Notes From Nepal: Part 1

 

In the middle of March, I was in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal, back to oversee food work I jumped into fifteen years ago without considering what that might kickstart. A little charity with the motto: Strong minds need strong bodies somehow grew from the visible results of that initial and subsequent forays into feeding malnourished monks, nuns and the schoolchildren in their care. At the start of the year, it received a surprise five-figure donation. So despite my doctor not wanting me to jeopardize my precarious respiratory health in one of the world’s filthiest places, I had to go in person to insure money dedicated to food, fruit trees and vegetable gardens did what it was supposed to do: feed people. Wired funds had at times, I am sorry to say, been secretly waylaid and hijacked by construction or classroom or ceremonial needs, and that rankled my reputed integrity. I’ve had a tough time trying not to sully my faith in Dharma with this discovery that a tight-knit organization of Tibetan monks sustaining an international empire of monasteries can be as treacherous as any global corporation protecting a brand. I keep telling myself Samsara is Samsara, and Dharma warns: it is inescapably pervasive.

I have been to Kathmandu enough times to arrive with trepidation, not so much about getting the job done as what doing that will do to me. (Several years back, I left in a wheelchair.) To starry-eyed trekkers touring for a week, Nepal seems to be the high (Everest, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri) and the mighty (Sherpas and Gurkhas). But we schleppers who go there longer and stay more down to earth know it as the world’s most flagrantly failed state, a patchwork country where things never get better so everybody does their damnedest to make them get worse-- a way, I suppose, of feeling at least they managed to do something.

Thanks to vicious squabbling between two Brahman factions that keep vying for vise-like control (Maoists who destroy and Congress who dithers), the country endured a prolonged and devastating guerilla siege that displaced a large portion of the primitive population, driving them and the infectious diseases they carry to the urbanized valley where the water table, trash collecting, air quality and farmland have been decimated. The decade-long internecine war also prevented any progress on upgrading electricity with all the hydro power the Himalayas offer, so blackouts of 10-14 hours roll daily across the valley, forcing mass reliance on diesel-fueled generators whose noise and fumes add to the misery. Roads remain unpaved, seriously rutted and sometimes blocked by people extorting money or protesting. Germs run rampant, especially in the food supply.

Whatever government there is at any moment is so corrupt, Nepal is the only country I know where you can’t send anything more than a postcard or thank you note through the post office because it’s bound to be stolen. The national oil company is such a mess, it has to keep raising the price of the fuel India delivers because it can’t find the money to pay. While I was there, gas was to rise again a considerable 10 rupees a liter, inciting university students to protest by doing what every protest does in Kathmandu: shut the entire city down by calling a strike and physically threatening anyone who ventures outside. (The Maoists used to assault even ambulances on humanitarian emergencies.) As usual, it did not stop the price hike; it just damaged everybody’s already meager daily income and upended scheduling.

On some charts, Kathmandu has become the most polluted city in the universe: none of the black diesel fumes, carpet factory particles, unpaved road dust, cement “smoke” from the nonstop construction, generator fumes and rotting garbage odors can rise higher than the Himalayas surrounding the city. A once breath-taking, sense-of-place, blue sky view of the city as a basin surrounded by snowy mountains is now permanently obscured by so much smog, it’s all a gray blur. Everybody wears a face mask.

To add to the joy, when the Maoists were winning the political tug of war, they deliberately spited India, mentor of the Congress Party, for its cavalier dealings with Nepal by turning to the Chinese. This race of people that has no respect for anything but itself is now callously upending or perhaps bulldozing everything physical and cultural everywhere to create something for its own benefit. They've been especially harsh to the Tibetan community that has lived here for decades and has a millennia long relationship with as well as blood ties to the people of this valley. “The Nepalese don’t seem to understand they’ve sold their soul and culture to the Chinese, and it’s going to cost them their country,” more than one expat told me with palpable sadness.

