A familiar sea of humans, cows, and three-wheeled auto-rickshaws… with some new features: People of all stripes gathering around giant outdoor projection screens to cheer every turn of the Indian athletes in the Commonwealth Games… Brand new Delhi Metro terminals, still not-quite-finished and already falling apart, teeming with hurried passengers, mostly unfazed as twelve more press themselves into the already-packed subway car… iPhone ringtones fill the air as police, no doubt instructed to put a new face on Delhi’s streets for the Games, remove beggars from their usual spots… Young women in uniform holding rifles very nearly their height peoplewatch like ghosts in the swarms of shoppers… A slice of New Delhi in 2010.

Tomorrow, the long, dusty road to Himachal Pradesh, a crumbling wagon trail of a thoroughfare with (very) slowly elongating patches of smooth black tarmac, always under construction (inconvenience regretted). It’s there that i’ll begin to feel strangely at home again, as the concrete monstrosities (“biggest and longest mall north of Delhi,” boasts one sign) gradually give way to what remains of the rustic beauty of the villages.

The purpose of the journey? A tiny effort to preserve a speck of that beauty in the face of all this “development,” and a humble aspiration to inspire and train interested villagers and visiting global citizens to do the same. Our budding sustainability project in the Himalayan foothills will take a big little step in the coming weeks: the stone foundations of our new baby, the Dharmalaya Institute, spent the last four months settling and curing in the monsoon rains, and soon we’ll start raising her lovely mud walls…

->  Read the entire post at the Earthville Blog

We finished filling the foundation trenches just in time. 🙂

From the Earthville news page:

Earthville’s Dharmalaya team is happy to report the completion of the foundations for the Dharmalaya Institute, an eco-friendly service-learning campus in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas. The Institute is being constructed in a style based upon the traditional vernacular architecture of the area, known as “Kangra style,” using eco-friendly materials and non-mechanized building methods.

The whole story is here.

It’s on… 🙂

From the Earthville news page:

After a year of preparation, today the Dharmalaya team in India broke ground for the construction of a new, eco-friendly service-learning campus in the foothills of the Himalayas. The Dharmalaya Institute will serve as the base for our sustainable village development projects in the Himalayas and will also provide volunteer service opportunities for international visitors as well as programs for the study of traditional wisdom.

Read the whole story here.

Buongiorno from Venice, which i thought i’d better see before it sinks much further. Lately, it’s flooding more frequently and more severely, and it’s chilling to drift around this jewel of history and imagine that, within as few as 20 years (if some scientists’ predictions come true) the first floor or two of every building in Venezia could become aquaria. I’m imagining schools of tourists snorkeling around the ghost town like a shipwreck, gawking at the pesci dining in the bistros where once they were dined upon, while the tenaciously adaptable Venetians (the few who can still afford to live in ever-gentrifying Venice) get out their tools and move the old front doors up two flights of steps. 2028: the 3rd floor is the new 1st floor.

Saved by music & poetry

Yesterday in Vienna, after a tasty breakfast of organic beet salad and “veganer schnitzel,” i did part of my morning meditation in the Secession Museum, in the company of Gustav Klimt’s epic frieze in honor of Beethoven and the revolution of virtue Klimt saw in his chart-topping 9th symphony. Motivated by both compassion and the desire for personal gain, the most virtuous of humans wage ethical combat against the forces of darkness and decay, but in the end even the mightiest of men cannot stop it… not even the gods can defeat it… yet, in the final battle, a woman with a lyre plays the trump card of music and poetry, opening the door to the Ideal Kingdom. (Sister, could you play a little louder, please? We could use your help.)

Carnage, in its many forms

The exhibit upstairs was case in point: first, hundreds of the most gruesome photos of slain humans, murdered brutally; and then, further in, the same photos, but this time it’s seals, clubbed and hacked to death for their fur and meat. A few dozen mannequins march in protest, joined across time and space by a parade of Tibetans marching in photographic solidarity, while an elderly Balkan woman in a wheelchair holds a placard asking for change… in the person of Barack Obama. Surely no single person could be Klimt’s harpist for all humanity, but give me Obama and the lyre or, better yet, give me the Dalai Lama and ample time to cultivate the active love he exemplifies, and reflections like this every morning, to remind me why i’m here and keep that extra wind in my sails.

