Saturday, July 02, 2005
Well You Can Tell By the Way I Use My Walk, I'm a Woman's Man: No Time to Talk
Lately whenever I have to take long walk I try to remember any of the other words to "Stayin' Alive," so I finally just googled them. The song has been in my head since Kashmiri Rafiq told me a few weeks back that the Indian army used to pick on people who walk with a swagger. He walks with a swagger, so they picked on him. It's funny that he knows he walks with a swagger. So far I've been repeating the only two lines I know while trying to pass as many monks, nuns, pedestrians, shopkeepers, begging people, dogs and cattle as I can. Since wearing any kind of walkman has felt odd everywhere except Delhi, I am hoping knowing the additional lyrics will keep me good company.
Today the long walk was to the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile, about twenty-five minutes downhill from my guesthouse, on the same road, and forty minutes back up. There are many things to see in that area: The seven main departments of the government are there, including the Department of Home. There's a library of ancient and recent Tibetan literature; a beautiful, perfectly preserved little gompa that I took many blurry photos of; a museum of Tibetan medicine; and a cultural museum with artifacts rescued from Tibet and also the first butter sculpture I'd seen, an incredible model of "His Holiness the Fifth Dalai Lama...and the Red Palace of the Potala". The butter's soft texture makes the palace extremely light and heavenly looking, and the rendition is cartoonish but not mocking: the little Dalai Lama sits right at the top of the building, with an exaggeratedly heart-shaped face, pointy chin, pursed lips and an overly large moustache. Above the palace sit puffy white clouds with, if I remember right, a border of yellow and around that a border of pink. They are held up by sticks but because of the softness of the medium look as if they're floating.
The museum also has several statues of Avalokitishvara, the "eleven-headed, eight-armed deity of compassion." (I think I've seen other representations of her with thousands of arms? Karin, Michele?) Nine of her heads are identical--identical earrings and crowns with exactly the same number of stones, but the tenth one, right on top, is a vicious looking lion-deity (anyone know who he is?), and then right above that is the littlest head, of Buddha. The Dalai Lama is believed to be the emanation of Avalokitishvara.
I went to two of the Dalai Lama's 10 days of teachings, during which he reads from a text written by previous lamas. (As I understand he gives teachings here two times a year, but this is a special year because he is not always here for his birthday on July 6, and it's his seventieth so the celebration is supposed to be great.) Everyone I know was finding the English translation, which you can only hear by bringing a radio, very hard to follow, in part because (1) many people like me don't have the English version of the text he's reading from, (2) the Dalai Lama reads very, very fast, so the translator also speaks fast as well as awkwardly, (3) b/c the Dalai Lama's voice is being broadcast over loudspeakers through the whole temple, it is very hard to concentrate on the English, (4) it helps to know much more about Buddhism than I do. But a Tibetan man explained to me today that the readings are very hard for the locals to follow as well, both because the Dalai Lama is reading so quickly and because the information and language are getting progressively harder (there are three stages of complexity and the Dalai Lama is going through all three). This man said the meaning is much more in the simple fact that the Dalai Lama is reading the text; when the attendees go back to study the text at home, the fact that they have experienced it through him will make the lessons go deeply into them "without interference".
The night before I went to the teachings I saw "Cry of the Snow Lion" with some fellow travellers; it was very very good, and described the history of Tibet's struggle, and how much the Tibetans owe their commitment to nonviolence to the 14th (the current) Dalai Lama. It also talked a lot about the Chinese kidnapping of the last two Panchen Lamas, the little boys selected one after the other to learn become the next Dalai Lama, and how the Chinese will not say whether the latest one and his family are alive or dead. What especially surprised me is how the Chinese have selected their OWN Panchen Lama and are training him. And the movie showed footage of the happy, elaborately dressed, spoilt-looking little boy smiling with government officials.
The first time I went to the teaching it was just really moving to see the Dalai Lama and the infinite reverence all around. When he passed through the area we were sitting in, most people faced toward him and put our hands together in prayer (although many say Buddhists don't "pray" since there's no supreme God in Buddhism). It was the first time I can think of that I performed an act of someone else's religion not merely out of respect. With the depth of emotion all around and in me, it felt like the posture my body should take before him. And then, once the teachings began, to see all the faces, young and old, refugees spinning prayer wheels or praying devoutly, some following the text, some not at all but staring off and running rosaries through their fingers the entire time. When he first arrived, most people, including the oldest and most frail, performed the bow in which they put palms together overhead, then to forehead, then to mouth, then chest, then get down on knees on the cement and prostrate, then get up and do it again.
