The Meaning of Life

I am starting to worry that people might get the impressed from my blogg that I am mildly depressed. Actually it isn’t so, I have just always been endowed with a very black sense of humor (not such a good trait in a nun!)

I had an idea to collect a list of all the stupid things that the people here have said to me recently, at which I would laugh out loud about it if there was another Westerner around to laugh with me, but now I feel guilty about being so negative and teasing everyone all the time. (so I will save it for another blogg)

When I first started up my blogg nearly three years ago I used to try and write things about Buddhism and the Dharma, those little insights about the nature of life I though might be beneficial to others. I guess I was still in my Buddhist honeymoon phase and still somewhat of a romantic youth. During this current ‘blogg revival’ I haven’t been doing that, I guess I am getting old and grumpy I have just turned 26 but feel 45. I get the feeling no one is reading it anyway so I usually just kind of write jokes for my friends.

Would you like a little insight into the meaning of life? These last three weeks have been extremely difficult for me as there is a big gathering at my nunnery with several hundred people. We have several classes a day and are debating for more than 7 hours a day. I go to bed around 12 and am meant to get up at 5am (but that doesn’t always happen!) The first 8days there was no break and then they sent us to His Holiness’ teaching in McLeod but we all had to get back to the nunnery quickly afterwards as there was evening debate. During that time I came down with a cold that now, three weeks later is just getting worse and worse. So I am really, really tired. There is one more week to go and it is over so everyone is kind of holding on by their knuckles until Sunday when it will all be finished. Last night I went to have a cup of tea with some class mates and our teacher before going to bed (somewhere between 12-1am) and my teacher asked me why I became a nun and came here to India. I told him I had no other choice. He asked the obvious next question… I said that if I went home I would probably go to uni, eventually get a job, probably get married and have kids and in the end it would all have no meaning. After death as peoples memories of me fade all the good times and bad will prove to have been in vain, but here if I work hard I can really achieve something that will have huge benefit for myself and for others in this lifetime and the ones afterwards too. So what other choice do I have?

There is a lady running around at the moment making a little doco for French television about the debate gathering. I watch her float around, sit and drink tea she even came and asked me if I knew a good place in town where she could get a massage. I saw her from the debate ground and thought “that could be me. I could live like that if I chose to. If I gave up my lifestyle right now I could be in that situation…and would it be crap!” So the point of my story is that although I am exhausted, sick and have all my minor decisions made by a series of bells (which just keep ringing and ringing these days). Am ultimately much more content than I was when I was at home doing as I pleased (when I wasn’t slaving away at work).

So there, has your life been changed forever?

If not, don’t worry.