A hint of autumn and the end of the Monsoon…. I hope!

Circa 12:55am 09-18-2010 as the sounds of last night’s debate still resounded in my mind stream the feeling of vertigo overcame me snatching me from my R.E.M. sleep. During those first few seconds of wakefulness I immediately realized that my bed, my room, my dorm and in fact all of Sarah and beyond was oscillating. It lasted for about 5 or 6 seconds and soon afterwards the bell was sounded to call all of the students outside. Once I had walked down those five flights of stairs I witnessed a bunch of half-awake zombies wrapped in blankets, meandering the basketball court, many not knowing why the hell the bell was sounded at 1 o’clock in the morning. One of my classmates came to me and asked me, “Why are we out here?” I was like, “You didn’t feel the tremor?” “Nope” he said. “If you were sleeping how did you know that the tremor was happening?” he asked. “It woke me up, dude. My bed I was shaking, I’m bound to feel it” I said and so it went. We stayed on the basketball court for about a half an hour until we were all called back to our rooms. I knew that when I resumed to lay down that I would be tossing for a bit and as I tossed and turned I reflected about when was the last time that I had felt a tremor and also about the first time that I had felt one.

The first one that I had felt was in McLeod Ganj fall of ’05 and that tremor ended up being a devastating earthquake in the isolated mountainous regions of Kashmir and Pakistan killing over 100,000 people. Then as in now, I stayed in a very non-earthquake friendly environment a ways up on TIPA Road, though Sarah is slightly safer. The last one, I want say, happened some time last year. I was in my old room on the 3^rd floor and sometime in the morning, around 9 or 9:30am my room shook and my door knocked as though the cops were about to bust a clandestine meth lab. The buildings that we live in and occupy daily are made out of about 95% cement and 5% rebar, since last night new cracks have appeared on my veranda. These items are not known for their flexibility or for their ability to absorb shock. But it does allow many institutions with low-budgets such as Sarah to build and organize a college. With me being on the fifth floor, I think that I felt the tremor more pronouncedly than my second and first floor counterparts. Our building, similar to a tuning fork after it has been struck, vibrated more pronouncedly at the top since that is where the tension is being released. I think that’s why many of my schoolmates, besides being deep sleepers, didn’t feel a thing.

It does scare me though, the whole earthquake thing, with being from the East Coast US; one is not used to the idea of earthquakes unlike our West Coast dwellers. The idea of the most solid that we know moving takes a bit of getting use to. If one hits pretty hard, if won’t be so pretty around here that is for sure. Especially this year after, Haiti, Chile and Tibet having been decimated by powerful earthquakes I wonder how steady the Dharamshala area is at this point. The last major one that hit here was during the time of the British Raj in 1904, where many of the Raj’s upper echelons frequented McLeod Ganj to escape the ferocious of heat of the Delhi summer. Even Sir Francis Younghusband, the man known to have forcefully opened Tibet up to British influence by marching an army equipped with then modern arms to Lhasa in the early 20^th century, visited McLeod Ganj. This area is an earthquake hotspot, as a seismology expert showed us on a map a few years ago. But really what to do if one really hits? Diving under my bed is the best thing that I can do and hold on tight. I figure that since I am on the fifth floor I might be fine, but that is really a false hope, I asked a friend, “What is worst falling down five floors or having five floors falling on top of you?” As in Upper TCV, TIPA, Gangkyi, and Norbulingkha, Sarah has a black earthquake protecting stupa built on it at the request of the HHDL after a seemingly seismically volatile period. We’ll now see as to their effectiveness. One of my classmates told me today after lunch that he had heard on the radio news that there are possibilities for further tremors tonight and within the next incoming days, let us see what transpires.

Since moving to this room with the back facing the majestic Dhauladhar range, I have sat on my veranda wondering about the people who live up one those mountains. Of course the thought of the local Gaddi goat and sheep herders come to mind, but also since this is India one, well at least I, can not but help to think about the many caves and huts that dot the area and some of its inhabitants. I have been to a cave below the Bhagsu waterfall that was once inhabited by a Shiavite yogi known as Jungli Baba who had passed on a few years back before I had come to India. The cave’s innards contained painted cravings of various Hindu deities and a Shivalinga situated prominently on the ground. Two summers ago, I went along with a group of students from Emory University and some Dialectic School professors to a stone hut, way way above McLeod Ganj to visit an Ex-Dialectic School student who has been on retreat on that mountain for some time. Inside was quaint with a wooden meditation box, a slab of wood for doing prostrations which was bending concave from years of use. The retreatant seemed happy to see some visitors especially ones who were interested in the Dharma.

Last Sunday since we had a full two day weekend, I went to McLeod Ganj to meet with my friend Jeremy who is now in the upper campus. He is really good with debate having studied Tibetan and Sanskrit as an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin Madison and as a grad student at Harvard. He also has a decent knowledge of both Western and Eastern Philosophy so he knows the exact language to use for this and his mastery of Tibetan and Sanskrit are impressive to say the least. So I always holla at him for questions. Last year before he left Sarah to the IBD campus I would go to his room to seek his advice in dialectics. Here is a clip of Jeremy in action during an all-night debate. Because he is now in McLeod Ganj and for lack of time I can’t chat him up as much as I would like so only when I have sufficient time can I take the trek up the hill. Anyways, he called me early last Sunday morning and suggested that we go and take a hike up the mountain and we’ll find a spot where I could ask questions about debate.

When I finally arrived in McLeod Ganj and met with him the weather was looking rather iffy but we decided to head on up any ole’ how. First we went to a pizzeria in Dharamkot that makes some pretty decent pizza. He was telling me that the weekend before as he was hiking up the mountain that he had met a Russian guy who had been living in a cave about half way up to Triund for the pass two years and that if I felt inclined we could go visit him. But Jeremy gave me a warning; the path to this man’s cave is quite treacherous. And after our delicious pizzas, for I was hungry as hell and since I didn’t have breakfast it was especially nice to have something else besides Sarah food for a change. So we begun our ascent, first losing our bearings but eventually we found our way. As we walked Jeremy was recounting to me about a time when he was walking on the same path that he had happened upon a group of hysterical Gaddi women crying surrounding a guy had just fallen off a roof, drunk he guessed, cracked his head and died right then and there. And there was Jeremy and another Israel backpacker on the scene as the only foreigners around. Pretty heavy! I once pretty much carried an old drunk Indian guy, who had fallen flat on his face on the road half way up to TIPA smashing his nose, all the way up this path and above to his abode hoping that his relatives will clean the drunk’s nose and but him to bed. One never knows what one will encounter when one hikes around these parts.

