After scanning the last few entries I'm dismayed at how little has been captured of the past weeks. The short list itself is long, and lengthier narratives would fill a book...agh! I'll start with yesterday, which was spent in a town called Damauli, 150km out of Kathmandu. I went there with Dr. Koirala, Dr. Kopila, and one of her peers, Dr. Namruta, also a young woman. They were going to do a full check-up of about 30 cases of uterine prolapse (varying degrees), all of which are part of a study they're doing on the efficacy of Ayurvedic treatment for the problem, which includes oils and exercises (yoga). Only 17 of the cases showed up, for various reasons (one woman got very bad jaundice; others were unable to be contacted, etc.) but almost all of them had improved significantly. It was my task to take photographs ("snaps") of each case. Obviously this kind of thing would be impossible to see in the States, let alone in the manner I got to see it...but strangely, what I thought I'd find a little much for my unprepared eyes did not arouse any disgust, only empathy.
Most of the cases are the result of inadequate or improper post-natal care. The women in the hills work extremely hard, including physical labor, and have little or no time to rest after giving birth before they resume their various chores. On the drive to Damauli, I saw three generations of women in one family--a bent-backed grandmother, pretty young mother and her daughters, maybe 9 and 12--walking along the road with huge loads of vegetables on their backs. Given that this kind of toil is part of maintaining their livelihoods, it's no wonder that they'd sacrifice rest in order to keep food on the table. There are other further exceptional cases: one of the cases we saw was a woman whose children are grown and husband is paralyzed. She had total prolapse, meaning the uterus was completely outside the vagina, and had ulcerations and other complications...the only solution was to send her for an operation, but she wouldn't go, because somebody had to care for her husband. It is a real struggle for the doctors.
For the most part the women were relatively open, but some were quite shy (especially those whose prolapse was not severe) and didn't want Dr. Koirala in the room. Of course, the preference women have for female doctors, particularly gynecologists, makes perfect sense. It was an intense day. After the last case Namruta and I walked down to the river and checked out a cave where a yogi supposedly meditated thousands of years ago (in fact Damauli is the site of a few caves where the writers of the Vedas meditated), but it was absurdly hot and we headed back up quickly for the five hour drive home. On both the ride there and back we stopped at a few stands where they sell plates of tiny hot fried fish. They were basically all there was to eat, so I partook; and in fact they were delicious, as was all the fresh produce we bought on the way back--bananas, papayas, endless greens. I bought a small rack of the fish for Ama-la, but when I presented it to her at home she literally screamed and jumped backwards. Hahaha! Turns out Tibetans have a "thing" about fish, but I won't call it an aversion, because that's so un-Buddhist, haha. It was very funny. Now I have a rack of fish sitting in my room and nothing to do with it, but dry or not, I'm sure they'll start smelling. Hopefully Vidhea and Yanik like fish; it would be a shame if such a tasty snack went to waste.
After an evening flying along the bumpy highways gazing out at trucks with painted slogans like "God...Halp Me" [sic] and advertisements for brands like "Lacto Fun", it was great to just hang out all night and rest. It's been about a week since Rupesh came, but the sleep has been sorely needed. And I check to make sure I can still touch my toes every morning and every night, even if I don't do much other stretching. Tsk tsk...lack of discipline. But my discipline is needed for other things: like schoolwork.
Today was the last tour with Anil. His genius has really illuminated the last five months here. This time we went to Thimi, also outside the city, to check out the vegetables, ceramics (which they're famous for) and general entrepreneurship that's popped up around the town. Thimi has other claims to fame, though, including the complex which manufactures textbooks for every school in Nepal, which means about 7.8 million children. The buildings were built by US aid a long time ago. We whizzed by the complex and into the town, where we disembarked from the van and wandered for several hours. The first stop was a traditional mask-making shop and studio where a young girl, high school-aged, was deftly working with black clay (which is kneaded with cotton, because it can't be fired). She showed us the process of mask-making, and the red and white clay as well, while Anil gave us cultural background. He pointed out that in many cultures around the world, creation myths describe that sentient beings were shaped out of clay and life was then blown into them. Because of this the designation for potters has usually had some connotation of being creators; in Nepali this is "prathapati" or "creators of people." This is part of why it's so important for the young people who are reviving and maintaining these traditional arts to take pride in this part of their identity, and not to feel that the amazing work they do is somehow inferior to the overly-intellectual work of others. As Anil said, at the end of the day, it's not just economy.
It's also worth noting that the Nepali designation is one of the 64 surnames that automatically inform the informed listener of the occupation or trade of the person named. For example, "Tamrakar" means coppersmith, and Anil's own surname, "Chitrakar" means image-maker, and his family is traditionally involved in photography, though painting preceded that. He himself used to do some mask-making as a child, and told us some details about them, like how to tell the masks that are used for display; they have the headdresses shaped and painted in clay, whereas those used for actual dances and ceremonies would have real headdresses of jewelry and flowers and the face only for the mask, so it is lighter for the dancer. They're lined with lhota (?) paper from the hills and with cloth inside, and use rice flour glue or a strange concoction of buffalo hide and ground bones, which smells powerful and disgusting. The original paints are made of ground rock. This clay is used not only for mask-making but also for vats and vases, which are painted and used in family rituals to store rice, water, alcohol, and other "divine" substances. Some of the rituals they're used for are really fascinating, like celebrating when a person has seen their 1,000th full moon or turns 77 years, 7 months, and 7 days old. Thimi's particular culture is derived from the period of Nepal's history prior to 1482, when Bhaktapur was the capital instead of Kathmandu, and its strength as a city was supported by 7 small surrounding towns each with a specific function and product, of which Thimi's was ceramics.
Walking around the town I saw quite a few sacrificial goats tied up awaiting their demise around the temples, but one particular Buddhist bahal (Gusi Bahal or the Yellow Jasmine Bahal), open to the public but privately owned by a family, was devoid not only of animals but also any visitors. The family had moved to Patan and left the bahal to fall into disrepair, but we did peek at the Buddha statue, sitting forgotten but looking just as serene as ever, behind the locked wooden gates that were nearly decrepit. Though the wood was nearly destroyed, we could make out the figures of the Buddha's two main disciples, Ananda and Sariputra, adorning the doors leading to his inner chamber. The smaller stone stupa in the center of the courtyard, however, was carved so beautifully that the fineness and subtlety of the work was still not only observable but remarkably obvious. It's a treasure of the world, this city with these places, and it's really "God's work" that Anil is doing in making so much preservation possible.
Afterwards we visited a Thimi ceramics business and thoroughly enjoyed exploring the shop and the workshop, seeing the kilns and raw products, unshaped and unfired clay baking in the sun, and funny little completed products, like a clay foot-scrubber with a little glazed frog on its back. Tuesday, Caitlyn and I are going back to pick up some final gifts, because I saw some things there that my grandparents will love. As we drove back into the city, the fragrant smell of massage oil overpowered the van as we passed a factory responsible for supplying the myriad massage parlors in Thamel with their lubricants. Even more interestingly we passed over a bridge where on either side could be seen long stretches of land occupied by tents and lean-to shacks. When I asked Anil what the story was, he explained that during the election campaign the Maoists had promised scores of people land if they voted for them. Now the masses had appeared at the government's doorstep, in a way, demanding their land and occupying the public's in the meantime. Quite a sight...I wish I'd had my camera.
Alright, it's been two days since I showered (running all about and lacking water at home), so it's off to the Hyatt to wash up. Tomorrow is the second round of hunger strike for me and Caitlyn's first, so I'd better smell alright for the press.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Hunger strike + more
So many things have happened since the last time I blogged that I'm overwhelmed and don't know where to start...but if I don't update now, I'll forget 90% instead of 50% of all the little noteworthy things.
On Saturday I went with Sapna, the Nepalese medical student doing a clinical internship with Dr. Koirala at the Putali sadak clinic, to the hospital where she studies. It's an Ayurvedic hospital known best for its care of jaundice patients. I don't want to exaggerate, but the experience was kind of harrowing. First of all, the complex wasn't built to be a hospital; the property was bought by government and turned into a public hospital later on. The buildings are essentially huge and residential, almost like hotels. They're not even clean, let alone as close to immaculate as humanly possible like American hospitals. We first went into the men's ward (it goes without saying that we climbed several flights of stairs-elevator is unheard of)...the first floor had three patients in a huge room with about twelve empty beds. One man was belligerent and wouldn't talk, so we didn't go over to him. We spent the most time with a wizened old man who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and I practiced taking blood pressure (which I still can't do properly) and using the arguably obscure stethoscope (which I can) to hear how lungs shouldn't sound. Then we went upstairs to the jaundice floor, where there were maybe twenty-five or thirty patients whose problems ranged from mild to very severe. I should note that there were not even curtains to divide the beds, let alone separate rooms for the patients...I practiced taking patient history and palpation (with Sapna's translating assistance and patient instruction) and we spent some with with a few of the patients, though not much. We went back downstairs and took a full patient history from a new patient in the non-jaundice ward, who happened to be a classic example of a vata constitution and had problems directly resulting from the behaviors and imbalances associated with that dosha. It was exciting.
We walked out and across the dusty courtyard to the women's building, where there was a grand total of five patients. One was a woman with some kind of menstrual trouble, three I don't know about (one was hooked up to the lone IV in the entire hospital) and the last, quarantined in a corner of the immense single room (maybe fifty beds total) was a seven-year-old girl who had TB meningitis. The entire time we were in the hospital--maybe 2-3 hours--I didn't see a single nurse, and there was a doctor coming in to make rounds in the men's ward as we left. This little girl couldn't speak and was covered with a blanket. I initially thought the old woman lying on the bed was the patient, but as we approached she sat up and rolled back the covers to reveal this tiny figure on the bed, chewing her lip, eyes rolled up, arms and legs folded. She had been in the ward for two days, having come from another hospital in Kathmandu that Sapna said was in "worse condition" than this one. As we left, she began to cry, and her grandmother and mother were trying to massage her legs and pacify whatever discomfort she was in.
After all that, we walked around the courtyard and looked at some of the medicinal plants growing around the complex. None of them are processed or used at the hospital. Still, it was nice to see them: guduchi, amla, and marijuana among others. I took some pictures and then we wandered around Durbar Marg for a while as the sun set. It was wonderful to talk to Sapna about all kinds of things, not only related to medical studies but also about Nepali versus American society, and our personal experiences of various expectations and silent (or not so silent) pressures on women in our respective worlds. On Friday we're going to spend some time going through a fantastic book I have based on polarity therapy, which itself is essentially an adaptation of Ayurveda.
Sunday was the 24th consecutive day of a hunger strike that Tibetans in Kathmandu have been holding. Earlier in the week Ama-la had mentioned that she, Pa-la, and Tsering Dolma were going to be there on Sunday, and invited anyone else in the family to come, and I decided to go as well. Popo-la got so excited about me going that I was almost startled, and everyone in the family was so grateful and kept saying how much it was helping that I was going and supporting them, and how much it meant to everyone. So on Sunday we headed over to Swoyambhu and settled in under the giant tent of Tibetan fabric. We waited for about an hour on the hill outside while the previous group finished chanting and had some thukpa (the strike runs in 24-hour cycles), and then went in and sat down. Almost immediately the man running the affair came over to me and asked me to come sit in the front and center, next to the one other Western girl there, Lorena Rodriguez from Spain. He made some introductory remarks in Tibetan, including introducing me and Lorena, and then we embarked upon our 24 hours of fasting. Most of the time was spent praying, though there were about five or six hours that I was just sitting and looking around, or talking to Lorena. We got water at 3PM, but other than that, there was nothing whatsoever to break the rhythm of just sitting. On Friday I'd gone with Tais to get a mala at the stupa, and I was really happy that she showed me how to use it, because it was a very intense and new experience to use the mala beads and chant mantra (om mani padme hung). The Tibetan momo-las (grandmothers) were thrilled to see me with the mala...it made me feel very good to make them so happy just by being there, and wish that I could do more. Vans of tourists heading to the stupa drove by, and each time they would pull to a stop and stare at us and take photographs, and all of us would flash the peace sign and they would respond in kind and then drive off. It was great to spread the message. I almost got attacked by a monkey when I got up to use the bathroom one time, but aside from that, it was a very peaceful day.
To make things simple, I'll just copy and paste the little article I wrote on Facebook:
Now, if you scroll far enough along in that slideshow, you will find a picture of Lorena and myself at the hunger strike. A Reuters news agent came over to interview us sometime in the morning, and gave a short interview; naturally this hasn't been used anywhere. I'm hoping that when I go again on Monday, this time with Caitlyn and hopefully Tais, some of our words might find publicity as well as our pictures. Anyhow, after the protest, we all drank thukpa (which apparently has a very flexible meaning, because in this case it refers not to noodles but to rice soup with cashews, paneer, and Tibetan cheese in it...under other circumstances I might have been sick from it, but it tasted positively delicious) and butter tea, and Ama-la and Pa-la and Tsering Dolma and I went up to the stupa for a couple of hours. First we got watermelon (a monkey stole mine, and Pa-la's) but we made it up unscathed, and it was beautiful and sunny and we had a lovely time. In fact, we also happened to see a very interesting thing almost as soon as we got up there: two nearly white snakes were mating near the temples. They were braided together like the caduceus.
When we got home Tais and Phuntsok had made us lunch, which was very sweet and also thoroughly appreciated, since we were all pretty hungry by then--after the stupa we had gone to sit in Buddha Park, which is this fantastic place with three ENORMOUS gold statues of Avalokiteshvara, Shakyamuni Buddha, and Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava). It was ludicrously sunny and hot, so the hunger caught up with us quickly, and even the chili in the tofu didn't bother me at lunch. Of course, Phuntsok readily admitted that his basic reason for cooking was what I'll call "karma by association"--if he and Tais made us food, they would automatically get some of the merit we got for participating in the strike, as Ama-la said, "without asking." Haha! Either way, lunch was good, and I'm bound and determined to get them to accompany us when we go again on Monday.
There's much more, but this entry is getting super long, so I'll write it in fieldnotes form (haha). Met a brilliant artist, Pasang, who uses old pangtes (chuba aprons) to make beautiful mandalas and designs. His cousin Tashi runs the store, and he was telling me about how his parents suffered discrimination when they first came to Nepal from Tibet; because they ate meat and the Hindus didn't, they weren't allowed to touch vegetables in the supermarkets, and they were poor and not socially mobile because they didn't speak Nepali. Now it's enormously different...the population of Tibetans in Boudha has grown so much that even the Nepalese owners of Gemini Supermarket speak fluent Tibetan, and any shopowners who learn the language do much better business. Still, there is a division, and I can sense discomfort even at home sometimes when self-conscious upper-class Nepalese people come over.
On that note, I will end this entry and go on with various other items of interest later on!
On Saturday I went with Sapna, the Nepalese medical student doing a clinical internship with Dr. Koirala at the Putali sadak clinic, to the hospital where she studies. It's an Ayurvedic hospital known best for its care of jaundice patients. I don't want to exaggerate, but the experience was kind of harrowing. First of all, the complex wasn't built to be a hospital; the property was bought by government and turned into a public hospital later on. The buildings are essentially huge and residential, almost like hotels. They're not even clean, let alone as close to immaculate as humanly possible like American hospitals. We first went into the men's ward (it goes without saying that we climbed several flights of stairs-elevator is unheard of)...the first floor had three patients in a huge room with about twelve empty beds. One man was belligerent and wouldn't talk, so we didn't go over to him. We spent the most time with a wizened old man who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and I practiced taking blood pressure (which I still can't do properly) and using the arguably obscure stethoscope (which I can) to hear how lungs shouldn't sound. Then we went upstairs to the jaundice floor, where there were maybe twenty-five or thirty patients whose problems ranged from mild to very severe. I should note that there were not even curtains to divide the beds, let alone separate rooms for the patients...I practiced taking patient history and palpation (with Sapna's translating assistance and patient instruction) and we spent some with with a few of the patients, though not much. We went back downstairs and took a full patient history from a new patient in the non-jaundice ward, who happened to be a classic example of a vata constitution and had problems directly resulting from the behaviors and imbalances associated with that dosha. It was exciting.
