worldly affairs

i'm writing from freak street in kathmandu, once in the hippie days the local stronghold of flower-power. i woke up before sunrise, and went out to explore the old city center as it arises for the new day (see picture to get a feeling of it), and before other tourists do. it also enabled me to join the group of the narayan (one of vishnu's incranations) worshippers on their morning chant's, accompanying them with a cymbal.

i am in a relaxed mode of being, feeling pretty well, and i know a few people around, so the atmosphere is quiet friendly for me. after the retreat i felt like getting away from kopan and nepal as soon as possible, and get to dharamsala for about 3 weeks to make some friends and live enoyably. however, now i feel like taking things easy, leaving the date of my return to india open and enjoying some of nepal's attractions. tomorrow then, i am probably going to pokhara, which is known for the natural beauty of its lakeside location and its proximity to the mountains, as well as its laid-back hedonistic lifestyle (for tourists, of course...)

life seems to move faster then this blog (which is of course better then the other way), so i will not tell my stories too elaboratedly this time.

my stories begin just as the retreat ends, with a concluding meeting with lama lhundrup, who couldn't do much to relief my conflicts except for saying that the practice was very good and that i'm very lucky, tell me that i should take my time and keep going in the path of the buddha, and give blessed RIMON and a tophy candy... my hunger for human interaction also wasn't reliefed by the short conversations i had with the remainings of the above mentioned community of kopan western residents, so i was happy to take advantage of the need to arrange my fight ticket and went for a half day visit in kathmandu, untroubled by the sudden heavy rain that had just begun.

the same city which was overpacked and annoying in the first day i came here seemed now a colorful and lively paradise. after hanging around, and helping sunjib, the younger child of the hindu family that takes care of the three godesses temple, with his math homework, i splurged myself with a dinner at kathmandu's best thai resturant.

the next day i took a trek to the nunnery (a monestary for female-monks) up in the mounains. i left kopan at 06:00 and went down to the valley to see the morning village life. walking past the first village i moved through the rice fields, immersing myself in the unbelievible green of these planes.

it wasn't long before i began to climb again, and after a while i was instructed by the locals to leave the main road and take the almost invisible trail that climbes straight through the mountains. i was also informed repeatedly with energetic hand wavings that i have a damn long way to go. i climbed on, enjoying the changing surrounding as i gained altitude. the fields disapppeared and it became woody and rockey, and later also very wet, with many streams crossing my way. i walked through remote villages up in the mountains, unfortunately with no food or mineral water for a foreign passer by. it's been a beautiful trial and error on my way up, and i was guided occasionally by the locals, one of which also kindly showed me her breast.

finally, after 4.5 hours i reached the nunnery, which is extremely peaceful, and most of the time was just inside the clouds. i walked around, watched the nuns easily performing their daily activities, and had a visit in the temple. they also provided me lunch, which was highly important after i only ate some biscuits the whole day.

just when i was about to leave i met a group of nepali students, around 20 years old, which also trekked to the nunnery. they invited me to a bedminton game, and then to football with an empty plastic bottle, and i ended up joining them on their way down and spending together the second half of the day. they were a nice bunch of folks, 4 boys and 3 girls, cool, happy, friendly, interesting, sophistically humorous and speaking good english. we had a lot on adventures on our way - the rampant rain that caught us unprepared, visiting the sleeping vishnu temple while we're wet to our bones, and the tea at temba's home - which is just near kopan monastery - when we returned together in the evening.

but the most exciting was undoubtedly the meal with the villagers. cobirras, which is hyperactively creative and communicative, and also a painter (he made the drawing shown above), arranged an invitation for lunch from the villagers, which tend to be extremely kind and generous. their hospitality was really incredible. we sat there for 2 hours, and while the they were cooking the food, the nepali gang were singing traditional songs and playing a nepali drum, and niema tried to explain me all the jokes that ran around, so i don't feel isolated.

then a chicken was chosen among the ones running around the house, and i was offered the honor of cutting its throat. when i explained that i do not kill even mosquitoes it was vivek who took the unpleasant duty. anyway it was surly the most fresh chicken i've ever eaten, and i ate it the nepali way - using my bare hand - since they had no spoons, while the villager grandma making jokes about me... although the family didn't expect anything back we left them 500 rupees (about 7$) which made them very happy.

