Because I was alone however, even the mundane seemed charged with meaning...And my emotions were similarly amplified: The highs were higher, the periods of despair were deeper and darker. To a self possessed young man inebriated with the unfolding drama of his own life, all of this held enormous appeal.
-Jon Krakauer
20/1/11
Sick day again. Read a little in the morning, went for a short walk to the platform down the hill just now...watched the little dances at the village down in the valley, reminds me of Israeli dancing. All tribal dance leaves so much space for expression...the joy of the harvest, the sorrow of the famine, the humility before Nature, the worship of the great spirit...it was nice to watch. Some brief taiji and qigong to get the blood moving before fatigue sent me back up to the house. I tried to pull some strength up from the Earth on my walk back but my concentration is inconsistent and the thick fog dampens my spirit....
The Deja Vu:
It was the most severe episode I've had since Dr. Powell's class my sophomore year. Sitting cross-legged on my bed wrapped in my jacket, the children screaming outside, the cold, the view, the book in my hand...slits of light coming in through the uneven wooden windows, my sick feeling throat, thoughts of her in the back of my mind...I've been here before...between a dream and a memory, a memory of a dream...reading page 28 of Red Earth & Pouring Rain is what triggered it:
'My life has been a dream,' Benoit de Boigne was often heard to say in Parisian drawing rooms as his life drew to a close, and was understood by the fashionable, secretly contemptuous inhabitants of those rooms to mean that his adventures in the faraway, unreal land of Hindustan now seemed fantastical and fictional. But when de Boigne, wiping his face and passing a hand over his eyes, muttered, 'My life has been a dream,' he meant that he had encountered, in that faraway, unreal land called Hindustan, the unbearably real sensations and colour of a dream, had felt unknown forces moving him as if around a chessboard, had felt the touch of mysteries impelling him from one town to the next, from one field to another.
I am glad it happened...it is always disorienting but I believe that it means I am exactly where I am supposed to be...it has stripped away some of the fear. I don't know exactly whence this faith has come, but I have learned its importance.
25/1/11
Lost seven pages seven or eight pages of the Kathmandu entry yesterday (yes, if you can believe it, it was even longer before) due to computer problems...wasn't my happiest but I am not as upset as I thought I'd be...a willingness to accept the signs of my environment, perhaps. Today is the sickest I've been so far and so I've been a little emotional...wanted to call, but the fear won out. Today is the first day I have been able to see Charikot, three hills away, in a week. The wind has blown that ugly fog out of the valley and now the sun shines warmly and the breeze initiates a smooth dance in the stalks and the leaves of the bamboo and sugarcane...even the stiff pines lean and sway to the rhythm. The terraces grow greener and the sky bluer.
26/1/11 Katannu Day
Finally getting better...thoughts on light and darkness. An overabundance of light and its total absence both blind, conceal...but while darkness obscures form, light dissolves boundaries. Another perspective--blackness accepts all and rejects none (greed or non-discriminatory wisdom?), light reflects everything back and keeps only an emptiness.
Thoughts on writing--writing is not a problem per se. The problem is writing instead of doing, instead of living...let logos inspire ergon.
.
30/1/11
Graveyard day with Suren...galaxies from the health post rooftop. Happy as a child.
6/2/11
It is my last afternoon in Mirge. Surendra and I walked up to the top of a hill on the border of Mirge and the village with the graveyard and looked out onto the terraces and spoke of family and future among other things. I have learned that there is a rhythm to listening as well as talking...I hope that this experience and my relationships out here will translate into the great wealth I can only imagine: paying attention to another without agenda. I said goodbye to his parents who, though they don't speak a word of English, have been very kind and our communication, since it is limited to handing me a straw mat to sit on and some roti to eat, has not felt as though it is lacking anything due to the language barrier. There is a soft springtime gloss on the place today...We walked back toward the school and stopped at the village for tea...in the tea house I ended up writing the English response to an email for a villager who is trying to get a job set up in Germany (one of numerous times I was asked either to explain something, help with homework or write a letter by people I had never met before). One of Surendra's friends told him something in Nepali, he looked a little surprised and quite serious. I asked what was said. Surendra told me that a young man, younger than myself, "expired" in an accident earlier that day...that a tree fell on him. The bittersweet shine of early spring is echoed in marriage celebrations and young death.
--
My favorite book is The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. It is the only book I brought with me that I haven't shed. Though it is a short book (only 96 pages with large type and only a small part of the page taken up by words), and though I have read it a number of times, I started it again when I left on this trip and only finished it on my last afternoon in Mirge. I sat on the roof of the health post and read:
People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you.
