The Final Countdown!!

I’m sitting in a café watching the rain, surprise surprise, tying up any and all loose before I check into Vipassana tomorrow at around 2pm.  You know, because 10 days of not being able to speak, read, write, look at anyone, make any contact what so ever, listen to music, leave the grounds, eat dinner and really only meditating 12+ hours a day, does not exactly allow anyone to do anything else.  The days leading up to this moment have been really quite wonderful.  Many new friends have been made, I’ve done my best to live avoid the internetz and live in the moment (it’s REALLY had when it’s so readily available!) and I’ve been thinking fondly of all my friends and family who I love dearly.  I’m nervous, excited, have really no expectations, except that it’s going to be really challenging and knowing there will be times when I absolutely hate it and when I absolutely love it.  In my final time I’m going to head to Vari’s REALLY wonderful yoga class again today w/ “old” and new friends, on the way back up the hill we’re going to stop for a nice dinner at the organic place that everyone raves about and hopefully I’ll meet up w/ Melody and Cat. Below are two blog posts I wrote when I wasn’t around the internet to post.  Enjoy!

Clear mind, clear heart, open mind and open heart… here we go!

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Lone Ranger

10.August.2011

Jade left today and for the first time since I deplaned in Delhi, I’m a solo traveler.  It feels good, it feels weird, it feels like, I don’t know, how this was going to feel for a majority of my trip.  I haven’t been on the road long but I can already tell how, even surrounded by tons of people, a perpetual rotating door of new friends, one can feel really, really lonely.  I’m not there yet, at all in fact, but I know it’s a potential feeling at the months continue to slip away.  Being a rather “permanent” fixture in Dharamkot I’m familiar with pretty much everyone who works here and end up meeting many of the travelers passing through and all conversations are starting to sound the same, except when I spoke with Jade.  Here’s the general flow that goes both ways – name, where you’re from, how long you’ve been traveling, how long you’ll be traveling, how long you’ve been in and will be in India, how long you’ll be in Dharamsala, what are you doing here, what you do at home, what brought you to India, where else you’ve gone and where else you’re going, etc.  It’s like dating, which I grow tired of VERY quickly because I’m bored of having the same conversation over and over again, which is why I’d just like Awesome to land in my lap but we see how successful (more like completely failed) that plan has been, but at least a majority of travelers are happy go lucky people with interesting stories to share.  Sounding like a broken record though is the first step to getting down to the nitty gritty. 

So on that note, I’ve met some really incredible people in the past few days, even while trying to hide out a bit.  Marshall is a Brazilian man from NYC who used to work at a university doing their tech for fundraising and has decided to up and leave his job and the US, travel throughout India studying yoga and meditation and return home, after a long departure, to Brazil.  There is also an adorable couple from Spain, Carme and Enrique who have finished their first stage of University and will be moving from the small island they’ve been living to do their masters in Barcelona.  They actually invited me to go with them to Amritsar for a quick few day trip, which sounds so incredibly delightful but also a bit hectic w/in a few days of Vipassana.  I’ve opted to keep to my yoga/meditation plan and stick around and prepare myself, however that looks, for my 10 days of silent, no eye/physical contact, 14hr per day meditation. Lauren is another girl I met, who is actually currently in Vipassana and gets out tomorrow, who is from Humbolt County CA and has been traveling since she graduated college and is also on the yoga/meditation kick in India.  Speaking of which, I need to email her tonight!  OH and how could I forget, I have found the latin yogis!!  YES!  They are gorgeous of course and one in particular, Deidre, is from Chile and doing her 500RYT with Mahi in Upper Baghsu and she couldn’t speak any more highly about the man or the course.  I plan to go check out his classes and he studied with the man I plan to take my 200RYT Ashtanga Vinyasa with in September, Vijay.