Naturally, a mass mess like this gets thickened with NGOs in infinite number and UN agencies of every kind. I am always hearing about yet another orphanage, another school, another medical mission somebody thinks I know about or should. It’s not possible to keep track. Too many people, like me, fall in love with the gentle, generous, long-suffering Nepali people— at least those in particular ethnic tribes, and want to help. This time I was introduced to Eva, a good-natured, bulging middle-aged Swedish woman who funds yet another small orphanage/school a few miles from the overcrowded charity boarding school where I started cooking. Nepal is an ocean of unclaimed children, indentured children and children exported in the sex trade because a huge portion of Nepalese are too poor to keep the children they keep breeding, thanks to the total absence of education and medical help.

I arrived in a city experiencing a torrential reign of trekkers from just about everywhere people earn enough money to travel. March is a high season, the dusty one before summer monsoon makes October the higher, clearer one, and the political stand-off seems to have sunk from its own weight far enough underground to make the country appear safe again. I arrived to a city magically able to keep the lights and water on in areas crowded with tourists paying Brahman-backed businesses. The hotels were full, restaurants busy, little white Suzuki cabs scooting everywhere. Six Swedes had come to see Eva and her orphanage before going with her on a little vacation trek too.

I was there, as I said, not to trek but tote, on a sort of NGO effort to channel money to the care and feeding of about 500-600 monks, 210 nuns and the 425 children in a Buddhist boarding school. I was also there to learn more about the local cooking and its medical uses from the Newars-- original inhabitants of what was once known as Happy Valley, the artisans whose remarkable woodworking skills made 13th Century Rajastan refugees fleeing the Muslim Mughals call it Kathmandu (wood-carved shelters). The Newari have a unique and uniquely scientific/artistic cuisine I’ve been studying for years. As I always have to say when I’m in Nepal: “Most people come here to see Annapurna, Chitwan or maybe Manaslu; I see Kalimati (Kathmandu’s teeming wholesale food market) and kitchens.” (I've posted reports about this on Facebook @Prima Dharma Cook.)

Somehow despite the drastic loss of farmland, there still seems to be plenty of food: mostly fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, grains and sweets. I take this as testament to the Nepalese great agricultural genius. They are credited with teaching the ancient Chinese how to grow greens, and the British found the Tamang tribes in the region around Kathmandu so spectacularly gifted at terracing steep slopes to make them produce prolifically, they shipped thousands to Darjeeling to create and sustain the tea estates (which is why the local language there is Nepali), as well as to the highlands of Burma where about 20,000 of them remain, abandoned to fear and obscurity. It’s always astonishing to drive alongside what looks like a dangerous ravine, turn the corner and discover the entire escarpment is a bright green, terraced farm.

I met with Tamang farmers on this trip: one at the small nunnery on the crowded outskirts of Kathmandu, and one at the large, sprawling monastery at a higher elevation in the countryside more than an hour away. I have at times raised funds for their salaries, which are now around $600 a year. To greet me, the bright-eyed, dazzlingly white toothed, moon faced farmer at the nunnery shimmied down one of the bamboo poles of the garden's monsoon protection tenting we’d paid for and immediately apologized for the torn plastic he was attaching to it. “Cheap,” he said with shame. “Try save money.” Just beside him was a gorgeously thick and green peach tree full of small, hard, green first-stage fruits—one of the 24 saplings we’d donated 4 years ago in a quiet campaign not only to secure nourishment for the then sickly nuns, but to provide a green oasis for the birds, bees and human souls in a neighborhood that had just lost every last shred of green to concrete buildings. His Holiness the late 16^th Karmapa had maintained an aviary, claiming birds are the energy manifestations of dakinis (Buddhist and Hindu female goddesses of wisdom), so we wanted the nunnery to serve as a bird sanctuary. And now, as the Tamang farmer led me around to the other thickly green and fruiting trees, my ears told me it was. (I've posted a picture of the peach tree on the blog at www.veggiyana.org)

