The Lotusland

Nothing to Show for It

A year and a half has passed by.  We roamed across five countries; we sweated on the humid plains of Nepal in September; we burned in the ultra-violet rays of the Ladakhi summer sun; we froze in unheated and protein-deficient ashrams in the mountain wastes at the source of Mother Ganga;  we endured fevers, giardia, grave and terrible flatulence,  rashes,  a bus accident, theft, overland border crossings into and out Nepal, the relentless noise and dust and feces that is Bodh Gaya during the high season.  And what do we have to show for it?  I ask you, what do we have to show for it?

Well, I'm 36 years old and I'm living with my parents. With my wife.    I've got the same job that I had when I left.  I've got many of the same problems too.   I suppose the fact that Juliann didn't leave me is something to my credit - though you can spin that any way you want really.   And then there are the photos (about 2000 - click here and take a look to see them all).   Some have said they're good.  Others suggested that I do more editing.  And then there is this rather paltry blog which remains motionless for weeks and months on end.

"But", people rush in to say, apparently motivated by kindly concern about my self-esteem,  "you had an important experience.  You'll remember it for the rest of your life."  At which point I hasten to remind them that memory is unreliable, tending as it does to fade and mutate, not to mention that it is not dependably pleasant.

People ask, how was your trip?

Great, I say.

Did you accomplish everything you set out to do?

Errr..eh..uh, I say.

Were you transformed?

Sorta kinda, I say.

So in what way?

Well for one thing, I say, experience is overrated.

  Oh.  And then a baffled silence descends followed by a change in subject, outright hostility, or occasionally, curiosity.  Well. What does that mean? Experience is overrated?!  When you left, Danny,  I was afraid you were going to come back full of just this kind of nonsense!     Just like in My Dinner with Andre  when Wallace Shawn is sitting politely listening to Andre (his once reliable but now kooky friend) tell about what he's been up to for the last few years.  What kind of Buddhist baloney is that?   Experience is overrated!?

Well, what I mean is very straightforward.   But one thing first.  I just want to make it absolutely clear that I in no way whatsoever - not in the least bit - identify with the Andre Gregory character in the movie.  But I digress. "Experience"  -  in the sense of exceptional,  important, exotic,  interesting, challenging, stirring, moving and generally fascinating sights, sounds, tastes, smells, touches  and ideas - is of value only to the extent that it shows us how we are not free.  And it turns out that crappy, unfulfilling, painful, and upsetting experiences are of great value as well so long as they are seen for what they truly are: inconstant, stressful and without any abiding self.  The big implication here is that there's no need to run off to acquire shiny experiences.  Yes, it is deeply, deeply ironic. Nor is it necessary to run away from the undesirable.  It is necessary only to stop contending with experience and to get curious about its nature.  To know about its nature is to know how experiences come and go.  What comes first? And then what? And then what?

Have you ever noticed that we don't actually control whether we like or dislike things in a particular moment.  We either do or we don't.  Like Chana Samosa.   It's good, it's good, it's good, and then one day, it's bad.   Same is true for the super burrito at Taqueria Cancun.   All of a sudden I just couldn't eat them anymore after years, literally years, of eating them.   And if a taste for a burrito that you've had for years is not dependable, what about other more complex things?  Like memories, preferences, or people?  The beauty is that the instability of all things cuts in the other direction as well.  How many times did the feared, hated, avoided situation, person, or event turn out to be a cause of joy, happiness, benefit, what have you?

When Juliann and I were on our way to a two month meditation course at Panditarama Forest Center in Burma last year, we ran into Steve Armstrong  and a friend of his at the Classique Inn in Yangon (a nice place to stay by the way - really friendly hosts and excellent Mohinga served for breakfast).  They were on their way up to Mandalay to build a school run by Sayadaw U Lakkhana.   Anyway, he had apparently spent several years with the teacher we were off to practice with. So we asked him if he had any advice for us.  He said with a congenial smile: Don't believe anything your mind tells you, and you'll be fine."  And it was good advice. It's too bad I didn't heed it!

Another way of saying the same thing might be this:  it is unprofitable to judge one's experience; but it is highly profitable to evaluate it.  Or as my granddaddy Lou used to say: good or bad, it's all grist for the mill.  Well, at least it is the kind of thing he might have said.