Vijay is AWESOME!  He’s a really skinny, very nimble and gumby like older man who can float better than that Ricky dude from, you know, that one video on YouTube. ;)  Jade managed to find him by accident when another teacher she had arranged to train with flaked on her.  His studio is at the end of Jogiwara Road in McLeod Ganj, down some very intimidating steps, pass by the kindergarten, down more steps, down a dark alley, down even darker steps and through the door on the left.  The room smells of 30 year old sweat, is decorated by the chipped paint coming off the concrete walls, the concrete ceiling and all the wiring is exposed, the floor is covered with the thinnest, hair and lint filled carpet (in fact, I don’t even know if it’s carpet, it may just be hair and lint now) and it’s AWESOME!  There are literally NO frills in this place AT ALL, yoga is all this place exudes, as it should and Vijay has been practicing and teaching yoga for almost 4 decades and by the rhythmic flow of how he describes each body position, you can tell he’s said the same thing for just as long.  He begins each class with a chant and I can’t understand him but as Sanjay said at Yog Peeth, “feel the vibrations of the mantra” and that’s precisely what you can feel, especially during his final chant while we’re lying in savasana. His voice and accent take a bit to get used to but once you do, there is an odd appreciation you grow to have for it.  From the very first class I took of his, the evening Hatha Flow, he was flipping me shit for my hair, my earrings and only lord knows what else, I’m an easy target.  I dug him immediately and I had the most intense yoga blissed out feeling afterwards than I had, probably ever, and I knew this man was going to be my next teacher.  

                “What is that, silver?” he said, flicking my 6g earrings.

                “No, stainless steel.”

                “Oh, yuck!” he joked.  Fast forward to the next morning at my first Ashtanga Vinyasa class. “Next time I see you, I want those to be platinum, ok?”

                “Platinum?!  That’s expensive Vijay!” as I exclaim, while trying to balance on one leg while I’m gripping the foot on my other leg, extending it out to the side, “are you going to buy them for me??”

                He comes in close and whispers in my ear, “you find a store, I have some tricks and I’ll steal them for you.” 

How can you not love a man who jokes about stealing platinum 6g earrings for you?  Considering the likelihood of landing the japan travel blogging opportunity is slim, mostly because even IF we get and invite, neither Sarah nor I will be available to reply within the required amount of time, I’ll be staying in Dharamsala until about November and doing my Ashtanga Vinyasa teacher training with him, which I believe I already stated.  So my unending quest to learn as much about yoga from as many phenomenal teachers continues.  Of course, after leaving Rishikesh, Jade and I learn of 2 amazing teachers there that neither she nor I checked out while there.  A trip back to Rishikesh may be in order to spend some time studying with Usha and Kamel.  My time in India is seeming to grow exponentially by the day.  Marshall gave me some great recommendations for places to study in Kerala, I still want to go to Mysore and I may head to Goa in January to study for my 500hr with either Mahi or Vijay.  You know, my entire world is still open so who knows that the fuck I’ll end up actually doing.

Since I’m here for the long haul, it’s seeming, I started to take some steps in integrating with the local culture.  Yesterday I started taking cooking lessons from the sweetest girl named Reeta.  She’s 27, her birthday is the same as mine and has been teaching cooking at her parents’ house for the past 11 years, the last 7, by herself.  She is WONDERFUL!!  I sent Shannon some Food Masala so I wanted to get some firsthand experience at cooking some things that I can share with her.  Yesterday I made vegetable samosa, cheese momo and dahl.  It was so fun and so incredibly delicious and afterwards, I found myself just chatting with Reeta about Indian culture.  We touched on the arranged marriage aspect of their culture a bit while making dinner but after I ate, she was sharing stories of the drinking problem of the men in her life, the abuse the woman take and it was really sad.  She also said that it’s hard for her family to continue to marry off the girls because the price of gold has soared due to the economic meltdown across the west and parents can’t buy the gold required of marriage arrangement.  I had such a great time with her I scheduled my next evening’s dinner to be with her again.  Today we made malai kofta, potato parantha and vegetable pakora and again, we chatted like old friends.  I asked her if she got a chance to talk to most of the people she cooks with but exclaimed, “I don’t like talking to people.”  “Well,” I said, “you don’t seem to have a problem with talking to me.”  “That’s because I like you!”  She also called me a computer while I was cooking because I was doing so well, all while she was doing little Bollywood jigs around the tiny little kitchen. 

