Sunday, June 29, 2008

prostration phobia

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!

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