We walked out and across the dusty courtyard to the women's building, where there was a grand total of five patients. One was a woman with some kind of menstrual trouble, three I don't know about (one was hooked up to the lone IV in the entire hospital) and the last, quarantined in a corner of the immense single room (maybe fifty beds total) was a seven-year-old girl who had TB meningitis. The entire time we were in the hospital--maybe 2-3 hours--I didn't see a single nurse, and there was a doctor coming in to make rounds in the men's ward as we left. This little girl couldn't speak and was covered with a blanket. I initially thought the old woman lying on the bed was the patient, but as we approached she sat up and rolled back the covers to reveal this tiny figure on the bed, chewing her lip, eyes rolled up, arms and legs folded. She had been in the ward for two days, having come from another hospital in Kathmandu that Sapna said was in "worse condition" than this one. As we left, she began to cry, and her grandmother and mother were trying to massage her legs and pacify whatever discomfort she was in.
After all that, we walked around the courtyard and looked at some of the medicinal plants growing around the complex. None of them are processed or used at the hospital. Still, it was nice to see them: guduchi, amla, and marijuana among others. I took some pictures and then we wandered around Durbar Marg for a while as the sun set. It was wonderful to talk to Sapna about all kinds of things, not only related to medical studies but also about Nepali versus American society, and our personal experiences of various expectations and silent (or not so silent) pressures on women in our respective worlds. On Friday we're going to spend some time going through a fantastic book I have based on polarity therapy, which itself is essentially an adaptation of Ayurveda.
Sunday was the 24th consecutive day of a hunger strike that Tibetans in Kathmandu have been holding. Earlier in the week Ama-la had mentioned that she, Pa-la, and Tsering Dolma were going to be there on Sunday, and invited anyone else in the family to come, and I decided to go as well. Popo-la got so excited about me going that I was almost startled, and everyone in the family was so grateful and kept saying how much it was helping that I was going and supporting them, and how much it meant to everyone. So on Sunday we headed over to Swoyambhu and settled in under the giant tent of Tibetan fabric. We waited for about an hour on the hill outside while the previous group finished chanting and had some thukpa (the strike runs in 24-hour cycles), and then went in and sat down. Almost immediately the man running the affair came over to me and asked me to come sit in the front and center, next to the one other Western girl there, Lorena Rodriguez from Spain. He made some introductory remarks in Tibetan, including introducing me and Lorena, and then we embarked upon our 24 hours of fasting. Most of the time was spent praying, though there were about five or six hours that I was just sitting and looking around, or talking to Lorena. We got water at 3PM, but other than that, there was nothing whatsoever to break the rhythm of just sitting. On Friday I'd gone with Tais to get a mala at the stupa, and I was really happy that she showed me how to use it, because it was a very intense and new experience to use the mala beads and chant mantra (om mani padme hung). The Tibetan momo-las (grandmothers) were thrilled to see me with the mala...it made me feel very good to make them so happy just by being there, and wish that I could do more. Vans of tourists heading to the stupa drove by, and each time they would pull to a stop and stare at us and take photographs, and all of us would flash the peace sign and they would respond in kind and then drive off. It was great to spread the message. I almost got attacked by a monkey when I got up to use the bathroom one time, but aside from that, it was a very peaceful day.
To make things simple, I'll just copy and paste the little article I wrote on Facebook:
The uprising that started in Tibet on March 10th is still spreading worldwide.
Though the protests at the Chinese embassy here in Kathmandu usuallywind up with demonstrators in tears and often with violence (freelyavailable photographs now attest to the force used by Nepali police)many Tibetans, including monks and nuns, continue to fight against the Chinese crackdown in Lhasa and other regions of the country. However, it's equally important to note that aside from these unfortunate incidents, there are peaceful means of protesting as well.These passive methods are also widely used, especially here in Nepal.There are many candlelight vigils held for the monks and nuns who arebeing killed in Tibet and to show solidarity with them.
I spent this weekend at a hunger strike by the Swoyambhunath stupa, with more than fifty Tibetans, and one other Westerner (Lorena Rodriguez, from Spain). These gatherings receive less attention from the media than active protests that quickly become provocative and violent. The people present there were about half from the monastic community and half laymen, and of the laymen, most were Momo-las (grandmothers). The strike has been going on for 24 consecutive days and will go on indefinitely, at least until the Olympics. The strike consisted of refraining from eating or drinking (besides one water break) for 24 hours, sitting together in a large tent, praying, chanting, and so forth.
There were a multitude of signs and banners in several languages:Nepali, Tibetan, English. They called for a UN fact-finding mission,for immediate provision of emergency medical services in Tibet, and forthe international community to press China to allow free movement ofpeople and provide access to daily needs for Tibetans. Aside from theinherency of the situation, there was nothing overtly political aboutthe state of Tibet's state, so to speak: no mention of autonomy,independence, or the like.
Everybody there supported the struggle of Tibetans against the Chinese occupation of Tibet, but perhaps more relevant, they also act as representatives of the true strength of the Tibetan people and Tibetan Buddhism. They condemn violence, whether perpetrated by Chinese or Tibetans, not condemning the perpetrators themselves; at the same time, they recognize and want it to be known that there is a clear imbalance of power in this conflict. There is a definite oppressor and oppressed, a definite victim, though any can be villains. I was there because I do believe justice is on the side of the oppressed.
Please check out the following link to photographs of the hunger strike, as well as other recent protests in Kathmandu:
Now, if you scroll far enough along in that slideshow, you will find a picture of Lorena and myself at the hunger strike. A Reuters news agent came over to interview us sometime in the morning, and gave a short interview; naturally this hasn't been used anywhere. I'm hoping that when I go again on Monday, this time with Caitlyn and hopefully Tais, some of our words might find publicity as well as our pictures. Anyhow, after the protest, we all drank thukpa (which apparently has a very flexible meaning, because in this case it refers not to noodles but to rice soup with cashews, paneer, and Tibetan cheese in it...under other circumstances I might have been sick from it, but it tasted positively delicious) and butter tea, and Ama-la and Pa-la and Tsering Dolma and I went up to the stupa for a couple of hours. First we got watermelon (a monkey stole mine, and Pa-la's) but we made it up unscathed, and it was beautiful and sunny and we had a lovely time. In fact, we also happened to see a very interesting thing almost as soon as we got up there: two nearly white snakes were mating near the temples. They were braided together like the caduceus.
When we got home Tais and Phuntsok had made us lunch, which was very sweet and also thoroughly appreciated, since we were all pretty hungry by then--after the stupa we had gone to sit in Buddha Park, which is this fantastic place with three ENORMOUS gold statues of Avalokiteshvara, Shakyamuni Buddha, and Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava). It was ludicrously sunny and hot, so the hunger caught up with us quickly, and even the chili in the tofu didn't bother me at lunch. Of course, Phuntsok readily admitted that his basic reason for cooking was what I'll call "karma by association"--if he and Tais made us food, they would automatically get some of the merit we got for participating in the strike, as Ama-la said, "without asking." Haha! Either way, lunch was good, and I'm bound and determined to get them to accompany us when we go again on Monday.
There's much more, but this entry is getting super long, so I'll write it in fieldnotes form (haha). Met a brilliant artist, Pasang, who uses old pangtes (chuba aprons) to make beautiful mandalas and designs. His cousin Tashi runs the store, and he was telling me about how his parents suffered discrimination when they first came to Nepal from Tibet; because they ate meat and the Hindus didn't, they weren't allowed to touch vegetables in the supermarkets, and they were poor and not socially mobile because they didn't speak Nepali. Now it's enormously different...the population of Tibetans in Boudha has grown so much that even the Nepalese owners of Gemini Supermarket speak fluent Tibetan, and any shopowners who learn the language do much better business. Still, there is a division, and I can sense discomfort even at home sometimes when self-conscious upper-class Nepalese people come over.
On that note, I will end this entry and go on with various other items of interest later on!
Friday, May 2, 2008
Strange encounters
The streets of Kathmandu most definitely belong to the people. Coming home from the clinic in Putali sadak tonight was crazy; there were swarms of people around the cars and bikes, and vehicles could hardly move...the honking was an endless wail of converging horns coming from a ton of trucks and taxis fighting their way through the pedestrian mess. Today the first follow-up since I've started clinical came in, and it was a particularly interesting case (some demyelinating disease, but not MS). Interestingly, the treatment Dr. K prescribed has had an effect in only 8 days--this after a chronic problem for years and being on tons of immunosuppressant and other medications...Dr. K said that when something so mild has an effect like this it indicates an error in the original diagnosis.
It's good that the clinic was busy and distracting today, because I saw an upsetting thing on the way there this afternoon. Stuck in traffic, I happened to look out the window and observe that the entire street was surreptitiously watching a man strong-arm his wife across the street. She tried to get free of his grip, but he was having none of it; we started moving just as they rounded the corner of a building. I may have slight tendency to paranoia, but this man's face and body language--and the woman's--along with the reactions of everyone around them--signaled that a beating or some kind of typical abuse was about to take place. It bothered me very much. The rank injustice of domestic abuse sickens me.
We also had a strange incident this morning. Tais and I were sitting at the table outside our bedrooms when a shabbily-dressed older middle-aged man appeared on the stairs. He started mumbling something, repeating "maathi, maathi" and asking for "tato pani" (hot water)...when we told him there was none and to go downstairs he didn't respond at all, just kept repeating the same thing. "Maathi kehipani chainna" ("there's nothing upstairs") didn't mean anything to him, so finally I just told him to come with me ("ma sanga aunnus") and directed him to Ama-la. Turns out he was a beggar who decided it was fully within reason for him to open the gate and hike the steps into the house and ask for food. Ama-la had already given him something to eat (after which he asked for bread instead, and then demanded tea as well), and then he had headed up to where Tais and I were. Guess his stomach was still rumbling...or his mind was just skewed. Either way it was unsettling that he just came right on up there and it made me thankful for the locks on our doors. Of course, I also realized how different and unfeeling my reaction was; I was uneasy, while Ama-la was generous and kind. It made me a little ashamed.
Tais and I spent some of the morning at the stupa, which was wonderful. I'm going to make it a point to go there every day until I leave and do kora for at least half an hour. There's something ritually comforting (or comfortably ritualistic) about rolling the mala beads through my fingers, reciting a mantra in my head, just going step by step around the imposing white structure.
I wouldn't mind musing a bit more, but many essays are waiting to be written, so there's no time!
It's good that the clinic was busy and distracting today, because I saw an upsetting thing on the way there this afternoon. Stuck in traffic, I happened to look out the window and observe that the entire street was surreptitiously watching a man strong-arm his wife across the street. She tried to get free of his grip, but he was having none of it; we started moving just as they rounded the corner of a building. I may have slight tendency to paranoia, but this man's face and body language--and the woman's--along with the reactions of everyone around them--signaled that a beating or some kind of typical abuse was about to take place. It bothered me very much. The rank injustice of domestic abuse sickens me.
We also had a strange incident this morning. Tais and I were sitting at the table outside our bedrooms when a shabbily-dressed older middle-aged man appeared on the stairs. He started mumbling something, repeating "maathi, maathi" and asking for "tato pani" (hot water)...when we told him there was none and to go downstairs he didn't respond at all, just kept repeating the same thing. "Maathi kehipani chainna" ("there's nothing upstairs") didn't mean anything to him, so finally I just told him to come with me ("ma sanga aunnus") and directed him to Ama-la. Turns out he was a beggar who decided it was fully within reason for him to open the gate and hike the steps into the house and ask for food. Ama-la had already given him something to eat (after which he asked for bread instead, and then demanded tea as well), and then he had headed up to where Tais and I were. Guess his stomach was still rumbling...or his mind was just skewed. Either way it was unsettling that he just came right on up there and it made me thankful for the locks on our doors. Of course, I also realized how different and unfeeling my reaction was; I was uneasy, while Ama-la was generous and kind. It made me a little ashamed.
Tais and I spent some of the morning at the stupa, which was wonderful. I'm going to make it a point to go there every day until I leave and do kora for at least half an hour. There's something ritually comforting (or comfortably ritualistic) about rolling the mala beads through my fingers, reciting a mantra in my head, just going step by step around the imposing white structure.
I wouldn't mind musing a bit more, but many essays are waiting to be written, so there's no time!
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Short list
Today and yesterday have both been mega-storms...thunder, lightning, wrath of the gods, the whole deal. Still, it's a nice break from the sweltering heat during the day. I've been spending way too much time indoors as a result of the weather and all the work that still has to be done for Lehman classes. Classes with Dr. Adhikari and Dr. Lakshmi have finished just today, so I have a notebook nearly full of information on the basics of Ayurvedic pharmacology and clinical examination. At first I wasn't sure how effective classes would be with multiple teachers, but it's turned out that their mini-curricula coincided beautifully. The details of rasa, vipaka, pravada, karma, and so on are probably too detailed to be of interest in a blog, so I'll leave them out. The various laws (Law of Homogeneity, Law of Natural Order, Law of Suppression, Law of Existence) were fascinating as well. They have philosophical names, but the laws are applied to pharmacology. Instead of going into that side of things, I'll post here a tiny part of one lesson on etiology, having to do with wrong use of the will, called volitional transgression.
There is an error known as pragyaparatha, the failure of intelligence by which we resort to substances even after we have experienced them to be harmful. This kind of volitional action can appear to have no effects for a long time, but it also leads to conditions like alcoholism and other addictions, in addition to generally unhealthy and indulgent behavior, which indicates an inability to control or direct the will. This factor relates to causes in our psyche which result in excess perverted, or deficient actions of the body, speech, or mind.
Misuse of our bodily functions either related to misuse of the senses or through either suppression or forced excitation of our natural urges. We should not suppress these urges, but rather attend to them as they naturally arise. The 13 noted urges are listed as follows:
Belching or flatulence
Defecation
Micturition (urination)
Sneezing
Thirst
Hunger
Sleep
Coughing
Breathing caused by overexertion
Yawning
Lacrimation (crying)
Vomiting
Ejaculation
According to Ayurveda, it weakens our life force to suppress these natural impulses. At the same time, it is important not to artificially excite them (for example with laxatives). Without going further into misuse of the senses, we assume that there are four ways the environment or outside world comes into contact with ourselves; minimal, in excess, perverted, or optimal. Of course there are many other things related to the whole sensorial dimension of health, so skip that for now (and a good three more classes' worth of information) and on to the pathogenesis of specific disease!
Actually, maybe not. Lights just went out randomly (though load-shedding hours were not set for this time)...I guess it will have to wait.
There is an error known as pragyaparatha, the failure of intelligence by which we resort to substances even after we have experienced them to be harmful. This kind of volitional action can appear to have no effects for a long time, but it also leads to conditions like alcoholism and other addictions, in addition to generally unhealthy and indulgent behavior, which indicates an inability to control or direct the will. This factor relates to causes in our psyche which result in excess perverted, or deficient actions of the body, speech, or mind.
Misuse of our bodily functions either related to misuse of the senses or through either suppression or forced excitation of our natural urges. We should not suppress these urges, but rather attend to them as they naturally arise. The 13 noted urges are listed as follows:
Belching or flatulence
Defecation
Micturition (urination)
Sneezing
Thirst
Hunger
Sleep
Coughing
Breathing caused by overexertion
Yawning
Lacrimation (crying)
Vomiting
Ejaculation
According to Ayurveda, it weakens our life force to suppress these natural impulses. At the same time, it is important not to artificially excite them (for example with laxatives). Without going further into misuse of the senses, we assume that there are four ways the environment or outside world comes into contact with ourselves; minimal, in excess, perverted, or optimal. Of course there are many other things related to the whole sensorial dimension of health, so skip that for now (and a good three more classes' worth of information) and on to the pathogenesis of specific disease!
Actually, maybe not. Lights just went out randomly (though load-shedding hours were not set for this time)...I guess it will have to wait.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Clinical 1
Today was my first day doing clinical observation with Dr. Koirala at his second clinic in Putalisadak. Yesterday was an amazing tour with Anil. Saturday my dad arrived. The last week or so has been constant action...
Starting with the tour, which was maybe the fourth one I've been on with Anil: we went to two towns just outside of the city, one where most of the traditional woodwork is produced, the other where mustard seed oil used to be produced for the whole country. While the details of the tour were beyond fascinating, I would be doing him an injustice by trying to recreate the experience, so I won't; however, a few of the basic ideas he emphasizes in all his tours are finally so drilled into my head that I can put them down here. Since he's an engineer and an urban planning expert, he often speaks about how to make a city a functional, successful place for its inhabitants. There are four pillars of such a place. First, he says, you want a place to be livable, so that the people living there have what they need and some of what they want. In order to make a place livable, it needs to be managed. If the management is going to be effective, the people in charge need to be accountable. And the only way to get people who will be honestly accountable is to ensure that the place has something competitive to make it bankable.