Back in the Himalayas

My bro Todd and i were set to join our pa-la for a trip to Tibet and Mongolia, from which we would’ve just now returned, had we not had to postpone the trip on account of the fact that the Chinese government (currently preoccupied with massacres of Tibetans), wouldn’t let us in — they closed the entire region of Tibet to foreign visitors. In the meantime, we’ve been facilitating discussion  about the crackdowns at KN/DEVI, hosting nightly events packed with concerned global citizens, which, if nothing else, gives us all a chance to gather in a human response, and gives our Tibetan staff some small comfort. It’s hard to know if all the caring people in the world could change the course of the Beijing juggernaut, and honestly i’m skeptical, but… we do what we can, right?

Todd and the KN crew

While we were there, Todd inspired us to do some ambitious renovation. Fixing, sanding, painting, cleaning, and lots of good fun. We updated the menu with a few new dishes, too, and now KN is shining more brightly than she has in years (Thanks, Todd!). It’s a joy to see the place in full swing, and to see so many people enjoying it so much.

Having finished a several-month-long heroic push at KN, Dara has just begun another kind of adventure: a traditional three-month monsoon retreat at an international Buddhist women’s center just outside of Dharamshala. She’s all smiles to have some time to focus on the inner work. As am i! 🙂

An Auspicious Setback

And for those of you who have been asking for an update on our efforts to establish our new eco-campus for sustainable village development and service retreats, well, there’s much to tell. First, as you may know, we were offered land in the West Bengal hills (near Kalimpong, in the Darjeeling district). Well, what some generous humans giveth, some selfish humans taketh away: Starting late last fall, the whole region went up in political flames (not only figuratively) as a tiny minority of disgruntled and/or opportunistic Gurkhalis (ethnic Nepalis uprooted by generations of military service) revived a sometimes-violent (and always inconvenient) movement for an independent state. The stated rationale for Gurkhaland is sensible enough (Gurkhalis comprise the majority in the area, and the Bengal state government utterly neglects them, so let them rule themselves), but the methods of the movement tend to be both despotic and ineffectual (an unfortunate combination) and, because they’re as relentless as they are inept, the pain never ends. They keep the whole region locked down for weeks on end with forced shop closures, road closures, and heart closures. Very sad. And not particularly conducive to building a retreat center, by the way, especially when they expel all the “foreigners” now and again.

So, between the political chaos and the fact that we learned of a government plan to build a road right through the middle of the land we were offered, we put the Bengal project on hold indefinitely, packed our bags and headed back hOMe to Himachal Pradesh. And, as life goes, this is turning out to be much for the better, as it has given us the opportunity to stumble upon an even more appealing prospect in the tiny, quiet Himalayan town of Bir, just 2-3 hours east-southeast of Dharamshala by road. You’ve seen Bir if you’ve watched Khyentse Norbu’s excellent film, The Cup, which insightfully conveys some of the quirky idyll of Bir. And Khyentse Rinpoche’s Deer Park Institute is a mighty magnet for world-class teachers of Indian wisdom traditions.

In short, we’re still on the road to build the Dharmalaya Institute, but now 1000 or so miles to the west and a fruitful year or two later. A delightful little team of angels has converged around the cause, and we’ve been looking at several pieces of land. We’ll keep looking a bit more in the fall, and around that time we imagine we’ll nab a piece and start slowly building this mud-brick-and-bamboo paradise. What will actually happen is of course anyone’s guess, but we’re pointing our prow in that direction. For inquiring minds, there’s more about the vision on the Dharmalaya website.

Meanwhile, i’m off to Geneva tomorrow to reconnect with our dear Swiss friends to explore the creation of an Earthville chapter in the land of yodels and strudels so we can build long, high bridges between the Alps and the Himalayas.

Sending love to all points on the compass…

We plant trees. We come back later. Some have died, some are still standing… and some have spawned magical forests!