The clouds were bearing into the valley ahead of us as we ascended, dark, gray and light all intermingled in a kaleidoscope of “it is going to freakin’ rain buddy!” But we ignored it; Jeremy stated that when he had came up the week before that the clouds had cleared up after he had reached a certain height. But I was thinking; this is Dharamshala, the weather here is just too unpredictable.

Finally after about an hour and a half of ascension, he identified the landmark that marked the beginning of the path to the cave. It wasn’t much of a path; it appeared more like a goat path than a people path. Plus by the time we had gotten there it had been raining on us pretty good. Luckily we each had umbrellas but I was wearing my champion sneaks which don’t do good in the mud and on a bad trail. The beginning of the trail had wet grass folded over it and when I looked over the edge the possibility of a fall to imminent death seemed all too real. We had to duck and stretch around huge boulders and weave through some rhododendron groves on a thin slippery edge. This so called trail was very erratic; at times we had to climb down the path holding on to the exposed rhododendron roots and the rocks to progress further. Jeremy said that this cave dweller could really bust a move on this trail. I was like; well no doubt, he had been living there for two years.

Finally after all that we made it. I was bit muddy and wet; the guy seemed happy to have visitors and invited us in. He moved about his habitat hunched over on his haunches like Gollum but in no way creepy. He had built a small wooden door with a glass window in the front and constructed a stone wall to the right side to reduce the exposure. He had also built himself a tin stove low to the ground for heating and cooking, the stovepipe seem to lead to the back exposed part of the cave giving the smoke a decent exiting route. Close by was a creek overflowing with monsoon water and of course he also gathered rain water. To the front and around the cave there was a vast supply of wood, mostly rhododendrons. Various tools were strewn in the front, an axe, a saw, etc. Inside was quite small; the cave dweller himself was not a big man so it seems fine for just him. He was a bit straggly, about in his late forties/early fifties, his salt and pepper light brown hair was in a ponytail slightly balding on the top. He had a section in the back where he seasoned his wood, an aluminum box for storing perishable goods. In the corner immediately to the left was a bed and besides that an altar with seven tiny metal water bowls offered and several pictures of some Rinpoches and deities. I did not recognize any of the Rinpoches so I assumed that maybe he was a follower of Bon (the religion that was in Tibet before the advent of Buddhism). But also there was none of the tell-tale signs of a meditative retreatant either. His teacher is the head of a Bonpo lineage in Solan which is near Shimla. Immediately he kindly prepared us some simple food made from gathered mountain and market veggies, he proceeded to explain how he had found this cave in his distinct Russian accent.

He had initially found it 16 years ago from an Argentine guy was on retreat there for about a year. The Argentine was a student of Lama Zopa. He told us that had came there to seek a different way of life and he said that this time has been the happiest time of his life, he didn’t know how long he would stay and that he could not ask for anything more. He was living with a Tibetan monk before the finally to decided on this cave. This place is way isolated and the chances of seeing another person causally traversing that path are highly unlikely. He had an imitate knowledge of the local geography and about various other caves around the area. Jeremy was interested with what he had to say about caves and their location seeing that he might want to spend a few days in one. He knew if there was water available around them not, if the herders used them on not and so on. I asked about wildlife and his said that he had seen black bears and has heard the purring of a leopard outside his cave one night, which sounded like a deep rumbling motor but had never seen one. Being in this cave reminded me of my hobbled days on the road as a young adult; when I used to squat far off in the woods. So in that respect there was some familiarity with the ambiance of the setting.

The food that he made us was very tasty despite its humble ingredients. He said that some of his food he had gotten from the market; that he gathers some of the herbs and veggies that grew in the mountains and also that at times he would go to a farmer and just ask for veggies. I am sure that at first it must take some of those farmers aback, but upon seeing him one knows that he is not your average Westerner chillin’ in Dharamshala, even to local eyes. We stayed there for awhile since we did not expect that he would cook, and so time passed by. Jeremy and I did not get to talk shop, but this random trek up the mountain in the rain was a delight. After bidding adieu to our new friend, a Russian cave dweller, we reversed our steps as the sun was setting.

On the way down, Jeremy gave me some advice about dialectics and about being in the course in general as a Westerner which I of course found very helpful. We left the cave at about 5pm and got to McLeod Ganj at about five minutes to seven. I was a bit worried about catching a bus down to Lower Dharamsala so late. I knew that the shared taxis would have stopped running by then. After saying bye to Jeremy, I headed to the bus stand luckily to find one bus heading down the hill with its ultimate destination being Dehra Dun. My feet and legs were killing me, it hurt to the bone. Jeremy said that nothing had helped him more for his reasoning skills than a long hike in the mountains, though that is yet to been seen for me, my legs where feeling it for sure. When I finally made it to Gaggal, everything was shut down, there was not a taxi to be had and so I (with my already hurting ass legs) commenced a half hour walk to campus in the dark. By the time I had made it to campus the rain started to pour again, but luckily I had my best friend for the monsoon with me, a rainbow stripped umbrella so I was fine, except for my paws. Anyways now when I sit on my porch and look out at the mountains I wonder how my Russian hermit is fairing it in his cave in the clouds.

This monsoon just seems never ending, but I know for sure that the end is to come soon. And how do I do this? Well around the end of monsoon every year some very scary looking spiders (as the one shown in the above picture) start nesting and growing everywhere. These spiders scare the be-jesus or should I say the be-buddha out of me. But their return indicates the beginning of autumn and the end of the monsoon. The weather is slowly cooling down particularly at night, we are just a few days away from the equinox and I am ready for it. Also there is a campus picnic coming up soon for a few days which will be fun for sure.

Throughout the week during our night debates including the damjas and our regular one and one debates, the two monks who came to our all-night debate last week Friday has been returning and this time with more of their classmates. Debating with these guys is hard as hell. It is like someone who has gain some decent familiarity with chess and that person is playing against a grandmaster. The level of eloquence and reasoning is at a whole different level than what is currently in our class, but these encounters had provided us with new ideas for debate topics, different ways to looks at the topics and to look deeper into the meaning of things.

