Budhanilkantha Ashram

I’ve been in Nepal for almost 3 months now, and have learned more about Nepali life and culture in the last 2 1/2 weeks here at Budhanilkantha Ashram in Kathmandu then I had in the previous 2 months.

My life here is very simple. I practice, I tend to the needs of the body; there are no demands or external responsibilities. Mind continues to adjust to the reality that this is all that’s happening for some time to come; that the majority of the waking hours will be spent either practicing meditation, pranayama or asana and for excitement listening to a Dhamma talk or reading about Yoga (the broader philosophy not the asanas).

The ashram is proving to be the perfect container for my practice; I feel very well cared for here. I knew intuitively when I was serving as a steward at the Vihara and Aranya Bodhi that I wanted to ensure that all who visited felt welcome and supported, to feel that those environments were a refugee. Now that I am on the receiving end I realize anew just what a gift it is to be looked after in this way; a beneficial motivation to take back to the Vihara next spring.

The nice counterbalance to all of the solitary practice is the time I spend with Shankar (my now friend and taxi driver who introduced me to Swamiji, his guru) and Gunjan Bramachari (the Hindu monk who takes care of the ashram and serves as the principal of the ashram school).

Gunjan and I have dinner together every night in the kitchen that I wrote about in the last entry. Even when he has eaten at the Hindu temple close by, he still prepares my meal and joins me for conversation. It is very sweet to observe how we get more comfortable and at ease together with each meal. We laugh deeply and frequently as we talk about Buddhist and Hindu beliefs, life in Nepal and the US and our own paths. I was touched yesterday when he asked by what means we would keep in contact after I’ve left the ashram.

Our conversations on Nepali culture are wide ranging, fueled by my curiosity. I learned that fully 20% of working age Nepali men go to other countries to earn money to send home. There are agencies that place men in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. The work is hard and very dangerous; I’m told that at least one dead Nepali man arrives at Tribhuvan airport every day.

Most marriages in Nepal are arranged and divorce is not part of the culture, although men do leave their wives to live with another woman. It appears not uncommon for women to be stuck in abusive situations here and they simply have no recourse.

I believe these cultural norms are destined to change due to a mass migration from the villages to Kathmandu, Nepal’s population having tripled in the last 30 years and an evident Western influence. 

Given these social conventions, I asked Gunjan about the role romantic love plays in this culture. As we all know, romantic love is a prevalent theme in the West. His reply was a completely confused look, he just didn’t understand what I was asking, had no frame of reference. 

I suspect I had the same look when he asked me what the English word was for a man who charms a monkey and brings it to the market. We don’t have monkeys in our markets, trained or otherwise…

Showing Gunjan the video I took of Aranya Bodhi Forest Hermitage was a reality check; the concept “off-the-grid” feels ludicrous here. Life at AB to a Westerner is hard. Watching the video with a Nepali who grew up in a village it seemed relatively luxurious to me; it was the full sized refrigerator that stood out most.   

No electricity or running water in the kutis, living in a tent (Nepalis don’t use tents), cold shower, washing clothes by hand… so what? That’s just village life (or better). 

Meeting Shankar’s family has also given me an opportunity to learn about Nepali culture. I think very highly of Shankar, he is both a truly dedicated yogi and a good family man. 

It is clear that he is treating his wife well and teaching his children so that they will grow up to be strong and spiritual adults. I was curious about his family but hadn’t asked because I didn’t want to be inadvertently rude by being too direct.

A few weeks ago he brought his wife, daughter (12), son (8), sister, nephew and sister-in-law to the ashram to meet me. His wife, who cooks the best Nepali food I’ve had (along with Swamijii’s) had prepared dinner and brought it to the ashram to serve to myself and Gunjan. 

I was honored to meet them, it was obvious that considerable effort was made to make this occur. A ride in Shankar’s small taxi with seven people, dinner and miscellaneous things needed to spend the night was an effort in itself. What surprised me was that Shankar made it clear that he thought it was their honor to meet me.