So, say a place has a competitive product, like wood, and craftsmanship to work with it, making it bankable. There is the question of how to ensure that the artisans--who are the fundamental link in the chain--earn enough money from the natural resources to sustain their lives. Assuming they sell, for example, some pieces to Anil directly for his restoration work, they receive payment for that: P1. But that alone can't sustain their family, so they also do work making windows and decorations for hotels and commercial enterprises, which brings in a second income: P2. In addition, Anil and his wife run an organization called Crafted in Kathmandu, wherein artists' work is exported to Manhattan and sold through catalogues in small numbers, bringing in P3. With P1, P2, and P3 together, the families can support themselves and continue their work authentically. Authenticity is something Anil takes very seriously, and every craftsman learns about the history and reasoning behind the details of what it is they do. For example, they know why in the final scene on the wheel depicting the 12 scenes of the Buddha's life, the food shown is mushroom instead of pork; though there is debate about whether he was poisoned by one or the other, it is likely that he abstained from eating meat (especially pork) and thus it was mushrooms. The debate is cause by the fact that the word in the text from which the art is derived can translate as either food. This is the level of knowledge each artisan has....it's astounding.
He also speaks a great deal on the iconography of the Buddha, and one fundamental aspect of Buddhist iconography is the lotus. For those who aren't familiar, the symbolism of the lotus is the following; the roots of the lotus begin in the earth, which is material form. It then grows through the water, which represents illusion, in order to blossom in the air, or emptiness. This is the same path that the Buddha followed. Similarly, the symbols on the Nepali coin are meant to represent the attributes of a leader. On each side of the square mandala on the coin is a symbol, including a knife (ability to defeat enemies), wheat grain (provide for the people), staff (diplomacy for negotiation), and a conch shell (mobilizing the people).
So those are just a few tiny snippets of what Anil teaches us on the tours. I admire him immensely.
Clinical study today was a totally different experience than taking class, of course. It's hard to describe when I know I'll be leaving out so much essential and fascinating information. Dr. Koirala's clinic was a little hard to find because it's in an area of town I haven't been to before, so I accidentally wound up visiting the Nepal Health Society. It sounds official and has a large office space in a big modern new building, but when I walked through the doorway, I found it empty but for a single desk and some wooden standing dividers. A young woman and a young man were sitting on two chairs in the unlit apartment, doing nothing, as there was absolutely nothing to be done in such a space. However, there was a phone, and the woman helped me to get directions going to the right place. She seemed very sharp, and I left wondering why the place was so deserted: alive but defunct at the same time.
When I arrived at Dr. Koirala's clinic, more of a storefront with a room in the back, it was already almost 5PM and the place was very busy. A Nepali boy in the front asked me if I was American and then led me to the back room, where Dr. K was in consultation with two men already. I watched him go through three or four patients, with intermittent translation or explanation. I caught a tiny bit of what was going just from my scarce understanding of Nepali--negligible from a medical or academic perspective, certainly, but something nonetheless. I also felt a patient's pulse for the first time, which was interesting. The whole perception of the room, the patient, myself changed when I was in the position of having to interact physically with the patient. I'm sure the nerve-wracking aspect would or will change over time, but it was definitely an experience this time. Then another girl came in, a Nepali medical student doing an internship with Dr. K as well (just clinical observation). We shared notes and she translated conversation for me, and generally it was a helpful situation.
The room itself was very small, painted white but not pristine, let alone sterile, like clinics in the States. The examining table had a cloth covering, which naturally wasn't changed between patients, as the average time he spent with each person was around 15-20 minutes and there were countless people waiting to be seen. When I left at a little after 7PM he was still going strong. The other girl said that he usually stays until 8PM or later, every day. He examined each patient in much the same way; feeling their legs, checking the knee joint movement, prodding the abdominal area, sometimes checking the throat, eyes, or tongue, or a specific area if someone complained. One difference I noticed about the way he examined men and women was that while he felt around the ribs and chest area, even with the stethoscope, he would ask the women about their children. Inevitably they had something like four children, with various situations, and it was always at the same moment that he invited them to tell him briefly about their situation. In discussing this with my dad after, we deduced that it was a deflective measure he took so that their emotional attachment to the topic would allow them to relax while he was feeling a perhaps sensitive part of the body, at least for a conservative culture like Nepal's. Maybe I will ask him about this specifically at some point.
Again, there's just too much to say. It's quite late so I'm off for now...hopefully will get enough sleep to wake up and do yoga.
Starting with the tour, which was maybe the fourth one I've been on with Anil: we went to two towns just outside of the city, one where most of the traditional woodwork is produced, the other where mustard seed oil used to be produced for the whole country. While the details of the tour were beyond fascinating, I would be doing him an injustice by trying to recreate the experience, so I won't; however, a few of the basic ideas he emphasizes in all his tours are finally so drilled into my head that I can put them down here. Since he's an engineer and an urban planning expert, he often speaks about how to make a city a functional, successful place for its inhabitants. There are four pillars of such a place. First, he says, you want a place to be livable, so that the people living there have what they need and some of what they want. In order to make a place livable, it needs to be managed. If the management is going to be effective, the people in charge need to be accountable. And the only way to get people who will be honestly accountable is to ensure that the place has something competitive to make it bankable.
So, say a place has a competitive product, like wood, and craftsmanship to work with it, making it bankable. There is the question of how to ensure that the artisans--who are the fundamental link in the chain--earn enough money from the natural resources to sustain their lives. Assuming they sell, for example, some pieces to Anil directly for his restoration work, they receive payment for that: P1. But that alone can't sustain their family, so they also do work making windows and decorations for hotels and commercial enterprises, which brings in a second income: P2. In addition, Anil and his wife run an organization called Crafted in Kathmandu, wherein artists' work is exported to Manhattan and sold through catalogues in small numbers, bringing in P3. With P1, P2, and P3 together, the families can support themselves and continue their work authentically. Authenticity is something Anil takes very seriously, and every craftsman learns about the history and reasoning behind the details of what it is they do. For example, they know why in the final scene on the wheel depicting the 12 scenes of the Buddha's life, the food shown is mushroom instead of pork; though there is debate about whether he was poisoned by one or the other, it is likely that he abstained from eating meat (especially pork) and thus it was mushrooms. The debate is cause by the fact that the word in the text from which the art is derived can translate as either food. This is the level of knowledge each artisan has....it's astounding.
He also speaks a great deal on the iconography of the Buddha, and one fundamental aspect of Buddhist iconography is the lotus. For those who aren't familiar, the symbolism of the lotus is the following; the roots of the lotus begin in the earth, which is material form. It then grows through the water, which represents illusion, in order to blossom in the air, or emptiness. This is the same path that the Buddha followed. Similarly, the symbols on the Nepali coin are meant to represent the attributes of a leader. On each side of the square mandala on the coin is a symbol, including a knife (ability to defeat enemies), wheat grain (provide for the people), staff (diplomacy for negotiation), and a conch shell (mobilizing the people).
So those are just a few tiny snippets of what Anil teaches us on the tours. I admire him immensely.
Clinical study today was a totally different experience than taking class, of course. It's hard to describe when I know I'll be leaving out so much essential and fascinating information. Dr. Koirala's clinic was a little hard to find because it's in an area of town I haven't been to before, so I accidentally wound up visiting the Nepal Health Society. It sounds official and has a large office space in a big modern new building, but when I walked through the doorway, I found it empty but for a single desk and some wooden standing dividers. A young woman and a young man were sitting on two chairs in the unlit apartment, doing nothing, as there was absolutely nothing to be done in such a space. However, there was a phone, and the woman helped me to get directions going to the right place. She seemed very sharp, and I left wondering why the place was so deserted: alive but defunct at the same time.
When I arrived at Dr. Koirala's clinic, more of a storefront with a room in the back, it was already almost 5PM and the place was very busy. A Nepali boy in the front asked me if I was American and then led me to the back room, where Dr. K was in consultation with two men already. I watched him go through three or four patients, with intermittent translation or explanation. I caught a tiny bit of what was going just from my scarce understanding of Nepali--negligible from a medical or academic perspective, certainly, but something nonetheless. I also felt a patient's pulse for the first time, which was interesting. The whole perception of the room, the patient, myself changed when I was in the position of having to interact physically with the patient. I'm sure the nerve-wracking aspect would or will change over time, but it was definitely an experience this time. Then another girl came in, a Nepali medical student doing an internship with Dr. K as well (just clinical observation). We shared notes and she translated conversation for me, and generally it was a helpful situation.
The room itself was very small, painted white but not pristine, let alone sterile, like clinics in the States. The examining table had a cloth covering, which naturally wasn't changed between patients, as the average time he spent with each person was around 15-20 minutes and there were countless people waiting to be seen. When I left at a little after 7PM he was still going strong. The other girl said that he usually stays until 8PM or later, every day. He examined each patient in much the same way; feeling their legs, checking the knee joint movement, prodding the abdominal area, sometimes checking the throat, eyes, or tongue, or a specific area if someone complained. One difference I noticed about the way he examined men and women was that while he felt around the ribs and chest area, even with the stethoscope, he would ask the women about their children. Inevitably they had something like four children, with various situations, and it was always at the same moment that he invited them to tell him briefly about their situation. In discussing this with my dad after, we deduced that it was a deflective measure he took so that their emotional attachment to the topic would allow them to relax while he was feeling a perhaps sensitive part of the body, at least for a conservative culture like Nepal's. Maybe I will ask him about this specifically at some point.
Again, there's just too much to say. It's quite late so I'm off for now...hopefully will get enough sleep to wake up and do yoga.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Bhasma Preparation Tests
Bhasmas are the Ayurvedic mineral preparations, produced in many cases by the same pharmaceutical companies that produce herbal medicines. The bhasmas, however, require not only different ingredients but different additional herbs and and methods of preparation, done in separate rooms, with--naturally--different costs. These are the ten classical methods of testing whether or not a bhasma preparation is finished, i.e. purified. It should be noted here that pure does not mean undiluted, but rather in a form that is harmless to the body and can be assimilated by it. Though pharmaceutical companies in India and Nepal currently use chemical testing to ensure the safety of the bhasma preparations (and in Nepal, most only produce herbal preparations), these methods are still used and are widely respected.
Nepali/Sanskrit name is first, followed by literal English translation in parentheses.
1) WARITARA (Water/flooded): If the bhasma is fully prepared, it will float on the surface of water, indicating lightness.
2) REKHAPURNA (Lines/full): Indicates that the bhasma in prepared form should be fine. When taken between thumb and forefinger, the fine powder will fill the lines of the fingerprint.
3) APUNARBHAV (Unchanged): Indicates that the bhasma should retain its original form, especially color, despite mixing with other substances: the mitrapanchak or five substances; molasses, gunja, sohaga, honey, and ghee, when heated.
4) UTTANIA (Moving): A grain of rice, barley, etc. will float over the preparation like a swan on a lake.
5) NIRUJA: When prepared, bhasma heated with a silver plate will stick to it. The form will remain unchanged.
6) NISWADU (Taste): The bhasma should be completely tasteless. Sour, bitter, or sweet tones indicate incomplete preparation.
7) NISCHANDRA (Sparking): There should be no shining or sparkly particles in the bhasma; they show unchanged substance, particularly for gold, silver, and mica.
8) AWAMI (Biological): When a tiny bit of the bhasma has been put on the tip of the tongue, there should be no effect. Impure bhasma will cause nausea or vomiting.
9) AMLA (Sour): When bhasma is put with citrus juice, especially lemon, it should retain its color and original form.
10) NIRDHUM (Smokeless): Finished bhasma will not emit any smoke when put over fire, while the impure form emits smoke.
All these ten tests are carried out for each preparation. A few companies still use these classical tests, but mostly use modern testing methods now. Many of the preparations have been shown to be impure and cause kidney problems and other side effects. If any problem is found with the bhasma through these tests, the bhasma preparation process must be repeated.
Next time: the scintillating details of Chyawanprash preparation!
Nepali/Sanskrit name is first, followed by literal English translation in parentheses.
1) WARITARA (Water/flooded): If the bhasma is fully prepared, it will float on the surface of water, indicating lightness.
2) REKHAPURNA (Lines/full): Indicates that the bhasma in prepared form should be fine. When taken between thumb and forefinger, the fine powder will fill the lines of the fingerprint.
3) APUNARBHAV (Unchanged): Indicates that the bhasma should retain its original form, especially color, despite mixing with other substances: the mitrapanchak or five substances; molasses, gunja, sohaga, honey, and ghee, when heated.
4) UTTANIA (Moving): A grain of rice, barley, etc. will float over the preparation like a swan on a lake.
5) NIRUJA: When prepared, bhasma heated with a silver plate will stick to it. The form will remain unchanged.
6) NISWADU (Taste): The bhasma should be completely tasteless. Sour, bitter, or sweet tones indicate incomplete preparation.
7) NISCHANDRA (Sparking): There should be no shining or sparkly particles in the bhasma; they show unchanged substance, particularly for gold, silver, and mica.
8) AWAMI (Biological): When a tiny bit of the bhasma has been put on the tip of the tongue, there should be no effect. Impure bhasma will cause nausea or vomiting.
9) AMLA (Sour): When bhasma is put with citrus juice, especially lemon, it should retain its color and original form.
10) NIRDHUM (Smokeless): Finished bhasma will not emit any smoke when put over fire, while the impure form emits smoke.
All these ten tests are carried out for each preparation. A few companies still use these classical tests, but mostly use modern testing methods now. Many of the preparations have been shown to be impure and cause kidney problems and other side effects. If any problem is found with the bhasma through these tests, the bhasma preparation process must be repeated.
Next time: the scintillating details of Chyawanprash preparation!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Daring Tale of Dorje in Tibet
This evening I had the chance to sit in on one of Caitlyn's lessons with Dorje*. Instead of language, though, the topic of choice was Dorje's recollection of his dangerous and very illegal trip back to Tibet to visit his parents in Lhasa for a month several years ago. He studied in Dharamsala at one of the Tibetan refugee schools (and, curiously like most Tibetans I've met here, had a private audience with His Holiness there to secure his education), and during a three-month break after exams he came to Nepal to visit his uncle, then working at a monastery in Kathmandu. His uncle suggested that Dorje's parents, whom he hadn't seen in about ten years, would really like to see him, and that it would be a very good thing if he could go back to Lhasa and visit...for whatever reason, whether it was homesickness or the recklessness of youth, he decided to go for it. Mind that this is despite having no refugee card, no passport from any country; no identification papers of any kind whatsoever.
At the first checkpost, he had to swim across a river, traveling with a monk and a guide who they paid Rs.1K. He and the monk parted ways when they reached the first town, where he befriended a local Tibetan man at the bar and managed to find a place to stay that night. He had only 500 Chinese yuan starting out. The next day he got a lift to the next checkpoint after lying to a truck driver and saying he had identification. When the driver went in to sign the register, Dorje buried himself in the back hidden from view, and on they went to the next town. However, the driver changed his course, no longer heading to Lhasa. Dorje refused to pay him as a result, and told the same lie to another bus driver, heading to the third checkpoint--there were seven between his departure point and Lhasa! At this point he had to hide in the truck from policemen searching it, and the driver became very angry at Dorje for lying about having ID. He could have been in a lot of trouble, and dumped Dorje at the next town, refusing to take him any further.
However, he had suggested a lie for Dorje to tell the next unhappy driver to pick him up: that he was a tour guide between Lhasa and the border town, and had lost all of his belongings and papers on the last tour. Dorje employed this lie to the first person he met at, again, the local bar; but the man didn't buy it and said he knew Dorje was from India. Eventually Dorje went to bed at a hotel. Around 6AM he heard knocking on the door...terrified that someone had told the authorities and it was officials coming to arrest him, he opened the door; it was the man he had befriended, who said there was an army truck leaving right away for Lhasa and he should try to hitch a ride with them. At first he was too afraid, but he realized it was as good a chance as any and quickly went down to scope out the situation.
