120% Post

Our neighbors down the road are having a raucous party this evening, and blasting Nepali pop. It's louder than most of the noise in the Bronx! Still, the music is fun--like a hybrid of bhangra, Grease-style pop, and Buddha Bar mixes.

Yesterday I was so out of it that I left Sushila waiting for the second time in a row, so I missed another Nepali language lesson; my cell phone was dead and I came home late (around 9) so Ama-la had been worried. For the first time since coming here I felt really discouraged, guilty about letting people down. There was a familiar desire to huddle under the covers and isolate myself. Even though we had momos for dinner (and guests), I felt so bad that I just wanted to go to bed. Popo-la seemed to see that I was upset--he told me to sit next to him, and made me eat five extra momos. He's such a wonderful presence! I also got to talk with some friends at home before going to bed, which definitely lifted my mood.

According to one of the Buddhist books I've read, one of the qualities of wealth that a Buddhist initiate needs is the ability to feel shame for things he's done wrong. Correct remorse will bring good karma instead of bad. I guess I felt the correct remorse, because everything seemed to put itself right today, and I feel much more like myself. After breakfast popo-la took tsampa (ground barley)--the consistency is like wet sand, cohesive but grainy--and did a cleansing for Patricia, Tais, and myself, taking threads from our clothes at the end. Later he'll take the tsampa pieces to a monastery and the monks will do puja (ceremony) to clear obstacles in the year to come, and our energy will get some benefit from it. Amchi-la also offered to take a few names of some dear friends who have been in bad circumstances lately from me, to lamas in India for pujas there, so they'll have prayers said for them. I'm grateful for the generosity people are showing in this way.

As usual, medicine lessons are covering lots of ground. Cause, mode of entry, and classification of illnesses are a few of the concepts we've been studying in the last couple of days. According to Tibetan medicine, there are two classes of cause of illness. The first is the distant and the second is the proximate cause. The distant cause is further classified into general and specific. The general distant cause is ignorance, which is responsible for the varying afflictions that arise in sentient beings. For example, someone who enjoys smoking cigarettes becomes addicted, which causes disease; it is ignorance that is the final cause. For those who claim to "know the risks and not care", examine the word more closely--it contains the word "ignore"! The specific distant cause of illness is the Three Poisons, or the afflictive emotions of attachment, hatred, and delusion. These correspond to proximate causes of illness, which are the three humors: wind or lung (attachment), bile or tiba (hatred), and phlegm or peken (delusion). The karmic influence on health and illness is also very interesting, but there is so much philosophy and detail that I won't go into it.

Since we've just begun studying dietary behavior in depth, I'll post some of the more common foods and tips. First some fun weight-control trivia: apparently if you drink your beverage before eating a meal, it will help you lose weight or stay thin. If you drink during the meal, it helps to maintain your current body weight. If you drink after the meal, it helps you to gain weight and assists with digestion. Speaking of drinking, it used to be that rainwater was considered the best kind of water to drink. Now, of course, with acid rain etc., it isn't; hot boiled water is the best. I can attest to the surprisingly apparent benefits of drinking it--it's soothing to the digestive system and in general. I recommend it. (Note that it should be drunk on the same day it's boiled, not after.) It's also good for asthma and hiccups!

Also, here's a surefire cure for diarrhea (which has been proven more effective than both Western and Chinese remedies). Boil water and make rice. Grind the rice in the boiled water. Put in a bit of salt, boil more on a low flame for 30 minutes or so. Keep stirring/grinding and boiling until it becomes like a porridge and all the water is dissolved. Put in a whole banana, cut up of course (use two if the diarrhea is super bad) and stir until the pieces are completely dissolved. Mix thoroughly, let it sit for about five minutes. Add a bit of boiled water, just so it isn't too thick. Add one spoon of butter and make sure it's totally dissolved; boil for about ten more minutes. Then drink it and the diarrhea will be gone! If that's just way too time-consuming or the case isn't so bad, just eat some bananas--it works like a charm. (Tibetan medicine is focused very much on digestion and digestive problems...which is good for the poor weak stomachs of the foreign students who come to study in the community!)

A few more random bits: green peas are bad for women with menstrual problems or ovarian issues, but good for high blood pressure. Lentils made into a paste will help skin irritations. Mutton is good for syphilis. Milk is good for tuberculosis, chronic fever, and diabetes, but bad for the mind. Radishes and carrots increase digestive heat, which is generally good for digestion (unless, I suppose, there's a pre-existing imbalance or disposition for one).

Aside from medicine, after only two classes with Sushila, I'm better at speaking Nepali than Tibetan! That might be largely because we're only learning conversational Nepali and not addressing the written language at all, but it's still exciting. We spent some time at the end of class talking about the energy problems here. I've wound up discussing it with almost everyone recently. The rumor is that starting sometime in February they're going to increase the load-setting to 11 hours a day...that means no electricity whatsoever for basically half of every day. Pretty crazy. Any business that hasn't scraped up the 25K-60K Rs it costs to buy a generator or an inverter is going to have a really tough time. How are people going to refrigerate food? In the winter, while temperatures are practically 0 degrees, this isn't so bad; but in the summer, when it's 90 degrees every day--nobody will be able to keep dairy or meat in the house. It's unbelievable. Ke garne? Jiban Nepal maa yestai gaaro. (What to do? Life in Nepal is hard...)

Sushila thinks that the people in the Terai region who are fighting for autonomy (there were bombs yesterday; but it's some 8 hours away from here by bus) are probably remaining unwilling to negotiate because they're being either provoked or supported--silently and invisibly--by the Maoists or certain government candidates, to prevent the elections in April. The people who are currently members of the "parliament" have very comfortable lives, and have for the last 5 years of what's been essentially anarchy. They don't want to give up their status and wealth. It's certainly in their favor to kick up this conflict and prevent the elections from knocking them out of their seats. It's happened before that an official who is not elected to his party position pops up not long after as a high-ranking member of another party. It's quite a crazy situation.

One of Tais' friends from Brazil, Patricia, has been staying here at the house visiting for the last week. She's been living in India (Bhir I think); she's a Shiatsu therapist and M.D. It's been a pleasure hanging out with her and Tais together. Hopefully we can stay in touch.

Last note: in a burst of longing for familiar reading, I read Women in Love over the past day or so. At first I found Lawrence to be an enjoyable if excessively lush writer (though he came earlier, I read Baldwin first, and it reminded of that style), but towards the end of the book his didactic philosophical tangents started to get irritating instead of romantic. After closing the book, I felt a little bit dismayed that for all its ambition the novel turned out to be the kind of vain, almost pessimistic dreamy junk as most romance novels. Still, he did capture--or at least successfully allude to--some real truths about women, men, and the inevitabilities of life, at least of the few I know. For his time I'm sure he was indeed a visionary, but without defending my opinion with literary criticism (how unenlightened), I wasn't too charmed by it. I think I'll go back to the Upanishads without any more interruptions.

Goodnight!