The man who led me and some others to the temple is 23; when he was 19 he ran away from his family in Tibet because someone there had told him just a very little about the Tibetan culture and the Dalai Lama; his source was not even supposed to tell him that much, but the boy wanted to learn more, so he stole money from his family and joined a group and a guide who helped them cross to India. Only once he got here did he call his family to tell them where he was, and that he was okay. When he arrived he went to the free two-year school for adults, created by the Dalai Lama, in which they learn English and Tibetan, so his English is just four-years old though I thought it was quite good. He had a restaurant job here but quit it in order to be able to go to the teachings; he hopes he'll be able to find another job, though he's concerned because there is so much competition.
Most non-Tibetan people I've met didn't go to the teachings after their first experience; I went back just once more, today, to listen to the chanting that happens right before and is really loud and echoing. Then the teaching started, and a Tibetan nun next to me introduced herself; she is Brazilian and says she is Brazil's only Tibetan nun, and that this is hard for many reasons, particularly the cost of the visa. While we were talking, I noticed that while most monks of different ages around us were following the text, two monks, perhaps 18-years-old, were playing tic-tac-toe to my right. I mentioned it to the Brazilian nun, who, although she was just chatting with me and herself not listening to the teachings, scowled and said that many monks become such because their families know it will be a better life for them; otherwise they have no motivation.
(And now it's all right. It's OK.
And you may look the other way.
We can try
to understand
the New York Times' effect on man.)
I knew it would make me look like a very, very bad tourist, but first of all, the monks sooo started it, second, the locals here see so many diverse Westerners that I didn't worry that I was making an impression for all the USA, and finally it just seemed that there couldn't be a more life-affirming form of communication for two people who don't share a language than tic-tac-toe.
So once the monks finished playing, I went to initiate a game with one of them and he was really happy about it, only tucking the paper away when some devout locals passed; but then he taught me a game you play where you draw a little grid that includes three points marked "toilet", and you have to make the other man's pieces end up at these three points. Even I was taken aback that this was the game I was learning. Meanwhile an earnest young man who sounded German leaned over to me and said something like, "Are you sure this is really the time to be doing this?", and I said, "I'll be right there," finished learning the game and then did get up and write a nice note of apology to the German boy. He, meanwhile, appeared to be realizing that the English translation was simply unbearable to follow; he was flipping through his own English text trying to find where they were (I don't even know that the translator was working off an English translation). I watched him finally stop flipping, attempt to listen to his earphones diligently, then take them off and look very glum. It really was frustrating.
Then I went to a new small political museum that describes very simply and effectively what the Tibetans have gone through.
Nearby is a museum of Tibetan medicine that I need to get more time in, but it included many ancient, still studied medical texts, including one known as "Diamond Cutter", or "Perfection of Wisdom Sutra". According to the inscription, in Tibet every family has one and many people recite it every day. "It is one of the shortest and earliest Mahayan texts on the Perfection of Wisdom...In short it contains the gist of the second wheel of Dharma."
There were also several paintings that appeared to be comparing the body of a man to that of a building; for instance, an image of the lungs was juxtaposed with an image of a slatted wood building, and a man's lingam was drawn and elongated to turn into the water drain at the top of a home. The caption clarified that the painting is "suggesting a comparison between a human being sitting upright in a crosslegged posture with the arms dangling loosely by the side and the palace of a universal emperor".
The museum also explained that a fetus passes through three stages, the Stage of the Fish (5--9 mos), the Stage of the Turtle (10-17 mos.) and the Stage of the Pig (18-35 mos), so called because at this point in feeds on "unclean residue." I am telling this mostly for my Dad, an OB-Gyn.
The museum had examples of many different medical tools including an eye press, meant to "immobilize the blood vessels around the eyes before bloodletting."
Dharamsala is a crazy place in a lot of ways: It was the first Tibetan refugee settlement, with the Dalai Lama initiating the flight and setting up his government in exile here, and India gave them the place because there had just been an earthquake here so it seemed like undesirable property. But they came with their lovingkindness and much loved Buddhism and now it is now one of the tremendous tourist destinations.
HA!