There was one Chinese army man and one Tibetan traveling in the truck, and Dorje pleaded his case to the Tibetan. The man asked him whether he was lying, suspicious, but relented, spoke to the Chinese guy, and offered Dorje a ride. Sympathizing with his alleged predicament, they bought all his meals, plenty of beers and cigarettes, and went sailing through the remaining checkpoints with no more investigation than a respectful salute from the checkpoint guards. When they reached the town near Lhasa, they dropped him off with good wishes. He walked the rest of the way to Lhasa the next day, after a night at a lovely hotel with a friend from grade school who he ran into--a rich tourists' guide--and called his parents for their happy reunion. When he described it to us, I could see in my mind his father walking towards him, crying from joy, so happy to see his son return.
He was very daring and reckless to undertake that journey, but everything worked out, and luck was on his side. What a tale to tell his schoolmates about how he spent his summer break!...it was exciting to hear, but in the end, the story is really quite sad. It's sad that the state of things is such that so much pain and separation is the norm between parents and children, and that Dorje had to risk his entire future in order to visit his home.
Yesterday, Karma came over to visit--a very charismatic and precocious ten year old in the neighborhood, and very popular with everyone at the house. As always, he sang some Hindi and Tibetan songs for us, complete with dance moves. Even more eventfully, his third tooth fell out (I always forget that we all lose our teeth as kids). When I asked whether he would put it under his pillow, he was just confused--it turns out that Tibetans save their teeth and offer them to the deities when they visit a particular place--I think the name was Yanglashe. Interesting...he had shaved the words "Free Tibet" into his hair last week, but his school made him shave it all off. Too bad. However, the wall of the gompa on our street is now covered in black graffitti calling for Tibet's freedom and a stop to the killing, in both English and Tibetan language. As Tais rightly pointed out, it's not the right place for protest vandalism...but I think a sort of desperation is taking over some of the would-be demonstrators.
The Maoists, who are dominating the election results, have threatened to begin deporting Tibetans who protest against China. They want to develop Nepal's fairly good relationship with China (delusionally, they believe China has done more for the country than India) and support the "one China" policy. Obviously this would be a huge human rights violation, since it's clear that the people sent back to China would be dealt with in a way nobody on Earth should be. It's all speculation right now, but there's definitely a precariousness to the situation. Caitlyn said that Amchi-la has been shaking his head and lamenting the Maoist victory every few minutes during downtime at the clinic.
Meanwhile I've been greatly enjoying classes with Dr. Adhikari and Dr. Ghimire. The time goes quickly. Tomorrow is a field trip to Ghodavari with someone I've not met yet (his named is Bhupendra), to get some hands-on experience with medicinal plant collection...or at least recognition!
There really aren't enough hours in the day. I've been doing a lot of research the past week or so on the history of the Orthodox church in India, linking the churches in Persia and India, for a whole host of reasons that are too complex and disorganized right now to go into here. Suffice it to say that a few things I've been reading seem connected in a way that, so far as I can tell right now, have not been even remotely adequately researched...too bad my knowledge is so pathetic and time and mobility so limited. I've decided to focus on the basic parallels between the Orthodox church (particularly its emphasis of the concept of Christus Medicus) and Eastern medicine, and go into the relationship between them only vaguely, because I can't substantiate any claims well enough. Maybe, eventually, it will be possible.
Leaving the academic nitty-gritty aside, I'm devouring all the writing of William Dalrymple, hunting his overviews for hints that lead into ever deeper waters. Even abandoning my searches, his travels make for great entertainment...I'm learning more from his retrospectives than I did in all of high school history. It's a fascinating distraction from the details of Ayurvedic pharmacology, which are becoming ever more intricate.
On an even lighter note, I've never been so into pop culture in my life. The charm of Bollywood movies has inspired me to take my insignificant base of Nepali language and apply it to learning Hindi (which is remarkably similar--all Nepalis understand Hindi, hence why Indian pop culture extends to Kathmandu movie theaters and CD players). If I ever do travel in India (probably to Kerala) it will be useful. In the meantime, I just want to be able to swoon about the "King Khan" in his own language. Besides his movie-star attraction, I've also recently been introduced to the alleged "best dancer in the world", Hrithik Roshan, who totally knocks Wade Robson out of the picture; inspiration-wise, he inherited a great deal of Michael Jackson's legendary moves. The uniquely Indian hubris is fast becoming a leisure-time pleasure for me. Aside from the Indian, of course, there are some specifically Nepali cultural delights I've come across, such as the hit songs of Naran Gopal, a classic Nepali old-timer whose music can be heard in taxis across the valley.
It's gotten astonishingly hot over the past two weeks and several of my afternoons have been wasted at the dead oasis of the Hyatt's swimming pool. Must resist the temptation to indulge in the delicious laziness there, and take full advantage of the last month I have here. There are so many things I want to do and see, it's overwhelming. I'm really enchanted with Nepal, and though a part of me is ready to return to New York, another part feels that this has really been my home, and wishes to stay.
At the first checkpost, he had to swim across a river, traveling with a monk and a guide who they paid Rs.1K. He and the monk parted ways when they reached the first town, where he befriended a local Tibetan man at the bar and managed to find a place to stay that night. He had only 500 Chinese yuan starting out. The next day he got a lift to the next checkpoint after lying to a truck driver and saying he had identification. When the driver went in to sign the register, Dorje buried himself in the back hidden from view, and on they went to the next town. However, the driver changed his course, no longer heading to Lhasa. Dorje refused to pay him as a result, and told the same lie to another bus driver, heading to the third checkpoint--there were seven between his departure point and Lhasa! At this point he had to hide in the truck from policemen searching it, and the driver became very angry at Dorje for lying about having ID. He could have been in a lot of trouble, and dumped Dorje at the next town, refusing to take him any further.
However, he had suggested a lie for Dorje to tell the next unhappy driver to pick him up: that he was a tour guide between Lhasa and the border town, and had lost all of his belongings and papers on the last tour. Dorje employed this lie to the first person he met at, again, the local bar; but the man didn't buy it and said he knew Dorje was from India. Eventually Dorje went to bed at a hotel. Around 6AM he heard knocking on the door...terrified that someone had told the authorities and it was officials coming to arrest him, he opened the door; it was the man he had befriended, who said there was an army truck leaving right away for Lhasa and he should try to hitch a ride with them. At first he was too afraid, but he realized it was as good a chance as any and quickly went down to scope out the situation.
There was one Chinese army man and one Tibetan traveling in the truck, and Dorje pleaded his case to the Tibetan. The man asked him whether he was lying, suspicious, but relented, spoke to the Chinese guy, and offered Dorje a ride. Sympathizing with his alleged predicament, they bought all his meals, plenty of beers and cigarettes, and went sailing through the remaining checkpoints with no more investigation than a respectful salute from the checkpoint guards. When they reached the town near Lhasa, they dropped him off with good wishes. He walked the rest of the way to Lhasa the next day, after a night at a lovely hotel with a friend from grade school who he ran into--a rich tourists' guide--and called his parents for their happy reunion. When he described it to us, I could see in my mind his father walking towards him, crying from joy, so happy to see his son return.
He was very daring and reckless to undertake that journey, but everything worked out, and luck was on his side. What a tale to tell his schoolmates about how he spent his summer break!...it was exciting to hear, but in the end, the story is really quite sad. It's sad that the state of things is such that so much pain and separation is the norm between parents and children, and that Dorje had to risk his entire future in order to visit his home.
Yesterday, Karma came over to visit--a very charismatic and precocious ten year old in the neighborhood, and very popular with everyone at the house. As always, he sang some Hindi and Tibetan songs for us, complete with dance moves. Even more eventfully, his third tooth fell out (I always forget that we all lose our teeth as kids). When I asked whether he would put it under his pillow, he was just confused--it turns out that Tibetans save their teeth and offer them to the deities when they visit a particular place--I think the name was Yanglashe. Interesting...he had shaved the words "Free Tibet" into his hair last week, but his school made him shave it all off. Too bad. However, the wall of the gompa on our street is now covered in black graffitti calling for Tibet's freedom and a stop to the killing, in both English and Tibetan language. As Tais rightly pointed out, it's not the right place for protest vandalism...but I think a sort of desperation is taking over some of the would-be demonstrators.
The Maoists, who are dominating the election results, have threatened to begin deporting Tibetans who protest against China. They want to develop Nepal's fairly good relationship with China (delusionally, they believe China has done more for the country than India) and support the "one China" policy. Obviously this would be a huge human rights violation, since it's clear that the people sent back to China would be dealt with in a way nobody on Earth should be. It's all speculation right now, but there's definitely a precariousness to the situation. Caitlyn said that Amchi-la has been shaking his head and lamenting the Maoist victory every few minutes during downtime at the clinic.
Meanwhile I've been greatly enjoying classes with Dr. Adhikari and Dr. Ghimire. The time goes quickly. Tomorrow is a field trip to Ghodavari with someone I've not met yet (his named is Bhupendra), to get some hands-on experience with medicinal plant collection...or at least recognition!
There really aren't enough hours in the day. I've been doing a lot of research the past week or so on the history of the Orthodox church in India, linking the churches in Persia and India, for a whole host of reasons that are too complex and disorganized right now to go into here. Suffice it to say that a few things I've been reading seem connected in a way that, so far as I can tell right now, have not been even remotely adequately researched...too bad my knowledge is so pathetic and time and mobility so limited. I've decided to focus on the basic parallels between the Orthodox church (particularly its emphasis of the concept of Christus Medicus) and Eastern medicine, and go into the relationship between them only vaguely, because I can't substantiate any claims well enough. Maybe, eventually, it will be possible.
Leaving the academic nitty-gritty aside, I'm devouring all the writing of William Dalrymple, hunting his overviews for hints that lead into ever deeper waters. Even abandoning my searches, his travels make for great entertainment...I'm learning more from his retrospectives than I did in all of high school history. It's a fascinating distraction from the details of Ayurvedic pharmacology, which are becoming ever more intricate.
On an even lighter note, I've never been so into pop culture in my life. The charm of Bollywood movies has inspired me to take my insignificant base of Nepali language and apply it to learning Hindi (which is remarkably similar--all Nepalis understand Hindi, hence why Indian pop culture extends to Kathmandu movie theaters and CD players). If I ever do travel in India (probably to Kerala) it will be useful. In the meantime, I just want to be able to swoon about the "King Khan" in his own language. Besides his movie-star attraction, I've also recently been introduced to the alleged "best dancer in the world", Hrithik Roshan, who totally knocks Wade Robson out of the picture; inspiration-wise, he inherited a great deal of Michael Jackson's legendary moves. The uniquely Indian hubris is fast becoming a leisure-time pleasure for me. Aside from the Indian, of course, there are some specifically Nepali cultural delights I've come across, such as the hit songs of Naran Gopal, a classic Nepali old-timer whose music can be heard in taxis across the valley.
It's gotten astonishingly hot over the past two weeks and several of my afternoons have been wasted at the dead oasis of the Hyatt's swimming pool. Must resist the temptation to indulge in the delicious laziness there, and take full advantage of the last month I have here. There are so many things I want to do and see, it's overwhelming. I'm really enchanted with Nepal, and though a part of me is ready to return to New York, another part feels that this has really been my home, and wishes to stay.
Monday, April 7, 2008
So it goes
Today many of the Tibetan men and boys shaved their heads to show respect for the monks who have been killed in the protests against the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Most of the women and girls wore black. Around the stupa there were some creative spins on this gesture, like shaving the words "save Tibet" and the shape of the Tibetan flag onto boys' heads...hopefully tomorrow I can unobstrusively catch some pictures. The political heat continues to rise locally as well, what with elections being three days away, and transportation ends (non-government vehicles are officially banned from the streets) starting on the 9th. Until then, the parties are making the most of the public roads, with bullhorn-toting political activists in parades and cars plastered with posters at every other intersection. A few days ago five bombs went off in various government buildings--just pipe bombs, nobody injured, maybe a few exploded walls--and the U.S. Embassy sent out warnings through email. Email or not, I'm sure we'd all be staying indoors on the 10th, but I am looking forward to seeing how the elections actually go down. This will be a really historic time if things happen in a fairly fair way, and it could mean good progress for the country, or at least a prediction of good progress in two years' time (when this assembly is supposed to finish the new constitution).
Sadly there's nothing up-to-the-minute to report as far as classes are concerned because I've been sick with a fever and other ailments for the last few days. My best guess is that it's related to the strange weather, which went from increasingly hot to absurdly cold and stormy in the last week. Hopefully resuming yoga and spending some time in the sunlight will help finish off the last of whatever bug took hold of my insides.
Before I got sick most of my classes were on various details of Ayurvedic pharmacology that I think few would be interested to read, so I'll refrain from posting the lists and details. Among the more fascinating topics was the kinds of preparations used to purify heavy metals used in some Ayurvedic preparations (gold, lead, mercury, etc.) which have received very bad press in Western medicine. Of course, these preparations aren't meant to be used long-term (Kopila said only one month out of the year and depending upon all sorts of things), but even with qualifications there have been side effects due to dosage or simple misuse. After hearing about the methods used to make them suitable for ingestion, I still have some reservations, and would certainly have to know that the doctor was exceedingly trustworthy and attentive. Fortunately, my impressions of Dr. Koirala go beyond that, and learning from him and people he considers highly makes iffy questions like these easier to learn about and explore with an open mind.
As there's no electricity right now and the laptop's battery life is rapidly dwindling, I'll update with juicier news soon.
Sadly there's nothing up-to-the-minute to report as far as classes are concerned because I've been sick with a fever and other ailments for the last few days. My best guess is that it's related to the strange weather, which went from increasingly hot to absurdly cold and stormy in the last week. Hopefully resuming yoga and spending some time in the sunlight will help finish off the last of whatever bug took hold of my insides.
Before I got sick most of my classes were on various details of Ayurvedic pharmacology that I think few would be interested to read, so I'll refrain from posting the lists and details. Among the more fascinating topics was the kinds of preparations used to purify heavy metals used in some Ayurvedic preparations (gold, lead, mercury, etc.) which have received very bad press in Western medicine. Of course, these preparations aren't meant to be used long-term (Kopila said only one month out of the year and depending upon all sorts of things), but even with qualifications there have been side effects due to dosage or simple misuse. After hearing about the methods used to make them suitable for ingestion, I still have some reservations, and would certainly have to know that the doctor was exceedingly trustworthy and attentive. Fortunately, my impressions of Dr. Koirala go beyond that, and learning from him and people he considers highly makes iffy questions like these easier to learn about and explore with an open mind.
As there's no electricity right now and the laptop's battery life is rapidly dwindling, I'll update with juicier news soon.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Basic Principles of Understanding Medicine
This entry will have a fair amount of Nepali medical jargon. Be warned! Also, be warned that this is more like a detailed cosmology of medicine than a textbook outline. I'm really only typing it up so I have a chance to study it, haha.
Class today was awesome but overwhelming. It was my first lesson with Dr. S.M. Adhikari, who happens to be Kopila's father, and occupies a position as the expert in medicinal plants in the Ministry of Medicine in the (so-called) government of Nepal and is President of the association of doctors. I am outrageously lucky to be taking class with him, and they are all so generous to me--with time and energy, which is even greater than material generosity. I feel humbled by how much effort they are putting into making my time here absolutely everything it can be. Until I go home I will be taking class with four doctors, covering so much ground...Dr. Koirala has immense wisdom, and his spiritual understanding of medicine is beyond what can be taught with words or pictures; Kopila brings the new perspective of the coming generation of doctors; her classmate Dr. L.P. Ghimire has a specialized knowledge of Ayurvedic pharmacology, and Dr. Adhikari is a most respected expert senior doctor...how amazing. And I get hours upon hours of time with them one-on-one. Pure teaching, and in Dr. Koirala's case, I feel that a great part of it is beyond that, into the realm of transmission.
Caitlyn had a very funny idea for an April Fool's Day trick to play on Yanik, which went over semi-well. We found it hilarious anyway...she called him up and told him I had run off to Nagarkot indefinitely with Sid, the bass player at Jazz Upstairs, and that my dad had called her panicking because I'd sent him an email letting him know I was skipping out of my program to go gallivanting. Yanik fell for it, but I think it got a little confused at some point. Quite funny anyway! And ama-la is very tricky; she got Caitiln to drink black tea thinking it was juice, which reminded me strongly of drinking the horrifying-tasting herbal concoction my dad used to drink when my mother indiscriminately put it into a Coke bottle and stuck it in the fridge.
