Old habits are hard to break, New ones are even harder to create…

The concert that was to have been held yesterday for the college’s “Founder’s day” and not college day like I was told was cancelled. So Takbum Tsering and I did not perform our piece. We did, however, practiced a few times at the beginning of the week. Due to the recent cloudburst that devastated Ladakh’s capital Leh and the mudslide in Amdo, Tibet our principal held that it will be rather uncouth if we had a concert with singing, dancing and merry-making while the people of Ladakh and Amdo went through this difficult ordeal. Though I understand the principal’s reason, it sucks that it was canceled on the other hand because many of the students have dedicated a lot of their time into preparing pieces for the show. I know that the students look forward to such shows because it is one of the few times that the seemingly shy ones get out there to strut their stuff. Since we have Ladakhi students in our class and on campus, with the Himalaya teacher’s training course arranged especially for them, they have been having fundraisers and prayer vigils with butter lamps for the victims this past week. There was also a prayer vigil led by HHDL at the Main Temple in McLeod Ganj today.

During our first practice Takbum had me try on an Amdo-style for the first time. Boy! That sucker was so hot that I was sweating profusely as soon as it was arranged on me. Takbum thinks that I look good in one, though I beg to differ, I felt like I was wearing a clown suit. The practice sessions were very cool; Takbum’s dramnyen is really a mandolin with a different tuning than what is used in Appalachia. As he sung I could easily imagine myself roaming the vast grasslands of Amdo with a herd of yaks. His strumming style made certain parts of the song hard to follow. The rhythm of the song follows its melody and not a steady rhythm of a drummer trained both in traditional Afro-Latin polyrhythms and marching drumming such as me. Regardless of that, I felt that the djembe does suit Takbum’s music, also I would have loved to learn the lyrics of song to help with the drumming but since Takbum sings in Amdo dialect it would have been quite a challenge to learn the lyrics and I opted just to stick to drumming. This practice time also provided us with the opportunity to chat which was really nice. Despite Takbum’s eccentricities he is a rather intelligent man, trained in both Tibetan literature and medicine for four years at a university in his native homeland. Though he only knows Tibetan, he is generally knowledgeable in various topics. He is one of the few Tibetans that I know that has read the Bible in Tibetan twice, he took many issues with the particular text, mainly that to him it seem to lack valid and cohesive reasoning unlike the Buddhadharma. With my lack of in-depth biblical studies I could not affirm nor deny his conclusion. We had quite a pleasant time, for sure.

You can recant that in a previous post I wrote about the interesting T-shirts that one sees various people donning throughout the sub-continent. This, of course, boils over to the Tibetan exile community. Like for example, a pious elderly Tibetan man doing his oblations at the Main Temple in McLeod Ganj sporting a 50 cent T-shirt which clearly states to “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” for which I doubt if he actually knows the meaning of what is written on his shirt. About two weeks ago, while cutting the grass of the debating courtyard one hot and humid Saturday afternoon a monk from my class (and as you know monks are by definition celibate) was sporting a T-shirt that had on its front the images of two footprints pointing upward, slightly separated and in between them were two other footprints pointing downwards. Around the footprint images were little concentric half circles to indicate motion. On top of the image it stated, “I am busy!” and on the back it said, “Do not disturb!” Hmmm, I wonder what that‘s supposed to mean? Does the image of two people “knockin’ boots”, to use a 90’s Ebonics euphemism, come to mind? Again obviously this monk was unawares of the meaning printed on his T-shirt.

Just an hour ago, I was talking to two female German friends of mine who expressed their shock when they saw a Tibetan guy who sported a T-shirt that stated, “Let’s play Post Office, you lick, I deliver”. Now that’s just not right!

This week, one particular T-shirt that a shy looking Tibetan girl was wearing caused me to think, WTF!! The gender divide at Sarah and probably in Tibetan Exile in India is quite huge. Tibetan boys and girls at Sarah rarely interact in the open sphere, acts of flirtation between genders are hardly noticeable, not that is does not happen, but it is a quite tough and immature ordeal as compared to an average college back at home, it is at about a 6 graders level back at home. A Tibetan guy that I know who has attended college state-side is rather perplexed at the whole phenomenon.

The topic of sex is an obvious taboo that is very hard to break, with most of the students having had if any formal or informal sex education. This is problematic for obvious reasons. Many misconceptions float about as to how VD’s are transmitted and how pregnancy occurs. It is rumored that VD’s are some quite prevalent amongst the youngsters. So, when I realized that this girl was nonchalantly sporting a T-shirt that used the Master-Card logo, but instead of saying that, it said “Master-Bate” within its orange and yellow circles, an obvious play on words of an euphemism for a certain solo activity, I almost choked on my rice and dal dinner. As far as I know, there is not even a word in Tibetan for that.

I remember asking a female international student a few years back, who is close with the Tibetan ladies, if she thought if they…. Well do you? She about died laughing and after she had gathered enough of her composure she said that she highly doubted it. Of course, one never knows right? So, maybe with this one can understand my shock. I am not even sure if a girl back home would wear such a T-shirt. If this girl really does not know what her T-shirt implies then she should be made aware of its meaning. I can’t do it, as a guy and especially as an international male student that would be crossing a line or really more like crossing the Grand Canyon plus I wouldn’t even know how to explain it in Tibetan due to it never being a part of my common banter.

The Indian-subcontinent unlike its East Asian counterpart minus Singapore has enough English speakers to understand such a meaning. I doubt that it would be much on an issue if the T-shirt was worn in Laos or Cambodia. If the general population doesn’t know then one just passes by unnoticed. It is different but similar in some respects like going to a tattoo parlour back in the states to get “hope” tattooed in Chinese on ones shoulder but it really says “I like eating dog doo-doo”. Since in the states, unless one is walking around in Chinatown, no one is going to know what the hell it says and that person will continue to have confidence that their “hope” tattoo is badass. But if that person happened to travel in China, and then that confidence will be erased rather quickly. So what to do? Maybe she knows what it means and thinks that the T-shirt is just cool and/ or is making a statement, sweet more power to her, but if she doesn’t should she just float around in her blissful ignorance? Remember, many folks who wear Ernesto “Ché” Guevara T-shirts in these parts think that it is Bob Marley.

Moving right a long, I have learned so much since the beginnings of the philosophy course even though I am slow at catching on; I am making progress which is awesome. Things that I use to let slide due to non-awareness, I can now catch them like second nature. As I have thought about it, what I am lacking the most right now it an effective study method, since this course is unconventional for me I am quite unsure how to go about it. So far I have been doing it basically Tibetan style, meaning by memorization and the problem with that for me is that for one, if takes me longer to memorize something than my Tibetan/Himalayan counterparts because firstly it is rather new to me, secondly I am older. My classmates are use to memorizing having been doing it since their childhood, thus they just repeat/murmur something really quickly a few times and it is in there. Not so with me, I have to say something thousands of times and then it might stick. Memorization is key to such a heuristic course; I have been experimenting in various ways but so far nothing as of yet. Because not many westerns have studied in such a course there is no information on the internet to serve as a guide.

I am amazed at how it was done in Tibet back in day. In our class we have notebooks to write notes in, dictionaries, and digital recorders to record our classes, etc. But in Tibet with paper being a rare commodity I assume that the idea of even taking notes probably did not exist. So if one could not remember what was said in class then it must have been quite difficult. One always hears how incredible the scholars from old skool Tibet were as compared to now. Though I think that a lot of it is due to nostalgia for the way things are remembered by folks who miss their homeland, when I see how we are dependent on the things with we use now, pens, notebooks etc, and that we could not imagine doing this course with them, I have to give mad props to those of the old skool who excelled extremely with out them. But still my search for an appropriate study method continues.

I participated in my first all-night debate (mtshan ma’i dam ‘ca) on Thursday (having missed the first actual one because I was on a bus to New Delhi so I could go state-side). The class was divided into three groups of about 12 students, and each group got during the debate an hour and half as challengers and the same amount of time as defenders. Each group had to arrange questions for the debate, and since we could draw from any of the topics that we had studied thus far, it seems that many chose to make some complicated ones. During my first years at Sarah I had attended the all-night debates of the previous class, but being in one is a whole different matter. For one, unlike before, since I have been studying the topics in-depth I can follow what is going on.

Our group decided to split in half so that all of us could sit as defenders at 45 minutes stretches instead of having only 6 folks sitting there for the whole time. I am trying to figure out the purpose of these all-night debates, because there were times when things got a bit chaotic. We are all mostly beginners so that is part of the reason for the bedlam. My group started the night as the first set of defenders, six of us in all, sitting on a cushion crossed legged in the temple in front of the HHDL’s throne, which behind that is a large and beautiful appliqué of Shakyamuni Buddha. In front of us are seated the rest of our classmates including Gen la. One person starts the debate, but anyone in the class can get up to ask questions and normally a large group forms asking questions very loudly in unison.

