Alreay so much time has past and I am yet to post my blog. The holidays finished as quickly as they started although I managed to get 4 full days of hiding in my room and not going anywhere which was really nice.
After the holidays we had to read petcha (the Tibetan’s wrote out Buddhist literature on long strips of paper). We were meant to read the 100,000 line perfection of wisdom sutra 3 times and then the whole of the Kangyur and Tengyur but in the end about half the Tengyur was done ‘the quick way’. (ie we just read the first few pages of each petcha… actually I didn’t know that was allowed).
At first the reading was ok because there was a lot of sponsors coming and they were sponsoring meals so it was great… fruit salad with cherries and more than one type of vegetable for lunch but after about day 4 everyone was going a bit cross eyed although for once my back held out, but I must say my knees weren’t very happy about it.
In the end we did 7 full days of reading, which is from 6am till 6pm (with breaks for lunch and tea etc.) and then there was Sakya Dawa Duchen, which is the holiest day in the Buddhist calander (Visak day-birth, death and enlightenment of the Buddha). Actually the whole month of Sakya Dawa is holy but I wont let that stop me from eating dinner so don’t worry! The monsoon arrived about 4 days before Saka Dawa Duchen and it is a real stinker this year. Many people went up to do prostrations around the Ling Khor in Mcleod but I knew it would be 2 feet of mud most of the way so I made small coughing noises and told them I had to stay home. (The ling Khor is the dirt path that encircles the whole of His Holiness’s residence, the Main temple the IBD and Namgyal monastery)
I just can’t get into the prostration thing. Isn’t there a way of making merit that doesn’t include flinging your body across muddy earth where cows and God knows what else have recently defecated? I think I should get double the merit for every prostration as I am quiet big and fat so plying myself of the floor each time takes twice the effort. (for those of you who don’t know what a prostration is, it’s a full bodied bow where your forehead to the top part of your feet have to be flat on the floor, then get up and do it again another 100 or so times.)
After Saka Dawa Duche it was back to the reading but we got the morning off as everyone was too busy comparing wounds after all the prostrations the day before so was an afternoon and evening session and then much to my surprise it was back to classes which all started up about two days ago. We still have a lot of reading of various prayers and stuff to do so that is being done in the evenings instead of night debate which is fine with me as the debate court is grass (ie very wet and muddy) and it gets cold at night. But it is stinking hot and muggy during the day, this morning is the first piece of sunshine so I have put most of the content of my room outside to air out. The monsoon still has another 2 and a half months so it probably won’t do any good.
Would you like another crappy Indian doctor story. I accompanied a nun friend to the new fancy, smancy public hospital which from the outside at least looks like a western hospital. It is a bit of a nightmare journey and it was hot so I wasn’t too happy but it is free and there is a new ‘supermarket’ (the only one with-in 8 hrs drive of here) so I mainly went to check that out.
Anyway the public system is free even for foreigners. She needed a dental x-ray and seeing as I have been afflicted with sever pimples this year and the Tibetan dr thinks it is menstrual (I think it is poor quality food and lack of sleep to be honest) but seeing as it was free I decide to drop by the ‘skin ward’. Can you believe the guy said I have rosaisa. I had pink cheeks at the time but that’s because it was stinking hot you idiot. I checked on the internet and I definitely don’t have rosasia, I have a friend who does have it and our pimple are nothing alike. The doctor said to me when you eat chilli and hot things does your face get hot and itchy. I said no. Then he prescribed all the medicines…. Antibiotic cream, antibiotic sunscreen and wait for it oral antibiotics! Then he said and you’ll notice your face gets hot when you eat chilly and hot things. The scariest thing is that this hospital is actually a training facility for new drs so all the dr’s have training doctors with them and there were about 3 girls inspecting my face. One said why is it not acne, I answered her question for her….. The moral of the story is take out private health insurance and for those of you at home……don’t trust Indian doctors.
