Mary Panttaja

I’ve been thinking about what’s interesting and compelling about spending 4 days of our vacation here at this event.

• First, the teaching from His Holiness the Dalai Lama
  • This is interesting because of the subject matter which comes in two components:
    • A philosophical study of the nature of reality; Buddhist philosophy is at core a way of understanding the nature of the evolving universe and how we participate in that evolution.
    • The method of training the mind in order that you may most effectively participate in the nature of the evolving universe. No where else have I seen a disciplined approach to training the mind in concentration and contemplation; much less one centered in a complete philosophy of the nature of reality. (I remember asking my philosophy reviewers of the arising world model (phd’s and masters in philosophy) how they were trained to do mental and analytical contemplation, and to a man/woman, they said that there was no such training in their universities.

The cultural nature of the trip is also fascinating:

• The religious tapestry is quite exotic to a westerner. A whole system of color and ceremony (which HHDL makes fun of regularly) surrounds the event: chanting, prayers, prostrations, bowing, gilded chairs, an enormous thangka (painting of Chenrezig) behind His Holiness, which you are constantly gazing at. This ceremonial content is an important component for the Tibetans who are in attendance; this is a key part of their investment to keep their culture alive.
• The audience is significantly filled with Tibetan exiles who have traveled from all over the world to be here with their families. Assortments of Tibetan costumes and a marketplace with Tibetan food and wares. There is the entire range of emigrants from western-raised teenagers in jeans and tshirts; middle aged couples who have made their way in the west and adopted a new way of life (the women wearing their fanciest Tibetan dresses–which are quite elegant); the seniors, smiling and nodding, who seem as if they are just off the plane, speaking no English, and feeling very vulnerable.
• Madison is also a revelation–a mix of Cambridge/Berkeley in the midwest. The city is very comfortable, well laid out, beautiful trails throughout on lakes and creeks, parks everywhere, the university is beautiful. It is, of course very quiet; school is out and the state government doesn’t seem busy. Lot’s of good restaurants and very easy to get around.

Most of all, it is amazing to be in a room with a couple of thousand people, young and old, listening carefully to a teaching on how to take responsibility for training their minds to enable them to live their lives more effectively. In our western culture, this kind of event is very rare.

Just some things of note on this quick trip to the midwest.

• Flew into Chicago on Saturday, and, after a short “lost” adventure, wended our way to Madison, Wisconsin.
• “Why Wisconsin?” everyone asks. It is a long, weird story, but the short version states that the name Madison is significant to us, and when it turned out that His Holiness the Dalai Lama would be here for a teaching, we assumed that we should come. We missed going together to the last one in NYC.
• Beautifully green and wet here. Lush prairie flowers along the paths just waiting to be mowed down. The only way to contain the verdancy of this prairie and forest is to mow it regularly.  Wild sunflowers over my head on the trails.
• Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, is perched between a bevy of lakes. Very cozy and comfortable.
• Of course, HHDL is here and it is wonderful to get to see him and the Tibetan community which has come to be with him. He sent a Buddhist monk here decades ago to start the first Tibetan monastery in America. He has been here 5 times.
• And, of course, Thubten Jinpa is here; one of my favorite people and unknowing mentor. HHDL’s English translator and the embodiment of the practice of surrender enacted by one with an extreme intelligence and capacity. I have spent so many hours (on video tapes and live) listening to his voice that it is, for me, the voice of the dharma (the teaching of Buddhism). I have never once heard him speak for himself; though I saw him speaking casually with a friend–so I know it happens.
• Jim called me over to an artist’s booth to see some thankas (paintings) and, low and behold, I found myself standing next to Jinpa buying a small painting. The artist lives and works in Oakland; we will go see him to have him help us frame the print we purchased from him. It is of Chenrezig  with both Blue Tara and White Tara.
• Sunday—breakfast, to the hall, lecture, try to find some lunch (chaos, lines, and amateur vendors), Starbucks Frapaccino,  a last minute momo becomes available, protestors (not Chinese, but Shugden followers), more lectures, back to hotel, quick nap, cycling for 2 hours, dinner outside an Irish pub, to the university for a Tibetan concert, ice cream at the student union with hundreds of people visiting and milling at the lake at sunset; back to watch the finish of the first Alp mountain stage on the tv. Couldn’t sleep.
• University wraps around one of the lakes; could be Boston/Somerville/Cambridge.
• Fabulous town for biking; rented bikes within an hour of landing and have been out several hours each day. Broad trails everywhere.
• Meadowlarks and blackbirds in the prairie fields—none of those in San Francisco these days. I miss them.
• Found a wonderful coffee shop that makes great waffles—went twice today—waffles only once.
• Sitting next to a family from Switzerland. The elegant  gentleman (with a beautiful young wife) escaped from Tibet at age of eleven in 1959, the year that His Holiness escaped. 6 years in India, 10 years in Belgium, now in Switzerland. Use to work in factories, then did training in cooking and worked in restaurants; now owns his own restaurant in a village outside of Zurich. Wanted to understand why we were there.
• Twice have eaten dinner at the capital square; beautiful clean capital building on a ridgeline between two of the lakes. Quite in the summer.