Three out of the group are pretty good in debate with the rest of us not saying too much but listening intensely and helping the others. Since there were so many of us, its was hard to agree on an answer and many times some one would just blurt out the wrong answer and after being drilled in by an effective challenger at the inconsistencies of the response, they would try to fudge the previously stated wrong answer so that it works. That is eventually bound for failure. I think that with the pressure one just acts on instincts instead of calm and collected reasoning like we are training to do. Maybe as we get better this quality will manifest itself more. As Gen la sat there in silence listening to us I can sure hear him thinking, Boy! These kids have a lot to learn. Of course, when things get stuck he knows to the exact things to say to get the challengers rolling again and to stump the defenders. It was quite an interesting night. There were so many out right blatant mistakes, even from the ones who are already quite proficient. A lot of it stemmed for the very questions that some of the groups asked, many being very long winded and complex. There are enough seemingly simple questions that are hard as hell, such as positing the comparison between, “it and permanent” and “permanent and it” where “it” (khyod) acts like an unknown “X” as in mathematics where “X” is to be found. Unlike this question, what is the comparison between, “an object suitable to an awareness of which being it is possible and three possibilities (trilemma) exist and different from one with permanent phenomena and a contradiction exist”, which is hard to spit out of the tongue very fast and it leaves both the challengers and the defenders confused. When our group was acting as challengers, there were times when two or three people are asking questions at the same time, and it wasn’t the same question that they were asking either. In spite of showing that we having a long way to go before maturing into proper smack masters, it provided us with different ways to look at the topics at hand and how it is handled by the others. The best part of the whole night was during our break when we ate tasty veggie momos and an apple cream desert while chatting with classmates!!!

I am not sure if in previous entries if I had explained what the four main responses of a defender are and how they work in general. I know that I must have mentioned that a defender is generally limited to four responses in debate depending on how a challenger poses a query. I would just like to explain briefly to give you a basic idea. The four responses of a defender are, I accept (‘dod), there is no pervasion (khyab pa ma byung), why (ci’i phyir), and the reason is not establish (rtags ma grub). This is the Gelukpa way of responsing, the Sakyapas and the others use the same words but they have different meanings. A Tibetan query has three parts, a subject (chos can), a predicate (gsal ba) and a reason (rtags). For a correct and valid query the subject must meet the reason and the reason must pervade or entail its predicate. For example, the subject sound, it follows that it is impermanent, because it is a product (sgra chos can/ mi rtag pa yin par thal/ byas yin pa’i phyir). Here the subject meets the reason because sound is a product and the reason entails the predicate because impermanent and product are mutually inclusive or have the same meaning. And so to such a question a defender should accept (‘dod) it.

If the query was, the subject sound, it follows that it is impermanent, because it is an existent, (sgra chos can/ mi rtag pa yin par thal/ yod pa yin pa’i phyir) then the defender must answer that there is no pervasion (khyab pa ma byung). Here the reason does not entail its predicate because whatever is an existent is not necessarily impermanent. Permanent phenomenon are also existents put not impermanent. Also, by stating that there is not pervasion one is implying that the reason is established.

If the query was, the subject sound, it follows that it is a person (sgra chos can/ mi yin par thal) then the defender should answer why (ci’i phyir). Since sound and person are mutually exclusive or contradictory one will never find something that is both a sound and a person. For the last type of response, if a query was, the subject sound, it follows that it is a product, because of being a color (sgra chos can/ byas pa yin par thal/ kha dog yin pa’i phyir) then the defender should answer that the reason is not establish (rtags ma grub). For even though the pervasion is correct for whatever is a color is necessarily a product, sound and color are mutually exclusive, there is nothing that is both. Anyways, I just wanted to provided a little info about the actual debate process, I know that this stuff can be boring for many and I hope that it does not deter you from continuing to read this blog. Leave comments. Much Love!!

Pax.

Feeling the Experience….

Pandita Dignaga

Pandita Dharmakirti

Homage to the former scholars and adepts of the country of Superiors and Tibet,

The great beings Dignaga, Dharmakirti, and so forth

Who clarified with valid cognition the path of reasoning well spoken

By the Valid Teacher seeing the meaning of reality

(Translated from the Tibetan by Daniel Perdue)

When class first started in the middle of March, this expression of worship was the first stanza that we memorized. And from then up until now many of our debates have started with this stanza. The reason for this stanza being that at this point we, as students of Buddhist dialectics, are striving for the path of reasoning which was said to have been first implied by the Valid Teacher himself a.k.a Shakyamuni Buddha and later clarified by the two great masters of Indian Buddhist logic Dignaga and Dharmakirti. At this moment, the text that we are using is called Collected Topics (bsdus grwa) because there are various topics of dialectical study collected within it, ranging from the introductory to the more advance. There are many different Collected Topics texts with different monasteries of the Gelukpa sect using specific ones. These days the other sects are familiar with Collected Topics and supposedly the Sakya sect has a Collected Topics tradition that might have been lost to antiquity.

The title of the Collected Topics text that we are studying is called “The Presentation of Collected Topics Revealing the Meaning of the Texts on Valid Cognition, the Magical Key to the Path of Reasoning”, written by Phurbuchok Jampa Gyatso, the main tutor of Thupten Gyatso the 13^th Dalai Lama, for teaching the young Dalai Lama dialectics. And so, this text’s intention is to act as a magical key to open the door to the path of reasoning. In this method reasoning is seen as a path to illumination. Tibetans generally talk about the path of reasoning (rigs lam) as something you can obtain because not everyone is born with it, like me for example. It reminds me of chess books that have games written in them in algebraic notation showing the progression of certain games or possible moves that can be done depending on how an opponent moves. In a similar fashion, the Collect topics text runs through different consequential reasonings that are based on how a possible opponent might answer and/or pose a question. An example of what our text can look is this, if a defender states that whatever is fruit is necessarily apple then the challenger might say it follows that the subject banana, is apple, because of being fruit. You (defender) asserted the pervasion or entailment; being that whatever is fruit is necessarily or must be apple. And from this, since the mistake is obvious a possible series of questions that a challenger might use to show a defender that not all fruits are apples will be presented. Each topic is more difficult than the prior. We started with topics on colors that ran through similar assertions as the one stated above. One of the principal lessons that is learned at initial stages is learning to differentiate quickly and instinctually between a predicate statement (A is B) and a statement of pervasion/ entailment (if it is A then it is necessarily B) The text also presents positions where the challenger’s assertions are incorrect and the possible answers that a defender can state to dispel them are presented.

The Buddhist meaning of valid cognition (Tib. tshad ma, Skt. pramaana) was principally elucidated by Dignaga and Dharmakirti in India in the 6^th and 7^th century respectfully, and by next year we will be studying Dharmakirti’s main text on valid cognition (tshad ma rnam ‘grel, pramaanavaarttika) directly for two months. All I can say about valid cognition right now is that it is how the mind or consciousness knows things to be true. The defining characteristic of valid cognition is a newly unmistaken consciousness and they are of two kinds, direct and inferential valid cognition.

In thankgas (Tibetan hanging scroll painting) of Dignaga and Dharmakirti, they are usually depicted standing with their hands assuming the position of a challenger in debate with his left arm outstretched in front of him and the right arm with palm facing up at about ear level, ready to pose a qualm to a defender. Their faces seem rather wrathful looking too. Last night during damja, I was looking from my group over to another watching one of monks standing as a challenger posing questions in such a way that one is just amaze to watch him. The defenders sitting in front him also had an expression of amazement. Namgyal has had debating experience prior to attending our course at one of the Drepung monasteries in South India where there are thousands of monks. So for him to debate with a bunch of newbies must be a walk in the park for him; our class is only 40 folks tops. Today I told him, “last night you really stirred it up, man”, and he told me, “you know those Thangkas of Dignaga and Dharmakirti always have very wrathful faces on them and since they are the ones that we look up too I modeled my style from their wrathful expression. It also brings on the pressure on the defender”. I smiled when he said that. I have always wondered why in the thangkas Dignaga and Dharmakirti’s faces were drawn that way and with the little experience that I have gained in debate I can see why.

I do not know how it is to be in a graduate school program but being in dialectic school is a lot of work. The studying, memorizing, debating, thinking and rethinking seem never ending. In debate, the folks who are good at it bring so many pretty different aspects from the various topics thus studied so far. There is always something new to think about and that one thing could leave one stumped for months. At the end of the day right before bed I say, “wooh” and crash to wake up the next day to hit it again. As I go through the motions of this course I am just amazed for it is different from US college life and even the regular Sarah college life. I still doubt if I will ever get proficient in this method, though I have just started, the level needed for proficiency is daunting from where I stand and I wonder what it will look like in two years?