*** i have got my scanned pictures from the trek (this blog was written along the whole day), so i'm gonna put some real ones!!! they are all mine but the first.***

i will add my impressions from my interaction with them in a few days cause i'm short in time, so u can check this out later.

coming back to kathmandu introduced a different scenaio - eating and drinking out with friends, and enjoying the kathmandu hot nightlife scene. i met 3 from the kopan gang here, and their friends (ale, like a real party girl, managed to handle 2 guys in her week here). in the first night here, coming back to my hotel at half past midnight, i took my guitar and went on the roof, which is one of highest in the city. i expected to be rusty after 3 weeks without producing a note, but being on the road softens one's fingers and moistens one's heart, and the tunes sprang effortlessly into the night air above kathmandu roofs.

back from silence

or was it really a silence?

as far as it matters to contacts with other people i guess it was (beside some practical matters such as ordering food); but many things happen inside silence, and some of them may be quiet noisy...

it's been ten and half days until this sunday, with meditation, studying, contemplating on the teachings, doing some prayers and ceremonies and taking the 8 mahayana precepts about every second day - that is not killing (sounds easy? - try to do it with all these hungry mosquitos around you), not stealing, not lying (here silence can be quite helpful), having no sexual activity, no intoxicants - alcohol, drugs and cigarettes, no singing and dancing, no luxorious beds, new jewels, and the highlight - one meal a day before midday.

a typical day started at about 04:00 (the ceremony of taking the precepts should be completed before sunrise, when it is still too dark to see the marks in the palm of your hand), and ends at 22:00-23:00, though usually i took a nap sometime in the middle. after cleaning the altar and changing the water in the waterbowl - which are being offered to the buddhas imagined as pure nectar, lighting the candle and the incense - a tibetan incense created especially for meditation, there was a session of morning meditation; then a yoga session, studying & reading, thinking & writing, and more meditation. actually the daily program was varied along the retreat.

there was the monastic atmosphere, with the monks and all their evening chantings; the morning and sometimes night ceremonies - decorated with sounds of bells, drums and horns; the recitations of prayers and religious texts - which are done either collectively in the temple or the classrooms, or individually while walking around in the grass or around the stupa; the philosophical debating, which constitutes an important part of the monastic studies and spiritual progress, and it is said that during the debates they expirience realizations of the emptiness of inherent existence, which is the true nature of reality. these debates are highly energetic, and are performed through dramatic hand claps whenever one has a punch line to make, in order to crush one's ego; and there were also the occasional tantric ceremonies at the far side of the monestary, just behind my window, where the blessed ones who entered the holy gate of vajrayana, were singing mantras extatically with the background of what sounds like a didgeridoo, and it is also possible to sing the mantras through it, which creates a strange and beautiful sound effect. they were sitting around the small hangar, dressed with their maroon and orange robes and special hats which look like big cocks' heads (KARBOLOT) made out of metal. in the middle there is a fire, and two monks put oferrings on it, when all the others are ringing their bells in the right places.
all these things around you almost make you feel you are quiet normal to do all that you're doing...

i began my retreat with a day or two of emphasis on meditation on the breath - to stabilize my concentration. then i started to do some analytical meditations - ones that involve thought and analysis of certain topics - according to lama lhundrup's guidance: precious human life, suffering, impermanence, and death awareness. although i had some powerful expiriences with these meditations, i felt i needed a more specidic guidance in my retreat, and i searched the monastry's library and found myself a book with a teaching of exactly the topics i nedded, taught by the renowned lama zopa, who is lama lhundrup's guru. i went through the book slowly, reading a chapter or two per day, and then thinking and meditating on it. i also tryed to follow lama zopa's advice, and think that by reading the book i'm being guided by all the buddhas to happiness of future life, liberation, and enlightenment. Meditating like this makes you feel a closer connection to all the buddhas, and your mind causes you to recieve their blessings.