Tonight are my remaining Watson interviews. Tomorrow we go to Gokharna for yoga in the morning, which will be new and interesting. With lessons getting so intense, I've had practically zero time to work on things for school back at home, which is going to be a problem soon...
Anyway, notes on the basic principles of understanding medicine:
There are three fundamental concepts of Ayurveda that the rest are founded on. One is pancamahabhuta, which is the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, space). The next is tridosha, which is the manifestation of the pancamahabhuta in vata, pitta, and kapha. The third is sattpadartha, which literally translates to "word which has meaning" and represents all that can be described in physical terms.
The ancient rishis or seers remembered six things that are the foundation of every science, including Ayurveda. We say "remembered" because the knowledge existed in the universe, and through their spiritual efforts they were able to channel this knowledge and turn it into a system for human use. These six things are as follows:
1) DRAVYA: Matter and material. There are nine aspects of dravya, which are the pancamahabhuta (5 discrete elements), time, direction or place, mind, and soul. The power of all matter comes from these aspects. Pancamahabhuta is animated by the power of the soul, the mind is the leader of all sense organs, and no phenomenon can be separated from its time and place. By saying the mind is the leader of the sense organs, we mean that for example vision is a sense organ, and its seat is the eye. Thus the power of the sense organ is the mind. These 5 aspects of dravya, counting pancamahabhuta now as one aspect, are known as the Causal elements. All other elements are the Effectual elements, because they are dependent upon these, and have their existence only as manifestations of the pancamahabhuta.
2) GUNAS: Properties or qualities of matter. The sartha refers to those gunas which can be perceived by the sense organs (which is the majority and the significant part according to pharmacology), though there are also those gunas which describe the structural aspect of the tridosha, which are invisible and intangible. The gunas can be further classified into the spiritual, the (meta)physical. The physical can be further classified into the specific and the general. There are 6 spiritual gunas, which can only be felt and are not found in senseless or nonliving dravya, such as desire, happiness, etc. The specific physical gunas are 5, specific to each sense organ; the general physical gunas are the 20 characteristics that distinguish the doshas (i.e. coarse, unctuous, sharp, etc.) and the 10 para apara, which are other distinguishing qualities (i.e. brightness, relative distance, etc.). These properties belong to the body, food, and medicine, which is why they are used to treat disease. There is a broad total of 41 properties. These gunas all stem from the greater emanations of the three mahagunas (greater gunas), which are the sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic qualities; these are understood as the speeds of vibration (fast, medium, slow), the active, passive, and neutral principles, etc.
3) KARMA: Action. Initiation or change of property or structure. Without karma there can be no modification of any state of existence, and in medicine helps us to understand the pharmacological action and therapeutic effect. There are two types of medicinal karma: pathophysiological and pharmacological. Change within the body is effected by drugs/medicine. To get the desired change, action is necessary. The qualities we cannot perceive directly, we can know by their action. In the sense of pharmacology we must see the action of the medicine in order to identify it, and to know whether it is an original or a duplicate substance. The drug alone does not perform the action; it must have qualities which must belong to material.
4 & 5) SAMANYA and VISHESHA: Similarity and difference. These two must always be taken and understood together. Similarity is the general that phenomena (or bodies, foods, medicines, etc.) have in common; the differences are specific and differentiate or separate the existence of one from another. What we perceive with the sense organs must have differences, but we all have common consciousness as the power behind perception. For example, my eyes are blue and another person's might be brown; my skin is pink but another's might be black; still, we all (generally) have two eyes, the same skin, etc.
6) SAMAVAYA: Relationship. There is an inherent relation between material and the properties or qualities that describe it. The continuity of this relationship, which applies to not only material but also the gunas and the karma, is inherent. However, as Krishnamurti famously said, "the description is not the described", and this is the principle meant by samavaya. For example, we call haritaki by its name because we both know and believe that it has certain qualities, properties, potency, and action. If it does not have this action or potency, this taste, this feel, this appearance, and so forth, it is not haritaki. If we say "this is hot", it must have a heating quality, otherwise it is not hot. In the same way, an action cannot happen without the property denoting that action. This relationship can have degrees of complexity as well; i.e. we may say something is dry, but its action might cause unctuousness in the body.
Regarding the dravya, the living body comes in contact with medicine and diet. Their use and prescription is based on the principle of similarity and dissimilarity. Dravya causes action on the living body due to its properties. Time, proportion, etc. may differ, but the properties that are the same will increase the same (like increases like). In other words, properties differ by way of the Causal elements, but need balance of the pancamahabhuta regardless.
Now we wonder how these processes actually occur. According to Ayurveda, the power of transformation is called agni, and in terms of the human body primarily refers to digestion and other metabolic processes. There are three main types of agni to be concerned with here: digestive, pancabhutic (enables the conversion, for example, of vegetables into nutrients--one form of the elements into another), and of the dhatus (bodily tissues or constituents). All of this acts and passes through the srota, or channels of the body. All the bodily systems (respiratory, circulatory, urinary, etc.) are srota; some are not visible, some are. They allow travel and passage throughout the body. All of this varies slightly in the body of each individual, which is why the patient's constitution must be considered wholly and in relationship to its aspects when prescribing medicine.
There are only three effects that dravya can have on the living body. One is to maintain, prevent, or cure disease; one is to have no action, and one is to cause disease. Whatever drug or medicine might be used, can only have these effects. The effects can only be had by either increasing or decreasing the dravya, the guna(s), or the karma, etc. in the body. Thus we measure by increase/decrease, excess/deficiency, etc. The dhatus and tridosha are the same depending on their state. It is also important to note that everything is necessary in the body in some amount. Even the excreta (stool, sweat, urine) are necessary in some amount; without them there is no state of health.
Class today was awesome but overwhelming. It was my first lesson with Dr. S.M. Adhikari, who happens to be Kopila's father, and occupies a position as the expert in medicinal plants in the Ministry of Medicine in the (so-called) government of Nepal and is President of the association of doctors. I am outrageously lucky to be taking class with him, and they are all so generous to me--with time and energy, which is even greater than material generosity. I feel humbled by how much effort they are putting into making my time here absolutely everything it can be. Until I go home I will be taking class with four doctors, covering so much ground...Dr. Koirala has immense wisdom, and his spiritual understanding of medicine is beyond what can be taught with words or pictures; Kopila brings the new perspective of the coming generation of doctors; her classmate Dr. L.P. Ghimire has a specialized knowledge of Ayurvedic pharmacology, and Dr. Adhikari is a most respected expert senior doctor...how amazing. And I get hours upon hours of time with them one-on-one. Pure teaching, and in Dr. Koirala's case, I feel that a great part of it is beyond that, into the realm of transmission.
Caitlyn had a very funny idea for an April Fool's Day trick to play on Yanik, which went over semi-well. We found it hilarious anyway...she called him up and told him I had run off to Nagarkot indefinitely with Sid, the bass player at Jazz Upstairs, and that my dad had called her panicking because I'd sent him an email letting him know I was skipping out of my program to go gallivanting. Yanik fell for it, but I think it got a little confused at some point. Quite funny anyway! And ama-la is very tricky; she got Caitiln to drink black tea thinking it was juice, which reminded me strongly of drinking the horrifying-tasting herbal concoction my dad used to drink when my mother indiscriminately put it into a Coke bottle and stuck it in the fridge.
Tonight are my remaining Watson interviews. Tomorrow we go to Gokharna for yoga in the morning, which will be new and interesting. With lessons getting so intense, I've had practically zero time to work on things for school back at home, which is going to be a problem soon...
Anyway, notes on the basic principles of understanding medicine:
There are three fundamental concepts of Ayurveda that the rest are founded on. One is pancamahabhuta, which is the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, space). The next is tridosha, which is the manifestation of the pancamahabhuta in vata, pitta, and kapha. The third is sattpadartha, which literally translates to "word which has meaning" and represents all that can be described in physical terms.
The ancient rishis or seers remembered six things that are the foundation of every science, including Ayurveda. We say "remembered" because the knowledge existed in the universe, and through their spiritual efforts they were able to channel this knowledge and turn it into a system for human use. These six things are as follows:
1) DRAVYA: Matter and material. There are nine aspects of dravya, which are the pancamahabhuta (5 discrete elements), time, direction or place, mind, and soul. The power of all matter comes from these aspects. Pancamahabhuta is animated by the power of the soul, the mind is the leader of all sense organs, and no phenomenon can be separated from its time and place. By saying the mind is the leader of the sense organs, we mean that for example vision is a sense organ, and its seat is the eye. Thus the power of the sense organ is the mind. These 5 aspects of dravya, counting pancamahabhuta now as one aspect, are known as the Causal elements. All other elements are the Effectual elements, because they are dependent upon these, and have their existence only as manifestations of the pancamahabhuta.
2) GUNAS: Properties or qualities of matter. The sartha refers to those gunas which can be perceived by the sense organs (which is the majority and the significant part according to pharmacology), though there are also those gunas which describe the structural aspect of the tridosha, which are invisible and intangible. The gunas can be further classified into the spiritual, the (meta)physical. The physical can be further classified into the specific and the general. There are 6 spiritual gunas, which can only be felt and are not found in senseless or nonliving dravya, such as desire, happiness, etc. The specific physical gunas are 5, specific to each sense organ; the general physical gunas are the 20 characteristics that distinguish the doshas (i.e. coarse, unctuous, sharp, etc.) and the 10 para apara, which are other distinguishing qualities (i.e. brightness, relative distance, etc.). These properties belong to the body, food, and medicine, which is why they are used to treat disease. There is a broad total of 41 properties. These gunas all stem from the greater emanations of the three mahagunas (greater gunas), which are the sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic qualities; these are understood as the speeds of vibration (fast, medium, slow), the active, passive, and neutral principles, etc.
3) KARMA: Action. Initiation or change of property or structure. Without karma there can be no modification of any state of existence, and in medicine helps us to understand the pharmacological action and therapeutic effect. There are two types of medicinal karma: pathophysiological and pharmacological. Change within the body is effected by drugs/medicine. To get the desired change, action is necessary. The qualities we cannot perceive directly, we can know by their action. In the sense of pharmacology we must see the action of the medicine in order to identify it, and to know whether it is an original or a duplicate substance. The drug alone does not perform the action; it must have qualities which must belong to material.
4 & 5) SAMANYA and VISHESHA: Similarity and difference. These two must always be taken and understood together. Similarity is the general that phenomena (or bodies, foods, medicines, etc.) have in common; the differences are specific and differentiate or separate the existence of one from another. What we perceive with the sense organs must have differences, but we all have common consciousness as the power behind perception. For example, my eyes are blue and another person's might be brown; my skin is pink but another's might be black; still, we all (generally) have two eyes, the same skin, etc.
6) SAMAVAYA: Relationship. There is an inherent relation between material and the properties or qualities that describe it. The continuity of this relationship, which applies to not only material but also the gunas and the karma, is inherent. However, as Krishnamurti famously said, "the description is not the described", and this is the principle meant by samavaya. For example, we call haritaki by its name because we both know and believe that it has certain qualities, properties, potency, and action. If it does not have this action or potency, this taste, this feel, this appearance, and so forth, it is not haritaki. If we say "this is hot", it must have a heating quality, otherwise it is not hot. In the same way, an action cannot happen without the property denoting that action. This relationship can have degrees of complexity as well; i.e. we may say something is dry, but its action might cause unctuousness in the body.
Regarding the dravya, the living body comes in contact with medicine and diet. Their use and prescription is based on the principle of similarity and dissimilarity. Dravya causes action on the living body due to its properties. Time, proportion, etc. may differ, but the properties that are the same will increase the same (like increases like). In other words, properties differ by way of the Causal elements, but need balance of the pancamahabhuta regardless.
Now we wonder how these processes actually occur. According to Ayurveda, the power of transformation is called agni, and in terms of the human body primarily refers to digestion and other metabolic processes. There are three main types of agni to be concerned with here: digestive, pancabhutic (enables the conversion, for example, of vegetables into nutrients--one form of the elements into another), and of the dhatus (bodily tissues or constituents). All of this acts and passes through the srota, or channels of the body. All the bodily systems (respiratory, circulatory, urinary, etc.) are srota; some are not visible, some are. They allow travel and passage throughout the body. All of this varies slightly in the body of each individual, which is why the patient's constitution must be considered wholly and in relationship to its aspects when prescribing medicine.
There are only three effects that dravya can have on the living body. One is to maintain, prevent, or cure disease; one is to have no action, and one is to cause disease. Whatever drug or medicine might be used, can only have these effects. The effects can only be had by either increasing or decreasing the dravya, the guna(s), or the karma, etc. in the body. Thus we measure by increase/decrease, excess/deficiency, etc. The dhatus and tridosha are the same depending on their state. It is also important to note that everything is necessary in the body in some amount. Even the excreta (stool, sweat, urine) are necessary in some amount; without them there is no state of health.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Just Power
At the Macchapucchare Base Camp lodge, there was a Buddhist review magazine, which during an idle hour I flipped through, and came across an article that I think is essential reading for anyone concerned with the shifting tides of power and its manifestations in society and religion. It's only available online for a paid subscription to the mag, so I am going to type it out here.
JUST POWER: In a talk given at Smith College, Helen Tworkov reflects on a half century of American Buddhist women and reimagines the future of power.
Imagine leafing through a pamphlet or perhaps a monthly magazine and coming across a guide to good behavior with advice that included the following:
For many contemporary Westerners the asumption that this advice was intended for women probably runs so deep as to go undetected. Maybe your imagination has already leaped ahead to the idea that this could be a list of idealized feminine virtues of the Victorian era; or a set of guidelines for prim boarding-school girls of the 1940s; or perhaps a compendium of traits that the feminists of the 1970s rejected in favor of male behavioral models. But in fact, these behaviors were extolled in The Way of the Bodhisattva, a seminal text by the great Buddhist sage Shantideva, and delivered to his fellow--all male--monastics at Nalanda University in eighth-century India.
Throughout Buddhist history the enlightened masters have advocated behavior--such as the quintessential bodhisattva ideal of putting others before oneself--that progressive women today can easily associate with a legacy of oppression. And yet, with the world in such perilous straits, and in light of recent patriarchal and god-sponsored warfare, these behavioral archetypes have ramifications that, like the teachers themselves, expand far beyond gender. Putting down the cultural baggage, however, is easier said than done.
A thirteenth-century Zen teaching points to how the mind variously refracts the same object, and offers us a way to approach this issue:
This saying, first attributed to Ch'an master Ch'ing-yuan, has itself been refracted through many interpretations and differing doctrinal schemes. In the first line, "mountains are mountains" can convey a conventional view of reality based on accepted, collective, perceptual normals. The second line expresses a deliberative remove from convention, in which "mountain" is understood to be a construct of the human imagination, devoid of any independent meaning or existence. In the third line, when once again "mountains are mountains," there remains only the pure, unfiltered view, neither constructed nor deconstructed, beyond acceptance or denial, beyond the duality of relative and absolute.
Using this Zen teaching as a lens through which to view Buddhism's prized attributes--those that many Western women associate with oppression--we first see a mountain of human attributes classically associated in the West with the feminine: gentleness, modesty, speaking softly, humility, equanimity, altruism, consideration, obedience, generosity. With the second line we can deconstruct the cultural reality to uncover the myth of normalcy. Here, we are forced to consider that the cultural ideal has often been a very poor fit with the actual experience of women's lives, that living a life of duty to one's family, husband, children can be accompanied by tightly harnessed feelings of anger, inadequacy, and humiliation. Here the attributes appear as external masks, so that, say, generosity masks greed, kindness masks anger, obedience masks servility. In this view, not even women embody the so-called female virtues: mountains are not mountains, and women, as defined in the first line, are not women, any more than the traits they exhibit are virtuous. In the third and final line, the mountains appears again to represent the same attributes we see in the first view, but now, generosity is just generosity itself; obedience is just obedience--with no subtext, no gender, no psychology, and no history. Just obedience, just modesty, just humility--beyond female and male, beyond oppressor and oppressed.
It's important to note that the above traits do not actually lie outside of constructed values, and in this way, do not reflect Zen teachings represented in the third ine. Just the same, Shantideva identifies these attributes as those most appropriate for the followers of the Buddha; they are conditioned behaviors allied with taming the ego. But supporting liberation from self-centeredness, they help create possibilities for engaging in the sacred nondual dance of interdependence beyond relative and absolute.