Later on today Takbum and I are to start practicing a song for the concert on Friday which I now know is for “college day”. I have no idea what college day is or why we are celebrating it because we have not celebrated it since I have been here, but I have noticed that every year Sarah celebrates a new unheard of holiday. Next Saturday is the second Saturday which we have off and normally the Friday before that we will have an all night debate (mtshan ma’i dam ‘ca) but because of the concert we will have it on Thursday night instead.

On Monday I had a pretty neat surprise. So far, I have not had any family visiting me here but on Saturday I received an email from Aunt Marlyn (my sister’s mother) that she was in New Delhi and that she and her husband Muganza will be there until Wednesday. She gave me the number of where she was staying that. On Monday afternoon I was able to talking to her briefly, I was so neat to chat with her being in India, but since they were only staying for a few days and Dharamshala being too far apart they could not visit, but I would have loved to show them a bit of my life here. It is hard to understand my life here since it is so different from anything back state side. They got an incredible deal too, like less than 300 bones here and back. That is unheard of. I was shocked that they got such cheap tickets to India and I see why they hopped on it. I do hope that some day my family will get to see my life here.

This caused me to think a little bit about my visit back to the states. As I visited various friends and family I struggled with the idea of the various realities that I witnessed as I stayed with different people. I was getting the feeling of being on a holo-deck like in Star trek; the city, the suburb, the north, the south, the deciduous woods of Appalachia, the redwoods of Northern California, popping in and out of different realities with those realities created by the folks who have been accustom to them and work with in it without thought because it is normal for them. Every place and every person that I stayed with had different vibes, different perceptions. In many instances I was revealed a glimpse of there lives, what stood to be important to them at that particular moment, what problems they had, who they associated with and how they came to be surrounded or in some cases not surrounded by certain people. The variation in everyone’s life is multitudinous and in a majority of cases I enjoyed every moment I spent with them. Some realities more shanti (peaceful) than others but I learned so much about the world, life, myself and them, we all shared and bounced ideas off of each other and that is why I miss them so much right now. I definitely felt a growth process happen within me and I hope that that was so for them also.

Pax.

Logic will break your heart…..

One of the things that have always struck me about India is the amount of T-shirts I see folks wearing with cheeky quotes printed on them. One that I have seen regularly has the famous title of Bob Marley’s song “No woman, No cry” on it, but the initial intended meaning is non-existent and a more literal meaning in Indian English reckoning is adopted being that by not having a woman there will be no drama or will not be crying; obviously this was not the meaning that Grandmaster Bob wanted to put across. Another one goes something like “No money, No gas, No rickshaw, No girlfriend, No problem”. Not all of these T-shirts have misogynistic quotes printed on them though I have noticed that many of those who wear these T-shirts, Indian men of course are in desire of a woman or girlfriend since they are in such low supply.

My old Tsamjor classmate and our current class captain Ngawang Yeshe, a monk from Kinnaur, H.P. was one wearing one of these cheeky T-shirts that stated, “Logic will break your heart” one day while playing badminton. Considering the context of our class’ subject matter maybe the T-shirt should say “Buddhist logic will break your heart”. If you take this into a Buddhist context then this statement could be deemed as true. For as we traverse the path of towards liberation, many of our preconceived notions and ideas that we have about how the world is, how our sense of self is and the world’s so called stableness is will be shattered. What is taken as to be the most reliable and most coveted possession, our self will be shattered and that will lead to heartbreak. It’s not that different from the lover who thinks that he will be together forever will his love and then his love unexpectedly breaks the relation. Both carry a huge disappointment. Since our study of logic and reasoning does have a soteriological purpose and with the existence of the idea that by using logic and reasoning as a tool to cancel itself out so to say, dualistic thought will ceased and a certain type of heartbreak or let down might be ascertained. So now, is this all true? Maybe, but the sight of this T-shirt, besides making me giggle caused my mental cogs to roll just a little bit.

This week has just flown by now that I am getting back into my old routine. There are still so things that I have to get back into the habit of doing again, but most of them have become normal again. Two months of vacation has caused a lull in habits that were just starting to develop when I started this course in mid-march. Our days are just so jammed packed and though it does not have the feeling as experienced in college with the sense of a huge workload, the mental training aspect is rather huge. This week we started a very important topic for Buddhist studies, “Cause and effect”. From the very first teachings on the Four Noble Truths taught by Lord Buddha down through all the philosophical outcroppings that have arisen in Buddhist India, Tibet and elsewhere, cause and effect stand as the crux on which it all is based. Many have said that, unlike Christianity, Islam and Judaism, which asserts that a Creator is the cause of many things in our lives and in our world, Buddhism on the other hand places many causes onto ourselves and not to a Creator. This is not to say that there are no deities in Buddhism, particularly Mahayana Buddhism which is chock-full of them, their existence is just as ephemeral as ours and they are not outside of the laws of cause and effect that governs everybody else.

Since “Cause and effect” is such a huge topic it is divided into the intro and advance sections. We as beginners are studying the intro section and we will study the advance section in a few months. For me, everything time we start a new topic I have a mini freak out, which of course have not true basis. Each and every topic that we have studied is very vast and it seems like when I have just about gotten into one topic then another one is commencing. As we work through these topics the complexity seems to magnify and I get discouraged. But I as I have witnessed also things slowly come to light with the work. I know that this is a very western aspect to myself, I wants things to materialize quickly. If I am working hard for something then I want the results ASAP. But as I have seen that is not how things work and I know that also from experience. I see how fast other classmates our picking up the topics. But the thing is one never knows what another person’s gig is, their internal gig that is. With me being the only westerner in our class, I have no idea what backgrounds and what circumstances have brought these folks out from the Indian-Tibeto Himalayas, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, to come to a place like Sarah College and study Tibetan Buddhist Dialectics. For example, since we have just met each other, none of my classmates know that I was homeless and hitchhiked all around the U.S. as a wee 17 year old. I keep such things in mind because we come from such different places that there is no comparison really.

In class, Gen la has been giving us these mental puzzles to figure out. It seems like he just makes them up off the top of his head. Remember from a previous entry, that in this style of debate there are only 4 ways in which any two phenomenons can be compared, tetralemma (four possibilities), trilemma (three possibilities), mutually exclusive (contradictory), or mutually inclusive (equivalent). Causes are generally divided into two, direct cause and indirect cause, and also into substantial cause and cooperative conditions. A substantial cause is a cause that shares a substantial continuum with its effect. For example, the clay of a clay pot is the clay pot’s substantial cause because the clay pot is made out of clay, its substance is the same. A cooperative condition is a cause that does not share a substantial continuum with its effect. For example, the potter is the clay pot’s cooperative condition for since he/she takes the clay and turns it into a pot, the potter does not share any of its substance with the substance of the clay pot. Effects are divided in the same way as causes thus, direct effect, indirect effect, substantial effect and cooperative effect.

In general, cause and effect are mutually inclusive, but when imputed on a phenomenon then they are mutually exclusive. The cause of a clay pot is not the same as the effect of a clay pot since they occur at different times. And so Gen la, with these divisions in mind will mix and match them in many different ways to get us thinking. There are many such things in our texts and that Gen la shows to us that they remind me of a complicated knot. Throughout history there have been many persons who have a knack of unraveling complex knots with Alexander the Great being one such supposed person. In a way the knot thing I can understand for there have been many a time in my life where I was confronted with a huge mess of tangled rope that needed to be unraveled in order to pitch a tent up to sleep for the night. Going through Gen la’s mind puzzles are similar except that it is done mentally. It is like mental gymnastics or mental yoga. Like when one sees an accomplished hatha yogi and is wondering, “how in the hell did he get his head down there?” in the same way these puzzles leave us well confused. Like yesterday he had us trying to figure out what is the difference between the indirect cause’s indirect effect of a functioning thing and an indirect effect’s indirect cause of a functioning thing, with a functioning thing being any impermanent phenomenon.

These puzzles which we also use in debate plus our texts and memorization of them can make the brain feel like it has been really working. Just like working out. I have never thought so much in my life, at least not is this way. In college there was a lot of thinking going but it was across a wide variety of topics with different folks from all walks of life. This way of thinking is way more analytical and specific; it causes one to who is fluent in the method to catch a contradiction in a blink of an eye. I am always amazed when Gen la debates with us in class at how immediate and sure his responses are; totally solid and on the mark. A few of the better students will ask pose questions to him and he just lays it down smoothly.

