Posts

What is Happening to Tibet?

/2 Comments/in , /by

This is not a fun topic. It is not uplifting like the talks given by the Dalai Lama. There aren’t many bright points to speak of. But it’s really important and devastating, so I hope you’ll read on.

The basics are that the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1949, and for the past 60 years have been persecuting the population, destroying monasteries and artifacts, and basically waging a slow cultural genocide against the 6 million or so Tibetans still alive today. There are “re-education” campaigns, which means they only teach Chinese in schools, and that the schools are prohibitively expensive for Tibetans to attend. There is active wage discrimination, with Chinese workers explicitly paid more than Tibetans for the same work. Tibetans are not free to practice their religion, and any mention or image of the Dalai Lama is dangerous. China has positioned a large portion of its nuclear arsenal in Tibet and dumps nuclear waste there. China has promoted immigration into Tibet to the point that the Tibetans are a minority in their own land. 70% of business owners in Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet, are Chinese-owned. Thousands of Tibetans flee, or attempt to flee, into neighboring countries each year. This number has decreased in recent years due to a Chinese clamp-down on borders to the south in response to civil unrest. You can find a much more complete description of what’s happening in Tibet here.

Still, it’s a complicated issue which I don’t pretend to have all that clear an understanding of. Tibet is too valuable strategically and economically (there is extensive mining there) for China to think of ever giving it up, and it’s doubtful they would admit to having been wrong for so long. China is also persecuting dozens of other minority groups in their country, so it’s a part of a much bigger human rights issue. Not to mention the restriction of information to, and the lack of rights for, the Chinese population as a whole. The situation reminds me of the line in the Tao Te Ching: “Therefore the sage, in the exercise of his government, empties their minds, fills their bellies, weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones.” Except that in this case, they aren’t necessarily keeping the Tibetans’ bellies full or bones strong.

I’ve been helping some Tibetans learn English at an NGO in Mcleod Ganj, LHA (which I found via Omprakash – check them out!), meanwhile trying to piece together some stories for an idea of what it’s like to be going through all this. I don’t know a lot about what happens on a policy-level, but here are some of the impressions I’ve gathered.

015

Despite the hardships, a lot of the Tibetans in exile want to go back to Tibet. They miss their families, and some have promised to return after seeing the Dalai Lama and learning some English. Most of them have risked their lives escaping through the mountains to get here. The journey usually takes about 30 days of trekking through high mountain passes, traveling in the dark of night, and basically being hunted by Chinese guards the whole way. Returning to Tibet almost certainly means never leaving again. Many Tibetans come from nomadic families and stay here in order to be close to the Dalai Lama. Nobody knows what will happen when the Dalai Lama dies, but it will certainly be a huge blow for the Tibetan community and their cause. He turns 79 in July. It is possible to contact friends and family in Tibet via certain phone apps, but they are closely monitored by the Chinese, and any mention of politics or religion is highly dangerous. The community as a whole is amazingly positive, peaceful, and resilient. Tibetan children are adorable.

I came to Mcleod Ganj with the naive goal of finding out what I (and the world) can do to help make this situation better. I’ve discovered that there is no simple answer to this question (duh). The beautiful idea of a free and independent Tibet, the return of the Dalai Lama, the restoration of the defiled monasteries and temples, the preservation of the environment, is highly unrealistic. The most pragmatic view I’ve heard is that this is primarily an issue between the Tibetans and the Chinese. Tibet won’t be an independent country again without some major global changes. But things within the country could be so much better than they are now. The more the Chinese people know about the issues in their own country, the more pressure there will be to provide basic human rights to Tibetans and other minority groups. As foreigners, it’s great if we can provide for the refugees the education and language skills which they have largely been denied in their own country. We can raise awareness of the issue. Our governments probably won’t step up and hold the Chinese accountable for the human rights violations going on there, as our own economic well-being is too tied up in the exploitation of Chinese workers. But we can be informed citizens and consumers. We can spread the word, and we can keep asking for change.

For more information about Tibet, check out:

www.tibet.net

www.solidaritywithtibet.org

www.savetibet.org

 

Meeting the Dalai Lama

/2 Comments/in , , , , /by

I’ve been staying in Mcleod Ganj for two weeks now, the home of the TIbetan government in exile and the Dalai Lama. It’s just up the hill from Dharamsala in the Himachal Pradesh region of northern India. Like most places I’ve been in India, this place is completely different from every other place I’ve been in India. Only the difference is more extreme. The Tibetan community and culture changes the vibe completely. There are also a lot of westerners here, but they tend to be socially-conscious volunteering types rather than travelers looking for the cheapest bed. It’s just about the calmest, cleanest, most
coffee-filled city I’ve visited in India.