and indeed, the buddhas accepted my devotion with pleasure and granted me their blessings. i did my best to follow their path of renunciation, and began to taste the great bliss of cutting off my desires and letting go of the eight worldly concerns. walking around the monastery, i recited to myself this verse from nagarjuna's "letter to a friend":
accquiring things, not acquiring things; comfort, discomfort;
interesting sounds, uninteresting sounds; praise, criticism:
these eight worldly cincerns are not an object of my mind.
they are all the same for me.

nevertheless, after some time i began to feel a bit restless. my meditational concentration was somewhat shaken, and from my expirience i knew that it is time to mute the buddhas for a while and listen to myself; that this restlessness must carry some information. it seemed like there was something in me that didn't like the idea of letting it all go. the buddhas promised that cutting off desires doesn't mean actually letting go of things, and that you even enjoy more when there are no attachments. however, for this to happen you need no less then to give up this life in your mind; otherwise, it is no dharma.
- "and what about playing my guitar, what about the love of a woman? are these also worldly concerns, don't they have their aspect of spirituality?"
- "just a deep form of attachment!" the buddhas insisted.

the following days were filled with conflict. the battle was harsh and bloody, and i was rattling back and forth between devotion and resistance. it also appeared in my dreams (in one of them i introduced lama zopa to my mom). i tried to turn things around and around but by the end of the day the buddhas made their point again, clear and determined: "give up this life in your mind; give up this life in your mind; give up this life in your mind!"

well, i havn't...

my original retreat plan was to avoid the difficulties i have with buddhism and focus on meditations on the clear nature of the mind, with the hope that some realization of such nature would prepare the groung for confrontation with the issues of karma, rebirth, and the buddhist cosmology with the six realms of existence. it was lama lhundrup who directed just to these areas of conflict.

at the moment i feel that this retreat has made clear and solidified the gap between myself and tibetan buddhism, and made me understand that currently i don't want to become a buddhist. my trust in the teachings is not stong enough to have such a deep change in my life and my mind (the dalai lama said once that practicing buddhism is like performing construction works in your mind) based on the aspiration to complete enlightenment. however, i still have to deal with the challenge of finding a way to bring into my life all these things that i respect and appreciate so much in the teachings and in the practice, such as the power of compassion and meditation, and the weakening of the cravings to worldly things which is not complete nonesemse after all.

in the three days after my retreat i felt mostly a need to come back to life (which i did, and i already had some beautiful worldly adventures i will tell soon) and even some aversion to buddhism. i guess i need some time to come back to balance and see how i feel.

today i am leaving kopan for a few days around the kathmandu vally, and then dharmsala. tonight i am meeting ale, the spanish girl from kopan, for a dinner and a drink in kathmandu, and generally i'm about taking things easy.

i hope i didn't tire you with these stories. take care you all.

starting a retreat

well, there is still much to tell about daily life here (i havn't mentioned the multicolored butterflies, nor the fireflyers - GACHLILIOT - that make the evening air sparkle all around you), but writing takes much time thought and energy, and i feel it is time for me to start pacifying my mind and practicing more seriously. so, i intend to stay away from the internet and stop writing for at least a week, and hopefully more.

before that i will tell that i live here in a humble hut, not much more then a bed, though i can practice yoga inside with some limitations on streching my arms. there are 3 vegeterian meals a day, quiet good ones, which are also the time of social mingling. in the morning there's porridge, at lunch we have a big meal of rice and many side dishes, there's a five o'clock chai break and soup for dinner. there's alway some kind of home made bread, either western or indian styled, and a lot of peanut butter... in the dining room, we visitors have our table at the balcony, with beautiful view to the valley and to the himalaya range (which is not snowy these days).

it's been a week with special buddhist holidays - his holiness the dalai lama's birthday, and the day of the first turn of the dharma wheel - so there were many ceremonies and events. yesterday there was a magnificent chanting in the evening. the monks were divided into groups (according to their levelof study) and each sat in some corner of the monastery and did its own chanting. you could walk around and hear different chants from all around, as if echoing each other in a very enchanting way.


a few day ago i had an appointment with the abbot (principle of the monastery), lama lhundrup - the monk in the picture, to recieve some advice concerning my practice. he encouraged me, and changed my focus to the cultivation of right motivation - the achieving of happiness by all sentient beings, and to renunciation - which means weakening the attachments and desires. not that easy... especially since patricia has arrived...