I am totally enjoying my experience in this course thus far, it is the most unique thing that I have ever done, it goes against my nature somewhat, since I have never been logical minded and never studied any formal logic previously. I have always seen myself as a more intuitive type. On the 13^th of August there is a concert of sorts happen on campus, every night of this pass week the different classes have been practicing traditional and probably also non-traditional dance routines during out one hour break at 9pm. The sounds of Tibetan singing and dancing permeate the campus at this time. I am assuming the our class has also been asked to participate in the concert but since our class full of monks and nuns they are cannot do so thus leaving only a handful of the lay students of pull something together. Takbum Tsering has proposed that I and he do a duo, me on the drums (I brought my djembe with me from the states) and him singing with the dramnyen (the Tibetan lute). His also proposes that we both wear chupas (the traditional Tibetan garb). He says that he has two huge ones and that I can fit into one of them. I have not so far worn a chupa since I have been living with Tibetans here in India. Since Takbum is from Amdo the chupa is going to be huge with long ass sleeves. I am not sure how I will look in such a garb and I know that when I getting on stage in front of the Sarah student body there will be many cat calls coming to my direction. A Westerner in a chupa is strange enough for them and now a tall black man in one will be even stranger.

There is a lot construction going on around these parts. Behind the boy’s dorm a water tower is being constructed. The building method used here are very interesting, using bamboo as scaffolding. One never sees an Indian construction worker wearing any type of protection ( I doubt that they are insured) and they can just claim to tall heights with no qualms and great agility. Also in front of the girl’s hostel the old volleyball court is being literally torn up to make a slate floored volleyball/ badminton court. Now what these workers have done and are doing is quite amazing and extremely hard work. They have already torn down a wall and build another a few feet front of the previous wall all by hand with hand tools. There is no backhoe action here. And then where the court is suppose to be they are making a foundation from different sized stones and smashing all of them with a sledgehammer until they are level. This foundation takes up almost the entire area of the court. When I first saw this I was amazed. Since it is cheaper in human labor to do what would normally be done with a machine back home all construction at Sarah is done this way. I asked Kailash, an Indian classmate, how much each worker is being paid and he said 100 rupees day (approximately 2 greenbacks) and that the work done in this way provides more workers with work. All of these workers are not from Himachel Pradesh, I think they are either Bengali or from Rajasthani but I am not sure. Well I will finish here, thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope that all of you are doing well.

Pax

P. S. The above picture was taken my first year at Sarah the fall of '07 from the roof of the boy's dorm, since then I have not been bless with that sight again as of yet...

Beginnings of a first step….

After spending a little over two months in Amerilandia and a 12 hour lay over in London (thank you Leyla!!!), I arrived back in Bharat (India) on the July 7^th 11am the day classes where to start. After fixing a complication with my student visa at the Indian Consulate in Washington D.C, which allowed me to lose time and a lot of dough that I really did not have to spend, I landed in the hot and stuffy capital of the Indian Republic for my third time. I was stuck in the afternoon heat in nowhere Delhi for three hours unnecessarily because my dear pre-paid taxi driver did not know where the hell Majnu Ka Tilla (Delhi’s Tibetan colony) was and drove us right into a traffic jam. Unlike back home, taxis here do not have a dispatch in which they can radio in for directions when lost, that concept has yet to arrive… all in due time. So to take my mind off that heat which was bearing down on me like a hundred pound bean bag, I reflected about my stay in my birth country.

There are so many people that I love and care about; though going back was difficult at first. Not seeing friends and family for years on end. Being reunited with my half-sister who I have not seen in 16 years and meeting her mother who took care of me when I was a wee one. Being reminded of my childhood self, the parts that I don’t remember, the embarrassing ones. Being reminded about my father who I never knew and his history, his family history which was all new to me, allowed me a sense of comprehending part of my physical genetic lineage if I can phrase it in such a way. I was always amazed to hear, whenever I was visiting a certain family member, that I resembled such and such person in the family, with this person always being different. To my sister I have the frame and walking style of my grandfather, to my maternal uncle I resembled my grandmother and so it went. I realized that the physical and expressive features that I hold right now are a mélange of several thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands of features that I have inherited from my ancestral bygones’ gene pool, including diseases or susceptibility to certain illness.

I won’t dwell too much on my experiences of back home since I am still processing, but it mostly comes down to, regardless of all the jetlag and the culture shock and the differences, I am very lucky to have the family that I have and the friends that I have. I felt very loved by every one (well almost every one) when I was back although I have been in India for many years now. My family and friends spans across racial, geographic and linguistic barriers and I think that this is allowing me to slowly think of the value of what it means to be a global citizen more carefully. Of course when it comes to dealing with embassies that it can seem not to be the case. But it seems to me that if a deep sincere cultivation of the feeling that us as earthlings are a much of lucky motherfuckers to be living on this random blue gas ball that is floating in space which rests exactly in the right spot to give life is not arisen and that all these divisions that we arbitrarily place on this blue gas ball is not eschewed like the plague then we are truly in for it in the future. Everything outside of this blue gas ball is hostile to our existence, if we really mess up, where are we to go? Mars ain’t really looking so good!

Moving right on along, once I arrived in Majnu Ka Tilla, I immediately booked me a bus to Dharamshala which left at 6pm on the 7^th and arrived in Gaggal around 6:30am on the 8^th. Grabbed me taxi and arrived at Sarah College after a two month absence and jetlagged as hell. Mind you, I done missed one day of class and I was not about to go to class on the morning of the 8^th. I was mad wrecked and was pretty much falling asleep as I hauled my shit up the five flights to my room. Being away had cause me to forget a lot of my Tibetan so at first my brain was struggling to switch back over to Tibetan mode. Too bad language acquisition as an adult learner is not like placing a pen drive into a USB, from which it can be accessed instantly, won’t that be cool though?

On the 9^th I made it to class, which was in full swing. Gen la had commenced exactly where we left off two months ago as if we did not have a vacation. Just like the presently presiding monsoon clouds, for many of us our minds are foggy and remembering all the divisions and definitions which we had memorized seemed like a far gone medieval time. Slowly but surely, getting back into this habit, into this practice after starting up our brains and our tongues, the rhythm of this study method became familiar again. Gen la told us the other day that we are studying using one of most unique methods out there, unlike the western model, which has debate but not like this, we are on the slow track, learning the craft in stages. We are progressively going through difficult and more difficult topics. Right now we are studying the topic of opposites (yin log min log) where a causal bystander might possibly be hearing a phrase like “opposite from being opposite from being opposite from not being opposite from being pot (bum pa yin las log pa yin las log ma yin pa las log yin pa las log pa), being spitted out at rapid speeds in front of a very confused looking defender.

For our Perfection of Wisdom (phar phyin, prajñaparamita) class which is to start next year and lasts six years, we are to receive 25 books. Not no puny books either, but quite hefty philosophically terse texts, like the Abhisamayalamkara and its commentaries. Right now I am struggling just getting through the three small texts that we are using now to study elementary logic and reasoning. The thing is that we have to mull over ideas many times over and understand them in such a way that when in debate one can provide a fruitful and beneficial discussion that shed a light on the topic at hand.

So far, this process is not coming easy to me, a few days ago, a Korean nun and I sat as defenders together in a damja (group debate). Both of us are very new at this and in the group that we went to they had some very sharp, witty and experienced debaters. We were not able to answer very effectively and the challengers ganged up on us like white on rice and I was feeling rather discouraged after the whole ordeal, but as one my classmate told me, we have to keep the goal in mind and not to compare ourselves to others for what’s the point in that, we will come to our own in due time, keep on studying and don’t give up. Those were some wise words from this fully ordained monk (gelong) from Spiti.

This pass week there was a sports tournament going happening on campus held by the Sarah Regional Tibetan Youth Congress (RTYC) where all the classes including the teachers duked it out amongst each other in basketball, badminton and ping pong. For our class, I was chosen to play basketball for all the obvious reasons, though not realizing that I can’t play it worth doo doo. But I took to the charge figuring that it could build some class camaraderie at the least. I don’t like to play basketball so there was definitely a part of me that did not want to play, and after I jammed my finger, that acted as a reminder of why I don’t like to play. Anyways, I did the best I could, I missed every shot I took and I am quite out of shape to be running up and down a full court, so you could imagine that I was not looking so good. My classmates where there on the sidelines cheering us on so that was some motivation though we lost our first game pretty badly. We also lost the second game insuring that we were not to advice to the next round. But so what, Nang rig a.k.a the Buddhist philosophy class suck ass at b-ball, but we placed some serious damage in ping pong and wooped ass in badminton.

The girls also had their turn on the b-ball court though it seems to have come from the motivations of Lina, a German student. Though I know it was a trying for her to get things going for the girls it did get done. Things at Sarah and it might be safe to assume in the Tibetan exile community in India is generally androcentric and from what I have heard from the girls, they either don’t seem to know or are too complacent to step up and take matters in for themselves. Men are men and one can not totally lie on their hands to have considerations for the ladies, especially in a place where this lack of consideration is the norm and not regularly questioned openly. Now I know for sure that there are women at Sarah who wish to empower the girls at large but so far the actually steps to crank up “Girl Power” has not been implemented. The so called power that is lackadaisically believed to be held by the “dudes” is totally ephemeral and mentally constructed. So maybe once this is realized by these ladies then fairness for the ladies can happen. From talking to Lina, who I know has placed a lot of her energy and compassion in this endeavor; so far the going is pretty rough but it is not without hope and work of course.