I’ve been into Buddhism since I was a teenager, so part of my idea coming here was the hope that I’d get to see the His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Based on his official website (he also has Twitter), it seemed like he might be in town for a few days between trips to Japan and Norway, but that he wouldn’t be holding any public audiences. Then last week while returning from a hike, a man recognized our new friend and Pacific Northwest yoga teacher, Paul, and stopped us. This guy had done an acroyoga workshop with Paul four years ago in Mysore. Who knows how he recognized him, but he told us that the Dalai Lama would be holding a receiving line for foreigners on Saturday, and that you had to register at the Tibetan security office. We booked it down the hill to the office, got there 45 minutes after they were supposed to close but just as they were getting ready to actually close. It turns out we would have been able to register the next day as well, but registering that afternoon saved us a multiple-hour wait in the line.

Saturday came and it turned out about four times as many people as they expected had registered for the event (1600 foreigners and 400 Indians – I could have told them this would be popular), so the Dalai Lama would be standing with small groups for photos and giving a talk instead of receiving everyone individually. This rarely happens for westerners, so we basically got super lucky to have this opportunity while already in town. We arrived around 6:30 AM, slowly got shuffled into the courtyard in his residence, and stood around for a few hours. Eventually we were instructed to organize by country and break up into groups of 40-50.

Sometime after 10 AM, His Holiness appeared from his residence, grinning and wearing those awesome tinted glasses he wears in all his photos. I’ve heard people talk about how the energy in the room changes when certain great people are around. I had some feeling of this when visiting Amma’s ashram, but it was not as tangible as this. When the Dalai Lama appeared, everyone immediately buoyed up out of the haze of hours of waiting around. I could feel a sensation of opening in my heart, and a huge smile immediately formed on my face. Part of this is due to expectation being satisfied. A bigger part, I think, is the collective energy of the group. And a third part, which I can’t explain but may be the real reason, is the energy and aura of the person. I don’t know what to think about auras, but you can tell when someone has good energy, and this guy has great energy. Supposedly you could feel the Buddha’s aura from three kilometers away.

As the Dalai Lama walked from group to group, every movement seemed to be filled with joy and kindness. He joked around naturally with everyone, received their greetings with grace, and transmitted an amazing sense of compassion. It was all a little bit rushed because of the size of the group, but he took the time to connect with people who felt compelled to ask or tell him something. The photo itself wasn’t such a big deal. It was a lot more fun to watch this 78 year old man navigate a crowd of 2,000 adoring fans.

Dalai Lama

Posing with His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his residence in Mcleod Ganj

After all the photos were taken, the Dalai Lama made his way to the stage to give his talk. It was great to hear his voice, and his laugh is unbeatable. I took two main points away from the talk, though the whole thing was powerful. First, that all the struggles created between groups of people are based on secondary (or tertiary, or lower) characteristics. Skin color, religion, ethnicity, nationality, economic status, politics. All are secondary to the fact of our common humanity. It can be so difficult to see beyond these apparent differences, but the fact is that each of us is one of seven billion people on this planet. We’re all striving for pretty much the same thing: a happy, secure life. He also gave a shout out to India for being the largest democracy in the world, and for having such a strong cultural attitude of nonviolence and tolerance. There are always exceptions, but it is remarkable how many different kinds of people live so densely here, yet in such peace.

My second major take-away was on the secular education of compassion. Formal education systems around the world focus on facts and analytic thinking in the maths and sciences, and leave ideas of kindness and compassion to religious and community organizations. It turns out compassion is not religion, and there’s no need for it to be confined to a segment of life with so much other baggage, and which is absent from so many people’s lives. Cultivating compassion is crucial for living a joyful and happy life, even for atheists. The more I read about neuroscience, the more I understand that this is a quality of the human brain, and has nothing to do with God or saints or what-have-you. It’s science. “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion” – HHTDL. I have a lot more thinking to do about this, but I’m pretty sure I want to make it a big part of my life.

The main piece I’ve left out of this story of meeting the Dalai Lama is plight of the Tibetan people, and the fact that all of this joy and kindness comes from one of the most persecuted and repressed populations in the world today. I’ve been finding out much more about the issue since I’ve been in town, and I hope I can relate some sense of what’s happening in my next post. To be continued…

Yoga yoga yoga!

Iyengar Yoga/I am not a Yogi

/1 Comment/in , , , , , /by

I have a confession to make. I’m not doing yoga how you’re supposed to. I don’t even want to. But I’m going to keep doing it anyway, and even teach.

I just finished a 5-day Iyengar yoga course near Dharamsala. Iyengar yoga was founded by B.K.S. Iyengar, who is basically the biggest yoga all-star in recent history. Definitely top three. This course was taught by Sharat Arora, a student of Iyengar’s, so this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to the source. I should start by saying that I enjoyed the course thoroughly. Sharat is an amazing teacher, full of life and inspiration. In five 3.5-hour sessions, my practice has been fine-tuned, and in some places completely overhauled.