The Tibetan people here do not seem to have the same rigidity with regard to dress and behavior as their Indian counterparts, and men and women have much, much more equal status. The Tibetan attire (though many wear Western wear) is beautiful and stately and I could write way too much about it. The Tibetan culture combined with the huge amount of Western tourists makes the place very homey for Westerners. You can show your knees and feel comfortable about it, walk around a hippie, get reiki or study yoga, and then there's the Tibetans' own commitment to massage and to astrology. There's a huge Israeli contingent here and a little town where many restaurants serve Israeli food. There's also Japanese, Italian, and Thai in this little town, and a wide assortment of movies shown in tiny theaters every night--Ray, Amelie, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, many Tibetan documentaries, and like that.
Tomorrow I hope will be a big hike or else a visit again to the little but fascinating Tibetan museum. It will make at least one of you feel better to know I'm reading Gitanjali, a series of poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore that won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. Yeats praised it highly but it more appears to have influenced Whitman:
"I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards."
Also: "O fool, to try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders! O beggar, to come to beg at thy own door!"
(In the fool's defense, whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother, you're staying alive, staying alive.)
Today the long walk was to the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile, about twenty-five minutes downhill from my guesthouse, on the same road, and forty minutes back up. There are many things to see in that area: The seven main departments of the government are there, including the Department of Home. There's a library of ancient and recent Tibetan literature; a beautiful, perfectly preserved little gompa that I took many blurry photos of; a museum of Tibetan medicine; and a cultural museum with artifacts rescued from Tibet and also the first butter sculpture I'd seen, an incredible model of "His Holiness the Fifth Dalai Lama...and the Red Palace of the Potala". The butter's soft texture makes the palace extremely light and heavenly looking, and the rendition is cartoonish but not mocking: the little Dalai Lama sits right at the top of the building, with an exaggeratedly heart-shaped face, pointy chin, pursed lips and an overly large moustache. Above the palace sit puffy white clouds with, if I remember right, a border of yellow and around that a border of pink. They are held up by sticks but because of the softness of the medium look as if they're floating.
The museum also has several statues of Avalokitishvara, the "eleven-headed, eight-armed deity of compassion." (I think I've seen other representations of her with thousands of arms? Karin, Michele?) Nine of her heads are identical--identical earrings and crowns with exactly the same number of stones, but the tenth one, right on top, is a vicious looking lion-deity (anyone know who he is?), and then right above that is the littlest head, of Buddha. The Dalai Lama is believed to be the emanation of Avalokitishvara.
I went to two of the Dalai Lama's 10 days of teachings, during which he reads from a text written by previous lamas. (As I understand he gives teachings here two times a year, but this is a special year because he is not always here for his birthday on July 6, and it's his seventieth so the celebration is supposed to be great.) Everyone I know was finding the English translation, which you can only hear by bringing a radio, very hard to follow, in part because (1) many people like me don't have the English version of the text he's reading from, (2) the Dalai Lama reads very, very fast, so the translator also speaks fast as well as awkwardly, (3) b/c the Dalai Lama's voice is being broadcast over loudspeakers through the whole temple, it is very hard to concentrate on the English, (4) it helps to know much more about Buddhism than I do. But a Tibetan man explained to me today that the readings are very hard for the locals to follow as well, both because the Dalai Lama is reading so quickly and because the information and language are getting progressively harder (there are three stages of complexity and the Dalai Lama is going through all three). This man said the meaning is much more in the simple fact that the Dalai Lama is reading the text; when the attendees go back to study the text at home, the fact that they have experienced it through him will make the lessons go deeply into them "without interference".
The night before I went to the teachings I saw "Cry of the Snow Lion" with some fellow travellers; it was very very good, and described the history of Tibet's struggle, and how much the Tibetans owe their commitment to nonviolence to the 14th (the current) Dalai Lama. It also talked a lot about the Chinese kidnapping of the last two Panchen Lamas, the little boys selected one after the other to learn become the next Dalai Lama, and how the Chinese will not say whether the latest one and his family are alive or dead. What especially surprised me is how the Chinese have selected their OWN Panchen Lama and are training him. And the movie showed footage of the happy, elaborately dressed, spoilt-looking little boy smiling with government officials.
