After Ben left last night, i (thankfully) had the nice distraction of attending a friend's (Halo our friend from the US) classical Indian dance performance. It was beautiful and she danced like a goddess. Pics to be posted soon!
This morning I met up with a girlfriend Maria from my permaculture course and we went to meditation together, then came back to my place for breakfast. She whisked me off on an adventure to the Tibetan library for a teaching in Tibetan Buddhism. We found a "short-cut" to get there and ended up hiking all the way down a mountain side. We laughed the whole way about how we were really taking the easy way down...
The Tibetan library is a special place. Some years ago, an attempt was made to destroy all the ancient scriptures and texts in Tibet (another old story), but the texts were smuggled out of the country. Many books were saved and now live in different parts of the world in many copies, ensuring their survival. Many of the originals now live in this library here in dharamsala.
After our teaching at the library, we hopped on a bus, and traveled to a town about 30 min away, at the bottom of the mountain. We landed at another temple for Tibetan Buddhism, to meet the famous Karmapa. He has been reborn 17 times now with the awareness of his place as Karmapa. He is a Tulku, which is one like the Dalai Llama, who gives the details of where and to which parents he will be reborn, so that he can be easily found again. He is young now, about 28 or so, and it is quite an honor to meet him... I guess? To me it was like meeting Santa Claus... And never having heard of Santa Claus before. I could tell by the way everyone was acting that he was a "big deal", but to me.. he was a monk who looked kind of bored as people filed by to receive their blessing. Not to say that I didn't admire him... He had a sweet energy, and a special presence. I was like a rookie in line who had no idea what to do. I didn't bow when everyone else did; I didn't have a white scarf to bless; and when I recieved my blessing, I didn't look down and fold my hands in a respectful prayer position.. I looked him right in the eye and smiled. He looked surprised. I realized I had done it all "wrong" but I didn't feel embarrassed. The man looked kind of tired of being bowed to and blessing everyone that walked by... So I gave him a great big grin and blessed him! He looked like he was trying not to smile.. But his eyes twinkled. Well...how can you break "the rules" if you don't know what they are ??? Not that I was trying to make a joke out of the whole thing, I actually have a lot of respect for the Buddhist teachers and practices.
The whole thing happened so fast, about 5 minutes to bless about 80 people. Maria had been so excited all day, and it was so anti-climatic that when we got outside we just burst out laughing!
We got on a bus back to dharamsala, and noticed a typical Indian moment when we saw an old man get out of a bus in front of us to go pee, and the bus took off without him! Our bus stopped to pick the poor guy up, and he looked completely bewildered.
When we finally arrived back in McLeod Ganj, I hit the evening meditation session and then stumbled wearily back to my room. As I was just getting ready to relax I noticed something move out of the corner of my eye... I went to the corner of the room, against the wall, and there on the floor was a scorpion! Without Ben here I had to brave it and captured it myself. As I took it outside, the guesthouse owner drove up. I showed him my unwanted houseguest and he said "oh don't worry! They don't hurt you." what kind of scorpion doesn't sting or bite??? My feeling was that he was afraid I might want to leave because of the creepy fellow (or gal) and tried to quell my fears. But it's gone now, and I'll be lookin in my shoes from now on before I put em on... And under the covers...
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