Maybe more later. Apologies for the terseness. LM

My good friends Sandeep and Sunita Giri (and young ones Ashwin and Priya) just returned from a trip to their families in Nepal. It seems it was a wonderful trip, and we are sorry to have missed it.

Sandeep reports that his good friend Mahabir Pun (they both attended university in Nebraska) has received a major award for this work bringing education, computers, and internet connectivity to remote villages outside of Beni and Pokhara. Mahabir has managed to inspire a whole region and has installed a complete wireless network where every part and computer has to be carried into the mountains. (Nangi Village in Myagdi, Nepal is a day’s walk from Beni Bazaar.) Here is a link to some great trekking photos of Sandeep’s travels to Nangi Village.

If you want information on how you can contribute to Mahabir’s work, check out his website on Nepal Wireless.

Also, Sandeep’s parents are now running a bed and breakfast just north of Kathmandu. I have stayed there and can attest to how wonderful they are and what a thrill it is to stay in a Nepalese home that also has all the comforts we are shamelessly used to. If you want to go and have any questions, feel free to contact me. I love to encourage people to head to Nepal, especially since things are much calmer there these days.

The bad news is that I cannot yet find a way to get this company started and blog too. Not on the same updraft. I assume I’ll figure it out, or not. The good news is that here are some photographs.

Canyon de Chelley - Antelope Ruin

Taos Pueblo

Mike’s Roadhouse in Mojave on Route 66 is more of a diner actually. We finally did lunch around 5PM. The food was “fine” (though the beef stroganoff was not near as good as MaryEvelyn’s.)

The drive through Mojave and down through the Tehachapi was disorienting to say the least. Out of the desert has sprung miles and miles—thousands—of windmills of all sizes spinning in all directions. The kinetic display, as you try to navigate the highway, is disorienting. The Mojave desert generates far more power than it could consume: we passed one coal burning plant, two enormous solar panel arrays, and the tremendous set of wind generators. It’s like the desert is just this energy generation plant, only it’s hardly livable on it’s own. I guess that’s why you can use so much of the land for such installations.

We biked out again in the dusk into a blistering red sunset. This time it was smoke instead of cumulous. A neighboring camper said there has been a fire in Santa Barbara for two weeks. We hadn’t heard as we’ve gotten little or no news while we were traveling. (Our own fault, we didn’t listen to any radio or watch any tv or read many papers.) The train here is even louder that ever, though they don’t need the whistles here east of Bakersfield.

Home tomorrow.

PS. Overnight I discovered that I was wrong about the train whistles.

Having spent the morning driving across Arizona, we were crossing the border at Needles around lunch time when, contrary to the recommendation of a friend who frequents the Dairy Queen there, we made a new executive rule: you do not stop the car for anything but an emergency (or fuel) when the temperature is 114 degrees. Just don’t do it.

Later, after things had cooled to 107 we decided we could risk a stop for cold drinks—but lunch was still out of the question. Now at 3:30 and 105, we still can’t really get interested in lunch. (Thank goodness for the nibbles we have stashed.)

Last night we stayed again on Route 66 in Gallup, NM. We ate a “fine” dinner at the historic El Rancho Hotel. It is a 1930’s roadhouse whose claim to fame was being the home away from home for movie stars filming in the area (plus the whole Route 66 thing). Quite quaint—and an easy, if not elegant, meal.

In the deepening dusk, after setting up camp, we headed out for a quick ride. There were storms in all directions, rain cascading in purple sheets against a pink and purple sky. It was dramatic as we rode alongside a train into the glimmer of sunset underneath the blanket of clouds.

Now we are chugging through the Mohave Desert. It’s shocking how much we take for granted the ability to move easily across these barren expanses. Seeing a couple of folks on the side of the road at 110 degrees makes you realize how difficult, if not dangerous, it would be to get stuck out here. But meanwhile, we’ve been just flying all day. (I forgot how high and forested Flagstaff is; quite a treat. Will have to spend some time there another trip.)