The first time I went to the teaching it was just really moving to see the Dalai Lama and the infinite reverence all around. When he passed through the area we were sitting in, most people faced toward him and put our hands together in prayer (although many say Buddhists don't "pray" since there's no supreme God in Buddhism). It was the first time I can think of that I performed an act of someone else's religion not merely out of respect. With the depth of emotion all around and in me, it felt like the posture my body should take before him. And then, once the teachings began, to see all the faces, young and old, refugees spinning prayer wheels or praying devoutly, some following the text, some not at all but staring off and running rosaries through their fingers the entire time. When he first arrived, most people, including the oldest and most frail, performed the bow in which they put palms together overhead, then to forehead, then to mouth, then chest, then get down on knees on the cement and prostrate, then get up and do it again.
The man who led me and some others to the temple is 23; when he was 19 he ran away from his family in Tibet because someone there had told him just a very little about the Tibetan culture and the Dalai Lama; his source was not even supposed to tell him that much, but the boy wanted to learn more, so he stole money from his family and joined a group and a guide who helped them cross to India. Only once he got here did he call his family to tell them where he was, and that he was okay. When he arrived he went to the free two-year school for adults, created by the Dalai Lama, in which they learn English and Tibetan, so his English is just four-years old though I thought it was quite good. He had a restaurant job here but quit it in order to be able to go to the teachings; he hopes he'll be able to find another job, though he's concerned because there is so much competition.
Most non-Tibetan people I've met didn't go to the teachings after their first experience; I went back just once more, today, to listen to the chanting that happens right before and is really loud and echoing. Then the teaching started, and a Tibetan nun next to me introduced herself; she is Brazilian and says she is Brazil's only Tibetan nun, and that this is hard for many reasons, particularly the cost of the visa. While we were talking, I noticed that while most monks of different ages around us were following the text, two monks, perhaps 18-years-old, were playing tic-tac-toe to my right. I mentioned it to the Brazilian nun, who, although she was just chatting with me and herself not listening to the teachings, scowled and said that many monks become such because their families know it will be a better life for them; otherwise they have no motivation.
(And now it's all right. It's OK.
And you may look the other way.
We can try
to understand
the New York Times' effect on man.)
I knew it would make me look like a very, very bad tourist, but first of all, the monks sooo started it, second, the locals here see so many diverse Westerners that I didn't worry that I was making an impression for all the USA, and finally it just seemed that there couldn't be a more life-affirming form of communication for two people who don't share a language than tic-tac-toe.
So once the monks finished playing, I went to initiate a game with one of them and he was really happy about it, only tucking the paper away when some devout locals passed; but then he taught me a game you play where you draw a little grid that includes three points marked "toilet", and you have to make the other man's pieces end up at these three points. Even I was taken aback that this was the game I was learning. Meanwhile an earnest young man who sounded German leaned over to me and said something like, "Are you sure this is really the time to be doing this?", and I said, "I'll be right there," finished learning the game and then did get up and write a nice note of apology to the German boy. He, meanwhile, appeared to be realizing that the English translation was simply unbearable to follow; he was flipping through his own English text trying to find where they were (I don't even know that the translator was working off an English translation). I watched him finally stop flipping, attempt to listen to his earphones diligently, then take them off and look very glum. It really was frustrating.
Then I went to a new small political museum that describes very simply and effectively what the Tibetans have gone through.
Nearby is a museum of Tibetan medicine that I need to get more time in, but it included many ancient, still studied medical texts, including one known as "Diamond Cutter", or "Perfection of Wisdom Sutra". According to the inscription, in Tibet every family has one and many people recite it every day. "It is one of the shortest and earliest Mahayan texts on the Perfection of Wisdom...In short it contains the gist of the second wheel of Dharma."
There were also several paintings that appeared to be comparing the body of a man to that of a building; for instance, an image of the lungs was juxtaposed with an image of a slatted wood building, and a man's lingam was drawn and elongated to turn into the water drain at the top of a home. The caption clarified that the painting is "suggesting a comparison between a human being sitting upright in a crosslegged posture with the arms dangling loosely by the side and the palace of a universal emperor".
The museum also explained that a fetus passes through three stages, the Stage of the Fish (5--9 mos), the Stage of the Turtle (10-17 mos.) and the Stage of the Pig (18-35 mos), so called because at this point in feeds on "unclean residue." I am telling this mostly for my Dad, an OB-Gyn.
The museum had examples of many different medical tools including an eye press, meant to "immobilize the blood vessels around the eyes before bloodletting."
Dharamsala is a crazy place in a lot of ways: It was the first Tibetan refugee settlement, with the Dalai Lama initiating the flight and setting up his government in exile here, and India gave them the place because there had just been an earthquake here so it seemed like undesirable property. But they came with their lovingkindness and much loved Buddhism and now it is now one of the tremendous tourist destinations.
