The Path Less Travelled

away

2009-02-20T10:50:00.003+09:00

I worked hard for some time to let people know about my blogg, and then disappeared!

I didn't e-mail during December as we were busy with exams and in the end I left for my holidays a bit early, doing my final memorisation exam two days early.
I decided to go home to get my new visa as things are getting more and more difficult in the visa department in India and several of my friends have had serious difficulties, so I decided to play it safe. The only decent price for a flight was between Christmas and NYE and arrived at 11pmish on NYE. Luckily my parents are over NYE parties and didn't mind collecting me at the late hour. Also the plane had only 12 passengers and we were giving peppermint cornettos. So in the end it was one of the more enjoyable NYE for me. (even including when I wasn't a nun!)

So even though I have been on holidays since then and was sure that I would write repeated blog entries, it never happened and now, with only one more day until I go home I feel compelled to write before they shut down my blog.
So tomorrow I will return to India and try and catch up on all the memorisation I should have done while I was here, but didn't. I thought to visit some friends at the wong in Derhadun, but my books call and there is less than two weeks before classes start up and a new, hopefully less insanely busy year begins. And seeing as how I will be again very busy all the time I am sure that I will again become a regular blogger as I seem to be the kind of person who is either very productive or comatose.

So I hope you all have great plans for the new year and that it actually works out that way too!

*

2008-11-30T01:44:00.004+09:00

The afflictions bind all these beings without exception.

You, in order to release them from the afflictions, are eternally bound by compassion.

Should I first make obeisance to you,

or to the great compassion that causes you to dwell for so long in cyclic existence despite knowing its faults?

author unknown

Getting community minded

2008-11-19T23:56:00.000+09:00

The year is slowly coming to a close and I am so grateful. It’s been a long one. Not that time hasn’t passed by at lightening speed which it always seems like it has by the time you get to November. I remember my mother saying it gets faster and faster as you get older which sounded scary at the time but now actually it is quiet promising. Not that I particularly want to get old but I look forward to retiring from study and that is still nine years away….so bring it on, lightening speed I say.
I am only moaning because our exams are drawing near. It is a toss up between studying hard for my own benefit or being lazy and doing nothing because no one will notice any way. In the junior classes there is no written exam for philosophy, only debate and then only 5mins of it. Last year they even gave us the topic we had to debate on in advance so it was a bit of a no brainer. This year will probably be the same. As for the grammar exam…..well, what can I say I absolutely hate it. For us it is all handwriting and calligraphy and not much actual grammar study. My teacher has finally worked out that, after nearly two years my writing is not improving and asked the kind of obvious question "are you practicing in your room too?" I said something like… "me no speak Tibetan" (it worked.)
Yesterday a good friend of mine headed home to Ladahk to have an operation on her ear. If you ask me she brought it on herself. She has been really unhappy for a long time. Misses home too much and always complains that she is no good in class (which isn’t true) and wants to go back to her old nunnery. If your mind is constantly depressed like that it is not much surprise when you start manifesting it externally. In my last blogg a pasted a letter I wrote to a senior nun friend of mine. This same nun once said something like…if you live in a community but are not guided well, when you have problems, often you either get angry or you get sick. I see that a lot here and also in the Western nunnery I lived in before
Lots of nuns come and go here. Amongst the Western sangha they think it is a problem only the Westerners have but actually it is the same for all monks and nuns. Its not easy living in a community; no matter who you are or where you come from. Here the main reason they leave is illness, lack of interest in study (in which case they return home but remain nuns) or curiosity about the world ‘outside the nunnery’ in which case they leave and disrobe.
Once they leave they won’t come back. It is considered too shameful. Also if they disrobe they will never become a nun again as in the Tibetan tradition they say that a nun only gets one chance, (this is not in accord with the vinaya but what to do). I know a couple of Tibetan ladies who were formally nuns and then disrobed (a layperson’s life looks like more fun kind of scenario) they all deeply regretted it latter. Ironically one of the major obstacles they have which they didn’t expect, was having to work for a living and putting up with being poor. The nuns kind of get so use to people supporting them, although their living standards may not be great, they never stop to think about where the money is coming from and how they are going to get it once they disrobe.
This kind of thing however is unique to the Tibetans. For us westerners we are generally much more materially comfortable as laypeople than monastics and kind of live in the knowledge that if we were to give up the "habit", we would lead a far more materially happy existence, in the short term anyway, (this is for those who are really serious about monasticism and not just playing dress ups on the weekend).
I guess I wanted to say something about communal living and the fantasies people who haven’t done it hold. It is a bad habit to have too many expectations of a community. If one’s expectations are not meet we will waste all our time trying to change everything to be the way we think it should be and that never works. If everyone thinks…. If only they would do it the way I think it should be done then we would all be happy. Of course if everyone is thinking the same thing you are bound to have problems.
The good thing about India is that you learn to either let it go or go stark raving mad. Yes…. the beggars are going to try and grab you and yes…. it will take you 3 hours to do one little thing on the internet it takes 10 mins to do at home and yes…. the seat may be built for three but that is no good reason why the driver shouldn’t insist four of you squeeze in there. Still after all of that you come to learn to ‘laugh it off’. "Look at that Ani Nykil, that man has trained the monkey to steal people’s purses and he just made off with your bag, isn’t India incredible!"
As bad and difficult as communities can get, I think it is better to live in a community for some time as an adult. To help you get over yourself and your preferences, (a well functioning community would be better though).
For example, for me if I eat a vegan diet I feel really health and energized and just yesterday I realized that probably I will never be able to eat like that again in my life. So I may suffer physically from not getting exactly the food I need (or want) but the benefit of living together is much greater. For a monastic, I think living in a community is obligatory, at least for some years. Living on your own is too easy and lets all your bad habits set in. Also you learn so much merely by being in the presence of various types of monastics, even the ones you really don’t like.
Ultimately living alone is often too lonely for a monastic and most of those who do live alone do not remain in robes in the long-term. And isn’t that what it is all about? Holding on, pushing forward, and persevering. If I am a reckless, out of control kind of girl today how can I expect to be a Buddha by the time I am 30? If you can keep it together and just keep chipping away at it, eventually the great rock of ignorance in your mind will be nothing but fine sand, easily blown away- it just takes time. His Holiness often says that if you put the correct causes in place, no matter what, the concordant result will arise. So if you are practicing sincerely and ardently day in day out eventually your practice is bound to bear fruit, you just need time to let it simmer.

If master and disciples achieve a spiritually harmony, their relationship has reached its perfection.
If you recognize the signs and state of your realizations, you perceptive visions have reached their perfection.
The quality of your communal harmony, your awaked experience with its inner warmth and all its signs,
let these my children, serve as your share of the relics.
"The Life of Milarepa"

The Meaning of Life

2008-10-21T14:26:00.000+08:00

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.

Life on the inside

2008-10-21T14:15:00.002+08:00

I thought it may be of interest to write about some boring things I take for granted, you never know what interests people.
I arrived at my current nunnery just over a year and a half ago. Before that I was in another nunnery that was built especially for Western nuns. So altogether it is just over 3 years that I have called India home (but feels like decades, I don’t know if I mean that in a good way or not.)

This nunnery is special because it was built not for Tibetans but for nuns from the ‘Himalayan region’ like North India and Nepal, Bhutan etc. There are some Tibetans here but they are in the minority. The place is also special because it is run by the nuns them selves and it is especially focused on study. For a Westerner it is probably the best they could get. There are only two or three nunneries in India that allow Westerners and when I first arrived I was the first they had ever had (beside a Mongolian some years ago). Since then several Taiwanese and Koreans have come and gone but as yet no other Westerner, although it is probably only a matter of time. Most of the local Tibetan/expat community have never even heard of the nunnery because it is so small (85nuns) and tucked away in a field behind a very poor Indian village no Tibetan has reason to wander into. Many of the neighbors still have no running water and live in mud brick houses next to their livestock. We are about an hours travel by local transport to the main Tibetan community in McLeod Ganj.

I have two classes everyday, except Sunday which is a holiday but when you have to wash everything by hand it doesn’t feel like much of a holiday! I study Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan grammar. We also have about 4 hours of debate a day, if you don’t know what debate in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition is, look it up on ‘You Tube’.