Her kitchen is about the size of my cubicle at the big bad monster cell phone giant, when they actually gave me a full cubicle.  There is a small fridge at the center of one wall, counter space lining the entire other side of the room and along the back, where there is also a stainless steel sink.  The place is very clean and simply stocked with everything she needs.  Clear plastic jugs filled with all sorts of spices and ingredients are stacked on the shelves by the sink and the cabinets underneath house all of the cooking tools and a basket of fresh, local vegetables.  We cook on a very simple 3 burner gas stove that she places on top of the counter and we both wriggle around the room getting from place to place, while one of us is cutting, one of us rolling dough and one of us… wait… there are only 2 of us.  During her little booty shake she exclaimed how much she loves dancing and that the only time she gets to dance is when there is a wedding in the local area.  20 days before the ceremony everyone in town is invited to go to someone’s house and they dance for hours on end to Indian techno, local tunes and the dancing continues for hours, each day leading up to the wedding.  The wedding marathon, this year, starts in October so she’s looking forward to September.  Today our discussion topic was the process she’s gone through thus far to find a husband and it sounds terrible and demoralizing, not much unlike the process anywhere else, it’s just different, actually, it’s very blunt.  After she had been talking with the last suitor – she’s had 2 – for a month, he had seen her picture, heard from others about how wonderful she was he said he didn’t want to marry her because she was too short.  The first suitor said she wasn’t educated enough for him, with her university degree and additional studies in computers.  She looked so let down by this but with an air of deflated positivity, if that’s possible, said, “that just means there is someone better out there but it’s so hard because people find out if you’ve been denied multiple times, it makes you less desirable, and I’m getting older, which doesn’t help.”  Man, if my “desirability” was based off past failures, I’d be screwed, we’d ALL be screwed!  We all go through some process of self realization after situations like that, let downs, disappointments and break ups and lord knows I’m still trying to process everything that happened with me in the past year.  With India culture though, it’s like you throw your profile out there for people to view and then get very candid feedback on why they are rejecting you and it’s always shallow, how can it not be when the most information anyone has is your age, height, weight, intelligence stats, maybe a picture and maybe, but rarely, a series of conversations.  It’s not like you can tell someone you’ve never met, “I feel like you never actively listen to me and are always waiting for the next chance you have to talk about yourself, again, and what you hate about your life.”  Nope, they get, “you’re too short.”  You can’t even do anything with that!  Tomorrow, I’m going to make dinner with her again and this time, we’re doing stuff off the menu!

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Mer Moment

13.August.2011

I can’t even begin to count the number of “Mer Moments” I’ve had today. J  I met a new amazing friend, Lindly, an older woman who is from the UK but lives in Austrailia and is teaching English to refugee/exiled Tibetans until December.  She LOVES to hike and is dying to go trekking.  She reminds me a little bit of my mom, just with a scosh of English wit and a bigger sense of adventure.  I finally made it to my first yoga class in a week and I went to Vari’s Power Hatha Flow and it was INCREDIBLE!  My new friend Lauren, who I thought was leaving for Manali after Vipassana walks in and I was excited I got to see her again!  I was dripping sweat from my knees (not uncommon because I’m a sweater) it was so wonderful!  Great flow, incredible energy from all those in the room and it was PACKED!  I walk out, beaming off an intense yoga blissed high and after 2 days of the most intense, pounding, torrential, non-stop rain I’ve ever seen in my life, it stopped.  Not only did it stop but as I’m hiking up the hill to Dharamkot the sky behind the green mountainous hillside I’m living was clear for the first time since I’ve been here!  To one side I can see a large-ish body of water in the distance and just between 2 bluffs I gaze up, stop dead in my tracks, and for the first time in my life I’m gazing at the first snow covered peaks of the Himalayas and they are INCREDIBLE!!  The sun peaked from the cloud it was behind as I was staring, mouth hanging on the ground, filled w/ the most incredible wonder and amazement that THIS is what’s been behind those clouds all this time!  It makes me want to go to Nepal and touch Everest, taste it’s snow w/ my mouth, walk all over it, maybe skip, do a happy dance and do the “powell jump” while someone takes a picture.  I think I just added another item to my list, my non-yoga adventure but ADVENTURE list!  In the hills, the streams of water, which normally look like white streams trickling down the lush, green hillside, are huge, roaring waterfalls careening over the rocks.  They are so powerful the sound is monopolizing the soundtrack for my trek back to my guest house.  At the bottom I was going to look at the time to see how long it takes me to walk up the less steep, non-shortcut way back but I forgot.  It wouldn’t have mattered, I stopped so many times just to stare w/ my mouth gaping open at how absolutely, fucking, incredibly beautiful it is – my home until November.  I wish more than anything pictures would capture what I’m seeing and even come close to doing it justice but there was no point in even trying.  The only thing that would’ve made this hike more incredible would be someone to share it with, like Mer and Em, so we could all relive that moment on the dock at Maggie’s Bluff in Magnolia… but in the Himalayan mountains. 

