Friday, December 30, 2005

Computer problems

Dearest friends, the reason I haven't been writing recently is that I am loosing my patience with cyber cafes in Kathmandu. Computers are really really slow and a few times power cuts erased my writing... I am going again to Boughdeau for a few days, to celebrate the New Year in a purely organic way - it will be a party with candles under the stars with whoever wants to celebrate this New Year's Eve (Nepalis don't really celebrate it now but in February). I will be back on Monday or Tuesday and shortly after I will be going to India. I haven't decided where yet, whether to Goa first or straight down south. I will decide after I come back.

Have lots of fun when celebrating the beginning of the New Year. I will try to write all I want to tell you about Nepal after I come back from the countryside.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Happy Holidays!!!

For those celebrating Christmas: Happy Holidays! And wishing you lots of love for and from the loved ones, time spent together with your families and friends, lots of tasty food, presents, snow, kisses under the mistletoe, enjoyment of all kind and also rest and relaxing time.... And for those not celebrating Christmas: Seasons Greetings! Wishing you a wonderful end of the year. And for all: Happy New Year!!!

I will spent the Christmas Eve with Piotr, my one Polish friend in Kathmandu. He lives here and rents a house on the outskirts of the city so today in the afternoon we will do some shopping and go home cook something which will resemble traditional Polish holiday dishes. I am not religious but I will accompany him to the mass at the Christian church tomorrow and afterwards we will eat what we cooked and celebrate the tradition. I will write about my Nepali country adventures soon.

Enjoy the holidays my dearest friends. I miss you all.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Back from Nepali countryside

I have just returned from the village of Boughdeau at the foot of the Himalayas. I was invited to a Buddist wedding and was supposed to go for four days but stayed for almost two weeks. This is just a short note that I am back in Kathmandu so that those who worried that I was kiddnapped by the Maoists can sleep well tonight. Tomorrow I will write about the village and its people, and about the political situation in Nepal.

I opened my e-mail server and saw all the adds about last-minute shopping and had to think hard what shopping was! Just kidding. I totally forgot the hustle and bustle of the last days before Christmas in the Western world. In Boughdeau the only things one can buy is soap, matches, kerosene for lamps, dry instant noodles, milk tea, biscuits, buttons and white thread. Everything else is "organic": made or grown in Boughdeau. Even life in Kathmandu, the streets, cars, clothing in stores, etc. seems strange to me after the organicness of Boughdeau.

I will be back tomorrow with stories and Christmas wishes.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Tibetan medicine and more on Kathmandu

There are a few Tibetan medicine clinics in Kathmandu. I went to the one which is in Boudonath - a Tibetan refugees aera. There's the biggest Buddhist stupa - or holy place - there. It's white and cone-shaped. Like in Llasa people walk around it with praying wheels, burn candles and incense. The nearby Sechen Clinic looked really nice and I saw a doctor who diagnosed me on the basis of my pulse, bodily composition and interview. It was a very accurate diagnosis. I am to take pills for 10 days (which I have to crush with teeth and swallow with warm water - the pills smell of dog poop and are the most disgusting thing I have ever had in my mouth). After that he will tell me what to do next. I also asked him about schools of Tibetan medicine and he told me that if I wanted to study Tibetan medicine I would have to go to Daramsala or Darjeeling in India as only in these places I could get a certificate after completing my studies. I will also go to the Auyrvedic clinic in Kathmandu to see what this type of medicine is like. I am reading books which compare the different types of treatment so that finally I can make the decision.