I get up around 5am and usually get to bed by 11pm although if I can sneak it in I will go to bed a bit earlier. We get some time in the afternoon to take a nap to catch up on sleep but still for me it is not enough so usually on Sundays, after all the washing is done, I go to sleep for 3 or so hours to try and catch up.

The food is good compared to most nunneries and monasteries around here but it took me a while to get use to it and I still take a multivitamin every day…..thanks Mum!

Breakfast is chapatti with fried onion, tomato and chili. Surely it can’t be good to have chili everyday for breakfast but it is the tastiest meal of the day. With that they give Tibetan butter tea (reflecting the mix of Indian and Tibetan culture typical around here)
Lunch is white rice, dhal and one veg. During the monsoon sometimes there is no veg as it gets expensive. Unfortunately they give whatever is cheapest at the market so cabbage, cauliflower, potato or eggplant is most common.
Dinner is either tingmo (steamed knotted plain Tibetan bread ) or rice and veg (the same vegetables mentioned above) and sometimes fried rice. It is all cooked the same….fry onions and tomatoes add veg and cook. I have taken to Spicy Indian pickle which makes everything taste good but everyone says it will give me an ulcer. Probably they are right!
There is also tea at 3pm which is more like sugary water the colour of faded milk. I often add coffee. Luckily up in McLeod you can get pretty much everything you want and a lot more. The only thing India really lacks is good cheese and decent fresh fruit and vegetables but I guess beggars can’t be choosers.

So that is a view of the place from the outside. As for the inside, I was sifting though some things and saw an e-mail I sent to a senior nun friend of mine earlier in the year. She has been a nun for something like 30 years and unlike most Western nuns, she has spent most of that time in a monastery. I often write her questions but unfortunately her answers can be a bit cryptic, so the e-mail is a few answers from the previous e-mail and some more questions from me. I thought it might give you a bit of a glimps of the inside (mildly edited).

Dear Sister,
I must say that although there is your usual gossip and bitching the nuns at my nunnery are quite harmonious. They take responsibility for everything (ie. Don’t rely on men or foreign women to run everything for them) and take on heavy duties gracefully, (despite their studies and everything else they have to do on top.) It also means that they avoid the sheep mentality that Tibetan nuns are so good at.

There are definitely a few lessons that Western nuns could learn from them, but the Tibetan tradition is very different from the ideal I think most Westerners expect (which is I think derived from their idea of the Christian tradition) and has more in common with the Chinese tradition to a certain degree.

“A monastery is a place for training the mind”, here the main practice is study. Traditionally the nuns only did mantras and ngondro together. Because they don’t have full precepts- (actually they don’t even know what they are,) even their Getsulma (novice) precepts are observed with a pinch of salt. (ie. only if convenient). In the past many nuns only received parma rabjung (ie. Lay people’s vows with permission to wear the robes) and this is still common in the Nyigma and Kagyu tradition. I have friends who have been nuns for 10 years in nunneries in Nepal and India and only when they come here for study do they get the opportunity to take Getsulma ordination. My roommate thinks I am the most boring person in the world, she went though my mp3 player one day when I wasn’t there and complained bitterly that there was nothing but philosophy class and ‘om mani padme hum’.

The purpose of the pratimoksha is to tame the mind through taming our actions but this is not usually the way the nuns are taught the vows.
So how to tame the mind? For me I get to practice cultivating contentedness with the food (ie. White rice and cabbage for dinner) and surely I am cultivating something with the hours of puja or weed pulling.
We have senior nuns who are like mentors, and if the juniors are having problems with study or personal things they can go to their senior nun. I have one too, she helps me with the studies but with personal stuff it is difficult because we are from different worlds.

Still, ultimately this ideal of a small community of women practicing together, all there because they want to work toward enlightenment (ie not because their mother forced them or they didn’t want to get married) is not the reality here.
It seems the Tibetan tradition as a whole is light-years away from what you seen in the vinaya literature.
I recently asked Geshe-la about it. The Gelongmas living in Dharamsala, not only can they not keep the majority of their precepts but even when they break a shangavasessa (second most important category of vows), they can not purify it. (I think generally the monks are in the same boat). My main question to Geshe la was can you received the same benefits as far as mind training is concerned, with things the way they are? How do you feel about that ( as far as keeping the precepts and no sojong etc)?

I hope it is not too personal a question, I am not looking down on the local Gelongmas at all. I have an idea of how I would like to practice, but here it is not possible. Nether the less it must work somehow because the Tibetan tradition turns out some amazing masters, the more I stay here the more I see that we are not so different. Studying is a valid path, I just wish I could do everything at once. (just to prove I am still a young person!)

So you have no e-mail, does this mean you have moved in? Do you have a regular program for locals? What about candidates for nuns? (or is it still too early?)

Is that too many questions?

Hopefully not………

Best regards,

Olympic mania

2008-08-31T16:30:00.003+08:00

This is an blogg I meant to post some weeks ago, I put it on my Mp3 and took it to town to send but unfortunately my bag and all its contents were stolen, so their was a delay.
So far this year all my bloggs have been posted out of order and at different times so I guess you will have to get use to it or stop checking them. Hope you are having more luck than me!!

So it is Olympic time again. Have you been gripped by Olympic fever too? Even here in our little Tibetan Buddhist nunnery in a valley somewhere near Dharamsala, India Olympic fever is slowly taking hold, but you know these nuns will get for just about anything. The mango season is definitely over so I guess they needed something new to occupy their time. I found the mango frenzy much more enjoyable.

The are several mango trees with in the nunnery boundary and some of them are as tall as a three story building. They were throwing rocks, sticks, cushions, sandals and just about anything else they could get their hands on to coax the mangos out of the tree. In the end our teacher out shined us all by procuring a huge piece of bamboo (taller than the tallest tree), so then the question is how many people does it take to collect mangos? Well, one giant Khampa monk to tap the top of the tree, three small nuns to stop the pole from sliding backwards and ending up in the Khampa monks bedroom window and several, rather brave nuns to run under the tree and collect the fall out without receiving a concussion from stray mangos falling from more than 40 meters above them, yes every one had a good time. (I did the Indian thing and stood around and watched)

But now the mango’s have dried up or been infested with bugs and we are left with the Olympic boxing tournament.

I must say I wasn’t anti-olympics until I recently spent some time watching CNN Asia on telly while staying up in McLeod during the teachings and realized that yes, in fact the world is willing to turn a blind eye to the torture and genocide of modern day China.
Several months ago Chinese soldiers swept into Amdo (far Western Tibet) and arrested all the children between the ages of 8 and 25, most of the kids fled to the mountains and hid, some weren’t so lucky and were taken to “holding facilities” in China until the games were safely over. I have friends here who’s relatives are monks in Lhasa, Tibets capital and have been arrested and taken to prison, ‘incase they decide to protest’. Even Han Chinese people have not escaped unscathed, losing their homes with no compensation and various other human rights abuses, but when the 8th of the 8th rolled around, all was forgotten and the world tuned in to watch people with light bulbs strapped to their bodies making birdy shapes, and the commentators harped on about peace and harmony. It was all a bit sickening.

I guess it just confirms what we all probably suspected, that no matter how much the world may have improved as far a human rights charters and what not, in the end as far oppression, torture and exploitation is concerned, as long as there is enough money on offer, the world is willing to look the other way and we all have a part to play in this. For me it also seems to signal the end of Tibet for good, because for as long as the Tibetans continue to suffer, in the end it is in vain as ultimately, (although someone out their may care) China’s got the money and the world wont let its conscious get in the way of a good business deal. I hope you enjoyed the olympics!

prostration phobia

2008-06-29T12:18:00.001+08:00

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!

2008-06-29T11:55:00.000+08:00

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!

very quick update with no real information

2007-07-21T13:19:00.000+08:00

I thought I should post something in case they are thinking of shutting down my blogg due to unpresidented lapses of anything.

Not that I have not been insanely busy.

I have, and basically since the beginning of 2006 when I was trying to study Tibetan, work in my nunnery and be some kind of 'practitioner', any passing thought of updating my blog fell to the bottom of a very long list of things to do.

Now, it is honestly no better, more studying, less working but very little access to a computer.