One thing that has come up over and over again with these advanced monks debating us, and why I now I have a better sense as to why Tibetans call the study of dialectics defining characteristics (tshan nyid), is because it is the defining characteristics that many of us mindlessly state as reasons without digging into their meanings. These guys know how to dig and find weakness in ones understanding and draw it out into the open. It is quite remarkable really, though at times that understanding could be one that one holds very dearly. Also another thing that stands out is that how one understands Tibetan grammar is very important to debate since the Tibetan sentence structure is very agglutinable where words can be sliced apart at different sections in the syntax that changes the meaning. Like for example, shes bya ma yin pa’i spyi (pronounced something like shay ja ma yin pe chi) could mean both an object of knowledge that is not a universal or that an object of knowledge is the universal of not being.

Other instances create a situation where the subject (chos can) losses its power (chos can nus med) and this only happens when the query has a subject tied into the predicate. For example, the subject permanent phenomenon, it follows that sound is impermanent because it is an object of hearing by an ear consciousness (rtag pa chos can/ sgra mi rtag pa yin par thal/ rna shes kyi mnyan bya yin pa’i phyir). Since there are two subjects, permanent phenomenon being the first and sound being the second, which is placed within the predicate as sound is impermanent, the first subject permanent phenomenon losses its power because sound is impermanent and because it is an object of hearing by an ear consciousness. And so it is in such a situation that the defender should accept the query or end up with tons of ridiculous consequences bombarded on them. It has taken many of us awhile to get use to this and it is like a beginning chess player learning how to recognize a checkmate or a stalemate, one does not even see it happening until it is too late or it goes by unnoticed.

As we continue to study, more and more of the bigger picture is slowly being revealed. We are slowly beginning to see what the issues are within the school of thought we are currently studying. Although it wouldn’t be until next year that we will learn to outright identify which view belongs to which school but according to Tibetan nomenclature (grub mtha’) the position of our current texts on logic and reasoning follows the Sautrantika (mdo sde pa) or Sutra school position with the others being the Vaibhashika (bye brag smra ba) Great Exposition school, Cittamatra (sems tsam pa) Mind-Only school and the big doozer Madhyamika (dbu ma pa) Middle Way school. Although the Vaibhashika is seen as the lowest school, we start with the Sautrantika which is the next one up; both assert the selflessness of self (gang zag gi bdag med) but deny the selflessness of phenomenon (chos kyi bdag med). The Vaibhashika and the Sautrantika schools are categorized as Hinayana (theg chung) Small Vehicle schools because adherents of these schools seek their own personal enlightenment and the Cittamatra and the Madhyamika schools are categorized as Mahayana (theg chen) Great Vehicle schools because adherents of these schools, make the pledge to hold off their own final enlightenment until all sentient beings have achieved enlightenment. Tibetans take the Madhyamika position that all phenomenon lack any inherent existence or that it is empty (shunyata, stong pa nyid) of its own inherent existence as being the most correct position.

Due to the fact that the selflessness of self has been used a lot in our texts and because it is the largest overall pervader meaning that if something is either an existent or a non-existent then it is necessarily the selflessness of self. But so far I think that we are still a ways away before touching that topic in-depth and we are even further away from discussions on emptiness. When asked in class Gen la just says that we will have to wait until next year to tackle it properly and I also think that he does not want to make us more confused than we already are. Our studies move step by step, each new topic depends on the previous learnt topic in order to be tackled and as we are studying the preceding chapters, one feels like a one is peeling off the layers of a humongous onion very slowly one layer at a time. Slowly I have gained some competence in debate, but I still have a long way to go though. Twice a week some of us have been meeting early in the morning before morning debate with Gen Sonam la, a Nepali Geshe Lharampa who looks like Malcolm X in maroon robes who has been answering some of our doubts. Also I just started helping a French student with some of the basics of debate once a week.

I have been happy to see that the Sarah ladies have started organizing themselves. They recently founded a group called the Daughters of the Potala palace (po ta la sras mo’i tshog pa) and last Monday they organized their first function as a group, an all female roundtable debate to discuss issues pertinent to them, there role in the community and culture. I think this is a great first step and I hope that the seeds of change in the realm of gender in the community can grow and progress.

A few days ago during our mandatory study period in the afternoon, one of my classmates came up to me as I was ambulating around the temple veranda doing some memorizations. He asked me to explain to him a song that he had written in his notebook in English. As soon as I saw the first line I automatically realized that it was the Star-Spangled Banner, I was loss for words. Besides knowing that it was written during the war of 1812 or during a battle in the war of 1812 I could not explain the meaning of it to him or even who wrote it. He did not know that it was the US National Anthem. He asked me if I had it memorized, I told him nope. In India all the children in school are made to memorize the Indian National Anthem and they sing it daily. I can still remember the Pledge of Allegiance but the National Anthem…. Forget it. He was surprised at this, but what can I say. I guess I am not as patriotic as I should be.

Pax

Dawn of the Dreads…

Ngagpa

Sadhu

There are times when it comes to writing updates that I am quite unsure as to how to start and then there are times when it just comes out naturally. Sometimes I might feel that I have nothing to say or that nothing of interest has happened in this or that particular week but then I sit in front of my dinosaur of a laptop and four or five hours have passed. This week basically started with the welcoming concert for the students of Miami University which was quite nice. The room where it happened was quite hot and stuffy but I think that it gave a good intro to the campus for the newly arrived students. There is one more such concert to come when the Emory students arrive in the winter. Many students and classmates asked me why I didn’t perform anything, many remembering some of my previous performances from by gone years and I really didn’t have a good answer. I was supposed to have drummed with Takbum for the Founder’s Day concert but that was cancelled because of the tragedies in Ladakh and Amdo, so no initiative was taken to prepare something for this one, maybe for the next one though, big maybe! Today we were graced with the presence of the students of the University of California Irvine, who gave the student body an intro to the their trip here in India and to their experiences in Tibetan Exile, visiting various Tibetan schools and attending the HHDL teachings on the Heart Sutra and the 37 practices of a Bodhisattva. I was not able to attend the teachings since I had class but during break I was able to listen in on the radio. I had a sense of novelty listening to the HHDL on the FM radio.

A few days ago as I was debating with one of my classmates and in between our debate he was stating he dislike for some the writings posted around campus by Takbum. I have not read any of these postings but it seems to me that Takbum is avid writer and likes to writes his options and post them for all to see. My debate partner that day felt that Takbum writing criticizing monks was very inappropriate especially since he is a Tibetan and is here studying philosophy with mostly monks. He said it is ok for foreigners to write critically about Tibetan culture and what not, but for Takbum, as a Tibetan who has escaped from Tibet and is now living in exile, to write such things is like “shitting where one eats”. His leader as a Tibetan is a monk (HHDL), the administrative leaders of the college plus his own professor, who is teaching him dialectics are also monks.