After five years away from my old hOMe of Dharamshala (a small but densely bustling town in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, which serves as the exile home for H.H. the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile), and hearing how much it had been overbuilt since i left in 2001, i had long felt a bit apprehensive about returning (sad to watch a flower wilt). But when i got word that HH would be teaching for a week on the Path of the Bodhisattva (revisiting the topic of the first teaching of his that i had ever attended, back in ’95 — the one that inspired Scarth and me to abort our round-the-world journey midway and stay here, to study and serve), that was all i needed to hear. Two long days of uniquely Indian travel later, i checked into one of the very last rooms available in the teeming town, just seconds before the monsoon clouds dumped an ocean on the streets, driving everyone but the cows indoors.

The deluge died down by dinner, and a five-minute walk (climb) later, i was ordering a “Tao of Pao” and a hot apple cider at KhanaNirvana and catching up with our old friend Samdup. It was a quietly magical homecoming.

Samdup is a Tibetan refugee in his early 30s, a former medical student in Tibet, whom we hired as a waiter in around ’98. He worked his way up to the management and we eventually turned the place over to him to run as his own, with the understanding that he would also continue some of the service programs of the Dharamshala Earthville Institute (DEVI), which we had based at KN and which, for me, were KN’s raison d’etre. As i walked up the three flights of steps to our café in the clouds, i was intensely curious about what i’d find behind the teal doors…

When i reached the entrance, there was Samdup, chatting with a customer from behind the BuddhaBar (our juice and smoothie bar that serves as a sort of cockpit for the KN mothership). He hadn’t checked his email, so my arrival caught him by surprise, and the way his busybody face blossomed into smile was precious. It struck me immediately that, while he and i always got on well, this felt like the happiest we’d ever been to see each other.

He joined me at my favorite corner booth while i tucked into my tofu, and told me that the years had taught him a new respect and appreciation for what is special about KN/DEVI and the value of what had been our unorthodox approach to running it. And, looking around, i could see what he meant: he has been stewarding the KN/DEVI vision like the devoted curator of a living exhibit, taking pride in the works he inherited, and rearranging a few things but mostly going out of his way to keep KN true to its origins. Healthy hanging plants, four coats of paint to try to match our elusive grape-chocolate shade on the walls, and a trip to Delhi to buy more of the same simple yet elegant black crockery. He continues our tradition of using only natural ingredients, even when he could’ve lowered his costs by using inferior stuff. Still the best burrito in Asia, and still under a buck and a half. Ali Farka Toure, Nina Simone, Buena Vista Social Club, and the Neville Brothers still rock the stereo, along with some well-chosen new stuff, and the vibe remains alive.

But what gave me the greatest joy was seeing the way our baby is still serving the community under Samdup’s care. DEVI’s “Sunday@Sunset” speaker series still brings former Tibetan prisoners of conscience to tell their stories every week, with Samdup translating into English and delivering the pitch for volunteer support at the end, to a standing-room-only audience. Documentaries on Tibet and other relevant topics air every Thursday (followed, surreally, by the World Cup). And the weekly open mic and jam nights still pack the house with the most eclectic mix of music and poetry one could ever hope to find in one place (see Pico Iyer’s colorful description), and though performers vary as much as the elevation in the Himalayas outside, the crowd is still warm and enthusiastically supportive of everyone.

I had a bit of slightly naughty fun: sitting incognito with the other guests, watching their lights come on, and hearing what they had to say. “This is exactly what i need right now,” said one smiling traveler as she and a few friends took their seats on the cushions next to me, fresh in from HH’s teachings. Scarth and Dara, you’ll be pleased to know that i heard regulars describing various menu items to newcomers as “divine,” “to die for,” “best one in India,” “as good as it gets in samsara,” and the like. I was tickled to overhear that i’m not the only one who regards KN’s Ferderferburger as a fully realized mahasiddha in the realm of veggie burgers. 😉  (If i sound like i’m bragging about the successes of my precocious child, please forgive me: i’m just bubbling over with the joy of witnessing that something we put so much work into has not only survived but is still being enjoyed richly, years later.)