It is already half way though 2007 and I can barely believe it. Time basically ended the moment I left the 'worldly life' and entered the Buddhist collage back in March 05.

Since that time I have moved from my home country to India, from a Western monastic environment to a Tibetan one, from lay vows to novice nun with the characteristic speed of a 24 year old thinking death comes at 30.

So much to tell and honestly no time so I will leave it here and hopefully, very soon try to fill in the gaps.

2005-12-31T17:06:00.000+08:00

2005-12-31T16:26:00.000+08:00

Eye Opening

2005-12-27T21:49:00.000+08:00

This time I have a good excuse for not writing for so long. I have been away in Thailand and although they have ample internet access in Bangkok I was genuinely too busy to write a blog. On my return when people asked me how the trip was the most honest answer I could give was ‘eye opening.’

Although I was only there for maybe 13 days in the end by the time I made it back it felt like it had been at least a month, if not more since I pulled out in the taxi and silently wept as we rocked and bumped our away along the dirt track that passes as a road to our property, heading to the bus station. Even now I still have no idea why leaving was so emotional for me. I had been here for months and I was only going on a 2 week vacation to sunny Thailand for a new visa, there was absolutely no reason to be sad, in fact any normal person would be excited at the proposition of a two week summer vacation considering that its really starting to get cold here, but for me I REALLY didn’t want to leave.

When we arrived in Thailand the first thing that struck me was how polite the people were. In Delhi airport you have to assume that everyone is about to rob you at knife point (they are but without the knives!) so in Bangkok when someone tried to speak to me I immediately yelled at them and tried to walk away, unfortunately this person was actually trying to point me towards the taxi rank! Oppss!

So here is the first ‘eye opening’ experience. I have been to Bangkok before, when I was 20 and returning to Australia after living in Europe for a few years. At that time I was only there for a stop over (heading to Tibet) and I had left my American boyfriend back in Europe, so emotionally I was a bit of a mess and also it was very hot, like 39 degrees Celsius and 95% humidity (it was the hottest time of the year and also Thai New Year). Anyway, I had a really terrible time. Everything was dirty and unbearably hot and as far as I was concerned everywhere I went people were trying to hassle me or sell me stuff but the Bangkok I discovered on that first morning only very vaguely resembled the one I had met three years earlier.

Obviously walking around with a Buddhist nun probably helped a lot but compared to Delhi this place was paradise. Even the beggars looked healthier than your usual middle class Delhiite. The streets were actually cleaned every morning and we saw women who worked for the council cleaning the phone booths. Where were the strange men following me around, the dirty beggars and unrelenting touts? Where was the smog, the sewerage and the chaos? The only thing I recognized was the 7/11s.

Suddenly it hit me, all those things I had experienced were not really there, my mind was in a certain state and the rest of my perception followed suit all the aboved mentioned was still there but it didn’t bother me this time so I barely even noticed. This kind of thinking it very basic Buddhist philosophy but when you really, truly see it, then it blows your mind.

The other thing I noticed that I hadn’t remember from the last time was the unceasing, blaring, nerve shattering, head splitting noise, that seriously never, ever, ever stops, (at least in Bangkok). Traffic noise I can deal with but I’m talking about music and blaring movies on a mammoth scale. For several months I have had a self imposed music ban. This will be hard for the folks at home to believe because I really, really love my music. In the past I would have music playing from the moment I woke up in the morning until I fell asleep at night, I was my music and my music was me. Unfortunately as a consequence it seems that I can remember every song that I have ever heard more than once and my mind can run through whole albums unassisted. Which was usually not a problem as I would be blaring some type of music over the top of my mental sound track but for the past few months for the first time in my life, I have tried to keep my mind quiet. And I can tell you that it wasn’t easy!

Anyway more recently I have been getting the hang of it and slowly have been recovering from my music obsession, so suddenly being surrounded by not one but several stereos all blaring old and usually really bad western music super loud was really driving me nuts, on top of this every restaurant was also screening movies on multiple tv sets dotted about their restaurant so if you weren’t listening to terrible western music you were listening to the sound track of some terrible action movie with very little dialogue and ridiculously over the top sound effects at full volume. What is wrong with these people that they can’t even eat without having something there to distract them? How did I not notice this last time?

So yes the old adage, perception is everything really came alive to me, their were more ‘eye opening’ incidents but I don’t want to bore you all at once with them. When I returned home and was recounting my music issue to a lady who has been staying with us recently she expressed her surprise at my stance on music and told me that she her self was a musician who didn’t have any trouble mixing music and Buddhist practice. She was a lot older than me, maybe more than double my age and so I told her that maybe it was because of my age but when I really think about it I don’t think that has anything to do with it.

I told her that when I listen to my favorite music it takes me to a different place, it makes me feel a certain way depending on the type of music I’m listening too. This in itself is not really a problem. When I listen to music that I use to really love it also reminds me of that time and the things that were happening to me. So what’s the problem?

Well, guess what, I am not the person I think I am and as far as I can see that is the whole point of Buddhism. In Buddhist philosophy they call it the reified viewed of the self. Which means we think we are a certain way and we back up this idea everyday in the things we do and say when really this person we think we are is completely a piece of fiction.

When I left Australia I really felt very naked, I was left on the fence without all my props, I didn’t know who I was anymore and I really could see that everything I thought was me had no true value or existence. When I look back at my blog I can see this although at the time I didn’t know how to express it properly.

So when I listened to music it reminded me of me, the feelings at the time, the moments of my life, this was all a way of backing up the idea of myself that I had created. So I really believe that if you are really serious about trying to make sense of all this stuff we get taught about selflessness then you need to give up the props that you use to create yourself.

So for this lady, she couldn’t imagine giving up her music because she didn’t want to give up herself, it had nothing to do with age and more to do with her motivation as far as Buddhism is concerned. So for those who need a bit of spirituality, who have some issues they would like resolved, than I know that Buddhism is for you and giving up music isn’t necessary, but if you want out, if you really want to end the unsatisfactory-ness of life and hopefully if you want to take as many people as possible with you, then you have to give up the music and everything else that is you.

So I’m sorry if this blog is not so inspiring, maybe there is someone out there who know what I’m talking about and then maybe you can feel a bit better about these types of choices because I know now that we are not alone on this one. I am really a very young girl, I know that this is not a normal aspiration for a 23 year old. Most of the nuns around here are already in their fifties, married, divorced maybe a few children. They say that they have experienced life, I think they have wasted most of it. I really don’t want to do that, more than anything else I want to die knowing that I really did something. I always knew that making money or babies wasn’t it, I knew that the best way to make your life really meaningful was to try and benefit others because one happy person out of 3 billion is nothing to brag about, it just took me 20 years to work out the best way to do it.

So this is the point where my mother calls the cult expert to try and un program me, luckily in truth my mother has been very supportive and yet I still think in her heart she is hoping that one day soon I will change my mind, come home and get an office job. Maybe I will although I really hope not. Now I have a teacher I really feel like I have made a commitment and I’m in this thing for life, more than anything else I don’t want to waste anymore time.

I cried when I left the nunnery because right now there is nothing else I would rather be doing and absolutely no where else on the planet I would rather be. I think that is the greatest achievement of my life so far.

In a Pureland

2005-11-15T17:03:00.000+08:00

Again I have fallen into the category of lazy blogger, but I think it is ok as no one is really reading these blogs anyway. For me it’s a diary that can’t be lost when my bag gets stolen (yes I’m still cranky about that even though it was nearly 6 months ago!)

Sometimes I’m not sure how honest to be with these things. Do I try and preach, discuss what ever thing I’ve been reading or something that has ‘spoken’ to me. Do I talk about my upcoming holiday, what I did on the weekend, would anyone really care, do I care? Not so much I guess.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned how beautiful the nunnery I live in is. There is a beautiful mountain range that runs behind it, smaller green hills and then some big rocky snow capped mountains. Completely surrounded by graded farmland. When the sun shines here (which is most of the time) the mountains are so clear it looks like you could touch them and you can see all around us in every direction. It really is very amazing.