He perceived that his writings were implying that there are no good monks saying that most of them have secret desires for the pleasures in life like everyone else. My debate partner stated that just because one is wearing robes, does not mean that they have conquered desire, but it does mean that when desire does arise in a particular monastic that they’ll refer to the teachings and practice the techniques for the reduction of desire and or that they’ll ask advice from a more experienced monk as to how to deal with it. Takbum does not know how it is to be a monk; with many becoming so before they have the faculties of choice. In Spiti where my debate partner and various monks in our course are from it is customary for the family to assign their second male child to be a monk from birth. He said that Takbum should go to Spiti and post his writings there, for then maybe that custom might be abolish and then the individual could have the choice of taking robes later on in life if they so wish which is better.

He had hear some rumors from one of his friends that Takbum was at another school where he had posted his writings starting kind of a writing battle with another student who disagreed with what he wrote and that eventually the school expelled him for his writings and that is why he is here at Sarah. But I ask the question, if Takbum is that distrustful of monks why would he apply to a course in Buddhist philosophy where one is surrounded by them. He could just join the bachelor’s degree course and be amongst laypeople. My friend thinks that Takbum is off his rocker. I do have to say that if his writings do not seem to show both sides of a picture then that writing can be damaging. I have met many bad monks (being ripped off by one my first month in India) and I have met plenty of good monks, I understand them to be human first with the same internal struggles as the rest of us and that many of them but not all have taken to heart the practice of the alleviation of suffering for all sentient beings. My debate partner said that what if he goes and writes a book condemning monks and all then that would not be good and could cause problems for Takbum and the Tibetan community at large. Anyways I found the whole discourse interesting, though I am unsure as to Takbum’s incentives for publicly posting he options around campus.

Towards the beginning of the week we did not have lecture of two days for some the monks were studying how to be an Umze or chant leader. Two chant leaders were brought down from IBD to educate them, since our monks are unfamiliar with the yearly rituals that are done at Sarah and also, during daily prayers before evening debate the melody is quite off. A lot of this is due to fact that some of the students don’t follow the chant leader and just belt out of sync or rush the chant. The other part is that our current chant leader chants in a low voice as it is so we can hardly hear him. The chant leader from our class is responsible for all the rituals that need to be done on campus including the daily morning prayers and the Wednesday night prayers. On Monday the IBD chant leader led and that was such a big difference. It was quite nice and everything flowed great. The Tibetan chanting style is quite different from the chanting of other Buddhist traditions where their style is very slow, Tibetans generally chant very fast and they have tons of prayers too, of which a lot of them memorized at a young age. Since we did not have lecture for those days, the rest of us had study period which was great, I need all the study time I can get.

This Friday was the Friday before the second Saturday of the month meaning that an all-night debate was in store. We found out from Gen la that some of the monastics who are on campus attending the Advance Hindi Teacher’s Training course are Buddhist scholars in there own right. Many having studied in South India and that a few of them are Geshes (Ph.d in Buddhist Philosophy) and amongst them one is a Lharampa Geshe (crème de la crème of Geshes) and that he gave them an open invitation to attend and participate in our all night debate this Friday. Many of us started getting nervous; though there are some of us who have studied debate in South India most of us are very green. So talk surfaced “what are we to do when some of big shot comes and smacks us down?” Gen la said that he invited them so that we can learn from it and to take it as a learning experience.

And so for two days, each group tried to organize the debates that they would ask which is hard as hell. There are so many unknown variables and factors that arise in debate that I am baffled as how to go about it. Learning this skill is very important though, especially when our final and only exam of the year comes right before Losar vacation. Our exam is pretty random, each student is to prepare a debate, at the beginning of the exam two names are drawn from a hat at random, the first name sits as defender and the second as challenger and then go at it for 10 minutes. After that time is exhausted the challenger will then sit as defender and another name is drawn from the hat and that person will be the new challenger. It goes on like this until every one has gone. Two Geshes are called in from another monastery to act as judges and supposedly have no relations with Sarah or IBD. Has a defender you will have no clue as to what topic will be presented to you. In the second year an essay element is added, so at least then if one bombs the debate exam you still have a chance with the written part. I have noticed with me that I would know a topic fine but when it comes to debating it, I don’t do so good. So this exam makes me nervous.

So for last night’s all-night debate, out of my group I was one of the six selected to sit as defender for our group. Luckily, two amongst us are pretty good and also we were to last to sit as defenders. Two monks from the Advanced Hindi Teacher’s Training course showed up. At first they sat down without saying too much, but eventually as our chaos ensued one of them stood up and took central stage and hammered every group that he debated with. It was then that it became clear to me the difference between let say the guys in our class who are good and some one like this monk who debated in a very solid and clear manner. Many of us were quite impressed and hopefully inspired and humbled. When my group came up to sit as defenders, this monk got us good. His responses to our answers were quite solid and immediate and as I looked at my classmates the feeling that we are really young and not mature was apparent. It also gave me some hope that maybe some day I could actually get good at this.

After he had left, there was still another group to challenge us and towards the end of that debate I became the butt of many jokes being thrown at us. One of my fellow group members was stuck by using the logic that if there are no impermanent phenomenon and existent phenomenon then any thing goes (gang dran dran), as it is stated in our main text. That was turned into that I did not have hair on my head because anything goes, which he accepted or if I was on top of his head and farted then anything goes, which he also accepted. At this, I and the other defenders just lost it, I couldn’t stop laughing. It went on like this for awhile. Gen la was on the sidelines for this whole episode and his laughter reverberated throughout the temple. Some of the things that my classmates come up with in debate are quite hilarious. But in the overall manner, this just reinforced to me that we are all “new fish”.