If you have e-mailed me and are waiting for a response, please don’t get too upset if it takes a while I am trying not to go up to town too often. Last week the bridge connecting us to Dharamsala was washed out and in Dharamsala a tree came down blocking the road to the bus stand, so I’m a bit frightened to go up often in case I get washed down the mountain too!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
I really had all intentions of restarting up this blog incase anyone felt what I had to say was of benefit, but just as last year (and the year before that) I am so incredibly busy, it is very difficult. As it turns out though I am not too busy to write to my Mum so I decided to cut and paste a few e-mails and create some kind of blog (although not like what it was before but at least its something.)
So much has happened in the two years since I was a regular blogger and I can’t barely begin to put down all that has been going on so I will just start again and slowly things will reveal them selves.
I would like to write little Dharma insights and these things as I did before but these days it is a bit of a sink or swim situation and book reading is something I have to save up for the holidays.
Which actually I am on right now but it will be over shortly and then there wont be another until January! What type of marvelous Buddhist books have I been reading these days? What about ‘The way of Perfection”….. wait isn’t that the credo of Teresa of Avlila the great Carmalite saint?
Well yes, and probably I shouldn’t be reading it but it is fascinating and often rings true even in my weird situation. Unfortunately for my mother there is no indication of jumping boats but it still has a lot of fascinating insights in to monastic community life.
So to fill you in a little on what has been going on around here………
The annual nuns debate festival will be held in our nunnery this year, they are also expecting a lot of puja requests from the Tibetan government during the time of the Olympics. Already classes have been disturbed a lot by all the stuff going on this year. Also it seems there will be another Kalachakra at Amaravati in Jan or late Dec which means we will have exams a bit early. Or at least that is the excuse they gave us for canceling our summer vacation this year. Pretty dirty trick hey! They are giving us 10 days during June (ie now) which is almost over already and I have been so busy running up and down the mountain I’ve only managed one day of rest so far!
I thought I was coming down with tonsillitis so I went up to see the dr. Once I convinced him I was still in possession of my tonsils he said I only had a bit of pharengitus. It wasn’t an auspicious start. I went up as His Holiness came back a few days ago and we were told he would give a little talk and that there was some prayers so although it started early (8am but it takes up to 2 hrs to get up there sometimes) I went anyway (as I also had to go to the Dr so why not!) Anyway, we got there and there was prayers but His Holiness didn’t say anything so it was a bit disappointing. He will be giving a teaching to the Tibetan Children at the Tibetan Children’s village (giant Tibetan boarding school with several thousand students) tomorrow. I am not going, I will see if I can get someone to record it for me.
Two weeks ago we traipsed up to meet some of the meditators who are living in little shacks near my friend Ven. Nykills retreat hut. We went the long (and prickly) way but made it in the end (with a few puncture marks one stinging nettle victim and a neighbors dog who decided to join us for most of the journey but gave up near the top of the mountain when we lost the path and had to start crawling through the thorns.)
Of course there was a easy and relevily simple path to follow but we only found it on the way down….. its that always the way!
In the end it seems it was worth it though as we meet with a meditator who was a lovely fellow (who Nykil and Sangye (both American one monk one nun) had already named ‘Happy Monk’) from their brief meting when he was on his way back from Sojong. He wanted to cook us lunch but I felt bad because the food we ate would leave him with more to drag up the mountain next time he went for supplies so we just had tea.
He spent near an hour talking about the Dharma especially mind training and the benefits of cherishing other, which sounds boring but his way of speaking was really entertaining and very moving. I had to translate for the others but it was hard because he would say so many interesting things so fast and go on for a long time so I wasn’t able to translate it all exactly, but I had a nice time!
As for me I am well, class is really good at the moment I like it a lot and our teacher is really very skillful. All the nuns are surprised by how hard he is making class but we are so lucky to get a top notch teacher in a nunnery so they are trying to butter him up and make sure he doesn’t leave. He is pretty old already (ie not worrying about a career) so I think he may stay for another year or two which is good for us. Its not easy to get a good Monk to accept a post working in a nunnery. Besides the fact they are suddenly so alone in a nunnery they get a lot of flack from their mates back in the monastery. The stigma of nuns being stupid and unable to be married off etc is still thickk in the air. Even one of my classmates asked me why I didn’t go to Sara school and study philosophy with the monks rather than coming to the nunnery but to be honest I much prefer being here with the nuns where we can be friend and I am not always shut out of everything. If I have to be here for 10 years or so I may as well enjoy myself a bit!