American women have come a long way through hard-won ideological battles and changes in our educational and legal systems. All these efforts have significantly altered the way we live, and have increased possibilities for women. There's a lot more work to be done, but I think that we've come far enough to ask ourselves not only how we can increase opportunities but also what we are going to use them for. The commitment to equality without attention to its application threatens to leave us emulating the flawed system we fought so hard to change. The shift that we;re seeking is not a lateral gender move away from, say, George Bush to Condaleezza Rice, although in some quarters, this is precisely what is happening. Consider, for isntance, that the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib was a woman, as were two of the six U.S. soldiers charged with sadistic abuses at the prison. For many of us in the West, the photographs of Abu Ghraib, and in particular, the one of PFC Lynndie England holding an Iraqi prisoner on a leash, reinforce the necessity of rethinking women's strategies for equality; as well, they intensify the need for a whole new experience of what power might look and feel like from an enlightened perspective.
For a half a century, in the name of gender and religious equality and values, American women and American Buddhist leaders have beaten a path from the cultural margins toward the center, as if the center itself held the key to the kingdom. At this point in history, to continue in that direction without examination seems foolish, if not dangerously destructive. We're challenged to do no less than formulate another view of power, or to adopt one more consistent with our Buddhist values. Returning to Shantideva, his injunction to "remain like a log" provides an apt image around which we might initiate a discussion about enlightened views of power.
Remaining like a log is not an action the American military would associate with the exercise of power. Yet Shantideva uses the phrase again and again to depict internal strength. For Buddhist practitioners who have struggled mightily to overcome the dominance of ego, "remaining like a log" can suggest new definitions of control, of dominion, and of power.
Shantideva advocates restraint, discipline, and nonreactivity. He speaks of taming, training, and subjugating one's own ego. The invitation in Buddhist practice is to yoking, or leashing, one's own mind, not another being's.
Considering this nontraditional view of power, it's perhaps not surprising that when Buddhism entered into the margins of American cultural, gender played a pronounced role. In the 1950s we see two distinct streams of attraction to dharma: one was almost all male, the other almost all female. We have an intellectual interest catalyzed primarily by the books of D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, and championed by the Beat poets. But, with few exceptions, this interest did not extend to practice. The Beat scene was pervasively male, and for all its attraction to Eastern philosophies and its pungent and theatrical critiques of the United States, it enshrined the ethos of rugged cowboy individualism as much as Hollywood Westerns.
At the same time--the late fifties--the first Zen retreats were held in the United States. Photographs reveal that almost all the participants of these first Zen retreats were middle-aged women. Taking the time to sit down, keep quiet and "do nothing" was apparently a very unmanly activity, despite the fact that of all the Buddhist traditions, Zen strikes many as being archly masculine. But Japanese Zen came packaged with the so-called Zen arts, such as tea ceremony and flower arranging. And in the United States, appreciation for art (not making art--that was male) was considered a woman's domain. The refined aesthetics of Japanese Zen went a long way toward legitimizing Zen in this country, and particularly among women. So there was a period when the Beat scene--which definitely popularized Zen--was as solidly male, with its aggressive homoeroticism and its legendary chauvinism, as the Zen retreat scene was female. It would be another few years, and not without the advent of the counterculture, before Zen retreats would have equal numbers of men and women.
The counterculture of the 1960s derived from opposition to the culturally sanctioned Vietnam War. But there was also a division within the counterculture into spiritual and political. The spiritual wing was characterized by, as Timothy Leary famously put it, "turning, tuning in, and dropping out." A lot of these people, including muself, are those who--if we got lucky--found our way to Buddhism.
Both the political and spiritual wings of the counterculture were characterized in part by defying gender stereotypes. While some feminists experimented with decidedly male forms, the spiritual wing embodied a feminized form. Both men and women who dropped out were wearing long hair, loose, braided, beaded; both genders were wearing jewelry and the slogan of that time which best encapsulates this feminization was "Make Love, Not War."
From within this sphere of the dropout counterculture, Buddhism began to attract young Americans new to dharma. Reflecting the compromised glory of the Vietnam War, many identified with the Vietnamese (and Buddhist) victims of American aggression. So, in completely monolithic, relative, and reductive terms, the hippie movement, which includes convert Buddhism, looks very feminine compared to the conventions of the mainstream middle class.
Through the seventies, we see the growth of several big Zen centers, and we have the development of the Vipassana community in Barre, MA. And by the early seventies, we begin to see an influx of Tibetan teachers. We see equal numbers of men and women students, but almost all male teachers and a disproportionate number of men with organizational authority.
I started my own Buddhist studies with Tibetan teachers. Then, in 1981, I moved into the Zen Community of New York, where every morning we chanted the names of our "ancestors," which happened to be eighty generations of Zen patriarchs. What was more subtle and difficult to apprehend was that "the ideal Zen student"--in whatever body, male or female--looked a lot like a classic old-fashioned version of a gentleman's perfect wife.
Particularly in the Tibetan and Ze scenes you had, more often than not, an authoritative male teacher surrounded by students who were, more often than not,
Now, it so happens that we see very similar kinds of behavior in people, and particularly in women, with issues of low self-esteem, or with very entrenched neurotic patterns of worthlessness that fit together perfectly with identifying oneself as the servant. And, as it happens, there were a lot of students who, with issues of self-esteem and/or abuse, were very comfortable with a continuation of certain neurotic behaviors, especially if that meant they were upheld as ideal Buddhist students. This, not surprisingly, became a source of great confusion. After all, we know that the quintessential core of Mahayana Buddhism is putting others before oneself. And that historically the quintessential work of womanhood was--and in many parts of the world still is--to put the needs and wants of husband, in-laws, parents, and children first. Thousands of texts present this bodhisattva principle, but to quote Shantideva again:
We know that to embrace unenlightened female forms may affirm individual and collective patterns of abuse and low self-esteem. If we continue to look at them as expressions of male dominance, then, of course, we will wish to abandon them. Yet to reject these qualities is to reject the teachings of the buddhas. If we trust that they are gender-free Buddhist values, then we may be able to use them to help frame a distinctly different value system.
By the mid-eighties, Buddhist women began looking at their own practice centers [MISSING SECTION]
--and by a widespread awareness of environmental devastation, some political voices in the women's movement proposed traditional "female" qualities as critical to pulling the world back form the brink--qualities such as compassion, deep listening, nurturing, serving. They identified the so-called "weaknesses" of women as the very strengths that the planet most needed to survive. Yet while this ideology can infuse a context for change, without an internal shift, and one that goes far beyond the issues of gender, its effect will--and has--remained limited.
Within a decade, young women became openly antagonistic to the feminism of the baby boomer generation. "Feminism" itself became a dirty word, and the feminists of the sixties were faulted for advocating a male value system at the expense of female-identified forms. Rather than engage in literal and symbolic bra-burning, young women retained the quest for equal opportunities but dressed up in Victoria's Secret. The quieter feminism of the eighties, which advocated an embrace of female-identified behavior, did not get much play either. And consequently the very nature of power itself was not questioned. At the same time, the gorund for change has been tilled. And the rise of patriarchal fundamentalism and of religious militarism is so untenable that perhaps the time is right to make real shifts in how we understand power.
Perhaps the unmasked politics of fundamentalism, economic domination, and the loathsome consequences of unbridled greed have descended to such horrific lows that, however unwittingly, they can spawn a new story, or uncover and unborn dream by which we can navigate the realities of where we are, who we are, and who we wish it to be.
Is it possible to imagine that power might be defined by presence of mind; that the more one is no longer controlled by compulsions, addictions, patterns, habits, the more power one has to act in service of wisdom and compassion? What if we said that power is internal freedom, that power is the capacity for choice? Can we--women and men--stand te heat of appearing to be passive, of remaining like a log? Can we imagine, compassionately, that in our society this might be much more difficult for men than for women?
Following 9/11 there was never a possibility of not bombing Afghanistan. It wasn't just the President and the politicians who disallowed nonaction; the mindset of the American people demanded retaliation. I use this example not to suggest that inaction in this particular case would have been a more enlightened strategy, but to suggest that "strategy", or any form of intelligent, wise consideration, was made impossible by the blinding thirst for revenge. A primitive, dualistic response--however easy it was to explain--ruled the day. Remaining like a log is not a political position. It is neither passive nor pacifist. Rather it describes a state of mind capable of making wise decisions, unplugged from the emotional charge of compulsive reactivity. Remaining like a log describes a mind that has options, one that is not merely being jerked around by selfish responses to external circumstances and that can therefore serve a larger reality with clear, cool insight.
In my own experience, Buddhist practice is indescribably difficult. I know of nothing in this world that is more challenging than the Buddha's invitation to an enlightened way of life. I don't think that the actual process of transformation from the selfish, self-oriented, me-first person into a bodhisattva of wisdom and compassion who consistently puts others first is any easier for one sex than it is for another. Yet my hope for all those living on the American sidelines--such as women and Buddhists--is that we use our compromised status to our best advantage; that we capitalize on our experiences and strengths and training to investigate alternatives to conventional views of power. Perhaps it is worthwhile to figure out what it takes--and what kind of power is required--to "remain like a log."
JUST POWER: In a talk given at Smith College, Helen Tworkov reflects on a half century of American Buddhist women and reimagines the future of power.
Imagine leafing through a pamphlet or perhaps a monthly magazine and coming across a guide to good behavior with advice that included the following:
Put on an ever-smiling countenance.
Do not move furniture and chairs noisily.
Do not open doors with violence.
Take pleasure in the practice of humility.
Always strive to learn from everyone.
Speak with moderation, gently.
Express yourself with modesty.
For many contemporary Westerners the asumption that this advice was intended for women probably runs so deep as to go undetected. Maybe your imagination has already leaped ahead to the idea that this could be a list of idealized feminine virtues of the Victorian era; or a set of guidelines for prim boarding-school girls of the 1940s; or perhaps a compendium of traits that the feminists of the 1970s rejected in favor of male behavioral models. But in fact, these behaviors were extolled in The Way of the Bodhisattva, a seminal text by the great Buddhist sage Shantideva, and delivered to his fellow--all male--monastics at Nalanda University in eighth-century India.
Throughout Buddhist history the enlightened masters have advocated behavior--such as the quintessential bodhisattva ideal of putting others before oneself--that progressive women today can easily associate with a legacy of oppression. And yet, with the world in such perilous straits, and in light of recent patriarchal and god-sponsored warfare, these behavioral archetypes have ramifications that, like the teachers themselves, expand far beyond gender. Putting down the cultural baggage, however, is easier said than done.
A thirteenth-century Zen teaching points to how the mind variously refracts the same object, and offers us a way to approach this issue:
Fisrt mountains are mountains.
Then mountains are not mountains.
Then mountains are mountains again.
This saying, first attributed to Ch'an master Ch'ing-yuan, has itself been refracted through many interpretations and differing doctrinal schemes. In the first line, "mountains are mountains" can convey a conventional view of reality based on accepted, collective, perceptual normals. The second line expresses a deliberative remove from convention, in which "mountain" is understood to be a construct of the human imagination, devoid of any independent meaning or existence. In the third line, when once again "mountains are mountains," there remains only the pure, unfiltered view, neither constructed nor deconstructed, beyond acceptance or denial, beyond the duality of relative and absolute.
Using this Zen teaching as a lens through which to view Buddhism's prized attributes--those that many Western women associate with oppression--we first see a mountain of human attributes classically associated in the West with the feminine: gentleness, modesty, speaking softly, humility, equanimity, altruism, consideration, obedience, generosity. With the second line we can deconstruct the cultural reality to uncover the myth of normalcy. Here, we are forced to consider that the cultural ideal has often been a very poor fit with the actual experience of women's lives, that living a life of duty to one's family, husband, children can be accompanied by tightly harnessed feelings of anger, inadequacy, and humiliation. Here the attributes appear as external masks, so that, say, generosity masks greed, kindness masks anger, obedience masks servility. In this view, not even women embody the so-called female virtues: mountains are not mountains, and women, as defined in the first line, are not women, any more than the traits they exhibit are virtuous. In the third and final line, the mountains appears again to represent the same attributes we see in the first view, but now, generosity is just generosity itself; obedience is just obedience--with no subtext, no gender, no psychology, and no history. Just obedience, just modesty, just humility--beyond female and male, beyond oppressor and oppressed.
It's important to note that the above traits do not actually lie outside of constructed values, and in this way, do not reflect Zen teachings represented in the third ine. Just the same, Shantideva identifies these attributes as those most appropriate for the followers of the Buddha; they are conditioned behaviors allied with taming the ego. But supporting liberation from self-centeredness, they help create possibilities for engaging in the sacred nondual dance of interdependence beyond relative and absolute.
American women have come a long way through hard-won ideological battles and changes in our educational and legal systems. All these efforts have significantly altered the way we live, and have increased possibilities for women. There's a lot more work to be done, but I think that we've come far enough to ask ourselves not only how we can increase opportunities but also what we are going to use them for. The commitment to equality without attention to its application threatens to leave us emulating the flawed system we fought so hard to change. The shift that we;re seeking is not a lateral gender move away from, say, George Bush to Condaleezza Rice, although in some quarters, this is precisely what is happening. Consider, for isntance, that the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib was a woman, as were two of the six U.S. soldiers charged with sadistic abuses at the prison. For many of us in the West, the photographs of Abu Ghraib, and in particular, the one of PFC Lynndie England holding an Iraqi prisoner on a leash, reinforce the necessity of rethinking women's strategies for equality; as well, they intensify the need for a whole new experience of what power might look and feel like from an enlightened perspective.
For a half a century, in the name of gender and religious equality and values, American women and American Buddhist leaders have beaten a path from the cultural margins toward the center, as if the center itself held the key to the kingdom. At this point in history, to continue in that direction without examination seems foolish, if not dangerously destructive. We're challenged to do no less than formulate another view of power, or to adopt one more consistent with our Buddhist values. Returning to Shantideva, his injunction to "remain like a log" provides an apt image around which we might initiate a discussion about enlightened views of power.
Remaining like a log is not an action the American military would associate with the exercise of power. Yet Shantideva uses the phrase again and again to depict internal strength. For Buddhist practitioners who have struggled mightily to overcome the dominance of ego, "remaining like a log" can suggest new definitions of control, of dominion, and of power.
When the urge arises in the mind
To feelings of desire or wrathful hate,
Do not act! Be silent, do not speak!
And like a log of wood be sure to stay. (5.48)
Shantideva advocates restraint, discipline, and nonreactivity. He speaks of taming, training, and subjugating one's own ego. The invitation in Buddhist practice is to yoking, or leashing, one's own mind, not another being's.
Considering this nontraditional view of power, it's perhaps not surprising that when Buddhism entered into the margins of American cultural, gender played a pronounced role. In the 1950s we see two distinct streams of attraction to dharma: one was almost all male, the other almost all female. We have an intellectual interest catalyzed primarily by the books of D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, and championed by the Beat poets. But, with few exceptions, this interest did not extend to practice. The Beat scene was pervasively male, and for all its attraction to Eastern philosophies and its pungent and theatrical critiques of the United States, it enshrined the ethos of rugged cowboy individualism as much as Hollywood Westerns.
At the same time--the late fifties--the first Zen retreats were held in the United States. Photographs reveal that almost all the participants of these first Zen retreats were middle-aged women. Taking the time to sit down, keep quiet and "do nothing" was apparently a very unmanly activity, despite the fact that of all the Buddhist traditions, Zen strikes many as being archly masculine. But Japanese Zen came packaged with the so-called Zen arts, such as tea ceremony and flower arranging. And in the United States, appreciation for art (not making art--that was male) was considered a woman's domain. The refined aesthetics of Japanese Zen went a long way toward legitimizing Zen in this country, and particularly among women. So there was a period when the Beat scene--which definitely popularized Zen--was as solidly male, with its aggressive homoeroticism and its legendary chauvinism, as the Zen retreat scene was female. It would be another few years, and not without the advent of the counterculture, before Zen retreats would have equal numbers of men and women.
The counterculture of the 1960s derived from opposition to the culturally sanctioned Vietnam War. But there was also a division within the counterculture into spiritual and political. The spiritual wing was characterized by, as Timothy Leary famously put it, "turning, tuning in, and dropping out." A lot of these people, including muself, are those who--if we got lucky--found our way to Buddhism.