Now I have a full weekend ahead of me which I plan to combine with study and relaxation. Earlier I was on my balcony kickin’ some beats with my beloved djembe and some of my classmates gave me a visit, looking at my drum, checking out my room and the like. One tried to play it but couldn’t get a sound out of it. They asked my some questions about it and what not and I was happy to share a little about it with them. Throughout my time with them since the beginning of the course, many of my classmates are amazed that my hair is real, which is some ways is understandable but also since there are traditions in both Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism of mendicants who have narlyier dreadlocks than me, I figured that they could easily make the association in hairstyles. The Sadhus of Shaivite Hinduism have some incredible locks, as do the Topdens or Ngagpas of Tibetan Buddhism, both who do not cut their hair while on meditative retreat. When I mention this to my classmates then they make the connection. They always ask me if my hair is real, or if I wash them, or when I wash it do all the matts unmatt themselves, or if their kind of hair could be done like mine. And it is not the monks alone, since coming to India these very same question have arose, even in 2005 when I didn’t have dreadlocks. Part of the amazement is in the curliness of my hair, there are unfamiliar with folks of African descendency and so are quite taken a back not really knowing what to think with they meet one. It doesn’t bother me, but it does surprise that many don’t make the connection with the style of hair that already exist within their culture that they are familiar with. Anyways, I feel that this entry is a bit disjointed, I now wonder if all my entries seem this way.

Pax

The developing of class dynamics…

We are responsible as a class for the cleaning of the temple, our classroom and the debate courtyard on Saturdays after lunch. Due to the heavy monsoon rains we have not been debating there because it has been too wet so we have been debating in the temple. The temple is very echoey so it is hard to hear what the other person is saying so often my voice gets a bit sore and my ears feel a bit ringy after a debate session. The nice thing about debating in the temple though is that no one from outside really pays you any attention and one is surrounded by the atmosphere of the thangka’s of various Bodhisattvas, Mahasiddhas and Panditas. Also one can not miss in the front of the temple the HHDL’s throne which lay in front of an appliqué of Shakyamuni Buddha. I miss debating outside also because there one can feel the environment as you plunge into the various mental knots being flung at you. There is particularly a tree that has a bougainvillea vile wrapped all around it and when it is in full bloom in the spring with its pink and purple flowers I always try to snatch me a spot underneath it.

This morning the college secretary was touring some college students from Miami University (not to be confused with Miami, Florida) who have recently arrived at Sarah for a Tibetan Studies study abroad program for a period of two months or so, and so while we were debating he was showing them around temple. I was sitting in a corner as defender debating with a Korean nun and we were having a good debate. After awhile I then realized all of a sudden a bunch of eyes bearing down on me from curious white faces. The secretary introduced the students to me after a bit and asked me to explain to them the reasons for all the mannerism done in debate. My Korean challenger done dipped to the bird immediately and was nowhere to be found as this was going on. Now this is understandable for I am sure like me when I first encountered debate, one doesn’t knows what the hell to think since there is nothing from our own realm of life stateside that resembles it. But I have say that though in debate one is constantly being placed on the hot seat, this particular seat was a tidbit hotter than normal. I immediately got nervous and was searching for a good and brief explanation and as any one back home who I have talked to about debate or who has read this blog knows this is not something that can be effectively explained in minute’s time. I tried my best, explaining about Manjurshri and the right active compassion hand meeting with the left passive wisdom hand thus cutting ignorance with wisdom and all that jazz, but I am sure that it might have been over their heads unless they have been exposed to Buddhism before. I have always been a sufferer of stage fright, though I have stood in front of large crowds of people before in my life. In debate I am slowly getting used to it, but still when damja time comes around generally, unless I am sitting and being drilled in as a defender, I like to sit on the sidelines and listen in. Anyway, ultimately who knows what was going through these kids minds, seeing this random dreadlocked black man in a Tibetan college debating Buddhist logic with a Korean nun in Tibetan and all the other commotion going on. This couldn’t be posited as an oxymoron, could it?

So back to the cleaning, today after lunch we had to cut the grass of the courtyard. But back at home cutting grass normally means a lawn mower of some sort. Not here. Here we have the tool that represents the worker through and through. So much so that it was placed on the flag of the ex-Soviet Union, the all mighty sickle. Dull rusty ass sickles! Many of the students coming from the rural villages of the Indian Himalayas have had experience with cutting grass with this tool. They crouch down on their haunches sickle in right hand and grab a hand full of grass and weeds with their left then cut underneath the left to repeat the process again grabbing more grass. Once the left hand has more grass than it can hold it is then place aside until a decent pile of grass has accumulated. Normally there is an elderly Indian man who cuts the grass to take it to feed his beloved bovines stashed in a mud barn behind the college. But on days when we are doing the cutting he is just elated because all he is got to do is come and pick up the grass. Since being in India I have never seen a lawnmower or a chainsaw. I remember my first day in Dharamsala fall ‘05, I was in a taxi and a tree had fallen and blocked the road up the McLeod Ganj due the heavy rains. I naturally and ignorantly assumed that some one will be busting out chainsaw to quickly remove the obstacle, but the taxi driver grinning at me stated, “Oh Sar, no problem tree chap chap then go, OK?”, and then some guys appeared out of nowhere with axes and commenced on the removal process and thus I quickly learned. But at times I am still amazed at the differences in modus operandi of my host country mostly from my previous conditioning. Like the saying goes, “You can take the boy out of the city but you can’t take the city out of the boy” I guess my case in a slightly modified way fits this allegory.

As I was cutting grass with this implement I was thinking that since the grass is for the cows, why don’t they just fence them in the courtyard since it is currently not being used by us and the cows could do the work. That’s what was done back in the day back home before lawnmowers, right? So far when I have asked this question, I receive looks like, “why would we do that for?” I guess that cow dung might not be desired in the courtyard though it adorns everywhere else in India or that it teaches us, the dialectics students a lesson in hard work.

While working different types of horse play naturally develops amongst the group. A few weeks ago it was some of my classmates doing headstands in lotus posture and seeing who could do it the longest, sometimes ending with another monk unexpectedly knocking the up-side down one over. In India and amongst Tibetans, the lotus posture, which is so elusive to us chair bound Westerners, is no sweat for them. Without an ounce of hatha yoga training they can just popped into it. We have one student though, an ex-monk for Spiti who is an avid hatha yoga practitioner, who has been teaching some of the monks in the early dawn before morning prayers. But what is a beginner’s class for them is quite advanced for us. I saw him bust out some of these moves once and they were astonishing to say the least.

Today since the sun was hot; our class captain bought a case of mountain dew for us. Some of the guys were playing Kabaddi which looks like a mixture of tag and judo and red rover. As we were sitting doing the dew, one of the guys starting chucking glass bottles around and that ensued into a kind of game where someone would stand and toss a glass bottle at someone but I few feet beside them so that they had to dive soccer goalie fashion in order to catch the bottle in mid air, luckily none of the bottles broke. This went on for some time amongst tons of giggles, some one took pictures with their camera phone and the bottle divers reveled in laughter as they saw pictures of themselves. I do appreciate the seemingly small things that my classmates do to have fun. I would have never thought that the throwing glass bottles could be fun. I wouldn’t even contemplate it but it created a relaxed atmosphere and we had a great time.