Most Nepalis will not take without graciously trying to offer something in return, even if it’s just a cup of tea. So I was offered a lunch at the nunnery, a typical meal of rice, dhal and vegetable, in this case spinach from the garden. And in this case, every time I took a spoonful, the nun attempted to refill my plate. It was hard to stop her until I said: “I don’t need anything more. Just seeing the cleanliness of this place and the healthy smile on your face now that you have food is enough.” With that I gave her a check for more monsoon protection over the garden--with higher quality plastic, 3 more fruit trees (guava and pomegranate to stretch the season), more store-bought fruits until the trees can be harvested, and seven months of peanut butter to up the nourishment of their steamed bread breakfast. She gave me a detailed receipt and a huge richly gold colored khata.  I left feeling insanely happy about putting a miniature dike in an enormous flood of misery.

Part 2 will follow so this account doesn’t seem too long.

~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
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Yours In The Dharma 2001-2010, Sandy Garson Copyright 2001-2010 Sandy Garson All rights Reserved

THE OTHER INAUGURATION

With buildings freshly painted rusty red, evergreen trees in the ground and pathways glistening with white cement, my teacher Thrangu Rinpoche consecrated a monastery complex fifteen years in the making. It sits 7,000 feet in the air, on a sacred hill in the blessedly pollution free outskirt of Kathmandu, and the banner celebration up there had all the grandeur of Bollywood. Colorfully garbed people from every continent piled into and around a soaring structure filled with brass statues, lavish brocades and streaming banners. Everyone was fancily decked in round red shirred silk badges for the three days of song, speech and lama dance, dinners and desi (ceremonial saffron rice with raisins), the whole shebang punctuated by endless processions of dazzling gifts.


The inauguration of Barack Obama will pale in comparison to that awesome spectacle of gilded statues, gold threaded cloth, hand-woven carpets, longhorns, elephant tusks, the stuff just kept coming and coming, even a kilo of emeralds carried from Brazil. I could joke there wasn’t much emptiness, but that spectacular outpouring was the most profound inspiration imaginable. Almost exactly fifty years to the start of the hoopla, the ninth Thrangu Rinpoche fled Tibet with nothing but his devotion to the Dharma and faith in the Buddha. At the time, these were miraculous enough to deflect a bullet from Chinese determined to destroy him. The awed 25-year-old grabbed his life and moved through five decades never letting that faith veer or waver, never straying or betraying the Dharma, never letting an ego swell or despair damage his devotion. Consequently, his focus was magnified by the devotion and faith such pure behavior inspired, ultimately giving him the power to create this breathtaking Buddhist center. The message was clear: look at the riches uncorrupted devotion to and unflappable faith in the Dharma leads to.


Not that getting there is easy. Rinpoche’s life is a reminder it takes excruciatingly hard work. But, the gala said: Yes we can, because the spectacular three-day tribute to transcendence of tragedy, poverty, and the humiliations of exile was an elegant display of how to overcome. It looked just like a guide to the paramitas, those six behaviors whose virtuoso perfection the Buddha deemed fitness training for sailing over the sufferings of Samsara, to the shore of sainthood—or the pinnacle of a sacred Nepali mountain.


The first, and maybe toughest, generosity, started with the huge red welcome portals temporarily erected along the dirt track leading up, then the immediate offering of biscuits, tea and personalized access badges upon arrival. “We humbly request that you accept this invitation,” the website said, echoing the big yellow printed solicitation mailed to thousands. With the whole world essentially invited, anyone who showed up, and over 2,000 people did—Tibetans from all over their diaspora, Tamangs from the local village, Manangis from a hidden Himalayan valley of Nepal, Chinese from Malaysia, someone from New Zealand-- got to share meals, tea, seating and souvenirs, a reminder that the Buddha said we must be like the sun which shines equally bright on everyone, without prejudice, judgment or favor.


So many showed up, Rinpoche had to rent a hotel in the resort town back at the base of the mountain, along with buses to shuttle the dozens of us up and down, yet it was all offered as freely as the tea. Even to the loud, opinionated, bucktoothed, red headed German backpacker who never shut up, never stopped asking for seconds, never contributed to the construction or the celebration, but always helped herself to the prime seat, smashing some of us on the bus in her stubborn push to get off first. to add to the perfection, the freeloader's name was Hella. I kid you not.