that's it for a while, take care u all, and talk again after some time...

community life

so much to tell... i'll try to write as much as i can since i will soon stop writing for some time. i am beginning to feel good here, after ups and downs in the first couple of days here. i am getting used to the place and to the state of travelling, and forming my little habits that make me feel home. i also have more inspiration and succeed more in getting into practice. today's fruit is 2.5 hours of meditation, a yoga session, and some studying of nagarjuna's "the fundamental wisdom of the middle way", possibly the most important philosophical buddhit text.

however, the most important thing probably is getting connected to the people here. after feeling lonely sometimes at the beginning, and craving for some intimacy, i began to enjoy the small community of travellers her, which is marked by the sign of impermanence since people join and leave from time to time. not many of them came from pure "buddhist" reasons; rather each has his own story that brought him here...

lovely hamsa is an australian druze of a lebenese/syrian origin. her father is a respected sheikh in the druze community in melbourne, and her mother, who is a cousine of the singer farid el atrash, had to give up her musical side since for the druze music is part of samsara... nevertheless, hamsa - which means "whisper" in arabic - was named after farid's song "a whisper of love". carrying such aromantic name, she came here to contemplate on a harsh conflict - whether to marry her non-druze boyfriend, which her parents would never accept. she've been here for a month now, and she still havn't got the answer, nor does she know how long she is going to stay..

shachar left yesterday (leaving me his yoga matress) after 2 weeks, of which 10 days of personal vipassana retreat. he has a shaved head, big black beard and a lap-top, to work on his ma thesis in education & philosophy, dealing with vipassana meditation. in his retreat he could feel jesus, or whatever name you would call the perfect manifestation of love and compassion. he's continuing to dharamsalla, where inbal, his 5 years on/off mythological ex (whom i know by a way), will join him, and once and fol all they are going to give it a fair chance.

the list goes on with with spanish ali (alexandra - x pronouced like a CHEIT in the spanish way), a 20 y old student rom london. she doesn't care much for buddhism, and usually is more into clubbing, sleeping late, laughing a lot and hanging around with friends. she lives here quiet laid-back life, goes to the gate a couple of times a day to have a cigarette, and promises every day to start a mango-only diet tomorrow. she stated a one month of volunteering in india, but then felt she needed to think about her life and came to kopan.

essen (it's a girl name) in half turkish - half dutch, who can live neither in holland (too flat, too individualistic) nor in turkey (too closed minded and traditional), so at the meantime, nepal looks fine.

and there are also some buddhist visitors - canadian lisa, who is feefty something, and a serious practitioner who comes here almost every year. she has made a journy and walk almost the whole nepal on foot, raising money to a development project. australian eva is completing soon 4 months of volunteering here in teaching english to monks. mui from singapoor is quiet shy, especially with men, so i didn't talk to her much, but she says that in chinese tal means 'path'.

hakan is a turkush guy, an inteligent stock analyst with broad interests in history, sociology and politics. he was my companion to a wonderful walk to bodhanat - a big and important buddhist site a few kilometers from here. we started in the vilagges near the monastery, and i had a chance to see real nepali life, not the urban touristic version of kathmandu. we went alond the small huts, and the corn and rice fields. it is the season of planting the rice, which requires the fields to be flooded with water. it was raining the whole night before, and the water are gathered in the terraces which devide the valley into small pools where the villagers (mostly women) work in the mud up to their knees. we continued into the town (a small town landscape) and then the impressive buddha stupa - which is a hugh shrine built around some ancient relics. we ate a dinner of tasty momos (the local KREPALACH) on sunset on a roof top resturant facing the stupa, and hakan told me stories about the history of the jewish community in turky (including the shabtai zvi movement) and the view of turkish people on the islamic-western conflict. we climbed back at night just before the rain started again.

so it's quiet diverse as u see, and always fun to see how PETRUZILIA is called in six different languages during lunch (quite smnilar - from german to arabic). the animal community is even more diverse, and there are the sheep and the goat my neiboughrs, all the birds with their strange sounds, the big homeless slugs with the patterns on their backs, the cute frogs, and the unquestionably most dominant - the moskitos, t he greatest challenge to one's compassion and patience.