Once while cleaning the temple a few weeks back, an impromptu concert on the temple’s right side veranda was formed with Ladakhi and Hindi songs galore. After each songs, the guys would yell, “Wah Wah, Kya baat Kya baat”, which is Hindi for wow wow how magnificent! They even convinced me to rap, though I cannot rap for shit, I busted out an old 90’s A Tribe called Quest favorite of mine. They have no clue who “Tribe” is but it brought smiles to their faces.

Today towards the end of our grass cutting session, a debate developed, not a dialectical one, but one about an essay written by Takbum that said some pretty critical things about behavior of monks in general. From Takbum’s perspective it was not aimed at all monks or to the monks in our class. But some of the monks took issue with it, for one, it was written by a layperson who does not know how it is to be a monk and that since many people will read it, it then presents an incorrect picture of monkhood. It was quite a hot debate. No foot stomping and handclapping in this one but with the same intensity and maybe more so than our normal dialectical debate. The idea of finding contradictions in ones assertions was still in place though. It was interesting to me to see this interaction. Takbum has been in this spot before I have notice several times, he is not afraid to say what he thinks which I admire, but it can be viewed as being insensitive to the ones around you. Especially when you are with monks, who just as equally as laypeople don’t comprehend the monastic life, do they comprehend the lay life.

Tomorrow is Teacher’s Day; our class brought our Gen la chair that he wanted. We’ll present it to him on Monday. Teacher’s Day is a holiday either started by or started to show respects to the great Indian scholar and the second president of India Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Teacher’s Day means, honoring ones teacher as ones mentor and guide in life and learning. This kind of respect towards one’s teacher was quite unfamiliar to me until I came to India and to Sarah in particular. One is always showing respect to that person who is imparting their knowledge onto you. From elementary school on through higher education, in India the teacher is well respected. Quite the opposite to what I knew in Brooklyn where in 7th grade homeroom, we were such hellions that we loved getting our short tempered homeroom teacher all riled up to the point to where he would pull at his hair red in anger smashing books on the desk and throwing erasers and chalk at us. We of course just dodged the projectiles laughingly making him even more infuriated. We got a kick out of it, but now years later with seeing how it is done here I reflected about my relations with my teachers in the pass. In college it was different of course, I did and I do have lot of respect for my teachers but it is not like here. Here, when one’s teacher enters the classroom for example, the whole class stands up and sits down after the teacher has seated. That was something I had to get used to when I was in Tsamjor. In the philosophy class we stand up and prostrate three times after Gen la has taken his seat and three times at the end of class before he leaves the classroom.

Remembering my two years in Tsamjor, on Teacher’s Day the students will present to each teacher a gift. Also snacks, games, poetry and songs are arranged by the students. I remember my first year in Tsamjor, the students made a game that involved a bunch of pieces of paper all balled up in a receptacle and the students had to take a balled up piece of paper, open it and do whatever it said to do on the paper if they were that brave that is. One of these pieces of papers that a Khampa monk picked up stated that he had to dance with me and so I got up, the monk was doubled over in laughter at the thought of the future dance with me and I grabbed his hand got funky with the monk. The whole class, teacher included was laughing so hard that I saw tears rolling down everyone’s face after we were done. Since this is my first year in the philosophy course a.k.a Nang don rig pa, I will see how it goes.

Tomorrow the Kalon Tripa (Tibetan-in-Exile Prime Minister) Samdhong Rinpoche will be speaking at Sarah to inaugurate a new Advanced Hindi Teachers Training program for handful of monastics (Himalayan by the looks of it) who will be staying at Sarah for a month and a half. I heard that there might other activities as well. Because the Miami University students have arrived there will be a welcoming concert for them Sunday night. As for the Kalon Tripa, this is his last year and there seems to be a hot race for the next democratic leader of Tibetan exile. A huge voting and political awareness program is happening, posters are posted and talks are happening about voter registration and rights etc. It seems that this voting session will be extremely important for Tibetan exile and the appearance of a modern form of politics seems to be appearing as well. I look forward to hearing the current Kalon Tripa speak; I have heard him speak once before it might have been last year but anyways I appreciated what he had to say.

Pax

Diamond Cutting in the Clouds…

I have just returned from the McLeod Ganj, which right now from sunny Sarah’s vantage point is immersed in a thick dense cloud. Since I have been back I have not had the opportunity to visit “Da Ganj” as much as I used to mainly due to financial and time restraints. But this weekend I had some incentives for visiting the foggy “spiritual Disneyland” as it has been described by various journalists. This weekend HHDL was giving a two day teaching on the Diamond Cutter Sutra (rdo rje gcod pa, Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā) at the request of the Korean sangha (Buddhist community). Most if not all of the teachings are sponsored and or requested by a sangha from a small group of Asian countries. Usually they are Korea, Taiwan, Russia (Kalmykia, Tuva, Buryatia)/ Mongolia and Singapore. These are always interesting times for one sees how the various Buddhist traditions, the monastic ones in particular, interact with one another. As I have mentioned before, in my class we have students from Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and Singapore, and most of these students are also well learned in their respective traditions. At the beginnings of these teachings the monastics from whichever particular country will lead the initiatory chants in their traditional style. Like this morning, the slow steady and mindful beat of a woodblock was heard reverberating around the main temple as the Koreans chanted. I remember once when I went to a teaching sponsored by the Russian sangha three years ago, how the Mongolian monks with their intricate throat singing overtonal manipulations chanted the chant for the mandala offering. I was heavily struck by that experience.

It has been some time since I have been to any HHDL teachings, mostly because I normally like to take that time to catch-up on some studies. But Gen la gave us the time off to go, and Sarah made a surprise holiday so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. Also there are some old dear friends visiting which I might not have otherwise gotten the chance to kick it with them. I was very elated to see them. It is always a treat to see the HHDL, though during the teachings the topics tend to be way over my head in English and definitely in Tibetan. Going to teachings is a good community event. Almost everyone is there and when sitting amongst Tibetans one is never left out. You are guaranteed to be taken care of. At the teachings you have your ole’ skool dharma bums and neophytes in attendance with their own particular style and flavor, all trying to digest the information coming to them by way of a translator. For the Westerns, there are always translations broadcasted by radio in English, and these days even Spanish of which I am particularly fond of listening to. Also the direct Tibetan teachings are broadcasted all throughout Dharamshala so that those who don’t have the chance to attend can listen in. Waiting for the bus at Sarah one student had his radio tuned in already.

