onward forward

today i got my plane ticket to delhi, india. the current "plan" is to fly to delhi on the 8th, visit my friend/employer Vidhea, and settle in Majnu Tilla, a Tibetan cultural neighborhood. The next day I hope to meet up with Neil Guidry and the rest of the Louisiana Himalayan Association army. A social work masters group is coming for August, and I hope to help orientate them to Tibetan and South Asian culture. After a few days in Delhi, my twin bro Daniel will show up, and we'll be off to Dharamsala to catch His Holiness the Dalai Lama's teachings on Gyaltsen's the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, from August 14-18. I have never had the opportunity to see him before, I am quite excited about it.

from Dharamsala danno and i may take to the roads, winding around North India and up through Nepal from West to East. I've never been West of Pokhara, and I'm looking forward to getting a view of the more rural West.

The photo below is the Tibetan Summer Passage 2006 group on top of the Jokhang looking west northwest to the Potala Palace. It was a lively bunch, and I had a wonderful time watching the excited travelers experience Tibet with their beginners' minds, direct perception of the spectacularly large and exquisitly small.



This photo here to the left, which i took on July 10 or so in Lelegaon, is a nice example of the landscape I'll be calling home for the 9 months I'll stay in the monastery in Chapagaon. I've got the go-ahead to move into the small gompa (monastery) in early september to be an english language conversation teacher and live-in futboller for the 31 young monks there. I'm also going to be translating a Tibetan commentary on the preliminary meditation practices to Tantric practice, finishing my biography of the Khari Lama, and studying Nepali and (hopefully) Newari.