Stars Over Key Gompa

Key Gompa seems far away now from the noisy and crowded alleys of Old Manali, crammed with what seems like millions of young Israelis with dreadlocks and dijereedoos slung over their muscular shoulders, screaming through the streets on Royal Enfields with their smoking bronzed girlfriends. I've tried at least 16 different interpretations of falafel since we arrived last week, many of them faithful representations. The late Sixtees are big among my young tribesmen: in small dope den-like cafes, Janis Joplin and Pink Floyd blare from speakers obscured the thick haze of pot smoke. For the most part, we've been enjoying watching the world go round and round from our second floor veranda in our guesthouse situated in the middle of an apple orchard. There's a great bookstore in town which we've been plundering practically every other day. "No Full Stops In India", "Journey To Ladakh", "Words of My Perfect Teacher", "The Life of Milarepa" - these are some of the titles we've been gnawing on. In the afternoons, we've gotten in the habit of walking through the large deodar forest which separates New from Old Manali. When the wind blows through the stately evergreens, they bend and sway langurously like sea anemones far below the surface, their pliable branches mingling easily with their unconcerned neighbors.

Some of you have wondered about what we're doing for food these days. With the exception of our time here in Manali, food has just been a functional part of life. We used to get excited about it, but then after so many disappointments and unexpected aftermaths, we've come to regard with a degree of equanimity. Of course there is one exception to this rule, and that is chana samosa. Chana Samosa was introduced to us in Sangla by a lean and limber guitar-toting Israeli heart-throb named Tomer who possessed all kinds of useful information about how not to get fleeced in India. However we will always remember him with the deepest gratitude for graciously initiating us into Chanasamosanana [pronounced chah-na-sa-moh-sa-nya-na] - Knowledge of Chana Samosa. For never more than fifteen rupees and often for as few as ten, you get two crispy fresh samosas squashed on a plate, doused in chana (chickpea) curry, plum sauce, yogurt, spicy mint chutney, onions and parsley. Of course, this is the ideal, but it doesn't usually stray far from it. For a while I was eating it like I used to eat burritos in my early twenties while living in the Mission: three times a day. Now that other options abound (like falafel) we've both cut back. But once we leave Little Tel Aviv (ie Manali), for my part, I intend to return to post-Tomer, pre-falafel regime.

What I really wanted to talk about was our visit to the medieval fortress-like gompa of Key, which, at an altitude of 14,000 ft, is perched on a giant conical sandstone eruption beneath a vertigious palisade. We arrived just in time for lunch, after a two hour jeep ride that involved squeezing 14 people (one on the roof) and dropping a mightily aged lama off on woefully barren stretch of road so that he could walk up to his solitary cave in the cliffs above. We were enthusiastically welcomed by our host Tenzin Namgyal (right), a young monk charged with looking after all the visitors. And he took care of us with such refinement and grace that I don't think it at all exaggerated to say that he brought the hospitality art to new and daring levels. He understood the notion of just the right amount of attention - not to little to make us feel neglected, not so much that we felt ourselves to be an imposition.

After lunch, he took me around on an introductory tour. The smoky kitchen was perhaps the most amazing room of all: its high ceiling supported by large wooden columns; the walls and ceiling completely blackened with soot; massive, what must have been hundred gallon vats over wood burning fires, bubbling with chai and Thanthuk - a thick Tibetan noodle stew - which would be ladelled out generously from buckets like the one you seen in the photo of Tenzin.

The 26 year-old Tenzin was doing his duty with genuine gusto and to good effect - but nevertheless he was hankering to continue developing his meditation practice which he will renew at the end of the summer when the traffic of guests died down. When I mentioned that Juliann and I were ourselves enthusiastic practioners, he looked like he might start hopping up and down with joy, and insisted that we return to spend the winter in his room - all the three of us. I must have looked at him a little dubiously because he reassured me with the classic Indian expression, "No problem," which can mean anything from no problem to unsolvable problem. I imagined how we would sit on cushions by a toasty stove, meditating quietly between chai breaks, and watching the snow fall silently in the evenings. Awakened from my daydream, he took my hand and led me out to the main courtyard to show me the view. So we walked around the courtyard holding hands like childhood friends, stopping to talk to this lama or that lama, and appreciating the expansive views of the Spiti Valley.