I often think about how lucky I am to be here, other than being very beautiful this place is like the dead centre of the Tibetan Buddhist universe. I still can’t get over the fact that I live a 5 min car ride from His Holiness the Karmapa and a half an hour drive from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Recently the regents of the Karma Kagyu have been staying near-by to get teachings from His Holiness (Karmapa) and we were able to go and knock on their doors. I went and had tea with Mingyur Rinpoche! (I even asked him to come and visit us, which he might do at the end of the week)

This is so crazy, these people nearly never go to Australia and even in the states maybe they go once a year but not all together and you definitely can’t just dropped by and visit them.

Earlier in the year a woman I know from Australian came, it was nice to see a friendly face. She had a volunteer job at a very special Dharma centre in the main village which was a really great opportunity, I was almost jealous! However with in a week she e-mailed me to say she was going home, I couldn’t believe it! She had the greatest opportunity to meet with all the visiting teachers and learn so much from the place she was staying in but all she wanted to do was go back to what was familiar, I was shocked.

To me this place really is a pureland and I truly couldn’t imagine going anywhere else, its funny because I get so surprised when people don’t see it the same way. When I left my temple in Australia I was really freaking out because I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing but it didn’t take very long for me to know once I had arrived that I defiantly did the right thing.

So this blog is a bit boring probably, sorry about that. The moral? We’ll I guess it’s that the Buddha really knew what he was talking about when he said that everything is a reflection of your mind, EVERYTHING.

I see a pureland and this woman saw a third world country and a lot of mud. I don’t know what else I can say, I guess kind of Ha Ha to everyone else who is living somewhere they hate because they are too scared to change anything.

Now that’s not very Buddhist!

The Bucket Story

2005-10-11T22:30:00.000+08:00

Sometimes you can't help but say to yourself....Why is everybody always picking on me?

The haze of laziness has lifted somewhat, although its no where near a total success.

For sometime I had been wondering why is was that I was surround by a bunch of crazy people. I’m not kidding. It didn’t take me long to notice that many of the people who hang out here in India, attending teachings, gathering guru’s and intricate networks of friends are really bonkers.

And it didn’t take me much longer after that initial realization, that not all Buddhist are Buddha’s, to wonder why so many were like that.

And after four month I have come to the conclusion that I have absolutely no idea. But it was a question that was taking up a bit of time for me and yesterday I finally clicked so I thought I would tell you all about it.

The day before yesterday I had a run in with a notorious nun who lives here in the nunnery with me. She is one of those people who oscillates between mother Goddess and all round good guy to screaming banshee, and once you have experiences the banshee element you generally try to avoid her at all costs, even when she’s in her 'I love everyone and everything' moods.

The day before yesterday was definitely a banshee mood and it was coming thick and fast. No matter what you say this nun turns it around so that it looks like your attacking her. If you ask her to wait for five minuets she’ll come back with a pithy, "what, don’t you want to speak to me, aren’t I good enough?" If you then say she can help you finish up so you can be with her quicker, you get "what am I your servant now?"

You get my point.

Anyhow, I was so angry by the time I finally shook her off I couldn’t help but wonder how this can happen. This woman has been a nun for more than a decade, how can she be so selfish and self centered ect ect ect….

No answer that really satisfied me appeared, just the usual antidote, ‘well imagine what she was like before she became a nun,’ or the old ‘ maybe she’s a Buddha in disguise’ all that kind of usual stuff which sounds great during a teaching but is often quiet useless in the heat of the moment.

Anyway so I was there grumbling, bitching and carrying on in my mind, (she’d already left by this time). And that was that, I hate her, she’s horrible and I’m such a nice, wonderful person, how dare she treat me like that. End of story.

Ok, so here's that dam karma coming into play. Next day, early in the morning, all hell broke out. Much to the horror and disgust of the Nun in charge of the temple I had used a bucket that belongs to the temple to clean the paint brushes we were using to paint the alter. Not only that but this particular bucket was personally purchased by this temple nun. NOT ONLY THAT but when I scrambled to replace the now paint covered bucket with one from my room this elderly temple nun slipped on the path as she was marching after me and dislocated a finger.

The disaster of the century now revolved around this holy, bloody bucket and Armageddon seemed to loom. Promises of brand new buckets and a heartfelt promise never to touch anything in the temple again EVER, did not placate this temple nun.

And that’s when it happened. I remembered something I use to know, that I had forgotten. That very morning during morning puja when I should probably having been doing something more constructive, I was wondering exactly when it was during July that I became such a cranky person. I use to be very generous and nice, patient and kind but then recently I had been more impatient and rude, selfish and short tempered. While pondering this, suddenly a small group of people arrived to join us for the mediation, they were more than 15 minutes late. Despite my contemplation I greeted them with a dirty look and a stern instruction not to put their prayer books directly on the floor. (I should mention with-in half an hour they had all put their books on the floor despite my warning.)

Anyway the point of this rather pathetic story is that as I took again my seat I saw that I was just as rude and impatient as ever and I suddenly realized that I wasn't such a lovely innocent person and that I still had a lot of work to do.

Anyway so as the bucket episode unfolded later that morning I alrady knew that I wasn’t perfect so how could I except anyone else to be either?

And although it was something I used to think about a lot, being surrounded with all these hard core Buddhist practionors and monks and nuns I forgot all about it and had started to think that they, of all people, should be perfect and when they weren't I was shocked.

So what am I trying to say?

I don't know, I just thought it would give you something to think about. I guess now when people get angry over silly things rather than getting very upset and defensive, how dare they be so rude to me, I didn't really even do anything, they should know better. Instead of that I have to try and be a bit more like a Buddha. They say that a Buddha or even a Bodhisattva can live in the world and not be moved by it.

Because I had been so unforgiving with this older nun, I never thought about where she was coming from or why she was difficult. If I could have seen that, because of her misperception of the world she constantly suffers feeling that she is mistreated and abused then I would have felt compassion for her and not hate. If you generate hate towards someone then in the future you will be more likely to hate and the feeling will escalate as your temper gets worse and worse. Indulging hateful feelings is the worst karma because it will come back to you, and no one wants to be hated unduly.

If you can sit and be yelled at and not generate hate towards this person then not only do you not increase your store of negative emotions but you'll also pay off some of the bad karma you've accumulated life after life when you didn't have the strength to try and see where the other person was coming from. I guess as long as I still get angry when I shouldn't, lose my temper at the drop of a hat or take out my feelings on the closest by-stander than I can't expect others not to do the same.

Perhaps this sounds a bit masochistic, it is definitely not in the nature of a westerner to 'take it lying down', but if you fight back, in the heat of the moment what do you really gain? If someone is badly mistreating you then you should not allow them to do so, but you should not harbor (if possible ) hate in your heart. Whatever you do you should do it with a heart of love. Although this is much easier said than done.

So because I haven't put a dhammapada quote in for a while I thought this passage would-be very fitting..........

"Many people do not know that we are here in this world to live in harmony,

Those who know this do not fight against each other,......"

This is very simple to understand but very difficult to implement. If someone is fighting against you and you fight back then all your doing is escalating the situation. It is so hard to lose the battle, but sometimes on a face to face level it is the only way to preserve your heart of love and not create more bad karma for yourself or the other person.

emotions

2005-09-21T15:20:00.000+08:00

Ok, so I think I must have a bit of bloggers remorse. After such a long absence I suddenly feel compelled to regularly update my blog, plus someone (other than my best friend) actually read it and responded so although I don’t really have time to write a proper blog right now I thought I would at least post a copy of an e-mail I wrote to a friend lately.

My girlfriend wrote to me with a problem. She said she had been suffering a lot recently because she had these terrible negative emotions come up all of a sudden and didn’t know what to do with them. Usually she is not an angry person. Basically she had a bit of a crush on a guy and confessed to a close friend. Despite this knowledge her ‘close friend’ was soon after caught doing some drunken making out at a party they both attended. This ‘drunken making out has since developed into a bit of a proper relationship leaving my friend with a nasty chip on her shoulder.

From what she wrote to me I could see that the problem wasn’t the guy, a crush is no big deal she was over it. It was more the feeling of betrayal. And although she had ok’d everything with her friend the sight/ sound or even thought of them together stimulated a huge amount of anger in her that she knew was irrational. So she asked me if I had any suggestions about how to deal with this disturbing emotion before she lost them both.

This is all ripped directly with the mouths of the great lo-jong-sperts like Ani Pema Chodron, I claim no responsibility for this stuff but I know that it works and my friend also wrote back later and said she felt much better.