Well I just want to let every one know that I am well and striving hard to my task, many challenges face me, financially, emotionally, intellectually, and mostly pertinently spiritually. Many of you out there in the world have and continue to be of such a great help, and I was surprised to know that so many of you care for what I am trying to do with my life and to this I am the utmost appreciative. To all of you who have stayed up late nights with me spending hours either chatting on FB, on the phone, or in person, you have encouraged this person and shared your hopes and your fears. All of you know who you are. I hope to write more entries but my internet situation here is quite iffy and my computer might keel over and die anytime soon. It amazes me to think that I have had this blog for 5 years now! Oh! Please leave comments so that I know that you are reading, I love those shout outs! Most of the time I am surprise that any one read this until I meet someone and they say, “heh, I read your blog!”. Aite, I am dogged tired, man that jetlag don’t go away so easily at times. Sarvamangalam!!

Pax

My last India blog entry for the next two months ;-(

Well yall’s this looks to be my last blog entry written in Northern India, for on Saturday the 24^th of April @ 1:15pm from the 108 degree city of New Delhi I will depart for London and then from there to NYC, that is, if the volcano near the Eyjafjallajoekul glacier in Southern Iceland stops spewing its microscopically vitric dust particle filled ejaculate 7 miles up into the atmosphere. I know that it has blocked a lot of trans-Atlantic air traffic this week and no one knows when it will stop. I hope to see many of my friends and family during my two month stay in Amerilandia and I have a wish list that I would like to see fulfilled while I am there. I seriously doubt that I will post anything during my stay so you might have to wait until I return in late June; but check periodically though.

This has been a week filled with differing and at times conflicting emotions, but I guess that is just life right? As far as class goes, getting to know my classmates has been really intriguing, I think that we are slowly getting used to each to some extent, though some are still marveled by my matted hair, but as I have said before, many of them are in there late teens and come from very desolate areas in the Indian Himalayas. So the maturity level can be quite low. Today as we were doing our weekly clean-up of the debating courtyard and our classroom, the monks were having a kick out of dousing each other with cold water and pulling each others shorts down to the ground. Some tried to get my shorts but luckily they were tied nice and tight for if they were not they would have gotten the surprise of their lives since I always prefer to go freestyle if you catch my drift. This was done amongst laughs and giggles galore. Like I’ve said, it is like having a bunch of lil brothers around.

Seeing that we spend at least 8 hours a day with each other and almost all of the students from the course live on the same floor having roommates also from the same course, naturally a group consciousness develops, which is really interesting in a way, for when it comes to debating each other it might seem like we hate each others guts. For instance, we had a damja yesterday and from amongst our group, Ani Nga la, a really tiny Vietnamese nun and a monk were selected to sit as defenders (dam ‘ca ba) at another group. It seemed like that group had thrown to them an impossible quandary. At points throughout the debating session one could hear lil Ani Nga la’s voice trying to hold her own but the group that she went to had some monks who are really good at asking brain and tongue twistingly hard questions.

At the end of the damja I went and asked her how did it go and she replied, “man, they were so mean, they gave us an impossible question to answer and when we couldn’t answer they asked us if we were stones or if we were dumb”. In the debate format that will kind of look like this; regarding the subject “you”, it follows that you are a stone because you can not speak, (khyerang chos can, rdo yin par thal, bshad ma thub pa’i phyir). And remember, there were probably 4 or 5 monks screaming this at the top of their lungs in front of the defenders exclamating their statement with a huge clap and a stomp. I told her that she probably held her own well which shows that she is progressing and that is what is important; everything else is just a part of the experience of taking this type of course. When one is debating one on one it is not that much of a thing, unless someone is listening in and wants to challenge you which happen rather regularly. We have a new staff member at Sarah, who was a monk and studied up to the Madhyamaka class (which means about 12 years of study) at IBD when he disrobed. He comes to our debates regularly and I think that he gets a kick out of whooping our asses in the park more than likely thinking, ‘boy! These kids have a lot to learn’. It is good that he comes because I think that it raises or could potentially raise the standard of our debates as a class.

As the week carried on, I came to know (though I can say that I knew already) that some of our classmates had studied Buddhist philosophy before. I have noticed a few students who are not studying, lazing around but kicking ass in debate while the rest of us are cramming like bad and sucking ass. One monk, Namgyal, has studied down in South India for some time, and there is a lay student from Spiti who was a monk also in South India. I knew this had to have been the case but at the beginning of the course they nonchalantly said the contrary when Gen la asked if they had studied Buddhist philosophy before. Anyways, a few nights ago I was debating with Namgyal, I was the defender for the start of the debate and man! He threw some tough questions at me and eventually I was like, “Ugh! are you pulling this stuff out of your ass for I know from the questions that you are asking and for the fact that I never see you studying that you must have studied some where else for these topics are in the chapters that are to be studied next year!”, and it was then that he told me that he was a monk from one of the three big monasteries in South India.

I was a bit frustrated and but I chilled out quickly. It must be so boring for him, but then I wonder, why is he here? The quality of the debating in those monasteries, from what I have heard is 100 times superior to that of IBD, there are more scholars teaching there (with most of them at the acme of their profession) and there are more people to debate with which means one gets to encounter a multiplicity of ideas. Those monasteries are like the Harvard, Yale and Princeton of Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism, why would one want to come here, which is like, lets say going to my alma matter Berea college (which is a great school no doubt), and where one has to start from square one, when one has the opportunity to learn from the best in the field. I think that first of all, they were more than likely sent here by their Lamas and secondly, compared to South India were in the debating courtyard is filled with hundreds of monks from various classes one would be some rather small fish in such an environment, where here one can rocking it out and don’t (at least at this point) have to work nearly as hard as the beginners, and thirdly, compared to South India, Dharamshala’s weather is more agreeable.

During one of our study periods, during which time I was practicing memorization, which I do following the Tibetan way: pacing around the temple saying the phrases over and over until I can say them without looking at the book, some of my classmates approached me casually and a conversation developed out of our congregation. I talked a bit about my life, being homeless and all, and that now I have found something that I enjoy. I was asked if I had a wife back home and I said no. One monk said putting his hands by his front thigh,” when you become a translator those girls in America who wear really short shorts will grab your arm (here the monk grabbed my right arm to show me his example) saying how much they want you”, I just started laughed saying that I am not interesting in those kinds of women, plus after you are done you’ll probably have to pay I said jokingly, probably not a smart move.

Standing in our congregation was an Amdowa from Lake Kokonor (mtsho sngon) named Tak Bum (stag ‘bum), meaning one hundred thousand tigers, which I think is such a cool name, many Amdowas have such awesome names, at Sarah there is a girl from the first year B.A. course named Min Nang Dzë (smin snang ‘dzes) meaning something like Beautifully Ripening Illumination, and another girl from the second year B.A. course named Sung Dü Kyï (gzungs ‘dus skyid) which means something like the Joyous collection of Mantras and Tantras, in a previous blog entry dedicated to the Tibetan women’s uprising day I have posted an essay that she wrote.

Anyways, Tak Bum asked me how much does a prostitute cost in the U.S. I told him that I did not know, but maybe a high class one is like $200 for a night. Then he goes on to recount that in Tibet they go for 500 yuan for a night (I have not clue how much that is), he was telling us how him and his friends were once in Lhasa and after coming from doing prostrations and praying at the Jokhang temple on the Barkor (a circumambulatory path) his then went walking by an area with brothels where the ladies standing at the entrance would try to pull one by the arm to get you to enter the brothel. These ladies he said, many of them Chinese but also Tibetan will tease you to get you into their lair saying things like, “Where you going, Big boy?”, “I can take care of you if you wish”. He said that they are really good and also that in India, the ladies here are also really excellent, hmm? I know that the going price in Delhi was 100 rupees or like 2 bucks, not a good idea.

I was feeling a little bit uneasy at the downward turn of our conversation. Besides Tak Bum and I, everyone else around us were teenage monks and I could tell that they were really interested in what he was saying. They started to ask me repeatedly if I had ever been to a brothel, I was like, hell nah! I explained the dangers of such activities to them. It was not the type of conversation I was expecting at that time. But knowing Tak Bum, it doesn’t surprise me to hear such things coming from his mouth. It just seems natural to his personally. He has this thing of smacking the shit out of my upper back thigh when I least expect it and then tells me that I have no ass. I am like, well hell; you sure don’t need to be rocket scientist to deduce that one do you?