What precious days we spent at Key! Where time is marked by the beating of drums, ringing bells, the clash of cymbals, and the warm guttural chanting of red-robed monks! Where in the mornings we drank hot chai and ate bowls of tsampa soaked in butter tea! Where in the afternoons we watched the vast shadows engulf whole barren valleys in a moment only to be deluged again by the sun. At night, after our bowls of Thanthuk, we sang Leonard Cohen songs (Juliann [aka the human jukebox] and little me) on the lofty temple roof looking out on the valley floor thousands of feet below, welcoming the stars which, little by little, grew brighter until they blazed with a kind of holy intensity. The opening line of the Buddha's Fire Sermon drifted into my mind "the whole world is on fire," and I reflected how indeed it is true:  Even even in the midst of such happiness, time burns on, experience burns on, conditions rise and fall away like ashes in the wind, until what is becomes what was and what remains is the futile attempt to recreate it by writing about it.

The Donkey's Lament

If you look very closely you'll be able to spot the flock of a hundred odd sheep, goats, and yaks.   The photo was taken just outside of a little village in the Pin Valley called Mudh.   On our way out to the pastures, we watched the billy goats chew their cud in that slow, deliberate, and at times almost menacing way so characteristic of billy goats.

On our way back to our guest house , we came upon a small family sitting by a stream in one of their fields making chai over an open fire.   They invited us to sit down which we did, but only after the three customary refusals.   The tastiness of the chai and the warm and unobtrusive hospitality of our hosts caused us to forget (almost) the fact that the stream from which the water was being drawn was full of goat shit.   We learned that the young woman in the group was a nun who was helping her family with the fields before returning to the nunnery across the gully.

After Juliann had finished her second cup, we paid our respects and departed.   A little ways on, we stopped to watch a lone donkey  standing absolutely still in the middle of the local cricket field.   Then, as if suddenly beseiged by some invisible demon, the donkey erupted into a fearsomely spasmodic braying, braying which seemed at that moment a direct expression of the most heart wrenching and inconsolable despair.   I have been moved by the dukkha of donkeys before - especially the mangy, plastic bag eating varieties that I observed on a beach near Santa Marta, Colombia.  But there was something different here, something approaching a kind of cosmic lamentation.   We could do nothing but watch the convulsing donkey, now galloping furiously towards no visible landmark,  disappear into the distance.

In the Land of Buddha

The pilgrimage is over and, despite our coughs, sore throats, gurgling bellies, and watery eyes, we're still smiling, at the moment, from the banks of the Great Ganga here in Rishikesh. Let me revise that - the outer pilgrimage is over: Lumbini, the site of his birth; Bodh Gaya where he attained enlightenment; Sarnath, the place of his first sermon; and Kushinagar, the site of his death and cremation. The inner pilgrimmage, which began in the vast oceans of beginningless time continues until we know for ourselves that what needed to be done has been done.

But back to this so-called outer pilgrimage, the one that traverses space and time and involves personalities and things. Though I wouldn't change anything about it, I still can't help but wonder if it wouldn't have been just as good (or bad) if we hadn't joined a tour group of Thai or Sri Lankan matrons in whose devoted midsts we often involuntarily but nevertheless happily found ourselves. Why not?

It likely would have made the border crossing between India and Nepal a lot easier, gliding effortlessly high above the mud and choking fumes in one of those immaculate deluxe buses with "TOURIST" emblazoned on windshield, protected from the chaos of the Indian road. Actually going from India to Nepal was the easy part. Having rented a car in Kushinagar, we jerked and splashed our way through Indian and Nepali immigration with hardly a hitch. Our driver, skilled in the art of expedited border crossings, greased a few palms so adeptly that at times money changed hands without us even having to stop the car.

Once in Nepal, with its spacious unpopulated fields of the lushest green wheat, towering Himalayan foothills, and refreshing rain we felt ourselves to be the luckiest people in the world, just breathing fresh air in relative quiet. Both of us had looked forward to our visit to Lumbini and we weren't disappointed by the spectacular peacefulness of the place. An absolutely huge park has been laid out around the main pilgrimage site - many hundreds if not thousands of acres. The space is reserved for the construction of monasteries representing the many Buddhist traditions. Many temples have already been built - still more are under construction. We stayed in the dharamsala (pilgrim's rest house) of the Gautami Nun's Temple. The beds were dusty, there was no hot water, and the electricity was out, but it didn't matter at all. These apparent deficiencies were hardly noticeable as we were warmed by the glow of candles and the celestial chanting of the young novices in the adjacent temple lapping against our ears.