This stuff is for everybody no matter what your beliefs so I hope it can one day help someone……..

About your question well, you have to look at what’s

the real problem and not think about the story. 'She

did this he did that' 'I think this'. You have to look

at what’s going on in you because the rest you have no

control over.

So firstly next time you feel all cut up over it and

you get that ‘burning feeling’ you have to completely

drop the story line that starts running through your

head and just feel the pain and work out what it is.

Anger? Jealousy? Hurt? Don't think about the situation

just focus on the feeling. How does it feel like? The

physical feeling what is it. Where is the pain, chest?

Stomach? Face? (DO NOT THINK ABOUT THE STORYLINE THAT

IS CAUSING THE PAIN AT THIS POINT)

All our emotions are caused by our own mind and our

perceptions. You can't change the situation ever, even

by being cunning or deceptive you can only change your

mind so find out what's happening with your mind.

Privately you can do loving kindness meditation which

really helps soooooo much.

So you sit down and clear your mind for maybe 5 or 10

mins. Just follow your breath and don't think about

anything else. Then you imagine someone you really

love. Usually they say your mother. And really see her

and feel love for her. I usually imagine my mum hugging

me. Then think of someone who you like, maybe me (ha ha)

any friend or your dad or something and kind of feel the

love.

Then you think of this friend you’re angry with. And try

to keep experiencing this great love you have for your

mother but have this girl you’re angry with in your

mind. Maybe imagine hugging her. Then you embrace all

sentient beings, every person who suffers every one

everywhere who has problems like yours but doesn’t know

what to do.

That’s loving kindness meditation, you usually end up

feeling very blissed out and then next time you see

the person you want to run up and hug them. I was

doing lo jong a few days ago where you imagine taking

all the pain from others onto your self and I couldn't

find a satisfying image of a person suffering (starving

African ect) and then I thought of this girl here who

is a bit odd but very unhappy and used her image, it

worked ok.

But then the next morning when I saw her I nearly

cried and wanted to run up and hug her and stuff! It

was really funny. Of course although I didn't say

anything she could kind of sense this intense feelings

I had for her and every since then she's been my best

friend and before we never really spoke.

Funny hey!

So yeah I mean your best friend one day can be your

worst enemy the next day, it all really revolves around

your mind so if you can change that then all your

problems will disappear.

So I think no. one, when you get angry drop the story

and get acquainted with the feeling and not the reason

behind it. Your mind is producing this feeling, not

the story. Then when you have the time either in the

morning or in the evenings do the meditation for like

15 or 20 mins everyday for a week and you'll be fine!

If you have trouble dropping the story when that

feeling crops up maybe you can say a mantra like om

mani padme hum or even just breath in and out and say

it in your head, I'm breathing in... I'm breathing

out... breathing in.. ect this is also a good way to

quieten your mind when you start meditation.

Ummm, if this works for you go and get a book by Pema

Chodren. She is a hero of Lo Jong (mind training)

she's great. I read 'Start where you are' by Pema

Chodron and it was really great.

tired but still here

2005-09-15T14:02:00.000+08:00

Its has been so long since my last blog that I seriously thought about just leaving it. I don’t think I get too many hits and at the moment I am so busy anyway that it doesn’t seem worth it. But I’ve found time today and I do want to keep it going. My original intention is still there, to try and benefit others through writing about my own experiences and yet ironically my biggest problem at the moment is pure laziness!

There are three main components to fulfill as a Buddhist, it’s the A, B, C’s of Buddhism, I’m talking about ethics, meditation and wisdom. They follow each other like milk, yogurt and cheese. The first step is to develop ethics so that you can then develop meditation which will lead to wisdom. As far as I can see ethics, as well as the more obvious don’t lie, steal ect also means keeping up ones practice and not indulging in extremes. By extremes they mean eating too much or not enough and sleeping too much or not enough ect.

Its not that I’m a bad person or anything or that I’m doing something ‘wrong’ but I am being soooo lazy. I make a decision that I want to get up and meditate for at least 10mins in the morning before morning puja, and yet when the alarm goes I hit the snooze and before I know it I’m contemplating skipping puja altogether.

This may not exactly sound like crime of the century but it is an indicator of a more insidious problem. Obviously I do not have the correct motivation. Because I’m in such a beginners phase I’m trying to concentrate on generating proper renunciation. To do this your meant to think often about impermanence, the reality of death and of course our precious human life. I can’t really write blogs about these things right now because I obviously haven’t really understood them. If I had then I wouldn’t be so quick to decided to listen to the radio over the internet even though I know that it makes me get distracted and then spend two evenings in a row conducting a secret movie marathon and not getting up in time for puja’s the next morning.

So really it comes down to this, even though I seem to have made this decision that this is what I’ve chosen for my life, in reality its only what I’ve ‘chosen for my life’ when I feel up to it.

The rest of the time I spend in daydream land. I wrote a whole bog on these running fantasies and although there has been a marked improvement I still can’t help myself sometimes. Its seems like living a real life is way too taxing when you can just lie down and invent one in your mind that you have total control over. If things in real life aren’t going the way I’d hope I can just retire to my imagination. However (oh ho here comes the Buddhism) the truth of the matter is that our real life is nothing really other than a fantasy anyway. All of it, even the bits we think we have no control over. We think that this is reality and the movies are fake but actually when you look at it, all of it is a dream.

How is this so? Well I wont even start harping on about emptiness but if you compare a fantasy with real life what’s the big difference. You can experience the emotions in your fantasy just as strongly as if they were real, and although in real life they appear more real, after a few years all your left with is a few tainted memories that could well be fantasies anyway. Our memories are so biased and incomplete. Our view of things changes with age, experience and circumstance.

Its so easy to be lazy and not do the things we’d planned. When I was still in Australia I joined a karate school and used to go after work. In this particular centre you had to go a minimum of twice a week so on top of everything else it didn’t take long for me to lose enthusiasm. Its just like that 3 month gym membership we never use. Except this time, even though I was tired I would go. Even if it meant that I left for work at 7am and didn’t get back till 9pm. It was a miracle and even though I felt so tired I kept it up. When I think back to that sadly I think it was because there was a young boy, maybe 14 who started at the same time as me and it was so important that I didn’t slip behind him so when I was thinking to myself in that last half hour before work finished, “I’m so tired I have to go home I have so much to do,” I would start thinking about this little kid and that if I missed the lesson he would get his next belt before me and it was enough to motivate me to get there.

Anyone who knows me knows this was a minor miracle.
Maybe if someone is reading this they can think of a better way to get motivated? I think really it all comes down to (surprisingly) motivation. If you really want it that badly you’ll go though haven and hell to get it. So do you really want it? Obviously not as much as you thought.

Sadly and probably not unexpectedly there are no 14 year old boys in my nunnery so then I have to ask myself if I’m not smart enough to become motivated for my own good, what can I use to get motivated. The answer…. A teacher.

Ah crap, the big G word. Guru. I hate that word! Its like being a 13year old girl without a period when all your friend already have it. All you want is to have it so you can consider yourself a real teenager but there is no way to fake it.

Yesterday I was thinking that I feel like someone who has just bought a brand new shinny SLR camera. I’ve sold everything I owned in order to get this camera and I’m sitting here and I don’t know that to take beautiful pictures, I need to take lessons but I can’t find a good photography course. So the camera is this precious human life and obviously the course is the guru and until I can make a connection with a teacher I’m going to continue to turn out these crappy off focus photos. And it really gives me the shits because I’ve invested so much in this bloody camera.

Namaste

2005-06-30T10:40:00.000+08:00

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.

The Eve of Adventure

2005-06-06T13:43:00.000+08:00

I would like to take this opportunity to write about some of the things that I have noticed since being back home. I am no longer in the Temple and have not yet left for India (that is tomorrow night!) so I'm still caught in this weird sud- intermediate bardo. The child like ghost that hangs around after someone has died and before they take a new rebirth.

I am settling back into 'normal life' very quickly, the volume of the television that I couldn't stand when I came back has now risen to the usual level and rather than sounding like the noisy drone I first found when I came back I am now, once again singing along with the adverts. I think this has been a really good opportunity for me to be more objective about myself and the condition of my mind. I feel like I have a bit more space now to look at myself and see what is going on.