Less hasty am I then the wind, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way,
begin no day where we have ended another day;
and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps we travel.
We are the seeds of a tenacious plant,
and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart
that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
...
I go with the wind, people of Orphalese,
but not down into emptiness;
And if this day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love,
then let it be a promise till another day.
Man's needs change, but not his love,
nor his desire that his love should satisfy his needs
...
Wise men have come to you to give you of their wisdom.
I came to take of your wisdom:
And behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom.
It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself,
While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days.
It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave.
There are no graves here.
These mountains and plains are a cradle
and a stepping-stone.
Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid
your ancestors look well there-upon, and you shall see yourselves
and your children dancing hand in hand.
Verily you often make merry without knowing.
Others have come to you to whom for golden promises
made unto your faith you have given but riches and
power and glory.
Less than a promise have I given, and yet
more generous have you been to me.
You have given me my deeper thirsting after life.
Surely there is no greater gift to a man than that
which turns all his aims into parching lips and all
life into a fountain.
And in this lies my honour and my reward,--
That whenever I come to the fountain to drink
I find the living water itself thirsty;
And it drinks me while I drink it.
...
If these be vague words, then seek not to clear them.
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things,
but not their end,
And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning.
Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist
and not in the crystal.
And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?
...
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you
is the strongest and most determined.
Is it not the breath that has erected and hardened
the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you
remember having dreamt, that builded your city
and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath
you would cease to see all else,
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream
you would hear no other sound.
...
After saying these things he looked about him,
and he saw the pilot of his ship standing by the
helm and gazing now at the full sails and now at the distance.
...
Fare you well, people of Orphalese.
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the waterlily
upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must we
come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver.
---
Present Time from Kathmandu:
I've been at a place for the past couple of days where I could either sit in my hotel room and feel sick or I could write and feel a little bit better so I decided to include a little bit from my readings and writings above...hope you don't mind. I am feeling better now...though it really depends on when you catch me...the medication is some rather unpleasant stuff...but its better than I was feeling before. I have spent an absurd amount of money between the hospital, the post office, and food that is tummy friendly in restaurants that I feel are safe. I am trying to let go of some of the self-imposed pressure about getting back into India. I had considered joining a retreat in Bodh Gaya that was to begin on the 14th after a day or two in Nalanda and Rajgir but it looks as though that plan is a goner...so be it. Maybe I can serve a few days there at least...though I feel that one should be in a solid, positive place to serve meditators and, though I am feeling better, there are many fluctuations. (As an aside, I was told some time ago that the position of cook in a Zen temple was once reserved for great masters as it was considered to be one of, if not the most important position due to the effect that would be felt, however subtly by all of the other monks upon taking the food he prepared.) I would like to be in Bodh Gaya for the full moon a few days later though...I imagine that to be a pretty special experience, but will accept the dictates of my stomach.
I have mixed feelings about going back into India. I remember crossing the border into Nepal and noticing almost immediately, certain changes...and the next day in Lumbini, the change in general demeanor was significant...smiling...Nepali people smile. When you say "Namaste" they say "Namaste." They were, on the whole, much much kinder and more helpful people...I feel like Lumbini brings that out in people though. Their little mannerisms were a welcomed change...but I feel ready to head back into it...ready once again to experience the unbearably real sensations and colour of a dream...to be given to the wind. I have concerns about my stomach...I have already stayed in Kathmandu two days longer than I had planned and will probably stay for a third to give myself some time to recover...hopefully this is the final phase of more than two months under the weather. Send some healthy vibes for insurance haha. I have tried to recognize the humility training, the push toward developing shelter in a non physical realm, the inconstancy of the health of the body and the lessons therein, acceptance of aniccia (at least with respect to a single manifestation)...I feel sometimes like I am failing all the way around my wrist...but I remember that even if its only a moments glance at a word on the lotus and a mental shift toward its meaning, a single breath in concentration, a brief step back...its more than was before...and it will continue to grow.
Trying to be patient with myself...doing battle with the mind, doing battle with the body...sitting again and am less afraid to feel what is actually going on. I think in the deepest of the deeps, the loneliest of the lonelies, the saddest of the sads, angriest of the angries, the most scattered of mental states and most broken of hearts, the obnoxious noises and the harsh silences...what has gotten me through most notably, is this: I have gotten through this before. This knowledge is a great force. And so here I am...and the journey will go on.