HA!
The Tibetan people here do not seem to have the same rigidity with regard to dress and behavior as their Indian counterparts, and men and women have much, much more equal status. The Tibetan attire (though many wear Western wear) is beautiful and stately and I could write way too much about it. The Tibetan culture combined with the huge amount of Western tourists makes the place very homey for Westerners. You can show your knees and feel comfortable about it, walk around a hippie, get reiki or study yoga, and then there's the Tibetans' own commitment to massage and to astrology. There's a huge Israeli contingent here and a little town where many restaurants serve Israeli food. There's also Japanese, Italian, and Thai in this little town, and a wide assortment of movies shown in tiny theaters every night--Ray, Amelie, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, many Tibetan documentaries, and like that.
Tomorrow I hope will be a big hike or else a visit again to the little but fascinating Tibetan museum. It will make at least one of you feel better to know I'm reading Gitanjali, a series of poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore that won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. Yeats praised it highly but it more appears to have influenced Whitman:
"I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards."
Also: "O fool, to try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders! O beggar, to come to beg at thy own door!"
(In the fool's defense, whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother, you're staying alive, staying alive.)
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Googling revealed nothing on the fetal stages in Tibetan medicine but there was an interesting reference to the fact that Tibetans were one of the first cultures to examine fetal development. So, I agree that "weeks" is probably correct. Gabi, I'd love a citation to more about this if you have one.
Great stuff!
Love, JogDad
Great stuff!
Love, JogDad
We could have seen 8 Mile when we were there 2 years back, but we didn't want to wait in line. We saw cinema paradiso instead. What happened with F'ing the German Boy -- Is he cute?
Have there been many boycott Chinese products rallies in Dshala? Those are just the cutest... I mean you could always boycott breathing air.
Rabi Tagore is a darling, but in so many ways his poetry (and Indian Idol status) is a creation of privelege. He was bred to louse about, write songs and spout poetry. He's prolly the best poet ever, but I'll never get over the hurdle of his outward bougie-ness.
"Jive talking" may be a more appropriate song from the SNF soundtrack, no?
Have there been many boycott Chinese products rallies in Dshala? Those are just the cutest... I mean you could always boycott breathing air.
Rabi Tagore is a darling, but in so many ways his poetry (and Indian Idol status) is a creation of privelege. He was bred to louse about, write songs and spout poetry. He's prolly the best poet ever, but I'll never get over the hurdle of his outward bougie-ness.
"Jive talking" may be a more appropriate song from the SNF soundtrack, no?
Dear Jamie, No, I haven't seen any such boycotts, although there are many boys I would boycott. But not the German boy (who I most certainly would not have F'd). I ran into him the other day (at the Green Hotel?) and spoke with him about the tictactoe moment, and he said sincerely that he didn't mind that I was playing it, only that he was concerned it was distracting people, which was an excellent point, although it struck me that they were easily distracted. But I decided he was nice, and also that next time I should prolly leave the monks to distract themselves. You know the SNF soundtrack so much better than I, I don't know the lyrics to that song. I had to resist seeing Meet the Fockers last night. In I think the 1800s there was a belief that rich people were better artists because they were free to be contemplative and genius. If they have discipline it all works out, and I admire discipline, so I can't de facto (?) a priori (?) in absentia (?) ad nauseum resent Tagore his privilege. Why aren't you married yet? Mama and Dada, so funny that you're both commenting on stages of the zygote.
Michele, I think you were the one that started it by telling me to "screw the German boy". Anyhow, he was Israeli. But a code is still an excellent idea. Love, Gabi P.S. I forgot to tell you that my Great Aunt Mae, my mother, and my friend Annie have each independently said they "love you" due to your chutzpah. And I haven't even told them that you told the Sikh "I like Sikhs", making a group of eavesdropping Muslim Kashmiri men laugh, that when a restauranteur asked you to come back soon you said, "okay, but Kashmiris are pains in the butt", and that when we started the conversation with the three typically patriarchal Kashmiri men in the govt emporium about women who can't have babies, you said that often it's the men's fault and they refuse to get checked. At which the men got very, very silent. And that you told Abdul's wife, cloistered in the kitchen, that Indians had told you that if one of her toes is longer than the other it means she is the boss of her husband. At which point did he or did he not hastily assert, "Oh no, she is not the boss of me"?
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