Yesterday in class Gen la, covered the three divisions of established bases (gzhi grub) or existents into virtue, non-virtue, and those that are not indicated in the scriptures, established bases can also be divided as permanent and impermanent. Tak Bum then bombarded Gen la with tons of questions. Is homosexuality non-virtuous? Gen la, yes since same sex couples can not reproduce and are together only for sexual enjoyment in Buddhism it is considered sexual misconduct, but in the political realm like in a democratic country, then they have there own rules because not everyone in a given country are religious so they have the political freedom to do as they please, at least in some countries. What about abortion? Gen la, “Oral contraception is fine, but once a new born fetus has develop quite bit then it is considered a person and one of the ten vows that a Buddhist takes is the vow of non-killing thus it being non-virtuous according to Buddhism. Can two monks get married? At this Gen la and all of us about died laughing, “Of course not, monks have taken a vow of celibacy and if they are in sexual relations with each other then they are no longer monks!”

But I also I know that there have been hidden homosexual activity in the monasteries, one monastery near here had a quite bad hepatitis B outbreak, but I have never been able to get any one to talk to me about it. Generally, at least in the Tibetan exile community sexually is far from being open, though there are many awesome people that I know who are trying hard make it a issue that is worthy talking about because VD’s are getting passed around the community really quickly. Anyways, one again, Tak Bum had a roll, he proceeded to quote the great Tibetan poet from Amdo, Gendun Choephel, who translated, the Kama Sutra from Sanskrit to Tibetan in the 1920’s or 30’s who stated that sex in general and particularly with prostitutes was a perfectly virtuous activity. Gen la, who has been a monk all of his life did not agree to that at all, though he chuckled at the mention of the great scholar’s name. I am totally fascinated by Gendun Choephel, I think he must have been and still is the most radical and progressive product of Tibetan society.

A few days before that, Gen la revealed a little bit himself. He is not Geshe, but had studied pretty far. He was from the first batch of IBD students which started in 1973. It is great to know a little bit about him, since there is this air of mystery about him. He constantly wear sunglasses because he has a eye condition where bright lights bothers him and with him being a monk his is totally bald, I see why an American student from the previous class said that Gen La reminds him of Morpheus from the Matrix who leads one down the rabbit hole of Tibetan Buddhist dialectics.

On a really sad note, as anyone who has read my previous entry knows, there was a devastating earthquake that hit Jyegundo, in the Kham province of Tibet. From the pictures that I have seen, it looks like an extremely bad situation. Several schoolmates, including a classmate of mine are from that town. One lay student, Jampa was absent from class the day after the earthquake hit to go to McLeod Ganj to see if he could get in touch with his family. The next day I spoke with him and I asked him how does it looks like and he said that he couldn’t get through with landlines but was finally able to get through with cell phones. His uncle and his three family members in the household all perished in the earthquake but Jampa’s folks seemed to be ok he said.

Were you close to your uncle and your family I asked? Yes, of course! We always spoke through on the computer since I have been in India and in Tibet also of course. You must be totally devastated! I asked. He said no, what is the point? What the benefit of all that? I am here in India and I was totally incapable of helping them, what is the point of being all sad for? He told me. That took me a back for a second. How could he not be sad? Back at home if that was one of my close relatives I would be all thrown apart with mourning. I knew that this attitude towards death is quite pervasive amongst Tibetans, my colloquial Tibetan tutor who tutored me for a year between 2005 until 2006, did not show a bit of sadness when her father died. I told her that it is fine if we don’t have class for awhile, but she said, just because my father died doesn’t mean that I have to disrupt my entire life so let us continue as usual. One of my old classmates from last year’s Tsamjor course, Sonam, who is also from Jyegundo had some loses, I spoke with him today and he said that his parents are alive but they lost almost all of their friends. He too, had this stoic outlook but it I think that there is just a thing about showing certain emotions in the public sphere or to folks whom one is not close with.

Yesterday also, in front of the boy’s hostel many poems with declarations of mourning for the people of Jyegundo where taped to the wall stating solidarity with them, stating that we are brothers of the same Tibetan blood, read some of there along with the other students gathered in front of these poem. A friend just told me that all of Bir, a Tibetan settlement nearby is virtually shut down, with many prayer activities going on. Many of the original Tibetans who settled in Bir are from Kham, with most of them being, I think, from Chamdo and Derge, but I also think that some folks from Jyegundo and other parts of Kham there also. This shows to me that there some public display of emotions, though I have not been to Bir recently to see it myself. Folks are devastated regardless of whether they chose to show it or not.

I also think that though most Tibetans are not very knowledgeable about Buddhist philosophy, that there are certain aspects of the philosophy that has become apart of their lives culturally. You ask almost any average Tibet, Are you a Buddhist? Yes. Can you explain to me Dependent Arising? Blank stares. I think that it is the similar with western cultures, so many of the ideas that we know take for granted came ultimately from philosophy, in medieval Christianity, St. Thomas Aquinas strongly and freely used Aristotelian philosophy with theology which in turn has diluted itself and prominent traces of it can be found in Modern Christianity, our strong sense of individuality that we sure as a society, democracy, socialism etc, are also embedded from ancient to modern philosophy and secular thought. It is so much apart of us that we can’t see it or that is it very difficult to see it. Like a fish in water can’t not conceive of life without water or us without air, totally engrained. With regards to this disaster, it has amazed me, once again how some thing so far away can hit so close to one’s heart.

What a week it has been, mentally duking it out on the debate courtyard hours a day, knowing that some long hours travelling is in store for me as I traverse the globe and U.S. continent, and that I have to face Amerilandia: my mind is all over the place. It has been three years since I last left the US, the last time I went home I had a really hard time and that was after a year, now this time it is after three years. U.S. and India are two totally different worlds and I live in a smaller world within the world of India with exiled Tibetans and Indian Himalayan people. As I look out my window, with the Indian heat beating down on me like a cop beating a brother in the hood because he looks like Tyrone who robbed a convenient store, the mighty Dhauladhar range are spreading majestically before me, its foothills spew columns of smoke into the air because the woods are simmering, I think, man! Amerilandia is going to rock the shit out of me and I am not sure if I am ready for it.

Pax

6.9 Earthquake in Kyegundo, Kham, Tibet: Please Donate!

A major earthquake has hit Kyegundo, Kham, Tibet. Many of my schoolmates are from Kham and are very worried about their family. I got this message on my facebook Tibetan Freedom group. Kate has succinctly provide a lot of info that I would otherwise not have access to. Below is the message in full. Please take the time to read and help if you are able!

Devastating Earthquake Hits Tibet - Please Help Dear friend, Early this morning, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake followed by a number of powerful aftershocks struck Kyegundo (spoken: Jyegundo) in Kham, eastern Tibet (Ch: Jieguduo or Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province). Media sources have reported nearly 600 people killed and more than 10,000 injured. Tibetans with contacts in the area have heard the death toll may be as high as 4,000. All of us at Students for a Free Tibet send our heartfelt condolences to the families who have lost loved ones in the earthquake. Our thoughts and prayers are with those in Kyegundo and the surrounding area. We will continue to post updates on SFT's facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/StudentsforaFreeTibet How you can help: 1) Donate to organizations working in the region and help support emergency relief efforts: * Tibetan Village Project: http://www.tibetanvillageproject.org/ (Note: you can also donate via Causes at: http://www.causes.com/causes/472609?m=01e7a3fb) * Tibet Relief Fund: http://www.tibetrelieffund.co.uk/ * Machik: http://www.machik.org/index.php * Tibet Foundation: http://www.tibet-foundation.org/news/urgent_emergency_appeal_kyekudo_yushu_earthquake/ 2) Help spread the word. The media is reporting that this awful tragedy occurred in western China. Please help educate everyone that the earthquake struck in eastern Tibet, not China. * Change your Facebook status and tweet: Quake in Tibet. Please help. Donate here:http://www.causes.com/causes/472609?m=01e7a3fb (Please RT); * Read and share a moving blog post about the earthquake with reactions from Tibetans in Tibet on High Peaks Pure Earth: http://www.highpeakspureearth.com/2010/04/earthquake-in-tibet-initial-reactions.html * Read and share the statement on the earthquake issued by the five leading Tibetan exile organizations in Dharamsala, India (including SFT India):http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/article.php?id=2186 * Write to the editor of your local newspaper to educate him/her that the earthquake struck Chinese occupied Tibet, which is at a minimum disputed territory. Kyegundo is in the Tibetan province of Kham, annexed into China's present day Qinghai Province. Fears over potential dam burst: The BBC has reported that a massive dam at the headwaters of three rivers in the area has been damaged and that people have fled to the mountains in fear that the dam might burst. A crack in the dam wall has reportedly prompted Chinese officials to drain the reservoir. The Chinese government has plans to build over a dozen more dams in this earthquake prone area. Read more on the Tibetan Plateau blog:http://tibetanplateau.blogspot.com/2010/02/dams-on-upper-reaches-of-yangtze-mekong.html For updates on how you can help the people of Kyegundo, please visit the SFT blog:http://blog.studentsforafreetibet.org With the people of Kyegundo in our thoughts and prayers tonight, Tendor, TenDolkar, Mary Kate, Schuyler, Kate and all of us here at SFT HQ Read more: His Holiness the Dalai Lama sends his condolences to the earthquake victims:http://www.dalailama.com/news/post/520-his-holiness-offers-his-condolences-to-the-victims-of-the-earthquake-in-kyigudo Statement by U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/pressreleases?id=1629 World News Blog (The sensitivity behind the latest Chinese earthquake): http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/2010/04/14/the-sensitivity-behind-the-latest-chinese-earthquake/ BBC (China earthquake kills hundreds in Qinghai): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8619593.stm NPR (Earthquake In China Kills 400; Thousands Injured): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125930694 New York Times (Strong Quake Kills Hundreds in Western China):http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/world/asia/15quake.html