Yesterday I had the bright idea to spend the day touring the Taos area. See the Taos Pueblo, the DH Lawrence ranch, maybe spin by Los Alamos. I made several mistakes, one of them thinking that it would be a brisk two hour drive to Taos.

Well, it was four hours there (some of it from goofs of my own, some from traffic, some from road work) and two hours forty-five back (for the return I figure out what “Santa Fe Relief Road” meant). It was a beautiful drive most of the way. (Though I cannot recommend Espanola or Santa Fe from the road.) Much of the drive follows the Rio Grande, some of it in a narrow canyon. The clouds were majestic over the desert bluffs and canyons. There is some beautiful country east of Santa Fe—a thick forest of pinyon and pine with few man-made landmarks. (How I should come to be east of Santa Fe on a route to Taos may come into question. Needless to say there are very long stretches of road that direction without any freeway exits (13 miles in one particular case.))

Taos itself I just drove through; it seemed very busy and touristy, though on another day might very well be interesting. I spent an hour walking the Taos Pueblo. It is very ancient and beautiful, though fairly brushed up and clean. The claim is that it has been steadily occupied for 1000 years. Quite an accomplishment on this continent.

So, a tiring day on the road with not much to show for it. I will calculate more carefully next time.

PS. All would have been made easier with use of some of the vast technology we own. But I didn’t take the GPS, I discovered 20 miles up the road that I  had only 20% charge on my phone (so I couldn’t use its mapping tools; just enough to SMS with Jim all day if I shut it off in between), and I didn’t take my computer. Of course, if I had read the map correctly (old fashioned technology), that would have solved some of my problems.

So, as you may know, we are in Albuquerque for the National Flute Convention and as I sit here managing email I can hear quite a wonderful musician practicing something very wonderful and difficult in the next room.  There are treasures hiding everywhere.

An interesting conundrum for some small towns seems to be that they evolved on major thoroughfares—for all the right reasons, I’m sure, but now people live on major thoroughfares, which is not the most comfortable spot these days.

We slept over in Grants, New Mexico. Nearby is a traditional travel route from the Acoma area to the Zuni area, used for centuries by native Americans to travel from one major community to another. On that path is a famous bluff called El Morro on which natives and adventurers, leaders and common soldiers have inscribed their insignias, names, and dates. The bluff itself was valuable because of a persistant pool of water at its base, a old fashioned rest stop. The oldest European signature is from the Spanish governor of the area in 1605.

So this is a natural travel corridor and no less so for us. Highway 40 runs through here and a major rail line. Highway 40 is better known as the historic Route 66. The highway traffic is constant and, surprisingly, so is the rail traffic. Every 30 minutes or so another one goes through.

The bad news is that this small town (like the town of Palisade, CO where we stayed earlier) can’t afford proper train signals on their roads—you know, the ones that blink and come down across the road to prevent you from trying to cross at the wrong moment. It turns out that if you do not have such fancy barriers, the train must, for safety’s sake, sound its whistles all the way through town—every train, every trip. Makes for an interesting night for a newcomer. Our friend Valerie, new to Palisade and innocent of history, asked the town fathers why they put up with the whistles. They explained patiently to her that it cost $500,000 to put in the signals and, of course, as a small country town, they didn’t have an extra half million to spare. And, I’m sure that every small town in America adds up to a pretty bill for the shipping industry as well.

So each small town puts up with the noise, and unwary travelers have a occasional surprisingly noisy night’s sleep. Most of the campers are in big RV boxes sealed on all sides and insulated with air conditioners, so they may not even have noticed.

But the thunderstorm last night was fun to watch as it steamed by us, not a drop of rain fell on us so we could sit out and watch, but just a few miles off it was quite stormy.

PS. We will probably drive home on Route 66 as it is the most direct way and takes us through Jim’s old home town of Barstow. He spent part of his youth wandering the Mohave Desert, which is why we are sort of desert rats.

PPS. I just found our hotel in Albuquerque on a map—turns out it is on the historic Route 66, now known as Central but noted on a map as the “post 1937″ Route 66.

PPPS. We were not yet employed when we booked this hotel and were looking for something close to the convention center but cheap. This Econo Lodge is very nice, clean, great service, a warm pool, close in. (Okay, it is on the freeway and nothing is fancy.) I am very pleased by it and for only $55 per day.  I really do think it is valuable to economize—you experience a place more directly without a lot of insulation from everything. (Though I am enjoying the air conditioning this afternoon. Sorry.)

