The Wisdom of the Guru Continually Presents Itself to the Willing

i am humbled to count this amazing young man, Phagchog Tulku Rinpoche, as my Teacher (with a capital 'T'). He lives in Kathmandu as well, and I have been a student of meditation and prayer under him for 3 and a half years now. He has meant the world to me, and i pray that all of you with interest will have an opportunity to meet him some day.

so it has been some time since i updated this self-absorbed neo-colonialist narrative (without an ending: the worst kind) that entertains the fantasy of authentic participation, my apologies. i have two things to blame, the first is a certain attitude of procrastination which infects all but the best of us at times (see 'mountains beyond mountains' about Paul Farmer for an exception), and the second is the friendly Party i went to visit: the communist one of china. the blog was firewalled or something in the people's republic.

my uncle thinks my syntactical and grammatical styles hint that i am the reincarnation of e.e. cummings. today i will try to cultivate this latent karmic tendency.

as the
words
of other blogs
fell
across the p a g e,

i took the Passage summer tibetan studies students on a two week busy tour of Lhasa roundabouts, and a roadtrip back over the central plateau to Kathmandu. we visited many big monasteries, and some smaller nunneries, and some Relatively insignificant historical Chapels which caused some of my students to ask me questions about the strange buzzing non-sound which came into their bodies through their foreheads or erupted in their chest (some of you know what i'm talking about), to which i could only reply things like, "isn't the yellow of the mustard seed fields in the distance a lovely contrast to the deep blue of the low hanging sky and the reds splattered on the cliffsides?" to be honest i am no such poet in personal conversation, but secretly that is how i felt: after all, such experience with proprioception of the movement of subtle wind energy through the yogic channels, catalyzed by the residual power of great meditation masters in holy places of pilgrimage and devotion, can't really be expressed so easily.

the students have now for the most part left asia, but i have taken my leave of them and my beloved second hometown of Kathmandu. although today quite Smith/Rosene styley missed my morning flight to delhi and had to catch a different afternoon one to keep my plan on track.
FUCK THE PLAN AND THE TRACK ITS ON! excuse me, last week i read the charles BuKOwskI novel 'women' and it has gotten into my writing too. well, minus the alcoholism part, considering the

one year anniversary of me being totally sober is coming up in a few days!

i feel like there should be some kind of wild drunken sex party to celebrate this, but rather, i'm meeting the New Orleanian group of Loyola University students with the LHA in mcleod ganj (dharamsala, himachal pradesh, india india india) tomorrow and i guess that will be as close as i get to my old friend Bacchus for now, since i'm going continue with the sobriety for a few more months.

today as was sitting in a traffic jam on the ring road around kathmandu, which had been caused by the very minor collision of a 'microbus' (gutted van filled with benches and self-pitying pukey Nepalis) and a bus, next to the Great Temple of Lord Shiva Pashupatinath, something caught my eye. it was a rather unattractive grizzled dark face. i had been admiring the organizational skill of Indians, who often travel in Tibet and Nepal in huge fleets of rented buses or SUV's, in groups of well over one hundred, as there was about 8 big tourist buses of chatty dark skinned plains-folk aiding in the general mayhem and confusion of motor vehicles (which in the end was the secondary cause which caused me to miss my flight, the primary being overconfidence given to a young man who has been reading too much BuKowSKi). i glanced up at the window, our car was slowly passing the bus, when an Indian Man of middle age looked at me. he was wearing an orange cloth wrapped around his upper body (all that i could see), and was certainly on a Holy Shaivite Pilgrimage to the Holy Temple of Lord Shiva Pashupatinath on the Holy Bagmati River that runs through the unique and, naturally Holy Mandala of the Kathmandu Valley.

for a long moment

we both made no expression, and i smiled a little, and he did too, but we didn't smile in a big idiotic way. but the "i'm filled with devotion to the Guru while stuck in this traffic jam and i can see that you are also filled with devotion to the Guru while you are stuck in this traffic jam too, smile," Bhakti devotion love smile style. the cool little known secret about devotion is that is is a doorway to Non-conceptual wisdom, which can be shared for a few minutes (it was a real jam) with a total stranger, because non-duality lacks all boundaries, being formless.

it was like TRUE LOVE on a dusty road.

anyway, on a different note i visited our monks in chapagaon yesterday to give them some gifts of 50 pounds of roasted barley flour from tibet, and dried cheese, and candy, and yak meat sweets. we played a little bit, and i said goodbye to Vajravarahi, because it will be at least two months before i see her, and i'm grateful to my protectors.
that may sound like a strange statement to make, but my respect and belief in protector spirits has changed a lot since i saw my first 'spirit possession' while in Tibet last week, and it was POWERFUL and SCARY AS SHIT and TOTALLY REAL.

so i don't mean to brag but Paul Farmer (via the book mountains beyond mountains) inspired me to let you know that
i've been working this last month and am in India to do some more work, and have saved some money with the fulbright, and so i gave ALL THE MONEY i made from my job to monks and nuns in Nepal to support them in their efforts to do meditation retreats, and to the passage program, which is deserving.

i've got my laptop with me on this trip so will be updating some pretty pictures and details in a few days.

om ah hung vajra guru padma siddhi hung!