Chö ra: The Debating Courtyard

The place where we spend the most of our time in the Buddhist philosophy course is in the debating courtyard (chos ra). At Sarah’s campus our debating courtyard is in front of the main administrative building at the center of campus where the various offices, a computer lab, library, temple and our classroom are located. We spend a minimum of 6 hours day in the debating courtyard, during the morning debates (8am until 9:30am) under the cool shadows of the trees and during the nights debates (7:15pm until 9pm) under the starry night sky, these days usually clear. Gen la said that the debating courtyard for philosophy students is what the laboratory is for scientist. There is where we do our work of analyzing and testing what we are hearing and reading, exploring and clearing our doubts. I am not so sure as to how I feel about that statement right now because our goal ultimately has a soteriological purpose, where I am not sure that that holds true for scientists.

Our class is extremely tiny, with fewer than 40 students, as compared to the three great Gelukpa monasteries (Sera, Ganden and Drepung) in Lhasa back in their heyday, when the populations of those monasteries included thousands of monks. In exile these monasteries have been set up in South India, where the monk population though still rather large doesn’t compare to what it was back in the day. So in the debating courtyard of these monasteries for starters, each class probably had several hundred monks in them and when debating time came all those monks along with the monks from other classes, higher or lower, will match their wits in the debating courtyard.

If you have never seen this before, then at first sight one might wonder, WTF are they doing? Are they pissed at each other? And what are they so pissed about? One will see the courtyard just packed full of monks in groups of two or three with one monk standing clapping his hands and stomping his feet and one or two monks sitting on the ground responding to the standing monk’s inquiries. One has to remember that all these pairs of monks are doing this all at the same time and thus it turns out to be a quite loud and cacophonous affair.

One tends to see some very un-monk like behavior like pushing and shoving. The typical images of Buddhist monks walking around slowly with joyous solemn faces of meditative beatitude are thrown out the window here. It is quite common to see several groups come together and in union challenge a defender or two. I remember one incident in the summer of 2006 when my friend Jason Fults from college had come to visit me when I lived in McLeod Ganj to attend some teachings that the HHDL was giving.

Jason, James from England, and I went to the temple the night before the teachings around 9pm to reserve our spots, and as we were getting closer and closer to the temple, the sounds of clapping and yelling got louder and louder. Then when we ascended the staircase that leads up to the courtyard in front of the temple which is on the second floor, we saw the strangest thing for us: three standing monks clapping, stomping and asking in loud voices questions in rhythmic unison to one monk screaming at the top of his lungs in one section and several other similar situations all throughout the courtyard. As we walked to one of the staircases that led up to the second storey where the teaching area was located, we just stared in awe on what was going on before of our eyes. Jason asked me if I know what was going on and besides telling him that they were debating Buddhist philosophy I could not saying anything else.

After we had finished reserving our spots by taping cardboard with our names written on it to the floor beside of the temple where the HHDL was to teach, we looked on from the second floor down to the courtyard where all the action was happening. From our bird’s eye view we saw one lay Korean lady (that was back in the day when they allowed lay women to join the course) sitting on the floor surrounded by standing monks. Some of the monks in front of her were pushing and shoving trying to get a chance to make their point. Many were carrying cushions in their hands and proceeded to give each other several whacks upside each others heads with the cushions. When that had subsided, they again resumed their contest with the Korean lady who seems very adamant to hold her point to the teeth.

As we left the temple, I told Jason, “Man, we were looking for a party to kick it at in the wrong spot for it seems that those monks had there party going on”. It was not until I came to Sarah that I found out what that was all about. It is called a damja (dam ‘ca) and it literally means thesis but in this context it means a certain debate format where a class will divide itself up in groups. Each group will then send two people to the other group to answer questions. Any person in those groups can ask questions to them and when they can not answer the whole group will yell a certain cheer in unison three times. So far we have had 4 or 5 of these damjas since I have started.

The person standing up is called the challenger (rigs lam pa) and the person on the ground is called the defender (dam ‘ca ba). Generally the challenger is not required to hold a particular point of view and can ask the most ridiculous of questions depending on how the defender answers. The defender is generally restricted to only four replies depending on how the questions are asked. Only if the defender is asked by the challenger to posit a reason that he is allowed to explicate beyond the four types of answers. In class when Gen la debates with us and some one goes on arguing outside of the set format; Genla will say , “drung shay mu go” “I don’t want all that lip” “You have to learn how to defend your assertions within the format, you can say all that you want within it”. It is not always followed on the courtyard especially at the beginning where one can hide their lack of understanding behind eloquently forceful words. Depending on the text that we study, the position that the defender must hold is called our own position (rang lugs) the philosophical stance of that text and especially at the beginning it is essential to ones training that one holds to that position. Once one has mastered this then one will gain the skills needed to develop a quite thorough position of one’s own.

To the general Tibetan audience debate must be very odd and bemusing. Many colloquial Tibetan words are used in such a different and technical way that many might feel that the exercise is ridiculous. Daniel Purdue recounts a story he had heard for Lati Rinpoche and one that I have also heard here at Sarah from one of the my teachers when I was in Tsamjor. It states:

“At the time of the Great Prayer Festival (smon lam chen mo) traditionally held in Hla-sa at the beginning of the Tibetan New Year, around February 20, the monks and nuns of all the great Ge-luk-ba monasteries gather for several days of community prayer, celebration, and the Hla-ram-ba Ge-shay examinations. During this time, even the monks who were not taking their examinations would naturally find opportunities for practicing debate. A layman who encountered two monks in heated disputation understood that they were arguing about a gold pot but nothing else about what was being said. Not understanding their debate, he worried about these two monks’ arguing over material possessions.

The next year at the Great Prayer Festival when he again encountered these same two monks in disputation about a gold pot, he moved to intercede. Reprimanding them he said, ‘Last year I saw you’re here arguing about a gold pot, and now this year you are here arguing about it again. Please stop arguing about this thing! I will give you each a gold pot if you just stop arguing’”

End quote.

A pot (bum pa) and it various manifestations gold, copper, silver etc and a pillar (ka ba) are used as classic examples in debate, so these words are heard frequently.

While I was once visiting H.H. Sakya Trizin’s residence in Dehra Dun, one of his attendants (who was from Sakya,Tibet) told me about the first time he had gone to Lhasa along with His Holiness and saw a debate there. He said that at first he was rather confused because to him it seemed that the monks were arguing over a tobacco pipe. He said that he taught that these monks must have been the worst monks of the monastery to be arguing over something as immoral as a tobacco pipe since monks are not allowed to take any type of intoxicants. It wasn’t until later that he realized or was told that the word used for pipe in Sakya “gang zag” is the word same word used for person “gang zag” in philosophy. I couldn’t keep myself from laughing at one.

There are so many such mistakes that can be perceived by the unknowing ear. For example, the word for you “khyöd” is used very similar to how the variable “x” functions in mathematics. Also khyöd is not the most particularly polite way to address someone unless they are a close friend or a child, very similar to tu and tum in Hindi. When hearing monks screaming this word, one might think that monks are just über mal-mannered. Another one that I am fond of is “one (gcig)” and “different (tha dad)”. One is something that is only itself and different is its obvious opposite. A traditional example is pillar (ka ba) because only pillar is one with pillar in both name and meaning, the word for “and” and “with” is the same in Tibetan “dang”. So this can be strung out like hippie beads for as long as one wants where one might hear, one with one with pillar, ka ba dang gcig dang gcig. The only thing that is one with one with pillar is one with pillar. The same applies to one with one, gcig dang gcig, the only thing that is one with one is one. This previous phrase in particular can be turned on its head if one hears “dang” not as “with” but as an “and”. In which case someone could say gcig dang gcig chos can gnyis yin par thal, regarding that subject one and one, it follows that it is two. Once in class Gen la asked us to posit something that is one with one and we all said one. He then said the regarding the subject one rupee and one rupee, it follows that it is not two rupees. These things just crack me up all the time.