Ordinary material giving was matched by great giving. This included all those processions offering the rare and personally precious, plus thank-you gifts coming in return from Rinpoche. It was Rinpoche offering prostrations and precious gifts to His Eminence Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, the thirteen-year-old presiding over the rituals. It was Rinpoche politely sitting on his throne two extra hours so hundreds of Tibetans and Tamang villagers could file past, one by one handing him a white scarf for blessings, each one getting a souvenir in return so no one left without feeling part of the occasion. The special giving of Dharma was pujas, lama dances and distribution of Buddha statues to everybody who contributed to the place, no matter what that contribution was. The extraordinary giving of freedom from fear was the warm welcome given to the local villagers, even those who climbed up in rags with babies on their back, and the opening of a free hospital clinic on the monastery ground—the first medical care ever for them.


As for exceptionally great giving, that rare and precious sacrifice of life or limb, Rinpoche pointed out the monastery sat on a site made sacred by the Buddha himself. In his incarnation as a Nepali prince, he willingly gave his flesh and blood here to a starving tigress and her cubs, thereby in the very next lifetime catapulting to Buddhahood. We are all so stubbornly used to equating our temporary body with our eternal mind, Rinpoche said, we clutch it fiercely, and thus panic wildly at intimations of illness, death or giving any of it away. He hoped time spent here at Namo Buddha (homage to the Buddha) recalling what the prince did would loosen that white knuckled grip.


Actually, just getting there helped. All of us over-fifty survivors of the tortured 25 hours of flying, mingled with torturous transit waits and invasive searches, spent a few days before the consecration trying to adjust to a city choked by pollution and paralyzed by politics, to a time zone where night comes when you’re geared for day and day becomes night because the barbaric Maoist government deliberately cuts electricity to destabilize the place. To a person, we swore the whole experience, complete with dangerous water and risky food, a physical ordeal getting too tough at our age to repeat. Yet we were all genuinely thrilled to have endured the depredations in order to witness our teacher’s moment of glory. And our suffering was a reminder how for years on end, Rinpoche has selflessly tripped through airports, crossed oceans, changed climates, suspended routine and upended eating habits, sacrificing his comfort to respond to requests to teach the Dharma.


Rinpoche never complains about how hard nomadic life has been on him, or about the difficulties of building this splendid monastery. That is perfect discipline. So were the poignantly unhesitating prostrations of this venerable 76-year-old scholar to the eminent Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, the 13-year-old who embodies one of the most legendary minds in all Tibetan Buddhism. The hundreds of monks, scores of schoolchildren and dozens of nuns frenetically scurrying around to insure everyone among the two thousand visitors had tea, every dish was washed, every cauliflower was cut, every water tank was refilled, every plastic chair was carried from one event to the other, every guest had a bed, every statue was polished also beautifully illustrated perfect discipline: always creating as many sources of good for the future as possible by always doing whatever positive actions you can, regardless of how insignificant they may seem.


The massive festivities were planned and pulled off without hitch or aggravation by a small committee of monks armed only with cellphones and focus. Dozens of their cohorts had gone without sleep for a week to polish their dances or hundreds of shrine statues or the new dining room floor. I heard about monks willingly tight rope walking wobbly bamboo pole scaffolds to get that rusty red paint at the tops of buildings. Not one of the monks, regardless of rank in the vast maroon wrapped army, failed to smile welcomingly, not one forgot a thank you for what may have been given in the year gone by (several joyfully offered to stop what they were doing to give me tours of the 2000 trees they’d planted with my contribution), not one ignored questions or requests. For their contribution, the seven-year-old ones exuberantly walked on their hands and spun blithely across concrete in cartwheels.


The teenage school kids bused out from the city slept on the floor and wore the same clothes for three days, and while these were getting dustier and dirtier, the smiles on their faces got brighter and wider because the choreography was flowing flawlessly and they knew they were helping to keep it that way.


