Where do I begin to describe a life that is so totally different from the one(s) I lived for nearly 50 years? And it isn’t even a well-defined life yet, not at all. Mostly it seems to be a process of struggling up to the top of one hill only to find that what is up there is either not functioning or not what I was looking for, turning around, losing my balance and rolling down the hill only to have to get up the next day and start the process all over again.
I’m speaking metaphorically, of course; it’s been awhile since I actually fell down and rolled anywhere. Still, in a lot of ways, it’s just as painful and embarassing as literal pratfalls would be. For one thing, it’s a small town. I mean REALLY small, even in this season where it’s as busy and full of tourists and pilgrims as it ever gets in Tso Pema. There are maybe the equivalent of five short blocks of actual commerce that comprise “town” and are not sequential, but broken into two parts. The “Kora path” is the main drag that circles the lake that gives this place its name. That path is maybe four or five blocks around and, of that, only two are really much populated by tea wallas, shops, etc. and only on one side anyway, the other is lakeside. Our hotel, the one owned by Lama Wangdor, is at one end of this path, the end nearest the town gates. It’s a handy location because it intersects with the other “busy” area - the street that leads up to the “main road” into town. A couple of short blocks of shops, etc. are located there. Finally there is a side street that veers off the kora path towards one of the monasteries (the one we’re kinda affiliated with) that also has some stuff on it.
Trying to describe it makes it sound like more than it is and it apparently HAS grown considerably since Lena lived here 25 years ago. But, to this city girl, it’s distinctly a small village - the kind of place where you can’t really walk more than a block without running into someone you know. And, since I know only a handful of people as yet, that’s saying something!
Tso Pema is a sacred site, a pilgrimage place. There’s a small scattering of Westerners here, the rare ones who have managed to find this obscure little place in the far north of India (we’re in that Northern point of India that is actually north of Nepal and Sikkim) almost up to the Kashmiri border. It’s hard to get to, as my prior posts may have indicated; even by the fastest means currently available, by the time you’ve taken the planes and trains and buses and taxis necessary, it would take at least 48 hours in a hurry from the West Coast of the US. A saner pace would require three or four days. In this modern age, that’s a LOT of traveling, most of it by rail and local buses and then long drives up the side of the mountains.
Most of the visitors from outside the area are from India itself. Himachal Pradesh is considered a paradise for summer holidays by those who live on the roasting plains. It’s also one of the holiest pilgrimage places in Northern India so there’s a constant stream of Hindu and Sikh pilgrims from the Punjab who stop here for one or two nights to pay their respects to the various shrines and temples that litter the hillsides.
Then, of course, there are the Tibetans who make up at least a goodly third of the resident population of Tso Pema. How and why this is such a special place in Tibetan Buddhist lore is a long story and one which deserves its own blog entry. That’ll come soon and it’s quite a legend. I’ve now spent time meditating in the cave at the top of the mountain where that legend began and all I can say is that it really is quite amazing.
What is relevant to Lena, Nyondo and I on a really personal level is that it was our good friend and teacher, Lama Wangdor Rimpoche who rediscovered this place, the abandoned cave on an obscure mountain, after having read about it in the old texts. Fleeing from the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the late nineteen-fifties, Lama Wangdor came looking for the meditation cave of Padmasambhava, (in Sanskrit “the lotus-born one”) the sorcerer/saint who first brought Buddhist meditation to Tibet.
He found it, the lotus lake (tso pema in Tibetan) of Padmasambhava, in the tiny, hidden little village of Rewalsar (it’s Indian name.) and, above it, the great rock caves in which the great yogi had sat meditating along with his consort Mandareva (a princess of Mandi, which is the nearest large town to here.) He settled in this cave, alone up on the mountain. The local villagers brought offerings of enough food to sustain him through the local winters and, gradually, others heard of him and a small community of yogin came to seek his teachings and his guidance, settling into the other caves on the mountainside where they could meditate in the calm and silence.
Over the years the community grew, the pilgrims came and now there are three sizeable Buddhist monasteries from different lineages on the shore of the lake, one of which was built by our friend. The town grew proportionately and has prospered.So Lama, our lama, is understood to be among the causes of this town’s rise to prosperity and wellbeing. His works, the monastery (which he built at the request of the previous incarnation of the Karmapa,) the community buildings, the hotel, other places around, have created work for all the local people who want or need jobs. This is well understood by most folks in town and, with few exceptions, respected.