Having a hard palate can be a huge obstacle when it comes to debating in Tibetan. Though my pronunciation is no where near perfect some of our international students are struggling with it. One case is our Korean monk, Tenzin Kunzig, who after attending one of the best universities in Korea for bio-engineering and being a genetic engineer until the age of 25, decided to become a monk and has been one for 20 years now with 4 or 5 of those years under Tibetan ordination. One can tell that he is a really sharp guy but his tongue really limits him at this point. I have been told and I now believe it after being around Korean students that in the Korean language there is not the ra or r-sound and it tends to be perceived as a la or l-sound. One common example of a non-existent is the horns of a rabbit (ri bong rwa) pronounced more like ri bong ra. Our Korean friend here can only say li bong la, which had me rolling the first time I debated with him; the defining characteristics (mtshan nyid) for a consciousness (shes pa) is that which is clear and knowing (gsal zhing rig pa) pronounced like sel shing rig pa. Now with the r-sound being replaced with the I-sound one gets sel shing lig pa which in Tibetan lig pa means dick and I am not talking about the short form for Richard. So I was thinking that sel shing lig pa could then be translated as clear and dick or more correctly as clear and penile? The other monks are just having a field day with him, but one monk is actually trying to teach him how to pronounce the r-sound, but so far to no avail, “you can take a man out of the woods but you can’t take the woods out of a man”.

Lastly, yesterday, a second Saturday, I gave a visit to my host family in McLeod Ganj after a long time not seeing them and found out at my little host sister Chöyang who is about 11 now has learning elementary Buddhist reasoning in her curriculum for the pass month and it seems that she has some interest in it, which I think is awesome. The HHDL has been an advocate to spread at least this kind of elementary Buddhist reasoning to the Tibetan schools. I debated with her for a little bit and many of the examples she used were totally meant for kids her age, instead of comparing a form source sphere and that which being it is not possible they would compare bull and animal or Lotus flower and the waters it grows from. I really think that this could build a young child mind to tackle various other subjects that they will encounter in their lives, it wouldn’t have to be done at the intensity that we are doing here at Sarah, but it is great for the young inquisitive mind of an 11 year old.

Once this pass autumn there was an inter-collegiate debating competition at the lower Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) campus in Dharamshala and before the competition was to commence two groups of TCV students, one from Bylakuppe TCV from South India and an another from Gopalpur TCV about 1 hour from Sarah came to Sarah College to practice debate with the philosophy class students and with the 1^st year BA Buddhist dialectics class that I was attending at the time. These kids where all between the age of 13 and 14 and man they were really good, both the guys and the girls were tearing it up. These particular students were sent because they were some of the better debaters from their respective institution. Out of the Gopalpur TCV students a few of them were my students from the 10 day English camp that I volunteered to teach at last summer and I was happy to have seen them. That was one of those experiences that will stay with me.

Pax

TGIS?

Normally back at the home front after the initial relief of making it pass the hump day (Wednesday) there is the final respite for the arrival of Friday. As I remember around campus while I was in college it was not unusual to be saluted with TGIF (Thank God/Goodness it is Friday) from other toiling students. But here at Sarah College TGIF does not hold true because it is only the second Saturday of every month that we have off, such as the next coming Saturday. Normally we have half Saturdays, classes until noon, and after lunch we have a mass campus clean up until 2pm.

Before when I was in the Tsamjor course (Bridge Course) there was more of a sense of spaciousness that accompanied the course especially that as an international student our teachers did not hold us to the same restrictions that applied to the Tibetan students. This is because most but not all of the Tibetan students in Tsamjor are studying in that course in order to pass the exam that is required to enter the B.A. course (Rignay) in Tibetan Literary culture. Most of the international students are interested in improving their language skills and the Tsamjor teachers realize this. So being in Tsamjor was just perfect for the level of Tibetan that I had at the time when I started two years ago and I was at liberty to choose what and how many classes I wanted to take.

But being in the Buddhist philosophy course is different, for when I was in Tsamjor we were considered casual students, in this course I am a full fledge Sarah student, and I must abided to all the restrictions. Which I think is great. As I have said before, this course is very time intensive; not including one’s own self-study, the course itself takes about 8 hours out of one’s day. The days go by über quick and at night you just pass the hell out. So when Friday comes there is not the respite of like, “oh, I can sleep in tomorrow”, but not to fret because it is about to be in “da house” the following day. And so, TGIS gets in effect, a nice chillness settles down around campus, many students go on visits to McLeod Ganj or nearby Tibetan settlements to visit friends, and things slow down, though normally Sarah is very slow compared to US standards.

One thing that is interesting at this point is that even though our course has just started three weeks ago with the intensity and depth of our subject matter increasing day by day, all of the other classes are winding down. Some of our international students have left already. On the third week of April all of the classes will have their end of year exam, in which anything which has been taught since July 1^st could be covered. For every one who doesn’t know about Tibetan style teaching, the teachers tend to give you tons of information everyday per class, any whisper or comment said in passing by the Professor could be on the exam. I remember so many times when the teacher will ask the students about something that was briefly mentioned two months earlier and when the students could not answer effectively, he will go on to scold the students for not pay attention in class. So with this attitude from the teachers, when testing time comes around, regardless that the week prior to the exam there is a week of mandatory self-study, the teachers will suggest to the students to have study period during class time. So now, many folks are studying their little Tibetan asses off. For all exams taken one’s grammar and calligraphy are also marked meaning that one has also to be aware of that also.

In our course, we have just finished the chapter on colors, in which we should now be some what familiar with the world of form according to the Sautrantika Buddhist tenet system. Established Bases (gzhi grub, vastu siddha) is chapter two. And now what has just happened is that whole entire view of existents according to the above mentioned tenet system, which is considered a lower view than the view that Tibetan Buddhist hold as “the” view called Prasangika Madhyamika, is being introduced to us. We will not study Madhyamika for years to come for it is quite terse and difficult to understand.

So with the established base chapter our view has been immensely widened. Where with the chapter on colors we were only concerned with the world of form which can be perceived with all of five senses, the next chapter is concerned with all existents and by implication non-existents as well. The chapter on colors is included within form, and form is included within other heading called functioning thing: “That which is able to perform a function” being its tsan nyid. All functioning things are mutually inclusive or have the same meaning with impermanence with its tsan nyid being “momentary” meaning that it is a phenomenon that disintegrates moment by moment.

On a brief note, Gen la mentioned last week that though normal humans can not directly experience impermanence that scientists through the use of instruments can get really close to that experience. For example, the knowledge about atoms and how fast they move, the amount of space a single atom contains and so forth. Though it is not Gen la’s field of study it is cool that he put these kinds of things out there for us, showing that our studies can have correlations with other fields of study, particularly modern ones. In particular, he mentioned the huge particle collider device on the Franco-Swiss border for their success in smashing some particles together, it being cited as “A New Era in Physics”.

Moving back to my previous thought, functioning things are composed of three divisions: form (which we just studied), consciousness, and non-associated compositional factors (which are functioning things but are not any of the two, form or consciousness). In contradistinction to these which are all impermanent there are “permanent phenomenon” and these two impermanent and permanent in turn are the two main division for established bases i.e., existents.

It seems to be that from now on that this chapter will be the foundation for all further study. It multiplies the amount of information to be memorized and the comparison combinations that can or can not be done between the various phenomenons. Some of the students are finding it quite difficult, as instead so am I, and as one young monk told me two days ago, “My motivation is broken”, I reminded him that it has only been three weeks and that if sticks with it he will get better. There are many young monks in our class around the age of sixteen/ seventeen. And I have the feeling that this might the first time in their lives that they are required to bust ass at something. This course requires all of thinking and taking the time to do so. With the little time that I have spend at monasteries, thing can be quite relaxed there, especially at monasteries that don’t teach philosophy where the young monks have lived since their childhood. As child monks their education includes memorization of prayers, learning ritual instruments, sand mandala construction, butter sculptures and the making torma offerings (offering cakes made out of roasted barley flour called Tsampa), all of which require mainly learning the motions but little intellectual content. It is only after learning these that monks may learn some philosophy. Seeing that this could be the case, I can understand why this young monk said what he said. So far with my experiences with memorization, especially doing it the Tibetan way, it is a rather brainless activity in way. One just repeats a phrase over and over until it can be said without looking at the book and then you add another one to that phrase until you have down and can just spit it out. It also puts you in a zone or trance so to say. The monks have several various tunes that they used for memorization, but I am trying to come up with my own based on the long clave rhythm, but so far no luck, hehehe. But in this course memorization is not enough, it is just a basis to work from, for if you don’t have some understanding, then all that will become able apparent in debate.

Having all these young monks around is kind of like having a much of lil brothers around. They are always playing with ya, smacking on ya, wrestling with ya and so forth, which is kinda cute, I guess. There are older students also so you can have the goof off time with the kiddies and more cool intelligent conversation with the older kats. Anyways I am getting tired so I will stop here, I initially wanted to write just a few lines but I guess some extra stuff ain’t too bad it is?

pax