I swear I saw a grimace fly across Rinpoche’s face when the infuriating Hella interfered with the lama dancers, throwing herself in their faces with her large camera, but he never acted on it. The monks continued gracefully to give her seconds and thirds of the ceremonial rice offered in the shrine room, plus fancy accommodations at the resort hotel, right along with the most generous contributors. Letting it all hang out was transcendental patience. The same patience Rinpoche displayed waiting and working fifty years to make this gift to the world.


Early on, many fancier gurus who fled Tibet were given grand sites to re-establish monasteries while Rinpoche toiled quietly, without a retinue, as a teaching scholar. By the time he was ready and able to set up on his own, all he could do was squeeze into a pocket sized space near the crowded stupa of Boudha. Then out of devotion, he made a pilgrimage to the often ignored sacred Namo Buddha site. There was no road, no water, no wiring, no shelter when he first climbed the 12 kilometers, but upon getting there, he vowed to make the spot pacify misfortune, promote peace and push people to rebirth in higher realms.


Down to the symbolic number of pillars in the shrine room, he envisioned this magnificent monastery, with specific components for teaching and healing, and not even a decade of mean Maoist interference deterred him from actualizing it. It slowed him down but didn’t stop him, didn’t cloud his sunny view. For this consecration of a monastery named "all that has been collected back from being scattered", he had gathered almost all the titled gurus of the original Thrangu Monastery of Tibet including Tulku Lodro Nyima Rinpoche who remained in it, and the 85-year-old Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche who made the journey from Woodstock, New York. So what was Hella but a reminder how pointless a distraction irritation is.


There’s probably no greater irritation in all Nepal than its evil politics. The elite is relentlessly exclusive. The narcissistic and petty cruelty common to the King, his Brahmin legions and the Maoists has undermined normality. Yet, like a star quarterback or political mastermind, Rinpoche has managed to move forward, creating a nunnery, retreat center, boarding school and now this marvelous monastery in the middle of the mess. He’s planted Dharma by being inventively inclusive, giving space to everyone. It's no secret that the complex was essentially built by Chinese people, enterprising ones who fled the Communists and set up colonies in Malaysia, Taiwan, Vancouver and Hong Kong. They're the very ones who funded the restoration of Rinpoche's original monastery flourishing unmolested inside Tibet. And they were all there en masse, with Rinpoche supplying a Mandarin translator.

In the crowded crush, I caught a passing glimpse of the unctuous Kasim, come from Varanasi, India where generations ago his Muslim family established a brocade weaving workshop that specializes in tapestry for Buddhist monasteries. For over a century, Kasim’s great grandfather or grandfather or father trekked from the banks of the Ganges into eastern Tibet to deliver and sell, cataloguing patterns specific to each customer. Thus as emigrant Rinpoches re-established themselves, Kasim was able to faithfully reproduce the designs of their heritage. Rinpoche has made him a rich man, and made us richer by always inviting him as a guest, to remind us of the historic, honorable interconnection between Muslims and Buddhists.


The real display of perfect vigilance, sometimes called morality, was having as the principal ribbon cutter and orator the new speaker of Nepal’s fledging and chaotic government, Subas Nemwang. Unfortunately, we had to sit two hours waiting for him to launch the festivities because he was caught in that spontaneous highway roadblock at the bottom of the mountain that had been vexing us. When he finally arrived, fez on, he expressed surprise at finding social services like school and clinic on private property and commended Rinpoche for this charity. He praised all of us who had contributed to such a beautiful and monumental effort, so beneficial to Nepal, and ended on what seemed an odd note. He asked us to please now rebuild into similar splendor the one Buddhist pilgrimage site in the country, Lumbini, birthplace of the Buddha.


On the bus ride down to the hotel that night, I found out the point of the pitch was the Maoist government, sensing a potential jackpot, wanted to clean up what is widely known as the slum of must-do Buddhist pilgrimage places. Nepal is so endemically depraved, all the reconstruction committees pocketed whatever funds were volunteered or coughed up, and left a golden egg seriously tarnished. So the Maoists disbanded the latest group and, having glimpsed the glory of Namo Buddha, appointed one of Rinpoche’s monks to take charge of rebuilding Lumbini.