When several different people, not knowing i had cofounded the place, described KN to me as a kind of magical connection hub where one inexplicably has just the right experiences at just the right time, all i could do was smile… 🙂

Indeed, though of course some things have changed, there is still magic at KhanaNirvana. From where i sit today, what surprises me the most is how surprised i am — why am i surprised to see that the place amazes and inspires as much as it does? We and our many angelic friends put a lot of heart into creating something special for those who come, and Samdup and his new crew are doing the same, so of course people will feel the love.

Even during the years when we slept (too briefly) on the floor every night and woke up to work another relentless all-day shift, i always felt the fruits of this labor of love were worth every moment… so imagine my joy when i saw so much of that beauty still shining and all there was for me to do was breathe and enjoy it… 🙂

~~~

Speaking of return on investment, i also had the great joy of catching up with some of my former students and seeing they’re doing great things. One is now producing DVDs of the Dalai Lama’s teachings in Dharamshala and around India. The other has started a full-service computer service center and has compiled a 200-page computer education textbook, and he proudly told me that, in the spirit of my volunteering to teach him and help him start his computer classes, he is paying it forward by donating hundreds of copies to refugee training centers around India. He has also trained countless teachers, who have gone on to train others… and, for refugees, that training can make the difference between being able to support their families or not. I was happy to see his success and especially his kindness to others. It was also instructive to see how the humble seeds Dave and Don and i planted a decade ago have grown into a forest of opportunities that have empowered hundreds of refugees to support themselves, their families and communities, and their culture. I wouldn’t have expected the ripple effects of our small projects to extend and expand the way they have, and it’s encouraging to see how such small efforts can lead to greater results when the causes and conditions come together.

Likewise, i was elated to learn that many of KN’s alumni have gone on to manifest dreams of their own, and some of them are also paying it forward by serving others. Tashi still teaches English everywhere he goes — as a volunteer, with no motivation other than to serve. Lobsang is running a magazine. Jampa now runs a nonprofit community center and teaches yoga. Others are also teaching or pursuing higher studies.

I never doubted the value of dedicating most of a decade of my life to volunteer service (it felt deeply right, so i never spent much time questioning it), but now, seeing how our humble work has inspired others to pay it forward, it’s a choice that feels even better. I also feel such gratitude for all the myriad forms of support we received (at just the right time, again and again) from countless local and global friends. My heartfelt thanks to you all…