Both the political and spiritual wings of the counterculture were characterized in part by defying gender stereotypes. While some feminists experimented with decidedly male forms, the spiritual wing embodied a feminized form. Both men and women who dropped out were wearing long hair, loose, braided, beaded; both genders were wearing jewelry and the slogan of that time which best encapsulates this feminization was "Make Love, Not War."
From within this sphere of the dropout counterculture, Buddhism began to attract young Americans new to dharma. Reflecting the compromised glory of the Vietnam War, many identified with the Vietnamese (and Buddhist) victims of American aggression. So, in completely monolithic, relative, and reductive terms, the hippie movement, which includes convert Buddhism, looks very feminine compared to the conventions of the mainstream middle class.
Through the seventies, we see the growth of several big Zen centers, and we have the development of the Vipassana community in Barre, MA. And by the early seventies, we begin to see an influx of Tibetan teachers. We see equal numbers of men and women students, but almost all male teachers and a disproportionate number of men with organizational authority.
I started my own Buddhist studies with Tibetan teachers. Then, in 1981, I moved into the Zen Community of New York, where every morning we chanted the names of our "ancestors," which happened to be eighty generations of Zen patriarchs. What was more subtle and difficult to apprehend was that "the ideal Zen student"--in whatever body, male or female--looked a lot like a classic old-fashioned version of a gentleman's perfect wife.
Particularly in the Tibetan and Ze scenes you had, more often than not, an authoritative male teacher surrounded by students who were, more often than not,
Soft-spoken
Deferential
Subservient
Modest
Respectful
Receptive
Smiling
Willing
Passive
Without strong views or opinions
Now, it so happens that we see very similar kinds of behavior in people, and particularly in women, with issues of low self-esteem, or with very entrenched neurotic patterns of worthlessness that fit together perfectly with identifying oneself as the servant. And, as it happens, there were a lot of students who, with issues of self-esteem and/or abuse, were very comfortable with a continuation of certain neurotic behaviors, especially if that meant they were upheld as ideal Buddhist students. This, not surprisingly, became a source of great confusion. After all, we know that the quintessential core of Mahayana Buddhism is putting others before oneself. And that historically the quintessential work of womanhood was--and in many parts of the world still is--to put the needs and wants of husband, in-laws, parents, and children first. Thousands of texts present this bodhisattva principle, but to quote Shantideva again:
With perfect and unyielding faith,
With steadfastness, respect, and courtesy,
With modesty and conscientiousness,
Work calmly for the happiness of others. (5.55)
And so it is that if I want contentment,
I should never seek to please myself.
And likewise, if I wish to save myself,
I'll always be the guardian of others. (8.173)
We know that to embrace unenlightened female forms may affirm individual and collective patterns of abuse and low self-esteem. If we continue to look at them as expressions of male dominance, then, of course, we will wish to abandon them. Yet to reject these qualities is to reject the teachings of the buddhas. If we trust that they are gender-free Buddhist values, then we may be able to use them to help frame a distinctly different value system.
By the mid-eighties, Buddhist women began looking at their own practice centers [MISSING SECTION]
--and by a widespread awareness of environmental devastation, some political voices in the women's movement proposed traditional "female" qualities as critical to pulling the world back form the brink--qualities such as compassion, deep listening, nurturing, serving. They identified the so-called "weaknesses" of women as the very strengths that the planet most needed to survive. Yet while this ideology can infuse a context for change, without an internal shift, and one that goes far beyond the issues of gender, its effect will--and has--remained limited.
Within a decade, young women became openly antagonistic to the feminism of the baby boomer generation. "Feminism" itself became a dirty word, and the feminists of the sixties were faulted for advocating a male value system at the expense of female-identified forms. Rather than engage in literal and symbolic bra-burning, young women retained the quest for equal opportunities but dressed up in Victoria's Secret. The quieter feminism of the eighties, which advocated an embrace of female-identified behavior, did not get much play either. And consequently the very nature of power itself was not questioned. At the same time, the gorund for change has been tilled. And the rise of patriarchal fundamentalism and of religious militarism is so untenable that perhaps the time is right to make real shifts in how we understand power.
Perhaps the unmasked politics of fundamentalism, economic domination, and the loathsome consequences of unbridled greed have descended to such horrific lows that, however unwittingly, they can spawn a new story, or uncover and unborn dream by which we can navigate the realities of where we are, who we are, and who we wish it to be.
Is it possible to imagine that power might be defined by presence of mind; that the more one is no longer controlled by compulsions, addictions, patterns, habits, the more power one has to act in service of wisdom and compassion? What if we said that power is internal freedom, that power is the capacity for choice? Can we--women and men--stand te heat of appearing to be passive, of remaining like a log? Can we imagine, compassionately, that in our society this might be much more difficult for men than for women?
Following 9/11 there was never a possibility of not bombing Afghanistan. It wasn't just the President and the politicians who disallowed nonaction; the mindset of the American people demanded retaliation. I use this example not to suggest that inaction in this particular case would have been a more enlightened strategy, but to suggest that "strategy", or any form of intelligent, wise consideration, was made impossible by the blinding thirst for revenge. A primitive, dualistic response--however easy it was to explain--ruled the day. Remaining like a log is not a political position. It is neither passive nor pacifist. Rather it describes a state of mind capable of making wise decisions, unplugged from the emotional charge of compulsive reactivity. Remaining like a log describes a mind that has options, one that is not merely being jerked around by selfish responses to external circumstances and that can therefore serve a larger reality with clear, cool insight.
In my own experience, Buddhist practice is indescribably difficult. I know of nothing in this world that is more challenging than the Buddha's invitation to an enlightened way of life. I don't think that the actual process of transformation from the selfish, self-oriented, me-first person into a bodhisattva of wisdom and compassion who consistently puts others first is any easier for one sex than it is for another. Yet my hope for all those living on the American sidelines--such as women and Buddhists--is that we use our compromised status to our best advantage; that we capitalize on our experiences and strengths and training to investigate alternatives to conventional views of power. Perhaps it is worthwhile to figure out what it takes--and what kind of power is required--to "remain like a log."
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Panchakarma
Life goes on here much the same as ever; some days a million things seem to happen, and other days the time melts away before I'm even fully awake.
This week I've been studying the panchakarma therapy in Ayurveda, which literally translates to "five actions" and is a detoxifying treatment. Classically it goes for 28 days, or 54 (though that's seriously intense), but the center here has developed a 14-day "seasonal" panchakarma course as well, which is only two of the five traditional treatments. Each of them takes a toll on the body and has a deep impact on the mind, which is why they say it flushes out the "mind-body system." Even ayurvedic medicines (herbal, oral) cannot go to the root of a problem without first flushing out the body with panchakarma, which balances all three doshas and prepares the body to receive medicine with cleaner and more sensitive organs, better circulation, and so on. If a person takes medicine--even very strong, or allopathic medicine--it will have only 25-50% efficacy compared to its real potency depending on the presence of toxins in the body.
The five therapies are vamana (induced emesis or vomiting), virecana (induced evacuation or bowel movements), anunasana basti and niruha basti (two kinds of enema; basti literally means "bladder") sirovirecana or nasya (nasal cleansing, but includes ears, nose, throat, etc.), and finally and less commonly raktamokshana (bloodletting). The bloodletting practice was added from a different source specializing in surgeries; the others all came from the same classical text of the Carak Samhita.
Each of the treatments works to balance a specific dosha (vaman-kapha, virecana-pitta, bastis-vata). The therapy course is developed beyond the basic treatments appeals to each individual's specific problem. Each day of treatment includes smooth/external oleation therapies (i.e. abhyanga, cakra therapies, sirodhara, picu) to help the body relax and be at ease. Some of the smooth therapies, such as cakra basti, involve mixing specific herbs and oils that not only are appropriate for the patient's constitution, but also target specific diseases or problems like joint pain.
The amount of preparation that goes into designing one person's program (which is all-encompassing: diet, routine, oils and herbs, etc.) for even a single day is staggering, and on top of that, there are ways the body itself needs to be prepared. The first six days or so of the 28-day treatment are spent preparing the body with smooth therapies, proper diet and routine. Before each of the five panchakarma treatments, three days or so of custom ghee preparations (clarified butter with particular spices and ingredients) is given to the patient. They have very deliberate functions--for example, the ghee preparation before the vamana treatment serves to coat the esophagus to protect it from any damage during the vomiting, and at the same time brings out the mucus and heaviness in the chest and respiratory system that needs to be vomited up.
Though vamana is probably the most intense of the five treatments, the restrictions on who can receive it and the other "karmas" (no elderly, children, weak or fatigued persons, pregnant women, people with fever or infectious disease, esophagus problems, etc.) make it different from many other ayurvedic therapies. A person cannot just schedule a panchakarma treatment; the mandatory consultation first might reveal that the therapies are not appropriate for them. However, most people can receive the basti treatments, which is how the 14-day course evolved. The bastis have their own strong effects, though, which many people might not anticipate.
As always, ayurveda treats the person as a whole; panchakarma therapy is accompanied by consistent counseling and seeks to address the health of the patient through latent memory (which is often cellular memory and thus transformed into physical dysfunction or discomfort). In sirodhara, for example (a smooth therapy in which oil is steadily poured onto the forehead between the eyes), patients often fall asleep or into a kind of relaxed hypnosis, during which they will often cry or "lip" (speak without sound) without realizing it. During the basti (enema) treatments, the intestines are thoroughly flushed out and become intensely sensitive. Because they are packed with nerve endings, there is an immediate and extreme effect on the brain; everything that is ingested and sensed within the body is felt strongly.
As a result of the physiological sensitivity and the psychological effects of this sudden change in consciousness, people often break down emotionally at this point during the treatment course. Everything from depression to extreme agitation can occur. Though a patient would never know it (at least at the clinic I'm studying at), there are multiple doctors (M.D.s) and experienced therapy providers watching the reactions of the patient and using their observations to decide which abhyangas and therapies to use, and which oils and preparations to use in them, to bring up the source of whatever distress has contributed to the patient's disease. No wonder many patients unconsciously react with negative emotions.
From the cases that have been described to me (including current patients at the clinic), the behavior becomes almost childlike, which makes sense--can you imagine the shock to your mind and body if all of a sudden your adult self became as sensitive to the inner and outer environment as when you were a child? Personally, having an enormously heightened sensitivity when I came back from trekking, closely followed by several days of abhyanga therapies, I know it had a significant effect on me--five minutes of bickering with my sister had me in tears, physically feeling the effects of unpleasant conversation.
As a sidenote, after oleation therapies patients are usually given steam to dilate the channels (pores etc.) and let the oils, herbal powders, or whatever was used have direct passage into the main stream of the body. In combination, a full course of treatments aims to have preventive, curative, and promotive effects; it takes measures to boost immunity, increase digestive capacity, and lessen stress. This is whole body and mind rejuvenation, which may sound lovely in a brochure but in actuality can be a very uncomfortable experience. The goal of rejuvenation is not relaxation in the typical American "spa" sense of the word.
Anyhow, I figured it has been a while since I updated with any information on what I've actually been studying (or at all, actually), so this entry should remedy that (no pun intended). There are far too many things to really sum up in a blog entry, but I hope the blog gives at least a small taste of this endlessly interesting body of knowledge--a fraction of a fraction!
This week I've been studying the panchakarma therapy in Ayurveda, which literally translates to "five actions" and is a detoxifying treatment. Classically it goes for 28 days, or 54 (though that's seriously intense), but the center here has developed a 14-day "seasonal" panchakarma course as well, which is only two of the five traditional treatments. Each of them takes a toll on the body and has a deep impact on the mind, which is why they say it flushes out the "mind-body system." Even ayurvedic medicines (herbal, oral) cannot go to the root of a problem without first flushing out the body with panchakarma, which balances all three doshas and prepares the body to receive medicine with cleaner and more sensitive organs, better circulation, and so on. If a person takes medicine--even very strong, or allopathic medicine--it will have only 25-50% efficacy compared to its real potency depending on the presence of toxins in the body.
The five therapies are vamana (induced emesis or vomiting), virecana (induced evacuation or bowel movements), anunasana basti and niruha basti (two kinds of enema; basti literally means "bladder") sirovirecana or nasya (nasal cleansing, but includes ears, nose, throat, etc.), and finally and less commonly raktamokshana (bloodletting). The bloodletting practice was added from a different source specializing in surgeries; the others all came from the same classical text of the Carak Samhita.
Each of the treatments works to balance a specific dosha (vaman-kapha, virecana-pitta, bastis-vata). The therapy course is developed beyond the basic treatments appeals to each individual's specific problem. Each day of treatment includes smooth/external oleation therapies (i.e. abhyanga, cakra therapies, sirodhara, picu) to help the body relax and be at ease. Some of the smooth therapies, such as cakra basti, involve mixing specific herbs and oils that not only are appropriate for the patient's constitution, but also target specific diseases or problems like joint pain.
The amount of preparation that goes into designing one person's program (which is all-encompassing: diet, routine, oils and herbs, etc.) for even a single day is staggering, and on top of that, there are ways the body itself needs to be prepared. The first six days or so of the 28-day treatment are spent preparing the body with smooth therapies, proper diet and routine. Before each of the five panchakarma treatments, three days or so of custom ghee preparations (clarified butter with particular spices and ingredients) is given to the patient. They have very deliberate functions--for example, the ghee preparation before the vamana treatment serves to coat the esophagus to protect it from any damage during the vomiting, and at the same time brings out the mucus and heaviness in the chest and respiratory system that needs to be vomited up.
Though vamana is probably the most intense of the five treatments, the restrictions on who can receive it and the other "karmas" (no elderly, children, weak or fatigued persons, pregnant women, people with fever or infectious disease, esophagus problems, etc.) make it different from many other ayurvedic therapies. A person cannot just schedule a panchakarma treatment; the mandatory consultation first might reveal that the therapies are not appropriate for them. However, most people can receive the basti treatments, which is how the 14-day course evolved. The bastis have their own strong effects, though, which many people might not anticipate.
As always, ayurveda treats the person as a whole; panchakarma therapy is accompanied by consistent counseling and seeks to address the health of the patient through latent memory (which is often cellular memory and thus transformed into physical dysfunction or discomfort). In sirodhara, for example (a smooth therapy in which oil is steadily poured onto the forehead between the eyes), patients often fall asleep or into a kind of relaxed hypnosis, during which they will often cry or "lip" (speak without sound) without realizing it. During the basti (enema) treatments, the intestines are thoroughly flushed out and become intensely sensitive. Because they are packed with nerve endings, there is an immediate and extreme effect on the brain; everything that is ingested and sensed within the body is felt strongly.
As a result of the physiological sensitivity and the psychological effects of this sudden change in consciousness, people often break down emotionally at this point during the treatment course. Everything from depression to extreme agitation can occur. Though a patient would never know it (at least at the clinic I'm studying at), there are multiple doctors (M.D.s) and experienced therapy providers watching the reactions of the patient and using their observations to decide which abhyangas and therapies to use, and which oils and preparations to use in them, to bring up the source of whatever distress has contributed to the patient's disease. No wonder many patients unconsciously react with negative emotions.
From the cases that have been described to me (including current patients at the clinic), the behavior becomes almost childlike, which makes sense--can you imagine the shock to your mind and body if all of a sudden your adult self became as sensitive to the inner and outer environment as when you were a child? Personally, having an enormously heightened sensitivity when I came back from trekking, closely followed by several days of abhyanga therapies, I know it had a significant effect on me--five minutes of bickering with my sister had me in tears, physically feeling the effects of unpleasant conversation.
As a sidenote, after oleation therapies patients are usually given steam to dilate the channels (pores etc.) and let the oils, herbal powders, or whatever was used have direct passage into the main stream of the body. In combination, a full course of treatments aims to have preventive, curative, and promotive effects; it takes measures to boost immunity, increase digestive capacity, and lessen stress. This is whole body and mind rejuvenation, which may sound lovely in a brochure but in actuality can be a very uncomfortable experience. The goal of rejuvenation is not relaxation in the typical American "spa" sense of the word.
Anyhow, I figured it has been a while since I updated with any information on what I've actually been studying (or at all, actually), so this entry should remedy that (no pun intended). There are far too many things to really sum up in a blog entry, but I hope the blog gives at least a small taste of this endlessly interesting body of knowledge--a fraction of a fraction!
Monday, March 24, 2008
Holi!