Lena was the first Westerner to settle up in the caves. She came in the early nineteen seventies and stayed for about eight years, learning, studying, meditating in the caves. She’s one of the only Westerners, one of the few women, who learned to speak the language, not in school or a formal setting, but from living and speaking it daily with the people around her. Once she could speak and translate Lama Wangdor’s teachings, more Westerners came to study and to meditate. Then she went back to the West when her mother got ill and, eventually, Rimpoche came West and they traveled and taught all over North America and in Europe. Now most of the young Tibetans study English in school and can speak well enough to translate the basic information and concepts. Even they, however, often avow that her verbal translations of Wangdor Rimpoche’s verbal teachings are unsurpassed. She not only knows the words, she truly understands the meaning of them.
So the town has grown in prosperity, but not so very much in size, she says. Oh, there’s electricity now for almost everyone (though we still have blackouts nearly every day when power useage is high) and there’s a water line up to the caves these days so people don’t have to carry all their water up the mountain on their backs. There is enough for all these days - unlike everywhere else I’ve been in India, there don’t seem to be ANY beggars on the street, everybody gets taken care of at least for the minimal needs of life and the streets and roofs appear to be in decent repair. But it’s distinctly rural, distinctly NOT a modern place by Western standards.
This hasn’t only to do with size, though I’m sure that’s a part of it. Rather, it’s the idea that absolutely EVERYTHING that isn’t grown locally has to be trucked at considerable difficulty, up the side of a mountain. We’re only at about 7000 feet, which isn’t a lot compared to the real peaks in the Himalayas, but it’s still something when you’re climbing. The nearest town of any substance is Mandi. To get here from Mandi is a 45 minute drive up on of the steepest and windiest mountain roads I’ve ever been on. The kind where, if two vehicles meet, one has to either pull over to let the other pass OR, if there is no room to do so, carefully back down the mountain until you reach a space wide enough for passing. Did I mention that there are no side rails or retaining walls - it’s a sheer drop-off from the road all the way down the mountain. So passing is a highly stressful thing and most people don’t drive - driving is almost a profession and highly respected. That’s to get to Rewalsar. The cave community is another half hour up an even sheerer mountain road. Then, to get to the caves up top, you get out and climb the rest of the way on foot. I found it quite challenging the first time I went up there and I doubt that I’ll ever actually find it easy.
These are the physical facts of where we’re living. Understanding the physical setting is necessary to understanding the psychological/social setting. At least I think it is. I’ve only just begun to feel like I have any bearings whatsoever, any grasp on life in this little Himalayan village whose entire reason for being is as a spiritual/esoteric power point. It’s kinda weird in a lot of ways.
*****
I stopped writing above to take a break and go out for a little while and do kora.
To do kora means to circumnambulate sunwise around a holy place or object. It can be as small as a tiny shrine the size of a volkswagen or as big as Mt. Kailash, the mountain that Tibetans consider to be the center of the universe. In places like this, it’s also an important part of the social milieu - it’s the time when whoever can goes out and walks around and talks, gossips, passes on information, meets up with their friends, makes new friends, etc. Twice a day, usually fairly early morning and the right before sunset, you go out and either walk around the lake = which is the big kora that most folks try to do - or at least do kora around the statue of Padmasambhava in its pavillion ringed with prayer wheels and stupas that sits on the edge of the lake right across from the hotel. Even with my foot still giving me trouble, I can easily do the latter kora. The full lake walk can leave me limping badly still, but the good thing about the pavillion is that I can go round and round it as much as I am able without getting stranded on the back side of the lake if my foot gives out. Then, once that’s done, there’re various chai wallas where you can sit on a bench and have a cup of chai for the equivalent of 6 cents US and wait for your friends to go by.
I had an impulse to go out by myself and do evening kora, so I slid out and enjoyed the peacefulness of the pavillion and the lake awhile then stopped for a cuppa. The chai walla is right next door to the weaver’s shop so I sat and watched him weave a blanket in vivid shades of orange and royal blue wool. After awhile I looked up and saw Lena coming towards me, surprised to find me there (for reasons I’ll eventually get to in this or another blog.) She was on her way to pick up our washing from the Dobiwallah and saw me. So she sat down.