Here’s the deal: Iyengar yoga is focused strongly on proper alignment and balance of the body. It doesn’t care much about strength or flexibility, and all sorts of props (blocks, belts, chairs, bolsters, blankets, etc) are used to make it possible for anyone to get into the best alignment in each pose. The teacher put a lot of emphasis on relaxing into each pose while maintaining alignment in order to release all the tension in the body.

Philosophically, the idea here is that balance in the body creates balance in the mind, and releasing tension in the body slowly eliminates tension in the mind, which is the root of craving and aversion. All this is more compelling and intricate when properly described, and my experience has suggested to me that it’s completely true. The teacher remarked that only this type of balance is “yoga.” All the forms which emphasize strength or flexibility are not real yoga, rather acrobatics or calisthenics. And on the my fundamental level, I have to agree with this as well.

The problem with strength or flexibility yoga, is that the poses continually create more craving to do harder poses, or to go deeper into the ones you know. Most recently for me this has been about handstand and scorpion. I want to be able to stand comfortably on my hands, and I want to be able to touch the back of my head with my feet. This is generally kind of weird, is not sustainable for the whole life, and is definitely not aligned with yogic thinking. Iyengar yoga does a lot better in this regard. There aren’t that many poses, they’re all accessible, and even more so with the props. You don’t have to go deep into the pose to get the benefits. As long as you keep proper alignment, you’ll reduce the tension in your body and become calm, more free from desire.

But I still want to be able to do these harder things. I want to deepen my yoga practice and my poses, to be stronger and more flexible. The more I learn about actual yoga philosophy, the more I realize that this freedom from desire is not really what I’m looking for in my practice. Maybe from meditation, but not from the yoga itself. Instead, I use the poses to balance my life on a larger scale. I plan to keep doing all sorts of things that create imbalance in my body: running, rock climbing, having worldly possessions and desires. To be totally immersed in the yogic life, all these things must be given up. Other physical activities just create tension and desires.

They’re also fun. The occasional frisbee tournament or running race is thrilling. Getting strong for rock climbing allows more rocks to be climbed. Life may not be able climbing more rocks, but I like it. Basically, all these imbalanced activities also create powerful experiences. Experiences broaden the mind, expand horizons and comfort zones, give meaning. A wealth of experience is not necessary for finding enlightenment or “inner peace,” and in fact based on this line of thinking, probably makes those things harder to reach.

These other forms of yoga, however, are wonderful for reducing the tension created by imbalanced experiences, for calming the mind, and for living a more examined life. Some people might be ready to go full steam ahead along the yogic path (not nearly as exciting as it sounds), and this pure form of Iyengar yoga seems to be a real way to do that. But I’m not ready to give up the experiential life, full of ups and downs and all-arounds. The world is big. There are so many good people to meet. For now, for me, yoga will make all those experiences better.

Six Months Without Alcohol

/3 Comments/in , , , , /by

Last night I had my first drink in over six months. To address the obvious question first: no, I haven’t been getting over a drinking problem. It’s been more of an experiment in sobriety. This is the longest I’ve gone without alcohol since I started drinking at about age 18. So yesterday, after a 50-hour, 2,700 km combination scooter-bus-train-rickshaw adventure (an aside – total cost: $30, or about $0.016/mile), I decided that I had learned what I set out to learn from the experiment. I had a Kingfisher Light, the beer of India, with some friends in Delhi and went out to a rap show to see Heems from Das Racist, who was crashing at the same apartment as me. Nothing crazy happened to me all night, my head did not explode with toxins, and I woke up the same person today as I was yesterday. I definitively did not turn into a pumpkin.

Here’s why I did it: Last September I signed up for a Vipassana Meditation course in Washington. They don’t specifically require it, but it is suggested that one abstain from all intoxicants for a month before the course starts. I did this for everything except coffee, which I tried and failed to cut out of my diet.

But alcohol was easy for me. I had just finished hanging out in the woods all summer with teenagers, so I had hardly drank at all for a few months previous. I actually quite enjoyed the excuse to not have a beer or two in the evenings hanging out with friends. I find that casually drinking beers with dinner or afterwards just makes me sluggish the next morning without adding anything (but empty carbs) to the evening experience. Going out dancing proved to be more of a test of will, but it turns out dance parties can also be really fun sober. Once you start to move your body, it just feels natural. The one weird part is seeing how sloppy and out of control some of the really drunk people are.