That was how it was for me at least. Perhaps this is only how it appears to me now, having weathered the rude reentry into India and arriving safely in Rishikesh. After all, where is the sore throat that was torturing me that very same night, the sore throat that caused me to "snore like a chainsaw" as Juliann observed irritably the next morning?

From the vantage point of the New Vardan Restaurant, a delicious joint in front of the Gorakpur railway station (separated only by a shallow river of mud and cow shit), the crossing back into India was no big deal. Panir (cheese) butter masala, when prepared and priced well, has a way of making everything seem manageable. At the time however we were unnerved when, after being asked once already to switch taxis at the border on the Nepali side, our new driver ( an Indian youth of maybe 18) was waved aside by a group of somewhat menacing looking men. An argument ensued between the boy and the other men. Finally the boy said "Car broken - change car." He looked scared to me.

"We've already paid - no more money," I said in a futile attempt to maintain control that I did not have.

"Yes yes," said the new driver merrily, "you are paying 100 rupees only."

"No way! Absolutely not!"

"Okay no problem, no problem."

Once in the new taxi, a second guy got into the front seat with the new driver which didn't put us at ease. Juliann, who normally has better intuition when it comes to this kind of situation, advocated that we bail out all together, eat our losses, and find another taxi unbesmirched by taxi mafia influence. I was nervous too, but the thought of conducting yet another negotiation seemed too wearisome. We made it to Gorakpur safely in the end, though I must admit I spent not a small portion of the two hour journey rehearsing different disaster plans. (Should Juliann wield the swiss army knife while I do the swinging and kicking? Or should I fight with the pocket knife while Juliann distracts them by feigning insanity? Perhaps making strange incantations followed by boasting of our generous offerings to Kali might be enough to make them hesitate before deciding to kill us.) We thought of many scenarios which could explain what happened at the border and then dropped it, realizing that truth was likely something entirely different.

I said, the Lumbini-Gorakpur leg of the journey ended with a nice cup of chai and good cheese butter masala. Of course, if we had switched taxis, we surely would have convinced ourselves that we had averted untimely deaths. Isn't this how we lead our lives? Imagining that we did the right thing or the wrong thing in this or that scenario and only then to make the fatal mistake of believing it? And yet these are just stories that we project onto the formless stream of our experience, stories that we pretend are true and then forget that we made them up in the first place. It could happen to you, you know. It's been my experience. I suppose these stories - these myths - are the floating currency of my life, anchored to nothing but themselves, buoyed by inattention and forgetfulness. A friend of mine once said that he thought we cannot escape our own mythology. Maybe. Maybe not. What would a mythology that leads to the unravelling of all mythologies of the self look like - from the inside? The same question could be asked in a slightly different way: if there are more or less skillful ways of relating to one's experience (more skillful = less anguish), what is the zenith of this kind of skill? What would it take to master it?

What I really wanted to talk about was toast. In India, if it's on the menu, it doesn't mean that it's available. And even if the waiter says they have it, it doesn't mean that it can be ordered at that particular moment. And even if the person next to you has ordered it, it doesn't mean that there will still be toast when you order it. Even if you ask if it's available and the waiter says it is, that doesn't mean that you can expect it to come on the same day. All it means, as far as I can gather is that if toast is on the menu, it only means that there is a potential for toast. I can hear my dad's voice as I write this: "you went all the way to India to have a plate of toast?!" Be it toast, nan, rotis, chipatis, parathas, papadams, or puris: nothing is certain. Even if you may get exactly what you asked for, it may no longer be what you want.

Juliann and I laughed all afternoon after overhearing a conversation between a German woman and a waiter after her set her breakfast down on the table.

Lady: "I ordered zee American breakfast. Where is zee rest?"

Waiter: "That's all."

"Ont zee menu it is says coffee, mango juice, eggs, toast, butter and lamb. Where is zee lamb?"

"That's a mistake - jam."

We laughed, not only because we think we're so great, but because it seems as reasonable to assume that a lamb chop will materialize with a plate of eggs as a ramekin full of jam. It could happen. No matter how skinny an alley is in Varanasi you just never know what can come around the corner: a herd of water buffalo, an auto rickshaw packed with people, a kid throwing dye on your new white kurta, two preternaturally white stallions, a river of sewage, a funeral procession. It's in places like Varanasi that suggest an ordered chaos at the heart of all things that, were we able to comprehend it fully, either liberate us or destroy us - or possibly both and almost certainly neither.