It’s been a crazy wonderful day—suspended between the experience of rock, wind, and water and the stillness that pervades this desert, and, on the other hand, the work we about to engage in, which is of a more mental, social, and frenetic sort. Canyon de Chelley (’de shay’) is a deep canyon less than a mile across with vertical walls that reach from seven hundred to a thousand feet into the sky. Except that impression, from deep in the canyon, is mysteriously unlike what you experience from above. On the mesa, if you walk 200 yards away from the canyon, the entire thing disappears, becomes lost in the eons of time, like a dream. The rock plateau of pinyon, juniper, and sage runs away from you for hundreds of unbroken miles. There is nothing to disrupt the view. You have to walk right up to the edge of the abyss to believe that it is really there. You could drive by it all your life and never find it. Only by going back and forth can you reconcile them into one world.

This canyon is unusual in that it holds important Anasazi ruins that date from 700-1300 AD and it was inhabited when the Spaniards arrived by the Navajo peoples who still live here. (Most of the Anasazi settlements were disserted by 1300 AD for reasons that have not been firmly established.)

We sat for awhile on the cliff edge overlooking Spider Rock where two enormous, cathedral-like spires stand in the middle of Canyon de Chelley encirled by vertical walls of red sandstone. These spires are holy to the Navaho people, as they would be to anyone living with them. The bright sun made the entire space glow, and the spires themselves gave the scene more depth and dimension than your would see in an empty canyon. You did not see it as a “view”, but were drawn into the scene. The brown water of the river, filled to overflowing from last evening’s deluge, sluiced and roiled across the sandy valley bottom.

Two dozen buzzards soared in the afternoon updraft on the very brink of the canyon lip, their black sheen creating moving heiroglyphs. Swallows darted and dive-bombed us with no concern for proximity to our heads.

The canyon itself was suspended in time. A few fields had been recently cultivated, a small hogan stood ownership over a corn patch. It could have been any summer afternoon in the last two thousand years, but for the two-track path that meandered up the canyon floor.

******

The national monument is a joint activity between the US government, the Navaho Nation, and the 84 families that “own” property in the canyon. The parcels of farmland have been passed down through generations. Most of the families “live” up on the mesa (above and adjacent (in a vertical sense) to their parcels in the canyon) where they are connected by paved roads to the town of Chinle, Arizona. Everyone who works in the monument is tied through birth or marriage to the original families. Most of them live here in the monument itself.

It was wonderful getting to know a little bit about them: our guide on the four-wheel-drive tour—it turned out to really be a four-wheeled event due to the aforementioned deluge, including being stuck in the river and winching both other trucks and ourselves lose—who grew up on his grandmother’s parcel and now lives across the canyon with his wife’s family; a flute maker and musician (how does Jim find these people?) who is Pima but lives here with his wife’s family and makes and sells an array of traditional flutes.

The society here is suspended between the land, their traditional culture, and the 21st century. They seem to be working to formulate a bridge between them. Watching the men rustle large 4-wheel drive vehicles through the canyon instead of horses and cattle felt like a fitting shift between the old and the new—a similar and relevant kind of work. It is a culture in suspension working to feel its way to the next thing. It’s a good thing. Suspension implies the quality of not-knowing exactly what should happen and thereby enabling the creation of that thing you can not quite imagine, but discover that you can create. Sometimes the challenge in our culture is that we already know exactly who we are, which does not leave a lot of freedom for creating something new.

*****

The rain storm that has been flustering off to the east all afternoon is approaching and I must fold camp here—that is, fold up the computer and start a late dinner. Jim is over under a tree playing his baritone sax as promised. (It is interesting to think about how he is, with his warmups, introducing the camping world to classical Philip Glass music.) The drips are starting to fly and my computer is more sensitve than his music. The thunder is rolling closer, and though the air is quiet here, the deep purple of the storm is stark against the green cottonwoods. Oops, another rumble even closer. Time to quit.

Postscript.

After dinner we took at short drive to the top of the mesa in the midst of the storm. What a scene! In the far west, where the sky was clear and pale blue, the sun skirted its light under the shelf of the storm to create rainbows that spanned the canyon. The storm sky was a menacing dark violet in sharp contrast to the gleaming straw colored grass lit with sunlight. The lightening bolted and flashed, thunder rumbling through the canyon and across the mesa. It was beautiful and exciting, and we returned home only a little wet.