Ok, time to shower and head to Reeta’s for more cooking, eating and talking!  She’s not letting me pick items anymore =)  She’s whippin out big guns and having me learn stuff they don’t have on the menu.

Awww… what an amazing day.  These days leading up to Vipassana are just getting better and better and I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

"I am..."

My time surrounded by familiar faces and yoga companions is coming to a close, slowly but surely, and upon Gabby preparing to leave and enter her life, the one she lived prior to embarking on this journey she and I are both on, we discussed the adjustment back to “real life.” What is “real life” though anyway? Jules and I had this discussion when we were at Yog Peeth because I suggested what we were living was not real, not in the sense of being surrounded by all of the distractions of home, whether it be work, friends, family, loves, traffic, news headlines, etc. Living in a bubble of yoga and spiritual exploration without “normal” distractions makes going inside yourself a bit easier. As Jetsunma said, the 3rd type of “laziness” was the “keeping yourself so occupied with good things you never look inside yourself,” which I find this type of laziness much easier to fall into from the comforts of Seattle, surrounded by loved ones and things to do. I chose to go ½ way across the world to find myself, or as I’ve learned, to find out who I am not, which is everything I think I am. I never thought what I was doing as trying to attain a new level of understanding, a new quality of life, to change everything about my being but while talking to gabby, and after she mentioned that, and noticing the changes, some rather drastic, physically and mentally, that’s a pretty accurate description of what’s going on. I have no idea what sort of person I’ll come out at the end. I know whatever has been happening has been intense on very subtle, sneaky levels and flattens me every once in a while but it’s also provided a stronger sense of awareness of me. The transition she’s making now is one I haven’t begun to ponder because it’s going to be so long until I see anyone from home, probably not until I actually get there because I think the chances of getting any visitors is highly unlikely. How will we be received? Will we be total aliens in a familiar shell of ourselves? In past years I would probably be very worried about this and trying not to rock any boat too drastically but this time the only thing I thought and said was, “I know I’m not going to mesh with everyone the same way I did before leaving and I just have to know those who remain in my life will accept me for me, and me for them, and I’ll have a whole new world of possibilities of people who may enter my life and I know that some people will no longer fit within the realm of what I will have become.”

I believe that, truly and honestly, and just saying it makes me emotional and teary eyed, or maybe it’s because I’m listening to Brandi Carlile while I type and she pretty much always makes me cry. I’m not emotional because there is a threat of losing connections or connections shifting, I’m emotional because I know I’m just starting to really feel how much I’ve changed and I know I’m nowhere near done and it’s overwhelming. The love and support I’ve received from my loved ones since I left, in little notes, emails, tweets, ridiculously sweet facebook messages, gives me the extra boost of additional strength to know what I’m doing is the right thing. I know and will continue to tell myself that when I get home, and along this journey and path to only god knows where, I’ll be gifted with people who are beautiful, wonderful, enriching and in the end, if there ever really is an end, I’ll have friends who love and adore me exactly as I am and will support me in the positive and constructive ways, I know that my family will be with me through whatever I do and if it’s my sisters, they will be inquisitive, open and accepting (mom is just accepting). When the time is right and I am ready, I will find a gorgeous, loving partner who cherishes me, adores and worships the ground I walk upon (in a healthy way and all reciprocated of course), which we both really deserve because we’re both going to be the most awesomest people on this planet ;) We’ll support each other’s dreams and aspirations and will help each other evolve into the best person we can each be. If I know this person or these friends now or not, I don’t know. All of you could stick around, all of you may not, I may “rise in love” (as Roshan says) with a former lover or someone else may come along. I know the universe has been telling me repeatedly (it’s actually ridiculous how blatantly obvious it’s been) that I’m to do this journey on my own right now and not get distracted by pretty girls. HA! DAMN YOU UNIVERSE!! *shakes my fist at the universe* :) I have no expectations for how things are going to unfold and I’m not scared, I’m not filled with fear, I just know and trust that whatever is supposed to happen, wherever I’m supposed to be, whomever I’m supposed to be with and whomever I’m supposed to befriend will unfold as it should. In the meantime, I will do my best to live the most honest and fulfilling life throughout the process, being true to myself and to everyone I encounter.