This entry is not quite complete but I’m leaving for the airport in a few minutes so will end here for now. Perhaps more on my time in Nepal in a subsequent entry…

Finally, I’m In Nepal

You’d think by now that feeling “this is unbelievable” would be more elusive, but it continues to manifest with regularity.

I’m in a Nepali ashram, a real one this time, and now after 2+ months it feels like I’m finally experiencing the real Nepal, as opposed to getting a glimpse of it through the lens of the tourist.

The guru is currently away teaching in Lumbini (the birthplace of Siddartha Gotama – the Buddha) for about a week; precise time and dates of return are not how it works here. Despite a fair amount of room only a few people live here, 2 of whom (the guru and his attendant) are not here right now.

Except for 2 local women who come during the day to cook and clean, I am the only woman here. The men are all treating me as an equal, as a guest. This is such a contrast to my experiences at Theravadan Buddhist monasteries in Thailand (see the other blog entry). 

Yesterday was Nepali New Year (2070) so the cook had the day off. A few boys from the ashram school made dinner. 5 boys ranging in age from about 10 to 15, myself and Chanendra a very interesting and intelligent Nepali man who lives at the ashram and teaches at the school were present.

The boys served my food, insisted on washing my dish for me. Today at lunch was just myself and Rakesh, another Nepali man I had a wide ranging conversation with yesterday. As is the case in Buddhist monastic settings, there is an order in which people receive food. After Gunjan Brahmachari (he seems to be the one who looks after things) ate, Rakesh turned to me and said “I defer to you, you go first”.

Then this evening (there is food offered around noon and again around 7pm here – and I do mean those as approximate times) Gunjan Brahmachari heated the food and served it to me. No one else was eating because there was a festival and he and the boys ate somewhere else. 

Firstly, it was incredibly generous to offer me food at all when I was the only one eating. Secondly, the fact that a monk was alone with a woman and was serving me was deeply surprising after all the time I’ve spent with Buddhist monastics.

By contrast, when Ayya and I were at Wat Phan Nanachat in Thailand we went to enter a structure where a dhamma talk was to be given. Although in Thailand, the monastery is a branch of Wat Nong Pah Pong (remember my skirt?) and was created to teach Westerners and ordain Western men. As Ayya and I started to walk up a short set of stairs the American monk informed us quite clearly that these were the monk’s stairs and we women needed to go use the other ones.

I’ve never been served by men in this way, it really got my attention. I suspect it has something to do with me being a Westerner. I’ve observed how the Nepali women defer to men; walking a little behind them sometimes, serving the men first, so it is not as though there is gender equality here. Which makes the way I am being treated by the men I’ve encountered at this ashram even more remarkable.

Gunjan speaks English very well so we were able to have a real conversation, mostly about spiritual things. I’m generalizing here but what I’ve observed, both in the US and here, is that Hindus laugh a lot more then Buddhists.

It was just he and I in the room that servers as the kitchen; trying to explain the experience of being there is an attempt to describe the indescribable but I’ll try.   

Dark outside, the room dimly lit by one blub, I sat on the floor on a narrow straw mat. He sat on a bench on the wall to my left. He with long black hair, long black beard, white hat and white tunic.

The kitchen is very old, rectangular about 5 feet wide and 8 feet long with a low ceiling. You can see the wood boards in the ceiling (beams would be far too grand a description), cement floor, brick and cement walls, dirty by American standards. You enter through a low doorway, and you take your shoes off prior to entry.

There are 2 propane fueled burners used for cooking, a set of shelves where the dishes are stored, a small cabinet for spices. It smells faintly of manure depending on the direction of the wind.

There is also a fairly small hole in the wall obscured by a plastic bag hanging from a nail which covers the hole. I know this because I looked up just in time to see a LONG rat’s tail disappear into the hole. Gunjan saw it too and he jumped up to look. When we left he said “now we can leave the kitchen to the mouse”.