The general process for getting up to “Da Ganj” the cheap way is to take a bus from Sarah, when there is one, for about 10 INR to lower Dharamshala and then from there, if there is a huge crowd waiting, fight and shove, American football style, to get into a shared jeep to McLeod. The shared jeep rides are rather uncomfortable. One is crammed in like sardines in a can, for the driver gets paid per how many heads are in. That is another ten rupees. The total time this takes from Sarah to McLeod Ganj is one hour to an hour and a half. It is quite an exhausting ordeal especially during monsoon.

There are more teachings coming up in the next couple of months, though I don’t know as of yet if I will attend all them, I will probably like this teaching attend it partially which seems to work for me for in this way I can still get some studying in.

As far as this pass week goes, there was not too much going on. I had quite a long sleeping spell on Tuesday because I was so exhausted. I get 7 hours of sleep everyday, but it don’t seem like it is cutting it. At the beginning of the course I was getting barely 6. But I think that seven hours is good, if I could do eight I would but so far no go.

We are now on the last chapter in the introductory path of reasoning “rigs lam chung ngu” Substantial and Isolated Phenomenon (rdzas chos ldog chos). Our previous chapter was on Generalities and Instances or Universals and Particulars (spyi bye drag), of which I just came to discover has had a long line of discussion going to antiquity in the western philosophical traditions. Even though each proceeding chapter gets increasing difficult and complex, it tends to be related to the previous topic studied which I find so helpful. Substantial and Isolated Phenomenon so far seems to organizes all of the phenomenon that we have studied so far into eight groups. One such group, Substantial Phenomenon, must have phenomenon that meet a specific criteria, like pot (bum pa) is a substantial phenomenon because it has a common locus such that (1) it is an established base i.e. it exists, (2) it is itself, (3) non-it is not it and (4) its isolate i.e. reversed from not being itself is not mutually exclusive with substantial phenomenon (khyod gzhi grub, khyod khyod rang yin, khyod ma yin pa khyod ma yin, khyod kyi ldog pa rdzas chos dang mi ‘gal yang yin pa’i gzhi mthun pa), recall that “it” (khyod) acts like “x” in mathematics where one has to find “x”. In this chapter there are seven other phenomenons that have similar requirements like the above and it gets quite confusing keeping track of them in debate since they are all so similar sounding. Anyhow, we are getting to the point where Gen la will point out distinctions between the four philosophical schools that we will be studying in the future which gives us a sneak peak in what is to come.

Yesterday I met an Israeli monk on the street that I was curious about when I first came to “Da Ganj” in ’05. I use to go to every teachings I could then, and I remember seeing in a ocean of maroon this one monk who was obviously not Tibetan, but just kickin’ there listening directly to the teachings. I had no idea who he was or where he was from, until one day I was circumambulating in the main temple while a debate session was going on in the courtyard. And so after my oblations and went down to investigate and saw this monk cutting into another in debate. By the time I got to where it was happening there was a small crowd of old Tibetans listening in watching this strange white monk doing his thing. After the debate was over I asked the monk in Tibetan where was he from and to my surprise he said Israel. He was in the program for the full time, a true Geshe in training, and now I assume that at time that he was in the Perfection of Wisdom class. I was surprised for up until that time I have met few Israelis deeply interesting in Buddhism nevertheless one that had taken on the maroon robes. Then, McLeod Ganj was and is still known to be full of Israelis backpackers, many just released from mandatory military service, to chill, relax and have a good time. I told him that I was attending Sarah within the year and that I was interested in the course that he is going through. He wished me luck and that was that. Since then I have seen him a few times (including once at Sarah where he sat as defender when the previous class had an all-night debate) and we will usually chat briefly. But this time it was in a mode of congratulations towards me for getting in the course and for me it was like completing a circle. It is weird to think also that in a couple of years this same monk might be clapping in front of my face.

Another Western monk, this one American, congratulated me last week. This one is quite a translator trained in the FPMT (Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo) translator program a few years back. I sat next to him by chance at a teaching in the fall of ’07 and we started talking for I noticed that he had great insight into the Dharma and he spoke Tibetan really good. We talked a bit about what led us to where we were now and I told him what I was up to and what my plans were with my Tibetan language study. He was just so friendly and laid back. After the lunch break he presented me with a small donation for my studies, in which I was flabbergasted, I couldn’t take it from a monk. It is supposed to be the other way around. But he insisted, not taking no for an answer, stating that there are not many folks out there with enough motivation, interested in taking the time to do the work monk, lay or otherwise. I wasn’t sure if I was the right person for this but I give in and I held on to the donation for three years until I was accepted into the philosophy program in which it was included in my first three months tuition for the course. It was last weekend up the hill that I received the opportunity to thank him for that, for being farseeing three years back. For though then I wanted to take the course, I had no idea if I would have gotten in or not. Through those intermediary years I wondered, “what if I do not get in?” But that did not happen, in both cases with the Israeli and the American monk I felt a circle close and another open. I am glad that there are cool Western monastics around that I have befriended, for I have met many who are not so cool and I’ve often wondered why did they become monks or nuns. But that might be another entry for the future.

Pax

Pataan Nahi!

Gen la started class this pass Monday by jokingly stating, “Y’alls don’t keep information in your minds, instead you have it all stored on these recorders”, as he causally stared at the array of digital recorders that lay on a table in front him. “Back in my day we were scruple-less when came to taking notes, we had no recording devices” he said. Gen la is interesting when it comes to giving us advice. About our previous all-night debate he said that we lacked a lot discipline. About debating in general, he was reminding us not to get discouraged; this process is about learning how to think in a totally new and different way, there are many ups and downs along the way, some have the capacity to pick it up quickly, while the majority might take one to two years get the hang of it. When he said this I was thinking that that will probably be me.