So Vipassana came and went, and I felt great. I decided to keep it going for a while to see what happened. Eventually I started going on some dates, which I thought had a high probability of being really awkward without the social lubricant. It turns out the opposite was true. Actively not drinking is pretty unusual in the dating world, and it happens to be a great topic of conversation. Most of us are so accustomed to drinking when we’re out on dates that not drinking really refocusing our awareness, and becomes a thing in itself to be examined. I had some really good conversations with women about why we drink, what we’re afraid of, and what we’re actually doing on all these dates. It was refreshing, and usually only awkward for the first five minutes.

Here’s what I realized about myself: I mostly drink to make hard situations easier, and this is a terrible reason to drink. Almost always this is in regards to women. Starting conversations, continuing conversations, moving beyond conversations. Alcohol makes it all easier. But it doesn’t make it any better. I want to be able to handle these interactions without “something to take the edge off.” Keep the edge, and if I get cut, so be it. I have faith in my ability to navigate a conversation, and I don’t want to teach myself that I need alcohol to make it go well.

So, a few months into the experiment and I had my Yoga Teacher Training on the horizon. I knew I wouldn’t be drinking during that, so I decided I might as well just continue with it until the training was over, then reassess. Also, it’s really easy not to drink in India. Not a lot of places sell alcohol, and one beer costs about the same as a great meal. So I stayed away.

And here’s what I learned next: In moderation, it’s really not such a big deal. I don’t feel any more “pure” or “wholesome” or “good” because I haven’t drank for six months. I’ve saved some money (honestly, this is the best reason not to drink), but I don’t feel any more enlightened. I’ve never had a drinking problem, but I’ve seen what alcoholism can do. The difference between having a few drinks socially each week and total sobriety for me is miniscule. For some people, that might be the tipping point. And going to the point of having a couple drinks everyday, the real trouble starts. It seems to me that alcohol is much more commonly a crutch than a carefully enjoyed pastime. We use it to dull the senses, to make hard things seem easy, when really we’re just letting the difficulties build up to the point of being unmanageable later. And things fall apart.

I’m glad to have had my little experiment in sobriety. Give it a try sometime – only your wallet will be fatter.

Comfortability/This Trip is Awesome

/3 Comments/in , , /by

I just passed my two-month anniversary in India, and at about the same time had a major breakthrough. I realized a week ago that I am totally comfortable here now. This trip is awesome. Somehow all the difficulties and obstacles that I was facing before have vanished. Jaya Ganesha! (He removes obstacles, and I sing to him a lot). I’m completely comfortable with no toilet paper, no hot water (had my first hot shower for two months this morning. So good.), last-minute bus tickets, long train rides, and most importantly, major uncertainty.

That’s really the biggest thing, and it’s the part that troubled me the most at the beginning of my trip. It only took a couple wild rickshaw rides to get used to the driving here, but the uncertainty has taken longer. I would stress out about not having a place to stay, not knowing when I’d eat next, find water, or have a toilet. Here’s the thing about India: there are people EVERYWHERE. Everywhere. So there is always a place to eat, and someone to help you if you’re desperate. I’ve got a good sense now of what food is safe to eat (almost all of it), who to trust (almost everybody), and when to keep walking. I’ve realized that the only difference between doing a lot of research to find a cheap and good hotel a week in advance desperately searching for one at the last minute is probably only about $2. There is usually space to do yoga. Having travel companions has been hugely important. A couple friends (or soon-to-be-friends) can make a stressful day of squeezing onto local buses without really knowing where you’re going into a noteworthy adventure. 

With this comfort has come a great sense of freedom. My plans are entirely flexible, which has been great. I have a general goal to be in the north in about 10 days, which I think I’ll almost be able to make. It’s okay if I’m late – it looks like I’ll have a 60 hour train ride first, and I’d love to stop by Varanasi. In the past week I’ve been in Tamil Nadu, which I had no plans to visit before I arrived in India. With a couple travel companions, I checked out temples in Madurai, went to a Sivananda yoga ashram for a few days, and now am in Kodaikanal getting ready to head to a permaculture/yoga farm in the mountains. It’s dreamy here. The landscape is a bit like northern California, but with more jagged cliffs. Kind of like southern Italy or Greece.

I feel like I’ve seen so much, but I’ve barely left the bottom 10% of the country. There is so much here, it’s unbelievable. My ideas of what India is all about are constantly shattered. Most of the places I’ve visited I would love to come back to for even longer (and I have a feeling I’ll never want to leave this farm). There is a zen meditation center right near where I’m staying now, which I’d love to visit but might not have time/they might be booked. This is the norm – there is more to see and do than I possibly have time for, and almost all of it I had no idea about before I got here. This sense of endlessness is wonderful, and it makes me want to travel so much more. The world feels enormous, but more and more approachable. The more I discover about myself, the more natural I feel where ever I am.

Open eyes, open heart.

This trip is awesome.