So much has happened in the two years since I was a regular blogger and I can’t barely begin to put down all that has been going on so I will just start again and slowly things will reveal them selves.
I would like to write little Dharma insights and these things as I did before but these days it is a bit of a sink or swim situation and book reading is something I have to save up for the holidays.
Which actually I am on right now but it will be over shortly and then there wont be another until January! What type of marvelous Buddhist books have I been reading these days? What about ‘The way of Perfection”….. wait isn’t that the credo of Teresa of Avlila the great Carmalite saint?
Well yes, and probably I shouldn’t be reading it but it is fascinating and often rings true even in my weird situation. Unfortunately for my mother there is no indication of jumping boats but it still has a lot of fascinating insights in to monastic community life.
So to fill you in a little on what has been going on around here………
The annual nuns debate festival will be held in our nunnery this year, they are also expecting a lot of puja requests from the Tibetan government during the time of the Olympics. Already classes have been disturbed a lot by all the stuff going on this year. Also it seems there will be another Kalachakra at Amaravati in Jan or late Dec which means we will have exams a bit early. Or at least that is the excuse they gave us for canceling our summer vacation this year. Pretty dirty trick hey! They are giving us 10 days during June (ie now) which is almost over already and I have been so busy running up and down the mountain I’ve only managed one day of rest so far!
I thought I was coming down with tonsillitis so I went up to see the dr. Once I convinced him I was still in possession of my tonsils he said I only had a bit of pharengitus. It wasn’t an auspicious start. I went up as His Holiness came back a few days ago and we were told he would give a little talk and that there was some prayers so although it started early (8am but it takes up to 2 hrs to get up there sometimes) I went anyway (as I also had to go to the Dr so why not!) Anyway, we got there and there was prayers but His Holiness didn’t say anything so it was a bit disappointing. He will be giving a teaching to the Tibetan Children at the Tibetan Children’s village (giant Tibetan boarding school with several thousand students) tomorrow. I am not going, I will see if I can get someone to record it for me.
Two weeks ago we traipsed up to meet some of the meditators who are living in little shacks near my friend Ven. Nykills retreat hut. We went the long (and prickly) way but made it in the end (with a few puncture marks one stinging nettle victim and a neighbors dog who decided to join us for most of the journey but gave up near the top of the mountain when we lost the path and had to start crawling through the thorns.)
Of course there was a easy and relevily simple path to follow but we only found it on the way down….. its that always the way!
In the end it seems it was worth it though as we meet with a meditator who was a lovely fellow (who Nykil and Sangye (both American one monk one nun) had already named ‘Happy Monk’) from their brief meting when he was on his way back from Sojong. He wanted to cook us lunch but I felt bad because the food we ate would leave him with more to drag up the mountain next time he went for supplies so we just had tea.
He spent near an hour talking about the Dharma especially mind training and the benefits of cherishing other, which sounds boring but his way of speaking was really entertaining and very moving. I had to translate for the others but it was hard because he would say so many interesting things so fast and go on for a long time so I wasn’t able to translate it all exactly, but I had a nice time!
As for me I am well, class is really good at the moment I like it a lot and our teacher is really very skillful. All the nuns are surprised by how hard he is making class but we are so lucky to get a top notch teacher in a nunnery so they are trying to butter him up and make sure he doesn’t leave. He is pretty old already (ie not worrying about a career) so I think he may stay for another year or two which is good for us. Its not easy to get a good Monk to accept a post working in a nunnery. Besides the fact they are suddenly so alone in a nunnery they get a lot of flack from their mates back in the monastery. The stigma of nuns being stupid and unable to be married off etc is still thickk in the air. Even one of my classmates asked me why I didn’t go to Sara school and study philosophy with the monks rather than coming to the nunnery but to be honest I much prefer being here with the nuns where we can be friend and I am not always shut out of everything. If I have to be here for 10 years or so I may as well enjoy myself a bit!
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