The biggest change I've found in myself aside from an unexpected aversion to loud music is calmness. I'm not sure how long it would last if I stayed in this environment but at the moment I am under a lot of stress. I'm going overseas and have given myself like 1 week to organise everything including selling my car! So there have been a lot of bumps in the road this last week, but rather than freaking out and getting really cranky, generally I have been taking a deep breath and thinking, oh well! Even more surprising than my internal response has been that not long afterwards my problems seem to be sorting themselves out without too much effort. Not that I'm not trying, I'm just not killing myself over things anymore. If I can do something about it I will if not I just wait and see and then before I know it a solution has presented itself.

I wish I'd known this years ago.

The other thing I've noticed it the amount of my day I'm spending in fantasy land. I have a myriad of little awake dreams where I'm someone important doing something interesting. I used to spend a lot of my life living a fantasy and not worry about what I was really doing. Isn’t that sad? I never noticed how much I was doing it! So I've put a stop to it and I refuse from now on to ever let myself be carried away daydreaming. Its really quite damaging as it can change your perception of things.

For example I'm going to India tomorrow and if I sat here and daydreamed about what’s going to happen when I get there, how I'll meet a amazing lama who'll recognise me as a tulku and do all these amazing things, then when I actually get there and this daydream does not become reality I will be disappointed( please note I am not nor do I hold any hopes of being found to be a tulku). It may seem a bit OTT but if you think about the way we imagine new partners or jobs and stuff to be and then when we find out they are not we are disappointed by our own expectations. In another way if, while I'm planning to go volunteer in a monastery in India I spend my whole time fantasizing about finding a really great boyfriend and doing lots of cool things in Australia I may suddenly find that I don't want to go away anymore.

I don't know about everyone else but I have always had a very vivid fantasy life since I was in primary school but no one ever talks about these things so maybe I'm the only one. If you don't know what I'm talking about just ignore the top bit!!

Before I go I wanted to get a bit more on topic and tell you about how I came to know the Dhammapada. Someone suggested to me to go and read a sutra (Buddhist scripture) and I think they suggested the heart sutra.

Anyway I never really thought about reading a sutra at that time as I was more of a book person, having it explained to me by some author or another but I thought I'd give it a go. So I went to Boarders, (probably not the best place but better than Angus and Robertson who still put Buddhist books under 'New Age'). I couldn’t find what I was looking for but I did find the copy of the Dhammapada I still cart around to this day. It’s a Penguin classic. I opened it and read the first verse and it blew my socks off. I bought it straight away.

I don't have the time to talk about this verse but I think it is very helpful to anyone, Buddhist or not. To me it is the answer to the questions we so often come up with. It’s a very blunt and to the point quote and it’s been going through my head a lot recently. It’s helped me to let go of things and not worry too much. It’s also helped me not to get too caught up in stuff going on around me as well as giving me encouragement to go out, follow my heart in pursuit of reality.

"What we are today is because of our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts create our life of tomorrow: Our Life is the creation of our minds."

We need to take responsibility for our minds, not let them wander around where ever they like. We need to learn to let go, this life is only a figment of our imagination.

So taking responsibility for my mind, letting go of Australia and reality I take a deep breath and get on a plane to India. Hopefully all will go well and the next blog you read will be written in Dharamsala!

Not in Kansas anymore

2005-06-01T18:56:00.000+08:00

I haven't had time to update my blog recently which is a shame because its been a bumpy ride!

The temple has been super busy with a national conference that we really should not have hosted with such a small number of staff. I was working from 7am setting up the dinning hall for breakfast spending the day in the cafe and only managing to creep away undetected at 10.30pm.

I was so busy being tired I didn't have time to realise that I was about to leave. In fact I ended up telling them that I was leaving less than a week before I planned to go after trying for several days (perhaps half heartedly) to get a chance to speak to someone in private.

The response was surprising. I thought they'd be angry or hurt (they may be Buddhist nuns but they are also human!) However, they were mainly very surprised and sad to see me go. They seemed quite genuinely sad that I was leaving and my friends were devastated. Its very hard for me too. If I hadn't been given this opportunity I would not have left and I didn't have the heart to tell them the whole truth about why I was leaving (only some very close friends) as I was ashamed. I knew that it is so rude to up and leave because I found a better alternative so I tried to keep that to myself although some of it leaked out. I honestly told them that I felt like the kind of practise I'm seeking is not the status quo in the temple and although I respected the way the Temple and order is organised and run it just doesn't suit what I need as a dharma practitioner.

I felt like it was better for them to think I was dumb than to think I was conniving. I guess it doesn't really matter what any one thinks, only the truth matters. I feel like I am trying to protect them because I care so much for them. To tell you the truth its been very painful to leave. In fact I lost it on the way out of the temple and balled all the way to the back door and then spent the next hour hiding out the back. I really respect and appreciate these people and every bone in my body wants to go back as quick as possible, but here is my problem. Should I be going back to the temple or am I just experiencing the suffering of impermanence by trying to cling to something. Ah it sucks being a Buddhist; you can't even let yourself be miserable!

So I went home yesterday. Although it’s not really my home anymore. I'm staying with friends and desperately trying to tie up some loose ends before I fly to Delhi on Wednesday. One week away. So now I'm really shitting myself. What the hell am I doing? I feel very stateless. I don't know who the hell I'm meant to be. Now that I'm back in my old world I can see that I have really, really changed and to be honest I have totally no desire left to remain in this saha world. I can see the futility of hours of tv, gadgets and useless occupations. I read in a book about the Karmapa 'we sedate ourselves with entertainment and useless pleasure but eventually we must face the truth.' (that is a rough quote). The truth is the futility of a self centred world view because everything we strive for will eventually decompose. In Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' he writes,

"the cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
the solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And like this insubstantial pageant faded.
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on
And our little life is rounded with a sleep."

So neither this world, my old home or even the Temple environment can be counted on. It changes every moment. Even though I've been gone for one day I've heard that there have been some big changes. So what am I clinging to?

An idea of who I am? Before I was Erin who works in an office and likes to listen to her music and drive her car. Now I am Erin who likes to wear a grey uniform and live in a Chinese Buddhist Temple. Except now I'm not living in a Chinese Buddhist temple and I left my uniform there so I have to wear normal clothes again.

I read somewhere an article where someone tries to prove their point that when we think about it every single thing we do is motivated by a desire to ensure our happiness. Everything from the friends we associate with to the kind of socks we wear. So really missing someone is motivated by our desire to make ourselves happy.

So in a round about way I miss the temple because I'm trying desperately to cling to this idea of myself as a permanent entity. The solution would be to let go of myself. Sounds easy, but how the hell am I supposed to do that? Think about my own impermanence?; consider my lack of inherent existence? Perhaps, but to tell you the truth I still really miss the temple. I kind of miss myself too because now I don't know who I am. I feel like I'm dead, like a ghost. I don't exist here, that person is gone. I'm not in the temple either that person is gone. I haven't got to India yet so that person is just a future fantasy and I'm left with a sack of skin and bones running around shopping for brown shoes. One of the really important bits from the heart sutra is 'form is emptiness,' but then it also says that 'emptiness is form.' So I have a form and substance, what am I going to do with it?

I've been told that if after a month I want to return that I may. After that time I'm not sure what the deal is. I desperately wish I had someone I could talk too who understands this from a Buddhist perspective because all my friends despite their good intentions think I'm crazy and should just go find a normal job or go to uni or something. I'll talk more about what I've found out about myself since leaving temple later, right now I'm just letting myself be pushed along with the current. I'm working towards getting to Delhi, flights, visa's all sorted but my heart is still in the temple. I keeping think 'I just want to go home.' I was only there for three months but its had this profound effect on me. I really feel like I've left the movie half way through. The story has been constructed and the characters introduced but the full story line has not been revealed and the resolution is still another 45mins away.

When I received the e-mail from the monastery in India, even before I read it I thought to myself, if they are inviting you there you must go. When I read the e-mail and the dream became possible I felt really shocked and also scared but I knew that I had to go. So even though I really feel like a stranger in a foreign land right now I am resiting the temptation to go back to the temple, at least until I get to India and can see it for myself.

