To begin with, every morning from 8 to 9:30; I have a teaching with Khenpo Jamyang Tenzin on The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva.

Then at 10 I have Tibetan Language with Khenpo Jorden for an hour. Tomorrow is our first exam on Unit 1: This, that: Here, there: to be; You get the jest of it. I think I am ready…

Today I took a break from the 2:30 review class on The Way of the Bodhisattva to head out with two of my students, Thupten Phuntsok and Thupten Palbar, for a walk around the stupa and a juice run.

I thought that I would apologize for my postless blog by offering you a few photos and a quote from the text this week. I hope that it in some small way makes up for my absence.

In this quote by Shantideva, he condenses one of the most important principles of the world (to me anyway) in a few short but sweet four line stanzas:

All the joy the world contains

Has come through wishing happiness for others.

All the misery the world contains

Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.

Is there need for lengthy explanation?

Childish beings look out for themselves,

While Buddhas labor for the good of others:

See the difference that divides them!

If I do not give away

My happiness for others’ pain

Enlightenment will never be attained,

And even in samsara, joy will fly from me.

And now for some photos and a trip to the juice stand…

The experience was beyond amazing.  I am learning a little bit more every day about what it means to have faith.  After taking refuge with Khenpo Jorden in Chicago, that was one thing that I have yet to fully grasp.  I am feeling a little bit closer to understanding faith each day.

Go enlightenment.

Check out more photos on the flickr album page!

Farewell feast as TG heads back to Sakya Center in Rajpur, India for the summer. Gonna miss him tremendously!!

Thupten Gongphel and myself; with a feast fit for monks and teachers!  It was a great afternoon send off.  Thupten Gongphel really has become one of my best friends here.  I adore him and always look to him for guidance and advice.  Though I often try to squash his ego and tell him that I am not going to follow his suggestions, though I really usually do anyway.

TG got on a bus to India today at 5 or so and then I had dinner in the now quiet and empty dining room of IBA.  It really hit me that he has gone when my favorite routine was once again gone.  Everynight TG and I would walk around the garden of IBA for an hour or so, just talking and chatting about this and that.  I really do cherish that routine and will surely miss it in the upcomming months.

So I guess that the smart thing to do would be to replace these routines with ones filled with studying my philosophy and Tibetan, learning to finally commit to mediation, and to go out and take some great kick butt photos! Ahh if only I could follow my own advice!

Its amazing that in just a few short months time I became so close to these guys. I really do love my students dearly. And I am already eager for them to return.

Tsering Norbu and Thupten Gongphel during our farewell lunch at The Garden.

Some of them will be staying around Kathmandu and I have elected them to help me study my Tibetan and philosophy. All the while it will be them studying English as well. What a great summer exchange.

Sometimes life throws a curve ball. The full moon in Scorpio of Vaksha brought Buddha’s birthday festival at Bouddhanath. This festival brought out the pickpockets. They nabbed my phone. Then the mirror in my camera just fell out. It’s broke. Again in Nepal I have a broken camera.

But even with all the full moon hoopla, I am still happy. I spent the evening making photos and there are even a few that I have grown to love. That’s all I can ever hope for in the world. Just to make one photo in a day that I love. There’s nothing better in the world.

I am in the midst of preparing the monks for finals which they will have on May 9th.  Then I am off to India for a few days to work on a story with The Esther Benjamins Trust.

Then its time for a ten day retreat with Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche and the my first official Philosophy and Tibetan classes begin.
For now I will leave you with a few photos of my first night back with the students!  My how I missed them.  But Oh My, how hot Nepal has gotten already!  Bring on the summer monsoons!  As always, click on the photos for a larger view!

When I was in Nepal I became very frustrated with horribly slow downloads combined with my steadily crashing and dying hard drive. I rarely opened iTunes anymore, it was just too depressing.

So over the past couple of weeks I have been able to download and catch up… from AC360 to This American Life, I am catching up and seriously loving it.

But, one of the podcasts I had totally forgotten about was Buddhist Geeks. Their tagline; “seriously Buddhist, and seriously geeky”, just hits the nail on the head. Its this amazing combination of great teachers, meditation meets science, etc. All the things that this geek loves about Buddhism and its practices.

A brief summary from the Buddhist Geeks site about this week’s podcast: Joseph Goldstein–one of the primary figures in the development of the Insight Meditation movement–finishes up his conversation with us by sharing his perspective on the recent cross-pollination of the Buddhist meditation with scientific investigation.

The Buddhist Geek in me loves it, check it out.