That being said...I miss you very much. I hope you are all happy and healthy.
Today is an Upekkha day...Equanimity...and there is work to be done.
-Jon Krakauer
20/1/11
Sick day again. Read a little in the morning, went for a short walk to the platform down the hill just now...watched the little dances at the village down in the valley, reminds me of Israeli dancing. All tribal dance leaves so much space for expression...the joy of the harvest, the sorrow of the famine, the humility before Nature, the worship of the great spirit...it was nice to watch. Some brief taiji and qigong to get the blood moving before fatigue sent me back up to the house. I tried to pull some strength up from the Earth on my walk back but my concentration is inconsistent and the thick fog dampens my spirit....
The Deja Vu:
It was the most severe episode I've had since Dr. Powell's class my sophomore year. Sitting cross-legged on my bed wrapped in my jacket, the children screaming outside, the cold, the view, the book in my hand...slits of light coming in through the uneven wooden windows, my sick feeling throat, thoughts of her in the back of my mind...I've been here before...between a dream and a memory, a memory of a dream...reading page 28 of Red Earth & Pouring Rain is what triggered it:
'My life has been a dream,' Benoit de Boigne was often heard to say in Parisian drawing rooms as his life drew to a close, and was understood by the fashionable, secretly contemptuous inhabitants of those rooms to mean that his adventures in the faraway, unreal land of Hindustan now seemed fantastical and fictional. But when de Boigne, wiping his face and passing a hand over his eyes, muttered, 'My life has been a dream,' he meant that he had encountered, in that faraway, unreal land called Hindustan, the unbearably real sensations and colour of a dream, had felt unknown forces moving him as if around a chessboard, had felt the touch of mysteries impelling him from one town to the next, from one field to another.
I am glad it happened...it is always disorienting but I believe that it means I am exactly where I am supposed to be...it has stripped away some of the fear. I don't know exactly whence this faith has come, but I have learned its importance.
25/1/11
Lost seven pages seven or eight pages of the Kathmandu entry yesterday (yes, if you can believe it, it was even longer before) due to computer problems...wasn't my happiest but I am not as upset as I thought I'd be...a willingness to accept the signs of my environment, perhaps. Today is the sickest I've been so far and so I've been a little emotional...wanted to call, but the fear won out. Today is the first day I have been able to see Charikot, three hills away, in a week. The wind has blown that ugly fog out of the valley and now the sun shines warmly and the breeze initiates a smooth dance in the stalks and the leaves of the bamboo and sugarcane...even the stiff pines lean and sway to the rhythm. The terraces grow greener and the sky bluer.
26/1/11 Katannu Day
Finally getting better...thoughts on light and darkness. An overabundance of light and its total absence both blind, conceal...but while darkness obscures form, light dissolves boundaries. Another perspective--blackness accepts all and rejects none (greed or non-discriminatory wisdom?), light reflects everything back and keeps only an emptiness.
Thoughts on writing--writing is not a problem per se. The problem is writing instead of doing, instead of living...let logos inspire ergon.
.
30/1/11
Graveyard day with Suren...galaxies from the health post rooftop. Happy as a child.
6/2/11
It is my last afternoon in Mirge. Surendra and I walked up to the top of a hill on the border of Mirge and the village with the graveyard and looked out onto the terraces and spoke of family and future among other things. I have learned that there is a rhythm to listening as well as talking...I hope that this experience and my relationships out here will translate into the great wealth I can only imagine: paying attention to another without agenda. I said goodbye to his parents who, though they don't speak a word of English, have been very kind and our communication, since it is limited to handing me a straw mat to sit on and some roti to eat, has not felt as though it is lacking anything due to the language barrier. There is a soft springtime gloss on the place today...We walked back toward the school and stopped at the village for tea...in the tea house I ended up writing the English response to an email for a villager who is trying to get a job set up in Germany (one of numerous times I was asked either to explain something, help with homework or write a letter by people I had never met before). One of Surendra's friends told him something in Nepali, he looked a little surprised and quite serious. I asked what was said. Surendra told me that a young man, younger than myself, "expired" in an accident earlier that day...that a tree fell on him. The bittersweet shine of early spring is echoed in marriage celebrations and young death.
--
My favorite book is The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. It is the only book I brought with me that I haven't shed. Though it is a short book (only 96 pages with large type and only a small part of the page taken up by words), and though I have read it a number of times, I started it again when I left on this trip and only finished it on my last afternoon in Mirge. I sat on the roof of the health post and read:
People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you.