I laughed and said “mice are little, that was a rat!”. He laughed and said they get as big as cats, the cats don’t want anything to do with them. I just laughed and said “neither do I” !

Receiving food in this way, served at approximate times and happily accepting whatever is offered, reminds me of the monastic life lived by the Bhikkhunis. It is an odd feeling to have absolutely no control over the food you eat, it is a sense of surrender.

From a health standpoint I do have some level of trepidation about eating the food here but I eat what is offered with gratitude. I can recognize the rice and the dal, the other items are a mystery (at least there is one common experience between my time here and in the Thai monasteries). They are vegan here so it really doesn’t matter to me what is served. 

Although odd sometimes, it always just feels good to receive the generosity of others and to be easily contented. Makes for a much more peaceful life.

The Old and The New

Another candle lit room in a guest house in semi-rural Nepal, on a ridge which overlooks 2 small lakes and 2 villages. This is my second time staying adjacent to Nepalese villages; the first being the 9 days I spent last week in Sarangkot, about 15 km from here.

The guest house where I've been staying is on a high point, I have a 360 degree view of the surrounding area. Just below is a village. As a westerner, the term “village” used to conjure a very different image. One of neat houses and a few (modern) stores, perhaps a gas station.  A “one street town” if you will.

I’ve seen or walked through a number of villages the past few weeks and these are not that.

The village below, similar to the others I’ve seen, consists of some structures where people live. The buildings are worn, occasionally missing part of a wall, sometimes made of stone or brick, sometimes made of what I guess to be clay or hardened mud. 

Often there are very large conical heaps of drying straw, by large I mean up to 12 feet high and 5 feet wide. The straw is used for the goats which are often part of the household. And oxen are not an uncommon sight. 

Often the goats and oxen are tied to a stake in the ground by a piece of string, although I’ve seen many goats and oxen wandering freely too. When the Nepalese people call the goats they say “la-la-la-la-la”; it seems to work.

Most households have either a plot of land where food is grown or they have terraced fields, which they use the oxen to plough. I’ve grown accustomed to the sound the men make to spur the oxen, and the sound of sticks hitting the oxen when they are not bending to the men’s will. Makes me sad that sound, they hit the oxen hard sometimes.

There is no running water in these village homes. What I’ve seen in the parts of Nepal I’ve visited, even in Kathmandu, is a common water source where people get their water, bathe and wash clothes. 

In Sarangkot I watched women lug big metal jugs of water up very steep hills; watched women do a family’s worth of laundry by the side of the road. At Rupa Tal (lake) this morning I watched a woman haul a huge pile of clothes to the lakeside and proceed to wash them (no soap evident) on a rock.

I stand on the balcony outside my room here in Begnas Tal and look at the village below, and I get a sense of another time. Standing on the rooftop, I feel like I’m standing on the deck of a time machine.

Here in these villages there are no stores, no infrastructure and limited transportation (meaning your feet). What you eat is what you produce. The milk comes from the goats. The vegetables come from the ground. 

I asked the guest house wife/mother who handles the food to make some food for me. Boiled vegetables and “gundruk” a Nepali soup made with dried spinach and garlic. A few minutes later I watched her pull a few carrots out of the ground. 

This is how life is here, so different from the world I left behind. And these people are relatively modern and well off so they have some way of getting into town to buy things like rice and dal for keeping on hand. But I sense many villagers don’t have the resources to go to town much.

What strikes me as I gaze at that village is that, for the inhabitants, this is the whole world. 

How does one transcend that circumstance? Of what import is the outside world?  I think about social life in the village. How does one find a partner from such a small number of choices? And what if you’re gay? I can really see the isolation of it, just the village and its environs, that’s all there is.

Walking through the jungle the other day I passed a woman carrying a big bundle of sticks on her back, tied across her head the way they carry things here. Passed other women with baskets on their backs and small scythes foraging for plants. What there is is what is here; use it wisely, use it all.

I really had no concept of that back home. We have everything, anytime.

