeper meaning and essence or lesson is still there somewhere


I hope this doesn't sound depressing, it’s not meant to be I just wanted to try and share my understanding of impermanence because I think a lot of the improvement in my own happiness has come from my ability to let go.

At the end of last year I had a less than quarter life crisis. Even though I am still quite young I freaked out when my birthday came by because I felt like I was wasting my life. A whole year had gone by and I had nothing to show for it. At that time I think I was tring really hard to hold on to the person that I had been a few years earlier when I had lived in backpacker hostels in the UK. But it wasn't working very well and I was disappointed. I kept thinking that I couldn't recognize this person. Who was this person staring at me in the mirror; it wasn't like me at all. There were a couple of issues at hand but one of them was that I had this really solid idea about how I was and it wasn't working for me at all. I was changing, time was moving on but I couldn't let go and I was causing myself a lot of suffering.

So now I try to not be me, but just be.