Less hasty am I then the wind, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way,
begin no day where we have ended another day;
and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps we travel.
We are the seeds of a tenacious plant,
and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart
that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
...
I go with the wind, people of Orphalese,
but not down into emptiness;
And if this day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love,
then let it be a promise till another day.
Man's needs change, but not his love,
nor his desire that his love should satisfy his needs
...
Wise men have come to you to give you of their wisdom.
I came to take of your wisdom:
And behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom.
It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself,
While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days.
It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave.
There are no graves here.
These mountains and plains are a cradle
and a stepping-stone.
Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid
your ancestors look well there-upon, and you shall see yourselves
and your children dancing hand in hand.
Verily you often make merry without knowing.
Others have come to you to whom for golden promises
made unto your faith you have given but riches and
power and glory.
Less than a promise have I given, and yet
more generous have you been to me.
You have given me my deeper thirsting after life.
Surely there is no greater gift to a man than that
which turns all his aims into parching lips and all
life into a fountain.
And in this lies my honour and my reward,--
That whenever I come to the fountain to drink
I find the living water itself thirsty;
And it drinks me while I drink it.
...
If these be vague words, then seek not to clear them.
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things,
but not their end,
And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning.
Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist
and not in the crystal.
And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?
...
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you
is the strongest and most determined.
Is it not the breath that has erected and hardened
the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you
remember having dreamt, that builded your city
and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath
you would cease to see all else,
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream
you would hear no other sound.
...
After saying these things he looked about him,
and he saw the pilot of his ship standing by the
helm and gazing now at the full sails and now at the distance.
...
Fare you well, people of Orphalese.
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the waterlily
upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must we
come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver.
---
Present Time from Kathmandu:
I've been at a place for the past couple of days where I could either sit in my hotel room and feel sick or I could write and feel a little bit better so I decided to include a little bit from my readings and writings above...hope you don't mind. I am feeling better now...though it really depends on when you catch me...the medication is some rather unpleasant stuff...but its better than I was feeling before. I have spent an absurd amount of money between the hospital, the post office, and food that is tummy friendly in restaurants that I feel are safe. I am trying to let go of some of the self-imposed pressure about getting back into India. I had considered joining a retreat in Bodh Gaya that was to begin on the 14th after a day or two in Nalanda and Rajgir but it looks as though that plan is a goner...so be it. Maybe I can serve a few days there at least...though I feel that one should be in a solid, positive place to serve meditators and, though I am feeling better, there are many fluctuations. (As an aside, I was told some time ago that the position of cook in a Zen temple was once reserved for great masters as it was considered to be one of, if not the most important position due to the effect that would be felt, however subtly by all of the other monks upon taking the food he prepared.) I would like to be in Bodh Gaya for the full moon a few days later though...I imagine that to be a pretty special experience, but will accept the dictates of my stomach.
I have mixed feelings about going back into India. I remember crossing the border into Nepal and noticing almost immediately, certain changes...and the next day in Lumbini, the change in general demeanor was significant...smiling...Nepali people smile. When you say "Namaste" they say "Namaste." They were, on the whole, much much kinder and more helpful people...I feel like Lumbini brings that out in people though. Their little mannerisms were a welcomed change...but I feel ready to head back into it...ready once again to experience the unbearably real sensations and colour of a dream...to be given to the wind. I have concerns about my stomach...I have already stayed in Kathmandu two days longer than I had planned and will probably stay for a third to give myself some time to recover...hopefully this is the final phase of more than two months under the weather. Send some healthy vibes for insurance haha. I have tried to recognize the humility training, the push toward developing shelter in a non physical realm, the inconstancy of the health of the body and the lessons therein, acceptance of aniccia (at least with respect to a single manifestation)...I feel sometimes like I am failing all the way around my wrist...but I remember that even if its only a moments glance at a word on the lotus and a mental shift toward its meaning, a single breath in concentration, a brief step back...its more than was before...and it will continue to grow.
Trying to be patient with myself...doing battle with the mind, doing battle with the body...sitting again and am less afraid to feel what is actually going on. I think in the deepest of the deeps, the loneliest of the lonelies, the saddest of the sads, angriest of the angries, the most scattered of mental states and most broken of hearts, the obnoxious noises and the harsh silences...what has gotten me through most notably, is this: I have gotten through this before. This knowledge is a great force. And so here I am...and the journey will go on.
That being said...I miss you very much. I hope you are all happy and healthy.
Today is an Upekkha day...Equanimity...and there is work to be done.
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