Within a few minutes we were joined by a pair of ancient nuns who asked if she was Lena and were thrilled to discover it was, indeed, she. She is quite famous around town as the one who made so much happen here, even from afar. Everyone knows who she is, even if they haven’t met her! So they introduced themselves. Hard to understand - they have such heavy regional accents plus both are nearly toothless so it was a bit of work. However we recognized their names from the lists of people we’ve helped find sponsors for over the years and tickled them by saying “oh yes, we know who YOU are!” So we bought them tea and chatted and Lena did a quick doctor trip on the eldest one as other folks we know wandered by on kora. Even I, who don’t get out and around nearly as much as Lena, seem to have met enough people to greet many by sight and several by name already.
We were then joined by our friend Teryl, an American woman from Boston whom we have known for many years and who surprised us (and herself) by turning up here at the same time we did after having tried to find us for the past years after we lost our house in Oakland. Teryl is amazing in a lot of ways, not the least of which is being a breast cancer survivor with more vitality and energy than most 5 people I know combined. Good people and one of the handful of people we’ve met on Lama and Lena’s teaching circuit that have actually become friends. So she’s been here while we have, in the same hotel. Our paths cross daily, but she’s quite independent and not needy or anything so it’s been a really pleasant connection, just enough to make us all feel good about it.
Anyway, the five of us hung out talking and drinking tea while the world passed by and the weaver started to close his shop as the light began to fade. I headed in since the mosquitoes were coming out in droves and they really adore my blood over all others. I can be in a crowd of thirty and one mosquito and it’ll find and bite me. Plus I’m really allergic to the bites and itch for hours. The only thing that makes life bearable here in Asia is benadryl anti-itch cream LOL.
I’ve been back almost an hour now and it’s funny - the light is pretty close to the same as it was when I came in - still light, waiting for sunset. It’s like that here - the late afternoon comes and hangs around for a long while and then suddenly fades altogether. It must be an effect of being up in the mountains, ringed by higher mountains - the sun dips below the western peaks pretty early but then the light is more or less the same for hours, indirect but clear. Up here in Himachal, there is much less of the pinkish colour of the light and sky that you see in Delhi or Mumbai. In those places the air glows rosy and flushed from the first hint of evening on. The dust in the air is what supposedly turns it pink.
We’ve got mountain light, the blues and silvers of the Himalayas. At higher altitudes, the sky is the deep, astonishing blue of lapis lazuli as though the night and day have merged in the thin atmosphere. Where we are it’s not so remarkably blue and the oxygen levels don’t take more than a day or two to get used to. In fact, after living in Nepal for three months, we didn’t even notice it the way people coming directly from the flatlands do, we’ve adjusted enough that this, anyway, seems normal. But the sky is mostly what you think of as sky blue. Except, sometimes, just at twilight when the entire world turns a bright, almost florescent purple for about fifteen minutes. It just glows with a colour I’ve never before seen as a product of natural light. Not every evening, just occasionally, which makes it seem special, magical. I find myself waiting for dusk to see if maybe today, there will be that moment of visible magic. Right now it’s inclining in that direction, but too soon to tell for sure.
We’ve been here just under two weeks. I don’t feel like I’ve even remotely acclimatized to either the culture or the pace of life; I don’t know if I ever will. It’s been difficult more than wonderful and in ways I didn’t quite expect. Hoping I can put it into words, that I can somehow, by writing about it, transform the experience and make it less overwhelming and stressful. I need it to be less overwhelming and stressful.
I was prepared to be perceived as alien in this place, a distinct minority with physical quirks that would make me stand out. Hey, I stand out in a roomful of people of mostly European descent. I’m big and usually at least half a head taller than everyone else. But my size is not SO unusual in North America, land of corn fed, overfed people of scandinavian and german heritage.
Nepal should have inured me to stares and comments. Should have except that I spent so much of my childhood and adolescence being stared at, called names and feeling like misfit due to my height and girth. By adulthood I’d mostly gotten over my self-consciousness and negative self-image. In fact, if you’d asked me before this, I’d have said that I WAS over it, that I had a really positive self-image and that, if they didn’t like the fact that I was an amazon, fuck ‘em. I came away from Nepal in love with the land and culture but feeling like the kind of geek that bites the heads off of bats and displays her tattoos in a sideshow.