The reason it was so easy for me to eat meat, long after I knew it was ethically wrong to do so, was because the package in the store (or food served on my plate at a restaurant) was so far removed from the actual animal. It simply was not the same thing.

All of my food was that way, I am a “city person”. I go to the clean, well lit store and select attractive, sterile packages of food products. Or select produce from pretty, rainbow colored heaps without a thought as to how far that fruit has traveled. Or how it got there. In my world what there is is everything.

I’d heard the term “developing country” many times before, but think I now understand what it means in a real-world sense. Nepal is a “developing country”. It is the old sitting side by side with the new.

The old… the village life I described, the lack of infrastructure i.e. unpaved roads, limited electricity etc.

The new… the zip line in Sarangkot that you literally have to walk through the houses in the village to access. 

The new… the city of Pokhara 15 km from here, which is the gateway to the Annapurna circuit, a major trekking destination. Pokhara caters to Westerners and is by far the most affluent area I’ve seen due to the influx of tourist money. Affluent being a relative term of course.

The old and the new all in one… I met a young man as I was sitting in the jungle yesterday. He lives in the village and spoke English very well. I sat on one rock, he squatted on another. He goes to school in Pokhara, studies commerce, aspires to own a guesthouse someday and employ the village people.

Earlier this evening I realized that I too am developing, I too am the old and the new.

The old… My life is my commitment to the ancient wisdom and practices of the Buddha and the Hindu traditions; meditation, pranayama, asana, study.

The new… the freedom, mobility and resources to be typing this blog entry on my laptop in a candle lit room in Nepal. 

I Still Can't Believe It Myself

I am alone in a candle lit room.  The low rumble of thunder provides my “mood music”. Occasional flashes of lightning illuminate the Nepali Sky. With some frequency these days the feeling arises… This is unbelievable. The way I am living/have been living the past 1 ½ years is literally unbelievable, even to me and I am the one swimming in this stream of experience.

It seems impossible that I live a solitary life on the road, transitioning from one radically different environment to the next on an almost continual basis. I know no one who has a life lived quite this way. I have met no one in my travels (yet) who has gone this far, let go of this much. And I’m just coming to the heart of this phase of the journey. To the deepest, most uncharted place.

Over and over I have had faith, have let go inch by inch. Over and over, clearer understanding emerges about what this really entails. Learning just how many aspects of this journey require faith. Learning how much there is to let go of.

It is a truism that one really never knows what an experience will be like until it is actually experienced. Mind frequently thinks it knows, has expectations (subtle or obvious) about what an upcoming situation will look like, feel like. In all of this I have tried to limit my expectations, tried not to imagine what any of these situations would be like beforehand because I knew it would be impossible to do so. There is simply no frame of reference to rely upon.

After a long preliminary I have finally put myself in the set of circumstances to live life in semi-retreat for 7 months. For the past few weeks I’ve been transitioning into this phase, slowly entering a long period of quiet.  I am aware of the mental process of slowing down, it is going to require a long time.

In this mind a gigantic boulder of momentum rolls down a very steep hill. A lifetime of DOING. Thinking. Planning. I see resistance to simply being arise. Witness the subtle and not-so-subtle strain of a mind which is habituated to doing something, gradually accepting the fact there this is not about doing. There is nothing to do. There is simply each breath, each moment.

Each day is spent meditating 3 – 5 times per day, practicing pranayama 2-3 times per day, practicing asana  or an occasional hike instead and each day includes a period of devotional chanting.

And here’s where the faith HAS to arise again.  I truly do not know where this will lead, have no idea if it will lead anywhere. I have no idea how this will change “me”, but I know that somehow it will. When striving and goal orientation arise I see them and let them go as much as possible. This is not about striving, not about “getting somewhere”.

I’ve decided it’s best to simply see this as an experiment. Hmmm... what will happen if I keep this up for (what feels like at this moment) a long time? Will it produce some positive benefit for this self and for others?