Friday was Holi here, the Hindu festival of colors, behind which are a thousand stories. Essentially the celebration revolves around either Krishna or the demoness Holika, and involves throwing colors and water balloons, coloring the streets red and yellow and soaking everyone. Kids started throwing baggies of water early, though...on my way home from the clinic on Thursday, a group of teenage guys were walking by me armed with waterbombs. One of them politely asked me where I was from, and then whether we celebrated Holi in New York; when I told him no, he asked whether he could hit me with the balloon. I declined to be hit, and he ducked his head and smiled and went on his way. It was very sweet! Of course, about five yards ahead a group of much more mischievous younger boys got me and soaked my hair and jeans anyway.
On the day itself we all went over to Phuntsok's house and engaged in a gigantic waterwar with the houses all around. His roof is higher than any other in the neighborhood, so we had a grand time. It's a fabulous holiday...I can only imagine what it would be like in NYC; people hanging out their windows and heaving plastic bags filled with water across the streets. It's very good-spirited and warm-hearted here. Actually, I find that the children, especially boys, are extremely friendly and helpful, not at all like the insensitive buggers that roam the streets of New York--though they get up to plenty of trouble, I'm sure. Here they're always willing to help someone cross the street or haggle with a taxi driver, or translate to the best of their ability, or just show off whatever tricks they're playing at the moment. Maybe it comes from living in multi-generational homes.
The afternoons have been gorgeous for the most part, aside from occasional thunderstorms. I spent the afternoon working on assignments for my online medical anthropology class, which was great. The readings are totally fascinating; it almost makes me wish I could be back at Lehman for class, but of course being here is what makes everything so interesting.
On the day itself we all went over to Phuntsok's house and engaged in a gigantic waterwar with the houses all around. His roof is higher than any other in the neighborhood, so we had a grand time. It's a fabulous holiday...I can only imagine what it would be like in NYC; people hanging out their windows and heaving plastic bags filled with water across the streets. It's very good-spirited and warm-hearted here. Actually, I find that the children, especially boys, are extremely friendly and helpful, not at all like the insensitive buggers that roam the streets of New York--though they get up to plenty of trouble, I'm sure. Here they're always willing to help someone cross the street or haggle with a taxi driver, or translate to the best of their ability, or just show off whatever tricks they're playing at the moment. Maybe it comes from living in multi-generational homes.
The afternoons have been gorgeous for the most part, aside from occasional thunderstorms. I spent the afternoon working on assignments for my online medical anthropology class, which was great. The readings are totally fascinating; it almost makes me wish I could be back at Lehman for class, but of course being here is what makes everything so interesting.
Monday, March 17, 2008
First, a story
The following short tale is from the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I find it an apt moral not only for life in general, but specifically for trekking or any kind of journey in some sort of wilderness. There are many missteps to look out for, but we cannot spend our lives looking at the ground...
A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for forty days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived.
Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw a hive of activity: tradesmen came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with everyone, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man’s attention.
The wise man listened attentively to the boy’s explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn’t have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours. “Meanwhile, I want to ask you to do something,” said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. “As you wander around, carry this spoon with you, without allowing the oil to spill.”
The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was.
“Well,” asked the wise man, “did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?” The boy was embarrassed, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him.
“Then go back and observe the marvels of my world,” said the wise man. “You cannot trust a man if you don’t know his house.” Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen.
“But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?” asked the wise man. Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone.
“Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you,” said the wisest of wise men. “The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.”
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Bare snippets of trek notes
3/5/08
This is the third day of trekking and we are at about 3200 meters. It is getting colder and colder, but the views are spectacular. I feel like I've snapped into "trekker mind" today; the climbing is easier to bear and slowly the noise in my head is quieting. Yesterday there were a few points where I thought I would go mad from the irrelevant daydreams and memories. ...
One lovely thing about the mountains is that they teach every lesson. Impermanence, effort, instinct, attention, motion...big words that mean nothing without a practical experience. They are real in the moment of seeing, of witnessing my own helplessness; then a sudden moment of clarity, where everything shifts and something else takes control of my senses. I have seen the mountains breathing and thought that my mind simply cannot support the magnitude of this.
3/7/08
Instead of the triumphant experience I anticipated, this trek is showing me all of my weaknesses and I am plunging into a rather morose state of mind. Anyway, the trek from Chhomrong to Himalaya was quite hard but nothing compared to yesterday, going to Macchapucchare Base Camp. We trekked from tropical climate to the snow and ice-laden mountains, out of the hills for sure, up and down, ascend and descend. We crossed a river, hiked through a bamboo forest, passed through a waterfall, explored the Hinku Cave...great views of the increasingly bright and snowy landscape. The jungle was thick but the air was cold, and after descending we hiked through a foot and a half of snow for an hour across the river to avoid an avalanche. The sight was phenomenal as the valley opened up, but the trek uphill hadn't even begun.
Supposedly Chhomrong to HH was the longest day, but by far this was the roughest climb. And going back will be no easier because of the seesawing up and down; what goes up, must come down. Today we are at ABC but it's so cloudy that I can't see anything. Yesterday afternoon we climbed along the high ridge behind MBC and I got to sit in the clouds...we are at 4200 meters.
I'm dying to shower but there's no hot water, and even if there was, my head would freeze. I admit that at this point (day 6) I feel a little petulant and ready to just go home. Dreams featuring my apartment (especially my bed) have featured prominently the last two nights. Despite the intense disappointment I feel with myself, I see that the period before I go home can be very different than the last couple of months.
3/8/08
We began the trek back today. Despite not sleeping again and having the same restless mind, I feel much better--maybe because, as Vivek said, when you descend from the highest point you always are full of energy and enthusiasm. We're already in Bamboo, and the way down was impressively steep. My sense of achievement at reaching ABC is increased in retrospect...I didn't realize how much we had climbed overall, let alone in one day.
But perhaps my sunny disposition is actually due to a far more mundane cause--I got to take a shower upon arrival in Dovan. It was one of the greatest pleasures of my life. Being without the ability to wash myself for almost a week sounds like a trivial deprivation, but it is not. I was in such rapture in the shower that I nearly turned into one of those grossly inappropriate Herbal Essences commercials. I feel like myself again, and last night I was beginning to feel like an alien in my skin, unable to feel awe, wonder, pride, or even recognition of what was around me, let alone myself.
Now I really know how the cleansing and purifying power of water and heat can so magnificently enliven the human body...and mind. I feel so much more prepared to greet the next few days and seize this experience, to make it into something else. Later I should think more about the remarkable effects of temperature and "the elements" on my health and state of mind. If ever there was a perfect opportunity to see this in action, it is a trek.
This is the third day of trekking and we are at about 3200 meters. It is getting colder and colder, but the views are spectacular. I feel like I've snapped into "trekker mind" today; the climbing is easier to bear and slowly the noise in my head is quieting. Yesterday there were a few points where I thought I would go mad from the irrelevant daydreams and memories. ...
One lovely thing about the mountains is that they teach every lesson. Impermanence, effort, instinct, attention, motion...big words that mean nothing without a practical experience. They are real in the moment of seeing, of witnessing my own helplessness; then a sudden moment of clarity, where everything shifts and something else takes control of my senses. I have seen the mountains breathing and thought that my mind simply cannot support the magnitude of this.
3/7/08
Instead of the triumphant experience I anticipated, this trek is showing me all of my weaknesses and I am plunging into a rather morose state of mind. Anyway, the trek from Chhomrong to Himalaya was quite hard but nothing compared to yesterday, going to Macchapucchare Base Camp. We trekked from tropical climate to the snow and ice-laden mountains, out of the hills for sure, up and down, ascend and descend. We crossed a river, hiked through a bamboo forest, passed through a waterfall, explored the Hinku Cave...great views of the increasingly bright and snowy landscape. The jungle was thick but the air was cold, and after descending we hiked through a foot and a half of snow for an hour across the river to avoid an avalanche. The sight was phenomenal as the valley opened up, but the trek uphill hadn't even begun.
Supposedly Chhomrong to HH was the longest day, but by far this was the roughest climb. And going back will be no easier because of the seesawing up and down; what goes up, must come down. Today we are at ABC but it's so cloudy that I can't see anything. Yesterday afternoon we climbed along the high ridge behind MBC and I got to sit in the clouds...we are at 4200 meters.
I'm dying to shower but there's no hot water, and even if there was, my head would freeze. I admit that at this point (day 6) I feel a little petulant and ready to just go home. Dreams featuring my apartment (especially my bed) have featured prominently the last two nights. Despite the intense disappointment I feel with myself, I see that the period before I go home can be very different than the last couple of months.
3/8/08
We began the trek back today. Despite not sleeping again and having the same restless mind, I feel much better--maybe because, as Vivek said, when you descend from the highest point you always are full of energy and enthusiasm. We're already in Bamboo, and the way down was impressively steep. My sense of achievement at reaching ABC is increased in retrospect...I didn't realize how much we had climbed overall, let alone in one day.
But perhaps my sunny disposition is actually due to a far more mundane cause--I got to take a shower upon arrival in Dovan. It was one of the greatest pleasures of my life. Being without the ability to wash myself for almost a week sounds like a trivial deprivation, but it is not. I was in such rapture in the shower that I nearly turned into one of those grossly inappropriate Herbal Essences commercials. I feel like myself again, and last night I was beginning to feel like an alien in my skin, unable to feel awe, wonder, pride, or even recognition of what was around me, let alone myself.
Now I really know how the cleansing and purifying power of water and heat can so magnificently enliven the human body...and mind. I feel so much more prepared to greet the next few days and seize this experience, to make it into something else. Later I should think more about the remarkable effects of temperature and "the elements" on my health and state of mind. If ever there was a perfect opportunity to see this in action, it is a trek.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
In Pokhara
I should write this entry before I forget everything from before the trek. Yesterday was full of jazz and history. In the morning we had a walking tour of Kathmandu with Anil Chitrakar, and it was fantastic to see him again. The tour was a very different experience. Walking the streets of the city near where the old palace and he king's residence were, seeing the remains of the buildings owned by great families of high caste (Ranas, Tamas, etc.) made for a definitively non-tourist tour. We learned about the bloody history of dynasty change, and the legacy of political ineptitude that tends to continue when "power" comes before "politics". Then we had a very pleasant cup of tea with Anil and decided to make plans to go over some books and paintings, to get a deeper view of the history that so clearly explains the present and even in a way predicts the future.
After that we headed to the monthly Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory (KJC) concert, which was amazing. A trio called Soulution played, made up of the incredibly talented German pianist and singer Beate, and two Nepali musicians, a monster sitar player and a tabalas player. They did some of the most awesome fusion wok I've ever heard, totally fresh, keeping the best of both classical Eastern music and bluesy jazz. I'm determined to find a way to bring them to New York. Later, Yanik and I went to Upstairs, where we ran into Beate again (which is nice--she's leaving Nepal in a week). The group at Upstairs is definitely at a level where they should be touring in Europe or playing in NY as well. A few of the group members have such similar characteristics and mannerisms to people I've met or known before...it's a trip to see how true it is that there are "types" of people. At least physically! Nobody can convince me otherwise.
The bus to Pokhara left early this morning (I'm currently here), almost empty; of the few other passengers, two were friendly young Christian missionaries on their way to teach Bible studies at the (tiny) churches in Pokhara and the mountains. They're based in Taiwan, though they're from the Midwest in the States. One of the guys, Russ, told me his whole story of being "born again" out of a terribly messed up situation, having a meth habit that cost $800 a day to being clean overnight by God's will. I found it a fascinating opportunity to speak the language of religion, but with the intention of discussing ideas that are beyond the form in which they're spoken. Religious belief is a volatile thing, as is any idea that people seize and make rigid. This guy, probably because of his own shadowy past, seemed a lot more laid back than many people full of the zeal for God. Still, there's a certain defensiveness religious people tend to have--a warning that I sensed if we got too close to breaking through the mental formations that familiar words represent.
Most of the 6-hour ride was taken up with staring at the breathtaking views as we wound our way through the farms and into the foothills. It inspired the kind of wonder that we all tend to forget is possible. By the fifth hour, though, I wasn't romanticizing the views anymore--they were still awe-inspiring (since actually everything is if you look at it properly) but the puppyish eagerness had worn off. I could strangle myself for not bringing the good camera! Upon arrival I was feeling addled from the contrast of my noisy brain and the quiet of the mountains, so the bustle of Pokhara was a welcome opportunity to (attempt to) prepare for the intensity of two weeks spent climbing towards the sky.
Anytime I am around hills or mountains of such magnitude, something in my psychology shifts. Time spent in wilderness or solitude changes people...if we can bear it past the limit of comfort, or even sanity. I didn't prepare myself for these couple of weeks much, and the result must be that relative solitude makes a strengthened impression...an uncomfortable one.
Meanwhile, I spent my last night in "civilization" watching a Hindi movie called Kal Ho Naa Ho (means something along the lines of "tomorrow may or may not be"...a seize-the-day message). Bollywood has captured my heart...these movies are so awesome, full of tragic scenes of tears between mothers and daughters, and fabulous song and dance sequences. I love the melodrama like it's unfolding in my own head! I'm completely, girlishly enchanted by Sharukh Khan.
Note from 3/16/08: In the following blog posts, rather than over-editing what I wrote during the trek, I'm just going to post fragments without turning them into a coherent and continuous narrative. Maybe eventually I will, but now is not the time to be concerned with writing a memoir.
After that we headed to the monthly Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory (KJC) concert, which was amazing. A trio called Soulution played, made up of the incredibly talented German pianist and singer Beate, and two Nepali musicians, a monster sitar player and a tabalas player. They did some of the most awesome fusion wok I've ever heard, totally fresh, keeping the best of both classical Eastern music and bluesy jazz. I'm determined to find a way to bring them to New York. Later, Yanik and I went to Upstairs, where we ran into Beate again (which is nice--she's leaving Nepal in a week). The group at Upstairs is definitely at a level where they should be touring in Europe or playing in NY as well. A few of the group members have such similar characteristics and mannerisms to people I've met or known before...it's a trip to see how true it is that there are "types" of people. At least physically! Nobody can convince me otherwise.
The bus to Pokhara left early this morning (I'm currently here), almost empty; of the few other passengers, two were friendly young Christian missionaries on their way to teach Bible studies at the (tiny) churches in Pokhara and the mountains. They're based in Taiwan, though they're from the Midwest in the States. One of the guys, Russ, told me his whole story of being "born again" out of a terribly messed up situation, having a meth habit that cost $800 a day to being clean overnight by God's will. I found it a fascinating opportunity to speak the language of religion, but with the intention of discussing ideas that are beyond the form in which they're spoken. Religious belief is a volatile thing, as is any idea that people seize and make rigid. This guy, probably because of his own shadowy past, seemed a lot more laid back than many people full of the zeal for God. Still, there's a certain defensiveness religious people tend to have--a warning that I sensed if we got too close to breaking through the mental formations that familiar words represent.
Most of the 6-hour ride was taken up with staring at the breathtaking views as we wound our way through the farms and into the foothills. It inspired the kind of wonder that we all tend to forget is possible. By the fifth hour, though, I wasn't romanticizing the views anymore--they were still awe-inspiring (since actually everything is if you look at it properly) but the puppyish eagerness had worn off. I could strangle myself for not bringing the good camera! Upon arrival I was feeling addled from the contrast of my noisy brain and the quiet of the mountains, so the bustle of Pokhara was a welcome opportunity to (attempt to) prepare for the intensity of two weeks spent climbing towards the sky.
Anytime I am around hills or mountains of such magnitude, something in my psychology shifts. Time spent in wilderness or solitude changes people...if we can bear it past the limit of comfort, or even sanity. I didn't prepare myself for these couple of weeks much, and the result must be that relative solitude makes a strengthened impression...an uncomfortable one.
Meanwhile, I spent my last night in "civilization" watching a Hindi movie called Kal Ho Naa Ho (means something along the lines of "tomorrow may or may not be"...a seize-the-day message). Bollywood has captured my heart...these movies are so awesome, full of tragic scenes of tears between mothers and daughters, and fabulous song and dance sequences. I love the melodrama like it's unfolding in my own head! I'm completely, girlishly enchanted by Sharukh Khan.
Note from 3/16/08: In the following blog posts, rather than over-editing what I wrote during the trek, I'm just going to post fragments without turning them into a coherent and continuous narrative. Maybe eventually I will, but now is not the time to be concerned with writing a memoir.
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