~~~

I banged out a couple of tunes on someone’s “Givson” guitar at KN’s open mic night and was amused to discover later that i had been spotted by a recruiter. Samdup’s friend Shodar, a talented young Amdowa impresario, told me he was putting on a show at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) and he wanted me to be the opening act. He also wasn’t ashamed to mention that he wanted an inji face on the poster to draw a bigger crowd. Well, he wasn’t joking: even though i only played two songs in the two-hour event, my face took up about 1/3rd of the poster… i was embarassed, but it didn’t seem to scare anyone away, as the hall was sold out to about 2000 exceptionally enthusiastic refugees from Amdo (the northeast region of Tibet) and a few of their neighbors from the other provinces. It might’ve been gratifying that they cheered wildly for my songs, except for the impression that it probably didn’t matter at all what i did — they were all so easily pleased. But i had a great time, bad sound notwithstanding, and i felt some personal satisfaction playing one of the first songs to be born in my old “cave” at Samadhi House, just a few steps up the road from TIPA, in the forest, over a decade ago. The rest of the night was a motley variety show of traditional Tibetan folk songs and dances (great!), Shodar and his friends doing hip-hop dancing (precious!), and a few singers doing the heartfelt karaoke thing that somehow enjoys the status of legitimate stage performance in much of Asia.

~~~

Ah, there’s more that could be said: deeply transformational retreat time, meetings with dear friends old and new, another offer of land for an Earthville campus (25 hilltop acres of monastery land in Sikkim this time), and other adventures, but my time online is about to expire, so i’ll wrap it up for now.

The bottom line is that, after my retreating and advancing, i feel great — on balance, probably better than ever, and in a way that feels a little more more stable by virtue of being a little less dependent on what’s happening around and inside me…. Let’s see how that holds up back in the Land of the Free-for-a-Fee… 🙂

For those of you who missed the message i wrote in the clouds (poor timing: as soon as i enscribed it, the Mothership flew by and messed it all up… sigh…), here’s a plain-text version of update:

After a sweet and transformative two-week meditation retreat here in Sarnath, i’m now officially the same as i was before, which is to say nonexistent yet somehow still fond of fresh fruit. Truly miraculous!

The retreat was a collaboration between Christopher Titmuss (a gifted Buddhist teacher and former monk who spent enough time meditating in the forests of Thailand to learn to tell sticks from snakes) and my lovely new friends at Open Dharma, a noble project offering retreats that provide an “atmosphere of creative stillness where each participant can open and deepen in her or his own way.” (Incidentally, Open Dharma has just taken a cushion under the Earthville parasol, and we’re happy to have them aboard.)

Before arriving, i was inspired to participate in the retreat for three reasons: for the opportunity to meet these good folks i’d been hearing about; because i was overdue for a contemplative pit stop; and because the structure of this particular retreat is an unusual one that’s similar to a model i’ve been envisioning for some time (thinking, “why doesn’t somebody offer a retreat like this…?”) and i was intrigued to see how the Open Dharma approach to this model works.

Well, work it does, and it’s designed to work quite differently for everyone, which is one of the things i really like about it. It is an open retreat (everyone is welcome, costs are covered purely by donation, and all are free to come and go at will) and this one follows at the end of a more traditional structured retreat led by Christopher every Winter in Bodhgaya. On the heels of that intense silent Vipassana retreat, this dharma gathering in Sarnath provides a chance for people to integrate their sitting practices with the rest of life, and to explore that integration process with each other as it happens.

A typical day alternates between silent group meditations, multiple discussion groups on a range of topics (e.g. practice-related questions, service as yoga, living free from fear, death and dying, love and spirituality, inquiries into the experiences of the participants, and so on), meals (with the group or otherwise), and a more formal dharma talk every evening.

As much as i liked the whole program, i found the small group discussions to be particularly nourishing — not unlike the conversations we tend to share over meals back home at the Earthville House, but with dozens of insightful people from across the globe and skilled facilitation from the teachers. I felt closer to being in my element than i have since KhanaNirvana days.

The whole experience stirred my long-waxing aspiration to create a campus for the exploration of meditation in action, applied compassion, and service-learning as a contemplative practice, and i got the feeling it might be time to take that dream off the back burner.

And, well, as it turns out…

I write you now from Kalimpong, where Artyom and i are pausing for the night en route to a small village near the Sikkim border. What’s there, calling us, you might ask? So might we… and, happy as we are to visit beautiful new places for no reason at all, our curiosity is piqued all the more in this case because of this tingling feeling that something fruitful is afoot and the universe, true to its coy sense of humor, has hooked us up for a blind date with destiny, so i’m mentally preening…

See, there’s an exceptionally devoted Tibetan nun (whom we still haven’t met), from a Nepali family, who has been wanting to use a few acres of sacred land she inherited to create a sustainable, non-sectarian retreat center and school. Her idea, as we’ve heard it, sound like a bare-bones version of that vision i’ve been dreaming since ’92. Feeling it wasn’t for her to develop such a project on her own, this nun entrusted the land to Leigh and Justin, two friends i first met years ago at KhanaNirvana. But, as it happens, they’re not in a position to make it happen alone either, so they were as delighted as we were when we bumped into each other in Sarnath and Artyom happened to mention that the other half of our reason for coming to India was to explore possibilities for creating just such a center. After a short and sweet conversation, they passed the torch to us.

So, suddenly, we find ourselves with the gift of a plot of sacred land that so far we’ve seen only in pictures and, we hear, an eager village full of enthusiastic Nepali-speaking collaborators of various syncretic spiritual leanings, ready to build traditional adobe buildings and grow organic veggies for the center. The Himalayan Connection Vortex churns on, it seems…

Tomorrow morning, we’ll be off to meet this nun and her family, see the land, and get a clearer sense of what might happen there. The village is totally unplugged, so the next update will come when we return from the blessed boonies.

🙂