Boudonath is about half an hour away from Thamel where I am staying and the first time I went there Roland, who is from Germany (in case I haven't mentioned him before), accompanied me there. Many years ago Roland spent some time meditating in the Buddhist monastery of Kopan. We walked to the top of the hill where the monastery is located since I thought that maybe I could go there from time to time and listen to some teachings and meditate myself (I did that in New York in Tibet House and I liked it a lot). However, when we got there I lost my interest in the place entirely. I expected it to be a peaceful place, free from distractions, commerce and western "consumption" influence (not that I am totally against "consumption" but maybe not in the monastery). The monastery is very commercialized. There are workshops on Buddhist teachings for $350 (seems like a very steep price considering the prices in Nepal), a shop with souvenirs, a cafe, nice dormitories for the practicioners, and flyers advertising Kopan and asking to "sponsor a buddhist monk for just $1 a day!" (don't miss that opportunity, dear friends, to sponsor a monk, you'll feel soooo good after you have done it! you'll never be closer to nirvana...). The Kopan monastery resembles very much the San Marcos village in Guatemala: a bunch of spaced-out westerners lying on the grass around a luxurious fountain, sipping coffee, reading books, meditating... I have nothing against doing all this, really. It's just that the Buddhist teaching, as I know it from the books I have read, of renouncing the comfort and practicing modesty is very far away from what I have found in the monastery. Hipocrisy always gets to me when I see it. I know that among the monks there are children and old men who need to be taken care of but majority of the monks are young, healthy, strong men and if I am to choose between sponsoring an orphaned child or a victim of a natural diseaster I will choose them over a monk. A monk can work, just as anybody else can, and he can meditate and save the world while working - according to the teaching of Buddha you can meditate everywhere and everytime. Yesterday I went to a meditation session at the Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center and instead of meditating for 1,5 hours I listened to the story of a converted Buddhist's life (a man from Australia) who was telling us how he was a rich, spoiled kid, smoking pot, doing drugs, no meaning in life whatsoever, lucrative job, girls, etc. and he got to be a monk and he is so happy now! staying in the center, giving three daily meditiation sessions to people - it's such a hard work, it makes him so exhausted at the end of the day, but he feels soooo good about helping the humanity... This was the last meditaion session I have gone to, I swear (the one that is not about meditating but about psychoteraphy). I have heard this story a few times already. Every time I am polite, of course, and I stay till the end but as much as I don't want to I just boil inside (Why don't you go to a Potosi mine, sweetie, or work the land on these tarrases side by side with the Nepali farmers all day long to see what hard work means? - this is the question I want to ask). I would say that it is easier for the camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich spoiled kid to become unspoiled kid. What I want to say is that the teachings of Buddha and of Jesus (I only know about these two; I haven't looked at Islam and Judaism yet) are very far away from religions which are based on these teachings. I would say that from the distance (from the Tibet House in NY and my readings about Buddha's thought) Buddhism as religion looked like something very pure and true to the teachings but seeing it, with as much objective and unbiased eye as possible, in Lhasa and Kathmandu, it is not. It is just as far from what Buddha said as Christianity is from what Jesus said. I would say that both Christians and Buddhists are much more occupied with ritual and religious gadgets than with practicing the teachings in their daily life. I would like to tell this little story that I got from the answers to the famous Steve's questions: There was a man on the subway train in NY, dressed all in white, his hair and beard long as that of Jesus, and he was telling everyone how Jesus changed his life, how He is the light, how we should be good to one another, love one another, because love is the salvation, it will conquer the world, etc., etc., etc. and just as he finished his talk and was ready to go out a woman came in pushed by the crowd behind him, bumped into him and stepped on his foot. "Watch were you are going you stupid bitch!" said the "Jesus." It may not be as drastic as this but it portrays what I want to say well. So I do respect all human beings, even the monks who live on the $1 dollar a day provided by some elderly woman who worked hard all her life and raised ten kids. But I would not consider the monks my teachers. I would consider the woman who raised 10 kids my teacher. When we were walking down from the monastery we again saw Nepalese working in their gardens, women cooking their daily meal, kids running around - the regular day as it happens everywhere, simple and modest. I told Roland that I so much prefer this life and I can learn so much more from it than I could ever learn at that monastery, so fake and distant from life as it happens. And that's how I feel. I saw a very good movie right after we visted the monastery. It's precisely about that. The title is "Samsara" and I very much recommend it. In the movie a wife of a man who was a monk before he married her and who after some time wants to go back to the monastery because he can't cope with this daily life full of suffering, tells him that so much is said about Buddha but so little about his wife and son whom he abandoned when he decided to look for enlightment. Is that not the most selfish act? So, my path, I think, is to never believe any teaching blindly and never follow anybody just because he thinks he "knows." What I liked most in Buddha's teaching is that we are our own teachers and we should listen to our own reason and intuition above anything else.

Thinking about Buddhism (and Hinduism since they are both practiced in Nepal) brought my thoughts to culture and what I see on the Kathmandu street. I read in one of the guide books that the Nepalise society is prudish. It seems to be true. Men friends can walk holding hands and embracing each other, women friends can do the same, but boyfriends and girlfriends can't. A kiss in public would be an offence. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by law. Women walk and talk in their circles, men walk in groups. It looks as if the two worlds don't mix except at home. Feet are considered dirty parts of the body and should not be put on chairs or pointed at people (while sitting or lying down). Men to whom I talked have a rigid idea of a woman's place in the world. In The Kathmandu daily I came across a big article about what the society thinks about couples living together before getting married - many people contributed responses and most were opposing such degradation of tradition. Also, men shake hands but women don't (you can imagine what torture this is to me, used from South America to throwing myself at people, hugging and kissing them as if they were my family). I was expecting to see here as much physical warmth and openess in contact between people as I saw in South America. I had this idea that if people who were influenced by Christianity (with its rigid ideas about women, marriage, contact between sexes, etc.) was still such an open society than here with Buddhist ideas they should be equally open. People seem also much more fatalistic here than in South America. Some of them told me, when we were talking about feelings and relationships, that their heart was broken by former girlfriends or boyfriends and they could never love anyone else... Instead of living in the present and forgetting the past (as the predominant religions say) people seem to have this unhappiness in them which comes from the past events. People in South America seemed to really live in the present. Past girlfiends are past girlfriends, welcome new love! What I want to say is that Christianity with the idea of the original sin and people as being soiled and imperfect from the very birth, having to work hard to earse the sin, the flagellation of the flesh - now it's out of fasion but flagellation of the mind is very much in use among Christians - masochism to chase out the evil thoughts and deeds, etc. as opposed to Buddhist idea of a man being born as a perfect being, the way he should be, equipped with everything he needs to be enlightened and achieve nirvana if only he lives in the present... What really does shape culture? That is the question.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Reiki

