Sankhu

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A quick day trip to Sankhu, on the outer rim of the Kathmandu Valley, and an ancient trading post to Tibet. Now, just a crumbling Newari village, choked with dust, but with some very nice locals who led me around and explained their ancient city with much enthusiasm...some pics attached.....

I have been heavily engrossed in Sogyal Rimpoche's classic, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. While not wanting to shave my head and become a monk, I do have a great desire both to explore Tibetan Buddhism as a philosophy and and to gain a better understand of the people who I walk amongst in this country. The teachings are beautiful, and the culture, with all of its art and ancient insights into the nature of the mind (which I have been exploring for some time on my own) is very captivating. Being amongst so many who dedicate their lives to studying the mind is very unique in this day in age. I will be partaking in a 10 day course when I return to Kathmandu, mid-November, to increase my own insight.

Namaste.

Kopan

The way to the monestary les me through places I never thought existed in the kathmandu Valley. Open fields and mountain vistas with broken rusting Tata trucks, roofs of thatch, naked children screaming. A butcher's shop, his wares, bloodied and swarming, spread out for all to admire. Tiny hobit holed hovel houses, infested with filthy inhabitants lined the dusty, rock strewn path, that maybe once was paved, maybe it wasnt. Tibetans and Nepalis living together side by side in astounding normalcy, in a region of the world where people die every day for their beliefs. And finally, on top of the hill overlooking the ancient stupa and medevil valley below, Kopan Monestary, a place of such ornate simple beauty. The thakpa's (Tibetan murals) awed me with their unashamed ferocity, what beauty, what colors. The monks were debating and yelling and loudly clapping their hands in the yard. I thought it was anger, but there is no anger in this place, only passion, and beauty, and struggle.

what is born will die
what has been gathered will be dispersed
what has been accumulated will be exausted
what has been built up will collapse
and what has been high will be brought low

Boudhna

"Brown eyes observe us as we pass. Confronted with the pain of Asia, one cannot look and one cannot turn away. In India, human misery seems so pervasive that one takes in only stray details; a warped leg or a dead eye, a sick pariah dog eating withered grass, an ancient woan lifting her sari to mvoe her shrunken bowels by the road. Yet, there is hope in life. Shiva dances in spicy food; the angry bus horns; the chattering of the temple monkeys; the vermillion tikka dot on the woman's forehead. The people smile-that is the greatest miracle of all." Peter Matthaison

I keep averting my own eyes from those of the young beggar with sad eyes and outstretched hand, looking down, ashamed for a reason I cannot explain, trying to put these thoughts and feelings down into my journal, glancing up, to see her still there, hand still outstretched, eyes still forlorn. Trying to decipher how this place makes me feel; how the extremeness in front of my eyes, dying lepers, cows lying in piles of festering trash, wide-eyed camera toting western tourists decked out in the latest North Face gear, spiritual pilgims draped in maroon robes, brown merchants with shiny white teeth trying to sell me things I have no need for, an entire spectrum of humanity packed into this space. I am in Boudhna, Kathmandu, a Tibetan enclave centered around the largest Buddhist stupa in the world, meandering into unpaved alleyways, countless doors and windows. A living relic of an ancient culture that has been wiped out in its homeland by an oppressive government; a living relic of the ancient trade and pilgrimage routes that have come through these very streets for thousands of years. Tibetan culture is deep and uneffected here, and swarms of saffron-cloaked monks circumnavigate the massive stupa in front of me. I sit in the relative comfort and sanctity of a small coffee shop, trying to deconstruct my own pilgrimage.
This place has such a strange sense of magic to it. It feels so exotic that your sense of exotic vanishes and the abnormal becomes commonplace. You become numb to the strange beauty, stopping long enough to exchange a smile with a stranger, and continue on your path. This place could overwhelm with its simple beauty, its strange beauty, if one was not numb to its effects. I feel a wonderful sense of peace here.
I am a pilgrim, on the start of my own long and strange journey, or maybe just on another leg of an even longer and stranger one. Regardless, I am in a place that is wonderful, a place that I will cherish. The monks horns ring in the background, the butterlamps are being lit by the old Tibetan ladies, and night falls on the stupa as I write.
I do need to buy a bunch a warm clothes tomorrow, I am freezing here in my island garb, which has left me woefully unprepared for the late October nip in the Kathmandu air. I will stay here for a few days. I am in no rush, a wonderful luxury and freedom that comes with traveling as opposed to vacationing. The next stop will be the Annapurnas, and a three week trek into the heart of the Himalayas, (the alaya, or abode, of hima, snow) which promises to be wonderful. Its great to be back in this crazy little country.