it is also an opprotunity to see monastic life here. there are about 200 monks from the age of about 6 (cute fun-loving kids - u can c 2 in the picture) who are used to the visitors and keep their routine going, with their ceremonies, studying and practicing, and also their playing (the big ones like a lot of chess) and chatting. i think the common feature to most people here is that they are easy to smile.

kopan

got very short time, and half working space-bar key.

i'm here in the gorgeous kopan monastery. great view on the kathmandu valley, very beautiful gompas and stupas (temples and shrines) and a special atmosphere. yet it is not that easy, going through all these experiences alone and also it's hard for me to get into serious practice so far.



getting here was quiet an adventure, since the road was corrupted by the rains, so i had to climb up the hill on foot, carrying my 15kg backpack, my 4kg daybag, and my guitar, in about 30 degrees hit and monsoon-like mosture. anyway it felt right somehow, arriving as a sweaty pilgrim and not as a spoiled tourist. when my clothes were totally wet a local car stopped and took me the rest of the way up.

they are closing the internet stations. will continue soon.

climatizing

contrary to my parents’ reports based on their trip in kathmandu 20 years ago, the city is everything but tranquil… my first steps into it, in the day i arrived, suggested that i was more tired, nervous and unfrendly then i imagined. i tried to find my way through the packed streets embedded with touristic shops selling clothes, local handicraft and travellers’ stuff, and tried to avoid the local way of making friends, which was always meant to end with me giving them money this way or another. the up side was that i could find a second hand “nepal” lonley plant guide and retreat to my nice guest house to rearrange my wounded troops for a more succssesful attack in the day after (knowing where you’re going is alway a good start).

a good sleep made things look different. the streets were still crowdy, mostly with locals since it’s off season, but there are many buddhist and hindu temples around, beautiful and intersting local scenes, and of couse – this forein atmosphere that slowly gets into your blood. i took a long day-walk, and then after refreshing myself had a good dinner of dal bhaat (the nepali version for the indian tali) and beer at a popular local place. the night ended pleasantly back at the guest house, with guitar playing, beer, and some talk with fellow travellers, which i needed very much after two days of solitude travelling.

anyway, after a good nepali breakfast (fruit salad of banana, apple, mango & papaya; lassi; hot vegetable dish; puri – deep fried bread; and a pot of coffe) i feel i can move further to the monastery. for a promo you can check www.kopan-monastery.com.

washed and settled in kathmandu

well, i'm here!

couldn't resist this all-too-green view of the kathmandu valley (it's monsoon time and it looks more cloudy and more green then in the picture), and stopped in the city for a day or two to taste some samsara before i leave this world for a while.
i feel great, clean and settled; even caught a most beneficial 3 hours sleep at the vip lounge at delhi airport (it takes 3 shekels to become a vip in india).

flight was just fine, and i got pleasant company on my way: a cute young israeli having a pre-military-service month in india at amman airport, and then in the flight to delhi i sat with rifaat, a half lebenese half mexican druze musician who lives in delhi, and plays at ashok hotel. he just returned from his half slovanian half jordanian fiancé who is supposed to join him in delhi soon. we enjoyed special treatment and extra PIZUCHIM on the house, since i soon discovered that the whole aircrew are big fans of him, and whenever in delhi they wouldn’t miss his spectacular hindi-spanish-arabic music shows. at the hight of 35,000 feet, he shared with me the ayur-vedan secrets of the black indian stone, which when used in the proper time, the proper place and with the proper intentions, raises man’s sexual potency to unheard of heights!

i had a few more chances to pip into different worlds - the bird-sight show began with the yellow-brown jordanian desert at sunset, and ended contrastingly with the magnificent himalayan foothills. i could also get some taste of india as a promo. i recalled how different things can be when the indian air-waitress (i know, i know, there's a word for this...) warned me about the exotic lemon juice i have just ordered ("don't worry sir, it's supposed to be sour"), of course she felt no need to mention that it came with salt and masala (an indian spice mixture)...

it's getting late. time for me to do the city.

Is this thing working?

...guess it is!