India is really a lot better than that. Mostly. In Delhi I didn’t feel particularly self-conscious at all unless I went into one of the very local neighborhoods and then people stared because they weren’t used to seeing any injies at all on their turf so what the hell was I doing there and might I do something amusing? Up here in the North there are a lot of Punjabi people and plenty of Punjabis are my height, especially the men, especially in their turbans. Even some of the Punjabi women are my size, though that’s the exception rather than the norm. The Tibetans mostly take me in stride.
Anyway, I came to Tso Pema expecting that, because I already knew some of the people, because my partner called this place “home” for so long and because we have so many ties here, having significantly contributed to all the projects that made the town prosper, that I would easily find my niche. Instead I’ve been wandering around feeling lost, awkward and confused since we arrived.
Some of that has had to do with my being sick. I’ve literally had three bouts of severe digestive upset that had me miserable and wrung out in the two and a half weeks since we got back to India. And I came in from Nepal feeling not completely well. The most recent was night before last and kept me mostly in bed all day yesterday - when I wasn’t in the bathroom that is. It’s hard to get socially acclimated to a place when you can’t go more than a dozen feet from a toilet - particularly in a place and country where decent toilets are few and far between. So I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in the hotel room. I noticed though that, even when I could go out, I was tending not to. I’ve never been agoraphobic before, but my tensions about the stares and curiousity on the street is definitely leading me in that direction.
I took another break after writing most of the paragraphs above to make Lena a hot beverage for her bad cold and then to have a supper of tea, yoghurt and tsampa with Lena and our friend Teryl. We talked some more about our sense of self-consciousness here and she made some observations that so absolutely and exactly matched my own experience that I burst into tears of relief and just threw my arms around her and hugged her. You see, Teryl is one of those women who, by traditional Western standards, is quite beautiful. She’s almost as tall as me, but graceful, willowly, her hair streaked with gold, her eyes a greenish blue, her face classically lovely. Men fall all over her and always have. And here she is, having the same sense of being a freak, of being gawked at, of being giggled at and pointed out and just plain stared at in an unpleasant way, as me who does NOT qualify as anything resembling classically beautiful. She’s had the same sense of isolation, confusion, not knowing where she fits, all of it. So it’s NOT just me and it’s not those things that all the demons of my childhood and adolesence say are “wrong” with me. Wow!!! Just wow. What an eye-opener! She’s also been tending to isolate in her room or going up to the caves where she can sit and meditate rather than going into town and dealing with the questions, stares and giggling. She has also felt like a zoo exhibit around specifically the shopkeepers and the Punjabi tourists.
The other interesting thing, to me at least, is that she also had a sense today of things turning around, starting to click. Both of us, when we met on the street, had individually said, “screw it” and gone out anyway and ended up having a nice time. We wonder if it is something in us that changed or something like the psychological weather around here. Either way, it was really good to talk to someone about this common experience. I got a lot off my chest and feel a big sense of relief.
Now, if I’m lucky, I’ll have internet access soon. That’s another whole tale of its own that has spanned many days and ended up with Nyondo, our computer geek, taking a night bus to Delhi to try to get one of our three laptops repaired so we can try the cellphone internet connection that’s the best thing available out here. She’s supposed to be back in the morning with my thinkpad in good repair, ready to go. We should know, in a day or so, if it all works.
Friday Evening
So Nyondo is back from Delhi and my laptop is (once again) repaired. Lena’s is out of warrantee and so we decided to have the local hardware guy take a look at it instead of the high-priced IBM repair center. Nyondo thinks she’s found a way to have her Linux system work with the mobile phone modem and mine has built-in Bluetooth and should be able to do internet stuff without a problem once it’s set up. The real problem now is getting Nyondo to stop fiddling with all the cool tech toy aspects of the new phone and just do the internet setup! It would be funny if it weren’t so frustrating. I’ve been without real internet access for weeks now and urgent business is starting to pile up. This HAS to work or I’m screwed.
Saturday Morning
IT WORKS!!!