I just really want to go home. I hope I've done the right thing.

Big News

2005-05-19T17:20:00.000+08:00

There is a well know sentence in Buddhism about 'monkey mind.' A lot of people are familiar with this. I found this quote in the Dhammapada and I don't know if the sentence originated from this text or if it is a sentence that is used a lot in different Buddhist sutras but the quote from the Dhammapada has an extra little bit I hadn't heard before and it adds a new dimension to it for me.

Ok so usually I understand the idea of monkey mind like a monkey that jumps from tree to tree, is not settled and jump around a lot. so this to me means that our minds are like the. proverbial 'angry elephant in rut' ( not just any old angry elephant but one in heat no less!) So I really associate with this I am complete unable to control my mind. The more I worry about it the more I lose control of it. Learning buddhism from such zen teachers and Thich N. Hanh I always feel like 'mind control' meditation/mindfullness is the basis of practice and the only way to really make those realizations. So it gives me the shits that I am not able to do either. In fact when I try to be mindful all I do is end up having a discussion with my self about what mindfulness is!

So here is the quote in question......

........"he jumps from death to death, like a monkey in the forest from one tree without fruit to another."

Chapter 24 verse 334

This quote adds the bit about jumping from a tree without fruit to another tree without fruit which added a whole new dimension for me. So the monkey is not jumping around uselessly for nothing, he is searching for something. Searching for food is the basic instinct and occupation of all animals. Its part of out inherent nature to search for food. This monkey is looking for sweet fruit to make him feel good and satisfy him.

He doesn't go to the tree to occupy himself or to be popular he is searching for something but every tree he runs to he doesn't find it. So when my mind is busy chatting, criticizing, comparing I feel like what I am really doing is looking for something, looking for happiness.

So suddenly I don't feel so bad about having a monkey mind. Obviously this is still something I really really need to work on if I want to make progress as a buddhist practitioner, however I don't have to feel bad about the way my mind is. All the chatter is for a purpose after all, even if it is very misguided.

I feel like now I know that my mind is looking for something, to be happy, to find the sweet fruit and thats why it jumps around everywhere all the time. Like the monkey after many lifetimes of jumping it starts going so fast it doesn't even really know why its jumping around but the basic desire to find this pleasure is still there. So what do I think about?

When someone upsets me I imagine having a conversation with them where I totally tell them off or do something to win back a bit of power. (this is not done on purpose these thoughts just come up through many lives of repetition and most of the time I am not totally aware I'm doing it!) Sometimes, if I'm bored I'll have a little fantasy playing out where I'm a really great wonderful/ important person, or I'll have a good chat to myself about something that happened when I was youngm, and how that is totally the reason I'm not any good at spelling.

So all these random things that appear in my mind are all really ways that I have concocted to make myself feel better. To try and get a bit of a taste of that sweet fruit.

I hope this helps someone. I feel like now I can really start to work with my mind because slowly I'm getting to know it a bit better. Before, I felt like it was totally out of my control and I couldn't understand how that could be because its just my mind, it is empty isn't it? Its one of the five skhandas, how can it have a life of its own? and then I though about dieting (weird hey!) why do people need to diet? (hopefully) because they are fat. (myself included.) Why am I fat? Because I eat too much. If its my body shouldn't I be able to stop myself from eating or stop myself from being fat? Yeah but I chose not to, I chose to be lazy or uncontrolled. I chose to eat that candy, its years of conditioning. So why is my mind out of control? Same idea.

This is my mind, it can be anyway I train it to be. It is not permanent, it will not be around in 100 years. there is volition or karma pushing me along but really it is up to me to put the time and effort into sorting it out.

So really the best way to do that is through meditation. The three main principles of practice in Buddhism are precepts (rules) meditation and wisdom. Wisdom is not really possible with out the other two.

Precepts I am working on. Living in this temple there are lots of rules. Lots of etiquette and I'm ok with that because this was my choice you know and I see the benefit of it all. But there is little to no meditation. Thy expect me to meditate before I go to bed. I don't think that can be good. One of the most basic rules is not to do it in your bed and especially at the end of the day with the lights out I do not feel like meditating!

This is a chinese fusion temple but there is a lot more Pure-land than Chan and I don't feel comfortable with a lot of the devotional stuff especially being a former born again christian (that is another blog altogether!)

So anyway I have had these little niggley voices in my head nearly since I got here and the main one is about the lack of meditation and doctrinal guidance. So as a bit of a side I was looking around at other things, you know and I came up with all these plans about what I would do after my year was up. I decided that I would go to Gampo abbey in Canada and do some 'real practice'. Intensive meditation and practice. I really like lo jong.

Anyway so I saw this position become available at a monastery in India and applied. I wrote them this big e-mail about how I'm practicing in a chinese temple but my heart is in Vajrayana and that I hopped that they would understand that my options in Australia are really limited and that all I want to do is immerse myself in the dharma right now ect. It was very honest and also probably a bit too long for a job application!

Anyway so they said no, they'd already filled it then a few weeks later I get an e-mail saying ok, if you want to come, come and we'll take it from there. My heart dropped out my ass!

So it is not an intensive study program. Its just an office job, no buddhist strings attached BUT and its a big but. I would be living in Dharamsala neighbor to the Karmapa (my spiritual hero) and have access to a lot of realized teachers. My likely hood of finding a Lama would be greatly increased. Thats really what I've been looking for all this time, a spiritual guide. Someone to tell me where I'm doing ok and slap me when I'm not doing ok. Eventually hopefully it will be someone who will be able to ordain me.

I haven't even taking refuge (yes folks I not officially a buddhist!) I don't want to take refuge until I've found my real path!

So what to do? Do I break my promise to these wonderful women I've been working, living and eating with for the last 3 months and run out on them? Do I say sorry, I know I've not finished my course (by the way we haven't had class for 6 weeks now).

Sadly yes. I break my promise, I leave them suddenly and look like a total asshole. It really breaks my heart but I feel like I could be letting the greatest opportunity of my life slip away. When I get to India they'll all be really bitchy and difficult to live with I feel like if the laws of karma are true then I'll have a really hard time because I'll be giving myself some serious bad karma.

I know it sounds a bit big headed to compare myself with the buddha but I imagine that when he ran out on his wife and child he created negative karma too, that need to be worked off. But he knew that it was the only way.

So yeah I feel a bit crap about what I have to do but I guess its a bit of that spiritual warrior stuff. Lets not even talk about where I'm going to get the money for this or what I'm going to tell my Mum!

Anyway so there is a bit of encouragement to work on our minds and an opportunity for me to do a cyber scream! If anyone is reading this I'll let you know how it goes!
Erin

E-mail to a friend

2005-05-12T18:37:00.000+08:00

This is an e-mail I recently sent to a friend of mine who was feeling down recently due to a few people making judgments about her life. i started off innocently enough trying to cheer her up but then flew into a Buddhist rant about the meaning of life and suffering and about doing what you know to be right even if everyone disagrees.

Anyway by the end it was more like a weblogg than an e-mail so I thought I might post it. Please note it has been edited a bit because she'll get cranky if I leave to much detail about her there!

Hi there,

I hope your feeling better today!

it's funny you should say that people thought you were
running away and stuff when you went to Australia as I
know so many people who get that same thing.

Especially when I was living in the UK. So many people there would tell me that they either felt like they should be at home being grown up or that their friends/family were hassling them about it. At that time they were pretty much the same age as you (26), so if it makes
you feel any better you are very far from alone.

I think its because people have this really set idea about what we should be doing and at what age and no one ever stops to think that maybe there is another way. (except for those that go and travel or do something that helps them really experience the world!)

People don't realize that this idea they have about what we should be doing (i.e. school, uni, job marriage, kids retirement) is very cultural and isn't by any means perfect or a guarantee that if we do it we will be happy. Usually I find that sticking to the schedule is actually a huge
excuse, a way to hide from life.

Rather than doing anything important or difficult or challenging they just do what everyone else is doing. So many of my friends went to uni after school. Not because they wanted to study but because they didn't know what else to do and every one was doing it. Also a lot of them said to me that they couldn't come overseas with me because they were worried if they did that they wouldn't want to go to uni after.

Sounds like they shouldn't have gone in the first place!