For those who stick around and still dig me when I get back, I love the shit out of you, for those who won’t, I still love the shit out of you! May you all be happy and well… ;) (one of the Buddhist nuns says that after every time she screams obscenities at the crazed drivers in India).

With that, I go back to winning every game of FreeCell I play. Maybe I should eat…

Nah-MAS-tee Bitches!
Xxxo
Dirty

P.S. Is it really fucking August already?! Jesus! Oh and I felt like being reflective and actual shit about India will be in the upcoming days. :) Not sure this could really be called a travel blog though, considering I’m not traveling anywhere! I just decorated my room I’m staying in! ha!

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo Day 2 - Enlightenment or BUST!

These are the notes I took from day 2 of her teachings at Tushita Meditation Center in Dharamsala, India

July 29, 2011

Morning session

Observing the Mind

• Even though thoughts are intangible, they rule our lives
• We dress our sense of “I” in memories and cloth it in labels based on what we think we know about ourselves but the Buddha says this is the biggest delusion and it’s all because of our mind
• We do not exist the way we think we exist, we are not who we think we are, we identify with all the wrong things
• The problem is we believe our mind so we then cling to our ideas and don’t question what we think, feel, believe
• It’s not about finding out who you are, it’s about finding out who you are not
• The essence of meditation practice is to observe the mind at all times and what is observing the mind is not the conceptual mind, eventually meditation will move from the non-conceptual mind to the heart.  Allow ideas, emotions and thoughts to come and then dissolve with no attachment or identification to them – Jetsunma lived with a yogi who suggested to really observe the happenings in the mind 3x every hour to become aware.

Empathetic Joy

• Joy in the happiness of others and is the total opposite of jealousy and envy
• We rejoice in others happiness, which then doubles the happiness felt!
• We should be happy when others do good things, are striving for happiness or receive happiness
• Rejoice in your heart with no concern for yourself
• So many people focus on the pain/suffering they or others are feeling/experiencing but they feel that if they open their heart to taking on anymore suffering, it will be too overwhelming.  Empathetic joy and focusing on what good is happening and rejoicing in others happiness will combat that feeling.  There is a lot of good and beauty in this world and it’s important to focus on this.
• 4 Right Efforts:
• Eradicate any negative things in our mind stream and uproot or transform them
• Prevent negative things from happening in the future
• Cultivate and recognize the good things we have in our mind stream
• Bring more of the good things in the future
• All our efforts are to bring us back to where we never left, to our true nature
• The negative feelings/qualities are fleeting and not inherent, we are all pure and perfect by nature
• 3 Kinds of Laziness:
• Gross
• “I can’t do it”
• We keep ourselves so busy with good things that we never step back to work on ourselves – a way to avoid dealing with ourselves
• Like with all other practices, must start with ourselves first.  Be happy and appreciative of all the good influences in your life and recognize and be happy about the goodness in you.

Afternoon Session

• 2 main obstacles keeping us from a balanced mind (where the subject and object are one)
• Agitation – we try to focus and mind has a different idea where it wants to go
• To alleviate agitation, keep sessions short and firm
• It’s scary to realize how little control over the thing that rules our life the most
• The main problem in this world is we are not the masters of our own mind
• If we had loud speakers attached to our minds, wouldn’t we all want to meditate to help calm the mind and regain control of it?
• We try to do too much
• If you do anything with a distracted mind, it won’t work
• Give something simple to start to focus with, like the breath
• If mind is agitated, look at a nice landscape, eat heavier foods, keep warm
• Sinking – This is the dangerous one.  We feel relaxed but our mind is unclear and not alert so people mistake it for deeper levels of meditation but it’s not
• Goal is a mind that is quiet, peaceful, relaxed, spacious, totally vivid and bright
• If you have a sinking mind, sit up straighter, keep yourself cooler

2 mental factors

1 – mindfulness – 1 pointedness

2 – introspection – spies on the mindfulness to see how it’s doing and makes sure meditation is balanced

Impartiality

• All beings should receive our love and kindness, not just certain beings.  Apart from attachment of those near and dear and apart from animosity for those not within our circle
• Feel neither strong like/dislike for those we love/hate
• Not indifference, it’s even mindedness
• Recognize that all beings want to be happy
• Know everything people do is to make them happy.  It doesn’t mean we need to let people get away with everything bcs that may not be compassionate bcs it may cause themselves or others harm.
• Compassion isn’t always sweet and sometimes it can be rawful, it’s the intention that counts