Currently re-reading Peter Matthaison's absolute masterpiece, The Snow Leopard, detailing his journey with famed naturalist George Schaller to the mountains of eastern Nepal in the late 1970's. Highly recommend this for anyone interested in the area, his words are true poetry.

As I get ready, prepare to leave this island home, it dawns on me again. The impermanence and transience of all things. Nothing will remain as it is; this is the natural way of the world. Putting all of what remains of my worldly possessions into my old green backpack, condensing my material life into this tiny bit of space, what a freeing emotion. The moment brings a smile to my face; so many memories began in this same place, in the same nervous excitedness that pumps in my chest; my personal legend written as a nomad's life, free to explore, free to experience, free to revel in the impermanence of this existance. One thing is for sure. I will miss this place, it is a special space, a certain moment in time that will always give me strength and comfort. Time for the next.

A few photos from my village's going away party yesterday, which was very special.

More new/old pics to be found at my Picassa site.... http://picasaweb.google.com/JeffreyHDow

"a journey, one hopes, will become its own justification, will assume patterns, reveal its possibilities-reveal, even, its layers of meaning-as one goes along, trusting to chance, to instinct, to hunch. When you start off you do not necessarily know where you are going or why."

-Shiva Naupaul

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHUS1CZS36Q a great 10 minute India travelogue

Ramblings on Poverty Alleviation

"Nations are mythical creatures, gaseous, and sometimes poisonous. But they start to solidify when diverse people have moments where aspirations collide."
----Binyavango Wainaina


In the next 1-2 years (or so), I hope to gain perspective on the unwieldy and daunting topic of 3rd world poverty, from a combination of travel experiences, work experiences, and a thorough attempt to abandon my "1st world" perspecetives on what conditions are necessary for "prosperity." In pondering a future in the field of international development, new ideas developed and explored will serve a dual and valuable purpose; to make me more worldly and in touch with humanity (a personal goal) and increase my understanding an effectiveness in any future endeavors in the field. Living for two years in the Peace Corps has certainly been humbling, but there is still a long way to go on this path....

Looking at the future, my eyes and my mind keep veering off to a vast land which has captivated my imaginations as of late...a place where humanity began eons ago, a place that forms the common bond between all of us on this planet....Africa.
A place of most of the development debacles of the last 50 years, place of crushing poverty and breathtaking corruption, of dispair, and, increasingly, of promise. One of the current bright spots, Rwanda, a place racked my genocide only 13 years ago, is highlighted in Nicholas Kristoff's blog to a much better degree than I could ever hope to undertake...(www.nytimes.com/ontheroad)...a very interesting take on matters, if you have a minute.

However, for every bright spot in Africa, there is also much trouble. At a recent Harvard commencement speech, Bill Gates summed things up pointingly..."We (he and Paul Allen) had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them....but it did not."
Where is this priority? This assumption stretches to the suffering and plight of billions of people, children and their parents, in this world, in the year 2007. Where is the priority, where is the concern, where is the simple dissemination of information? Why are we more concerned with celebrity gossip and sports cars? These things are hard for me to understand. Have we been so callosed by the debacle that is Iraq that we have no more room for dispair?

Let's look, for instance, at the Democratic Republic of Congo (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cg.html).
This is a land the size of Western Europe, with only 300 miles of paved roads, no electricity outside of the capital city of Kinshasa, a place where the deadliest war in the world since WW2 has raged for over a decade, with more than 5 million people killed and countless displaced. Most Americans could not locate this country on a world map. Why the indifference? When people begin to care, major things can happen. Where is the DRC's George Clooney? I did notice press lately (worthy press, I might add) on the conflict that has been renewed in the east of the country, detailing a recent spate of killings. However, those killed were a group of mountain gorillas. Where is the press detailing the human suffering? People need to be informed to begin to care. And people need to care to enact any kind of change. We need to remember that we are all born with the same heart, the same lungs, eyes, ears. Yet some struggle even for the most basic level of survival. A great program that has been getting a lot of press lately, which is a worthy capitalist model, if you have a minute..... (www.joinred.com)


Whats the answer? Many people believe they have it. I don't. I do know that handouts do not work in achieving anything lasting; they serve a purpose, but they do not provide any means for progress, merely survival and stagnation. True development and poverty alleviation means giving those, so motivated, the means to help themselves. A bright spot in this field is the area of Microcredit, which has been getting a lot of attention since Muhammad Yunus & Grameen Bank
were awarded the Nobel Prize last year. (www.grameen-info.org) Empowering the rural poor has a lot of potential for a grass root and widespread lifting of living conditions for those so inclined to participate. This is what I will be exploring in the months to come in southern India.