I thought back to Nepal recently and my time at IBA with the monks. Every night after dinner we walk our kora around the light post in the center of the garden. I look up at the stars while we talk about philosopy or about the struggles of the Tibetans or my life as a crazy westerner. I can’t begin to express here just what the stars look like.

There is a sky full of them. They are many and they are bright. It seems as if the sky will fall to the the ground from the weight of the light. Or maybe the sky will float up higher, the light carrying the sky off into space.

So as I sit here, pondering Chicago’s stars, I think of Kathmandu’s sky, and I know that there is just one more thing that I am ready to return to…

I may live with 30 monks, but I am still all personality!

Leave it to me to stick my tongue out for the camera. Always the clown. Poor Thupten Gongphel beside me has no clue what a dork I am, he's just all smile!

Perhaps a lot of my visions of these ‘fairies’ are in a large part brought on by the visions of my imagination. Maybe I just need some way of making sense of all of the chaotic drama that seems to guide me along the path.

Yesterday I spoke of my missed connection with my new pupil. Today the connection was not missed and we managed to have our first lesson. Nothing was taught and there was just a nice conversation and a discussion about goals and plans. It was refreshing compared to the feelings of demand that I sometimes get from some of my other students.

I have photographed this Khenpo before and I have seen him at pujas ‘around town’. I thought that I would initially recognize him and I did. But one thing that I didn’t think of, was that I recognized someone else in him as well. My father.

Sitting across from him and talking to him about the Buddha’s dharma, life, and the mind, it suddenly smacked me in the mind that he looked like my father. A strange combination of my father as a young man but with the round face that he had in middle age. His eyes are a tinge of a different shade, but his mouth and nose and smile are just the same. It was a bizarre feeling and thought process that I hadn’t experienced before.

After departing from his company I took the thoughts a bit further. I realized that when I first was asked about teaching him was the 14 year anniversary of my father’s death.

To add to the current theme, lately I have been contacted by quite a few people from my past that I really haven’t seen or spent much time with since my dad’s passing. I kind of left my old life at a certain point and decided upon myself that there was a time to move on. Now that these people are back in my life ‘virtually’ in some small way, I have found myself thinking of those times quite often.

Perhaps I am taking this a bit too far mentally. Perhaps I shouldn’t again chalk this experience up to the dakinis or my karma. I am sure that somethings in life are merely coincidental. But when is life coincidental and when is it just meant to be?

This year I thought that I was spending the season far from friends and family and that it didn’t feel at all like Christmas. It has been quite some time since I spent a Christmas away from home. I resolved with myself to try and put it out of sight, out of mind, and focus on the task at hand; teaching the monks. In one month I will be home in Chicago and I decided that my celebrations would be then.

Little did I know. Yesterday, Jhampa Losal la asked many times about what I did for Christmas and what they could do to make my holiday special. I said numerous times that nothing was necessary, I don’t like for them to go out of their way for me around here, though they often do!

Tonight Lokman prepared a feast for all! Instead of the usual Tukpa, or noodle soup, (or perhaps tonight is supposed to be fried rice night?), we had a multi-coursed meal of goodies! Special veg rice and noodles, a thick and rich curried dal (lentils), sauteed veggies, amazing sauteed mushrooms with ginger, Chicken for the carnivores (or monkey monsters as I affectionately call them), fresh salad veggies and bananas with curd. It was absolutely great and best of all I know that it was made with joy and love.

After dinner, I made the rounds talking with the monks about the holidays and about life… The usual after dinner chit chat and surely one of the highlights of each day!

Suddenly one by one they showered me with kattas (scarfs given out of respect and also for good wishes), they had gotten me Christmas cards, some special Ladahki dried apricots, and many even gave me chocolate!! They know the way straight to my heart

I was so touched and at that very moment I had another moment of aha! and realized that I am not only exactly where I want to be in this world on this day, but even more so that I am where I need to be. I am surrounded by my newest friends and I am surely surrounded by my new found IBA family.

Then the photos started. I now know what it must feel like to either get married or to be a b-movie star. What began as one or two of us in a group, turned into photos of all 30 with me, then one by one I posed with this monk and that monk. It was really special… I hope that they bring a little bit of a smile to your face. I know that they brought a huge one to mine.

Sometimes life doesn’t go exactly how we planned for it to go. We wind up in places we never imagined we would be, doing things that we hadn’t even thought of doing. But, I still believe honestly from my heart, that all things happen for a reason and that the path unfolds before us. I may not be where I thought that I was going to be this year, but I am surely doing what I know in my heart I am meant to be doing.

And after being showered with cards, kattas, chocolates, warm wishes, and photo flashes; It sure feels great to know that I am not the only one that is happy with me being here!