Transcendent concentration was easy. It wasn't just Rinpoche's unswerving fifty year's of focus or the year effort made unstintingly by his monks. There were no televisions, radios, computers clicking, movies rolling, no bright light distractions like that. Dharma was the only focus and there was nowhere to lose it. Namo Buddha is a pilgrimage site, and Rinpoche says that visiting such a blessed place helps strengthen devotion and faith, changing our behavior through inspiration.

Unexpected inspiration came from the brocaded Chinese dumpling sitting next to me at the first event. Her face was pale as a China doll, her cheeks plump and eyes slit, her stature small. Her English was very halting with echoes of a lisp, and in it she said her name was Mancy. She was not, as I first thought, one of the so-called overseas devotees from Malaysia, Taiwan or Hong Kong. She was bona fide Han Chinese from the southern city of Guangzhou, a passport carrying citizen of the Communist regime. And that was the problem. Cherubic Mancy had an unexpected eruption of karma. Experiencing a yen for Dharma, she traveled to Hong Kong, heard Rinpoche talk and immediately vowed to learn Tibetan so she could translate his teachings into Cantonese. It's the only language the southern half of China including Hong Kong truly understands. "I realized," she explained, "that the translation was in Mandarin and most of the Hong Kong people, like myself, didn't really understand it all. We were missing a lot." So Mancy has been traveling on her own alone, on limited visas and under police surveillance, to Nepal from time to time for tutoring in Tibetan. After the last visit, she was detained at the airport for two hours because she had a Tibetan dictionary. She had one on her that day too and was looking for a Chinese speaking monk or nun to teach her til her visa ran out.


As for perfect wisdom, Rinpoche gave everyone a booklet explaining that “this world of ours, where material goods are available as never before, could be taken as a positive sign. However, this abundance has also created an era of craving and attachment escalating beyond measure. In their wake, our environment has deteriorated while wildlife has been slaughtered to the point of extinction. Major earthquakes and rising ocean levels also attest to the tremendous damage done and the danger of future harm.


“At such a time, it is very beneficial to recall the life story of the Buddha, and narratives of his prior lives which provide models for excellent conduct. Here he offered himself to a starving tigress and her cubs. When we hear the story of such fearlessness and dedication to protecting the lives of animals and the natural world, it becomes clear we need to do all that we possibly can. …


“I offer the aspiration prayer that making available this history of this sacred site will bring great benefit by helping to protect the environment and preventing its further decline, and especially by preventing the loss of wildlife through safeguarding the lives of those who have no protection.”


Rinpoche also says: "...today, we can visit this place where the Buddha demonstrated such great courage and compassion. That we can ...indicates how fortunate we are." Frankly, at this very moment when kleshas were exploding like fireworks all over the earth--Pakistanis blowing up Mumbai, Afghanis attacking each other, Palestinians bombing Israelis with lots of vice versa revenge, Darfur dying of uninterrupted genocide, Republican blowhards stirring up a stew of American racial enmity--everybody really did feel that way.

~Sandy Garson
"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/

Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.

Yours In The Dharma 2001-2008, Sandy Garson @copy: 2001-2008 Sandy Garson
All rights Reserved

YES WE CAN

Forget the title above,
It's incorrect.
Computers are despotic.

The real title is Season's Eatings!
The real point is Joy to the World!
Thanks and giving at the table.

Chinese with Tibetans
Korean and Mexican
Nepalese and a Spaniard

What the world's coming to
is the table.
Happily.

Birthday in Zanskar
Married in Brooklyn
Reunion in San Francisco

A few friends
A little food
A thrill to be alive.

~Sandy Garson
"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/

Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.

Yours In The Dharma 2001-2008, Sandy Garson @copy: 2001-2008 Sandy Garson
All rights Reserved