To people who have not engaged in this type of practice, spending the day this way may sound easy. It is not.

It is often enjoyable, frequently peaceful. AND it requires self discipline, commitment, determination, curiosity, focus and a smattering of incredulity at the radical and somewhat daunting task I’ve set before myself. 

 I love this life, sitting alone, quietly in this candle lit space created just for me.

3rd World - 1st Impression

We arrived at the Tribuhvan airport after dark; where we arrived was very different from the airport we had departed from. Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok is very new, modern and clean. It provides one the opportunity to purchase $10 ice cream sundaes and Channel perfume in addition to the ubiquitous “authentic” Thai coconut cookies (which I had seen nowhere but at the airport).

Nepal was a contrast even before the plane hit the runway. We were given an immigration form to complete on the plane. The questions were standard, however, the paper of the official form was incredibly thin and somewhat coarse. Upon landing there was no jet way, one walks down a set of stairs and onto the tarmac. The inside of the terminal was dark and worn, no Channel or cookies to be found. 

Kathmandu is the only major city in the world without 24 hours of electricity. “Load shedding” occurs every day; in theory each neighborhood gets 12 hours per day of electricity, however, many of these hours occur in the middle of the night so some days it seems that there is not electricity most of the day. 

My first entre to Kathmandu was unsettling and surreal. We had arranged with the guest house where we would be staying to have a taxi meet us at the airport.  We knew we were looking for a man named Ganesh which I took to be a good sign; Ganesh is the Hindu deity who removes obstacles.

Walking out of the terminal was like a scene from movies I’d seen.  Because of load shedding it was fairly dark; generators allowed for enough light to make things visible, but not at all bright the way public places are in the U.S. 

On each side of the exit doors was a metal barrier, beyond which a mass of people were crowded and clambering, trying to find their arriving friends and relatives. In front of us was the usual group of taxi drivers I’ve now traveled enough to expect to see every time I get off of a mode of public transportation overseas; all jostling and yelling for your attention and the fare.

Among the pack we found a mildly disgruntled Ganesh (our plane was 2 hours late), holding a sign with Ayya’s name on it. He led us through the dimly lit parking lot to his truck. Old. Rusted. Cracked windshield. And off we went.

There are no streetlights in Kathmandu, no stop signs. Drivers honk their horns profusely to let other drivers know they’re coming or that others are not driving quickly enough or that they’re going to pass (in the face of oncoming traffic). 

Traveling down dirty unpaved streets, passing rows of shops with metal barriers all rolled down, piles of garbage and an occasional cow I have to admit to having been frightened for the first time in my travels.

We navigated via byzantine streets to the guest house and arrived about 11:30 pm. The metal gate was locked and Ganesh lightly pounded on the door to attract the night guard’s attention. Our keys had been left at reception so the guard was able to show us to our rooms. 

Perspective is a funny thing…

On the first look at the room where I would be staying for 5 weeks I thought, “OMG, it’s dirty and cold in here” (there is no heat in the rooms and the temperature at arrival was in the 40’s). But after getting over my first week of culture shock I came to realize what an oasis that guest house truly was. 

I looked at 5 other guesthouses in the area and by far, this was the cleanest and nicest. Located in a monastery compound it was quiet, removed from the poor souls begging on the streets (some having lost fingers to leprosy). It had a nice garden, a good vegetarian restaurant and I was able to have a hot shower about 70% of the time I wanted one.

Living this itinerant life I’m learning to adapt quickly to the new situations that arise with great frequency. Becoming content with whatever is offered. And although this is true,  my first look at most of my new accommodations has invariably produced that “OMG response” -  which by now is just as quickly followed by laughter at the absurdity that is this blessed life.

Note: I’m writing this from a room which necessitates my first use of the word “squalor”.  I’m in what was advertised as an ashram but is decidedly NOT an ashram. I was planning to stay here for 2 weeks but am leaving tomorrow after only 6 nights. Ananda Yoga Center is a blog entry for another day...