The journey to Bodh Gaya in mid February: through the open windows of a spectacularly decrepit public bus to the Howrah Railway Station in Kolkata...how to describe this...Imagine a corridor four lanes thick with 20 foot walls on either side, absolutely choked with every kind of man-powered and motor vehicle belching dark plumes of exhaust, everyone trying to move at the same time into nonexistent space. Bicyclists and pedestrians, pedalled and hand drawn rickshaws struggling at the margins, often millimeters from the great hulking masses jerking and pushing all around them. Everyone is on their horns continuously which, combined with the knocking roar of the unmuffled engines, raises a cacophony of truly hellish proportions. Between the roadway and the walls, countless families of five, ten, or more - men, women and many children - eking out the most miserable kind of existence in collapsing hovels of plastic and cardboard built atop piles of garbage, huddling together around fires, filthy, half naked, and starving judging by their gaunt stares.

After an hour of fighting for our very breaths (poor us!), the walls disappeared and we found ourselves crossing the Hooghly River on the Howrah Bridge, a gleaming steel suspension bridge, with countless people streaming over the walkways in two great rivers carrying everything in huge bags, tied loads, doors, or pieces of machinery on their heads, in their hands, on the backs of bicycles.

Safely in the train station, we were followed by shoeshine boy for more than an hour as we waited for our train to Gaya. I was seized in the grips of an immense stinginess which prevented me from seeing obvious solution to the problem - just get my boots shined. But I just wanted to get away from it. This boy - probably 16 or so - had a unnervingly vacant stare that he trained on us with a relentlessness and eeriness of Bartleby-esque proportions. Wherever we went he followed. A group of Indian men at one point detected our irritation and, in an attempt to help, surrounded him threateningly and started yelling. "This is getting ugly I thought." Fortunately, the boy looked at them with the empty gaze and simply stood his ground, saying something I couldn't understand but which must have been something like "I prefer not to move." The men with their indignation just melted away and the three of us stood there. Eventually another fellow agreed to a shine and the episode ended just as quickly as it began.

The arrival in Gaya: mobbed by auto rickshaw drivers all accusing each other of cheating us. ("Cheating man! Cheating man!)

The auto rickshaw from Gaya to Bodh Gaya: certain that death was imminent, I found myself strangely relaxed as we careened through dark potholed streets at improbable speeds, slamming over speed bumps and swerving to avoid collisions with goats, cows, children, and women carrying huge bundles on their heads. As the sun rose, we could see countless villagers relieving themselves along the sandy banks of the Nairanjana River. I really wanted to look on the bright side but I had to admit I was disgusted. It wasn't how I thought it would be.

Thus I relate some impressions of our time in India. I feel that I've said very little here. Trying to put it into words reminds me of a passage from Herman Hesse's "Journey To the East" when he's talking about the difficulty of handling the past:

Where is the center of events, the common standpoint around which they revolve and which gives them cohesion? In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning
might ensue and that it can in some way be narrated, the historian must
invent units, a hero, a nation, an idea, and he must allow to happen to this invented unit what has in reality happened to the nameless.

Here are a few more photos and notes.

We had planned to spend three days in Bodh Gaya. We ended up staying over two weeks. Why? In short, great atmosphere, great people, great talks, and we were too sick to leave.

Each night under the tree there were wonderful Dhamma talks from illustrious monks (Venerable Dhammasami from Oxford Buddhist Vihara, Ajahn Sujato from Australia) followed by informal discussions. The Burmese monk on my left Venerable Khemasara, a gentle soul. On Juliann's right is Subhata, who happened to be sitting next to her during our retreat at Panditarama Forest Center in Burma.

A Thai pilgrim taking a break during the Pali chanting festival in Bodh Gaya.

Uncertainty is the rule. Who could have predicted that when we went out one morning for breakfast in Bodh Gaya, the temple where we were staying would have been transformed into the set of a Bollywood-style Bihari movie? The director graciously offered us chai and seemed quite happy to give us a summary of the plot: country boy meets country girl, but during marriage ceremony a crucial ritual is not performed because the boy must go to work in the city where he has an affair but ultimately realizes he must return to his betrothed.