Many times he will bring up something that might relate to Physics (like antimatter, sub-atomic particles, Stephen Hawkins, theory of relativity, etc) though he is by no means an expert in the subject, just to show us that there are applications for our study outside of the realm of clapping our hands and stomping our feet in the debate courtyard. But similarly as the laboratory is for the scientist so is the courtyard for us as neophyte dialecticians and onwards. In Tibetan the name of our class is nang don rig pa, which could mean “the way or the science of the internal meaning”, and as we debate we are called to look for the deeper meaning, to dig deeper. About presenting debates he made an interesting comparison as to how in modern courts the defendant and the prosecution presents there cases in front of the judge and jury setting up each argument and posing the pros and cons for each case. Our task in some ways is not that dissimilar he stated since it requires clear reasoning, sequencing, order and proof. Though I wonder what my friends from college who have finished law school and are newbie lawyers would say to that. How dissimilar is dialectic school from law school I have wondered? I have to say that I appreciate what Gen la says, though his general stature is seemingly stoic, it shows that speaks from thorough experience and that he cares about our progress.

During our daily debates, he just walks around slowly with his hands behind his back, roaming to and fro from different groups listening. Sometimes he might say something, but most of the time he just stands there and he stands in such a way that one can’t really tell if he is listening to you or to the challenger and defender debating a few feet away from you. This illusion is enhanced by the fact that he has an eye condition where he wears sunglasses all the time. Jeremy, an American student from the previous class referred to him as Morpheus, except this one dons monks robes. As I have said before, he leads us down the rabbit of hole of Buddhist reasoning.

That stack of books that you see in the picture above represents most of the books we will be using for the next six years. Not including this year, after finishing the study of logic and reasoning we will move on to the heavy stuff. The Perfection of Wisdom (phar phyin, prajnaparamita) course is the longest course and with in lays the study of the Abhisamayaalamkaara ‘The Ornament of Manifest Realizations” (mngon rtogs rgyan) and Pramaanavaartikakaarika ‘The Full Commentary to the Compendium of Valid Cognition’ (tshad ma rnam ‘grel). For this course so far we have received 32 texts as you see stacked like mountain and we are to receive another 7 to 8 more texts as soon as they arrive from Varanasi and South India. I will like to thank a very cool and intelligent Singaporean nun and classmate Ani Aneja of sponsoring the texts for me. The Korean ex-genetic engineer monk Tenzin Kunzig and Korean layperson Tenzin Rabjam sponsored all of the books for the Tibetan and Himalayan students, which was über awesome. In total the cost of all the books per student will come to about 100 bones US. We received the majority of the books on Tuesday. There are 38 some odd students, so as you can imagine, that meant tons of books. The books were first sent from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in South India to Pathankot (4 hours from here) at the Punjab-Himachel Pradesh province border, and brought to Sarah by a few students from class. The afternoon that we came to get the books, they were all stacked in the temple towards the front; an impressive heap of texts if I had ever seen any. As it says in a visualization exercise, “imagine to your rear, a stack of scriptures stacked like a mountain”, I thought of this when I saw this pile. Gen la had a list with everyone’s name on it and per text he called us up one by one to retrieve them.

As the our individual piles steadily got bigger I was thinking, “imagine if in college during ones first year if you received all your books that you will need for all the four or five years of college if it will match or surpass the amount of books I am getting now?”, probably yes, but going to the college bookstore and this are two different things. As I knew that we were to be getting a bunch of books I had brought my army duffle bag with me. The other students either had to use some of the boxes that the books had original been packed in or haul it by hand. With most of us living on the 4^th floor besides me and two others on the 5^th floor, walking from the temple to the boy’s hostel, we looked like line of lemmings (these being golden and maroon ones) carrying these stacks in a line all the way up them stairs. Some of the stacks were as tall as the lemmings themselves. Ani Nga la, a very tiny and petite Vietnamese nun stood at about the same height as her stack. After receiving these texts, unpacking them in my room and looking at them I wonder if I will be able to digest the material stored within them. Here in front of me lay some very tough stuff, boy! I struggle with the three texts on reasoning that we are using now. All in due time I suppose. On the other hand I am excited for my future study.

Normally at Sarah, nothing exciting ever really happens. Everyone goes about their day, studying (most of us) hard. They haven’t started the interclass debates yet; these are more like round table debates as in college back home. The tragedies in Ladakh and Amdo of course are the minds of the students. But at Sarah not much is happening, the new to be water tower and badminton/volleyball court is something I suppose, well also when the students arrive from Emory and Miami Universities for their study abroad programs at Sarah the college goes all out to welcome them with a concert that the students have prepared. They use to show movies on the basketball court after Wednesday night prayers, I hope that they start that up again soon. The last movie that I remember seeing on the b-ball court was 2012 last year which was a bad movie, though the student body got a hell of a kick out the section that was made to seem like it was Tibet with lamas and monks and all, since that was probably the only section in the movie that the majority could actually understand, roars of laughter were undeniable due to the odd way that the actors spoke Tibetan. This week has been raining like no somebody’s biz-snatch and one rainy morning just after I had gotten my piece of Tibetan bread for breakfast from the school kitchen an electrical wire attached to a fuse box in front of the girl’s hostel just started shooting sparks madly like it was the 4^th of July. Girls were screaming madly, though it was quite a dangerous situation, no one was anywhere near the fireworks. Most of us in the vicinity just stared in amazement at the spectacle. I thought of how many times every day that folks walk underneath at wire and luckily while no one was underneath it erupted in sparks; I then thought to myself, “Only in India, Only at Sarah!”

I would like to conclude with a joke that was told to me this week by a classmate. In Hindi, “pataan nahi” means I don’t know, and there are many stories that run about poking fun at new arrival’s naïveté when they first arrive in India. Here it goes. A nomad fresh from Tibet is traveling around India and he is just amazed at the development that he sees. One day at a train station, he is very curious as to who built it. He sees a guy standing near him and he asks, “Who built this station?” to which the guy not understanding Tibetan replied, “pataan nahi” with a smooth Indian head wobble and a shrug. The nomad thought to himself, “Hmmm, this Pataan Nahi fellow is quite an architect”. So another day, he is at the airport and he is just amazed, he has never seen anything like it and he asks a woman, “Who built this airport?” and she also replied, “pataan nahi”. Now the nomad is like, “Wow, Pataan Nahi must be a genius, just look at all the things he can build, I want to find Pataan Nahi and gave him some money for all of his achievements!” And so he begins his quest and goes around New Delhi and one day he sees on the street a poor dirty laborer doubled over carrying a heavy sack of rocks on this back. The nomad then asks someone, “Who is that man?”, “pataan nahi” he replied. The nomad was surprised that this poor toiling man was the great Pataan Nahi who had built all the incredible structures that he has been seeing and so he goes over to the laborer and gives him some money to the surprise of the laborer.

Pax

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...