What this all equals is that these people live their life by the timetable that their families/society set out for them. they never discover new things and they die before they have the chance to find out who they really are.

Let me give you an example........

There is a girl who wants to go to France. After school she wants to spend a year in France but her
family convince her that she should really go to uni first. So she does, thinking that she'll go after uni.

Anyway by the time she finishes uni she has this boyfriend who drives her nuts but she still wants to keep him and she doesn't have any money anyway so she decides to work for a year, get a bit of work experience and save to go to France.

A few years pass and she's so caught up in the OC and Charmed, her and her boyfriend have put a deposit on a house and she really doesn't have any money left over to save for this trip she wanted.

Next thing there are kids on the way and the bills have to be paid so there is no way she is going to be able to make that trip at least while the kids are young.

Once the kids get a bit older her husband leaves her and suddenly she has to raise this family on her own. Its hard and there is no way she'll be able to afford a holiday till after she's paid for the kids education.

Finally the kids are gone she's found a new boyfriend/husband and is seriously considering this
trip to France. the next day she goes out to the travel agent to get the tickets and gets hit by a
bus.

She never made it to France.

Her whole life she felt like something was missing.

Not because she didn't get to go to France but because she was so busy doing stuff she felt she should be doing she never really knew who she was.

This is getting to be a bit of a long e-mail but you get my point. I think that age is no barrier to unhappiness. You should do what you want and experience what you can before the arthritis sets in.

People who criticizes you or who say that your not acting like a grown up are generally baffled and jealous because their life is empty and no matter how much they distract themselves with entertainment, boyfriends, money and ego they still feel empty.

This is a really Buddhist thing but the awful truth is that if you are born your gonna die and although its nice to think that its going to happen when your 90 or something it may happen tomorrow.

Have you done everything you hoped to do in this life? You don't need to scale mountains or learn another language. Just as long as you can say that you are happy with the person who looks at you in the mirror and that you have done things you are proud of and corrected the things you weren't proud of.

I hope this makes you feel better and not depressed. If you think like this when people criticize you, you just feel sorry for them, when you don't get the job you wanted you just let it go as it wasn't right anyway.

Think about what you would do if you found out you were going to die tomorrow and do it today!

Sorry to be a bit D&M,

Speak to you soon!

Erin

Being a spiritual hero

2005-05-07T18:05:00.000+08:00

In chapter 23 Endurance (althouh the name of the chapter differs depending on your copy) there is a verse I really like.

"For it is not with these things that a man will reach the land unknown. NIRVANA is reached by that man who wisley and heroically trains himself."

This bit about being brave and being wise really speaks to me at the moment. Especially when your talking about being a hero and about guarding our mind and surrendering our ego. It all sounds very defeatist at first but in the end there really isn't any other way. Any person who is sincere about any religion will eventually come to a point when society does not agree with their beliefs and they have to say no to themselves and to society.

To me being a spiritual hero (which is a common term for a Bodhisattva) is a very beautiful way of expressing this wall that anyone with an honest desire to be happy will come across. Becsaue to be totally honest, in this consumerist society I really don't think it is possible to be totally happy and still appear to be a 'normal' person. Not that you have to be a nut case but you do need to be a little bit 'differnt'.

Before I went to india earlier in the year I had already made plans to come and be a student in my temple. They hadn't actually got back to me before I'd left and I still had to do an interview and all that kind of thing first so really it wasn't set in stone.

I even applied and was accepted into university and went to the orientation. Basically I was trying to avoid going to the temple. When I finally left my home to move to the temple I keep all my things dotted around my poor flat mates house 'just incase' it didn't work out and I came back quickly. I was scared. Scared of leaving my life, my car my friends and all my nice little do dahs I'd collected over the last few years.

Watching people pour through my clothing and take things away was gut wrenching. But I did it. I did it because I knew that I was not able to put the 'books' into practice. I was doing a lot of reading and meditating and all these kinds of practices but if my flatemate left his dirty dishes out I would lose it.

Someone said to me you have to empty yourself of everything and then fill yourself back up again with the dharma. If you hold onto yourself; your past your abilities your preferences, there is no room left for the dharma. I'm starting to agree with that.

The first thing that had to go when I got here was my piercing. I had my tongue and libret pierced. Taking them out was like taking away my name, I didn't realize how closely I identified with them. I nearly didn't recognize myself with out them. In fact I didn't recognize my self and I felt so inadequate with out my piercing and without any makeup. I didn't want people to see me in my uniform. I didn't like walking around the temple when it was open incase outsiders wanted to speak to me.

Now I don't care.

In fact i try not to look in the mirror at all, not avoid my self but more becsaue it doesn't really matter to me anymore. I find that if you don't judge others by their appearence you don't care about what others may be thinking about you.

I read in a Zen book my Richard Attkins about how our ego attaches to things we like, things we want to be like and things we want people to see us with. For me it is actually my music. I love to listen to my cd's currently it is 'Kings of Leon' although its getting a bit old now.

I totally identify with my music and even though I wont be going out of the temple again for a while I still managed to buy 3 new cd's on the weekend. I feel like if I don't have my music I will be empty. The funny thing is that the ultimate goal in Buddhism is emptiness!

I think to myself well music and television are such important parts of our culture if I cut myself off from them I will be unable to connect with ordinary people. I think that deep down this is just a huge excuse.

So I guess being a spiritual hero is having the courage to do what you know is the correct thing even though it sucks. The big thing here though is the wisdom to know what the correct thing to do is. if your like me and you don't have a Lama or a trusted teacher at least you can rely on the three jewles. Even though your friends think you've gone soft and your Mum thinks you've joined a cult. Even though society thinks you're a crack job, you have to stay strong.

A hero usually saves people, saves the damsel in distress. I guess I'm trying to save myself from society and save everyone else from themselves as well. Still I have a long way to go. I read this quote is the next chapter. i can't really comment on it becsaue I am not at thing level yet. It is very challenging and I just wanted to put it out there so people can have a think about it. If you don't agree with it you can out it aside but it really touches a nerve in me.

"Leave the past behine; leave the future behind; leave the present behind. Thou art then ready to go to the other shore. Never more shalt thou return to a life that ends in death."

erin

Lost in space

2005-05-06T13:23:00.000+08:00

As far as first bloggs go mine have not been spectacular. Last night I wrote a good post and then lost it at the last moment. Don't you hate when that happens!!!!

Perhaps I should introduce myself. As you can tell from the title I am a practicing Buddhist which isn't particularly unusual these days. I'm always on the net looking for something. We'll I'd say I'm always looking for something. I've been looking for it in lots of different places. I've done a lot of traveling including spending time in India earlier in the year but that is another story altogether!

Right now I find myself living in a Chinese Buddhist temple in the countryside desperately trying to fit in as the only European and the only non Chinese speaking person here.

Hence I think I have something to share with the world and especially anyone who is an aspiring Bodhisattva and especially anyone who is an aspiring western bohdisattva. I'm not a hippie or a feminist or any other stereotype, I just want to find what I've been looking for, and although i've come a long way I don't think I've found it yet.

So I'm writing for any one who can sympathise with me, anyone who is looking for something and anyone whose dreams for the future don't involve a volvo and 2.3 children.

Over time I hope that I can share what I have already learnt with people and also hopefully will stop myself going crazy in the process!!

So I'll do a bit more searching and let you know what i find!

Hello

2005-05-03T17:42:00.000+08:00

Hello,

this is my first blogg and to be perfectly honest I don't really understand the concept yet and am extremely new to the idea. I am also partially dyslexic so you'll have to excuse any inaccuracies.

I was searching the net a little while ago and came across a blogg by another blogger call Andi I think. Anyway she has just recently left to go to korea and become a buddhist nun. I read one of her last entries first but ended up spending hours going through the rest of them. I found it very inspiring and I could totally empathize with her and also she said a lot of things that touched me and pointed directly at things I'd been having trouble with also.

Anyway so I thought that seeing as how her blogg had been so helpful I might try and start my own as well. I think at first I don't really know what to do but as time goes on hopefully I should become a bit more entertaining.

I'm not sure if I should put a bit of info about my self or what so i think I'll just put this out there and look around at others and then come back with a better idea of the whole thing!

So any obviously no one will add a post but I promise I will be a bit more interesting soon!