I can't believe a week has passed since my last entry on the blog... I signed up for a course on the first level of Reiki. Reiki is bioenergotherapy or treatment with energy. It was given by Elif who is a Reiki master. She is Turkish but has lived in Kathmandu for many years and has been practicing Reiki since she first got here. I really liked the course, everything about it. I like the place (Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center), the fellow students (four of us), the atmosphere and the training itself. I like the fact that I can really feel the energy coming out of my hands, and when I am "scanning", or having my hands above the person, I can feel where the energy is and is not in the person. Ocasionally I feel tingling in my fingers or even a low electrical shock. It's really amazing. First Elif tought us the philosophy and "tuned" us to give energy and then we practiced on ourselves. Two of us got very relaxed, peaceful and well-rested. Two of us, including me, had a really bad belly ache and didn't feel good for the first three days of treatment but on the fourth day the energy came and I personally woke up ready to climb Mt. Everest. So I like how the reiki works for me and seems to be working for people to whom I gave Reiki but what I like most about this type of treatment is the philosophy behind it: although the person can feel the energy he or she receives, it is himself or herself who is really doing the treatment by absorbing the energy. If a person is not ready to receive it and resists it, there may not be effects. Elif said that the healer is really just a vassel; the true healer is oneself. There's no one really who can heal us except ourselves. When I first got to the office of Susan, my Chinese doctor in New York, in June of last year she asked me "Are you ready for the treatment?" (Are you ready to take part in your healing? Without your participation I won't be able to do anything.) Elif told us how, from the perspective of Reiki healing, the sickness is seen. I have heard this philosophy many years ago during the psychology class in college and I read about it in many books afterwards but I understood it fully when I got to Susan's office: like many things illness is a work of our subconscious mind. I developed my own sickness, unconsiously. When we feel inadequate, worthless, unloved, insignificant, we look, or rather our subconsious mind looks, for something to make people love and accept us. We may think we want to be cured but really it just feels so good to be so weak and hopeless that people have to take care of us, we poor little things. We don't even really try hard to be healthy again. We may go to see a doctor, take the medicine he proscribes, but then we still do things that we know are ruining our health. I was thinking about this this morning and since I like metaphores I liked this one: at a certain point after we come to this life we start feeling there's too much to think about, remember about, figure out about. It seems impossible to grasp all the daily life "stuff." We put an add in the paper: "Wanted. Subconsious specialist to take care of stuff. " He answers our ad. We are too busy and too hectic to check his references. We hire him. We give him an empty, vast and beautiful, bright room in our house (our body). He moves in, covers the windows with curtains, closes the door and unpacks all the equipment and switchboard to deal with our stuff. He puts a sign above the door "Subconsious." We sometimes visit the room and check on him but gradully we stop checking, we stop going over the accounting papers and his business plans. He is left alone. He gets bored sometimes... And he starts playing with the switchboard to make his life more fun. Instead of "food" when the stomach says it's hungry he pushes "food", "food", "food" whenever he feels like it. Brain says it's sad, the guy pushes "angry." We feel happy, he pushes "not worthy enough, get over it." We are curious about something and want to try it, he pushes "fear." He is out of control, he loves this game he is playing with us. He is rolling with laughter when we feel one thing but do other thing - just as he tells us to do. We do things which bring exactly adverse outcome of what we hoped for. But sometimes a day comes when something happens (a signal, a meeting, a circumstence) which reminds us about this guy whom we hired long time ago... We storm into his office, look at the switchboard, see the real work he is doing for us, and we fire him on the spot. He leaves and with him he takes his switchboard and all the things he has been collecting all these years: the huge amount of memorabilia from the past: emotions filling big jars and standing in every corner of the room, bottles with never-shed tears, boxes of anger stuck under his bed, photos of all the people who hurt us, abandoned us, abused us... All that he takes with him. The room is again a vast open space. We open the door, open the windows, let the air come in and for the breeze to take all the dust away. Through the window we see a meadow and out of it many trails of possibilities leading to the horizon... But first we have to undo the damage we have done to our bodies with the help of the subconscious guy. Now we really want to get rid of our sicknesses. We look for whatever is out there: modern medicine, alternative medicine, herbs, therapeutical massage, Reiki, meditation, therapy with laughter, therapy with dance, with art, with scream... We are not just trying it but really want it to work for us. We look around and find something that helps us the most to feel well. So... coming back to Reiki. There's the energy which goes to the person's body and which can trigger the desire to change... Elif told us that in her practice she saw people cured of any type of disease, including cancer. So if I can draw the energy from around me, concentrate it and send it to a person and the person wants to take it and use it, I will be very happy to do it. And then whatever happens next is up to the person.

There are still many things I want to write about today. I will run to the Center and come back later to tell about Tibetan medicine, the Monkey Temple, the streets of Kathmandu and the friends I met over the past few days.