A touch of ashram wisdom

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June 10, 2013

Surely it would not be the worst thing in the world if I stayed here in Pokhara!!! This place is amazing. Sometimes, just sometimes, the level of laid back gets to me a little. At the ashram they wake us with a cup of tea at 7am. That means it can be anywhere between 6.30am and 8am. The last meditation session of the day – Satsang which means celebration of the day – is supposed to start at 7pm. I have yet to see that happen. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen at all.
Life is so simple here, so very different from ours. I was talking with the teacher Baba Ji the other day about how to take home what I have learnt. He said to me to find an open window and just sit there and be. I thought about this for a while and responded: “I do not have any windows in my life which open”. It was a revelation. Our rented apartment has only the sliding doors to a balcony which faces a main road and a small widow in my son’s room. The office I had worked in for the last four years had no windows which opened.
Baba Ji thought about what I said for a while and said: “but what do you do for air?” It was impossible to explain to him.
A couple staying at the ashram tried to post some clothes home to Holland. The post office told them they could not post clothes anywhere. When asked why not they were told “because it is”. When they pushed the matter and asked why is it, they were told “it just is, that is all”.
You really do need to put your logical mind aside here and just be. Which is very cool.
I seriously think – okay maybe it is just a fantasy – that I could live here. Maybe run a little guest house (with staff who would do the work of course). A foreigner cannot own real estate in Nepal. The majority ownership must be held by a Nepali national.
The people here are gorgeous and smile so openly and freely. They are so completely unaffected by the stresses we labour under in the west. They know how to live. They sleep a lot, dance a lot, eat dal bhat for every bloody meal (am totally over that) and just sit around being. They don’t think about tomorrow or material things or ambition or acquiring or travelling. It is a little narrow-minded but that’s okay. The Nepalese are happy. How many societies can you say that about?
A

Getting my chill on in Pokhara

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June 5, 2013

Namaste!
So I a now ensconced in an ashram in Pokhara. It is weird being in a place like that, with all that love and good will and no electricity and hot water only when it is sunny (which is suprisingly often despite the onset of the monsoon). Gonna hang in Pokhara for quite a while, probably until just a few days before I fly home. It is a very cool place with lots of laid back people and nature is just everywhere.
I realise now the total level of disconnection from nature I have been living in and I dig having to make way on the roads for bullocks, cows, goats, camels, dogs, ducks, chickens and a few other bizarre item.
This place is hippy central and has lots of internet cafes and whatnot. It seems everyone here is trying to find themselves, some by getting lost trekking, others by meditating and others but just getting really, really stoned!
The ashram is kinda hard work and is hurting my knees more than the trekking did. We do two yoga sessions in the morning, one meditation session and then a break before two more meditation sessions in tne afternoon which are mostly dancing! There is also healing and all sorts of stuff in between. Quite exhausting really and raising some big issues. Not the peace, love and chill out I was hoping for but I am confident this is what I needed.
What is strange for me is that I keep seeing myself returning back to my life, but that life is no longer there. I am struggling a lot with that. I see myself returning to my old home with my son and the dog and cat and then going back to my old job. But that isn’t going to happen and a couple of times I have found it really hard not knowing what is coming up next – there is a freedom and exhileration in it but also a kind of terror.
Everything I used to define myself by has gone and all that is left is a void of uncertainty. Scary stuff when it comes down to it.
Other than that, loving Nepal. There is a spiritual undercurrent to life here which I really like. A tolerance and acceptance of people, ideas, religions, beliefs, individuality. It is refreshing.
In Chitwan I spent a heap of time with elephants – riding them, swimming with them (utterly childlike cool) and just watching them. They are brilliant creatures. Also managed to see some rhinos, peacocks, loads of deer, crocodiles. And they were all soooo close. I loved it.
In Lumbini, birthplace of Buddha, we were watching a local game of cricket – seriously, it is played on every ounce of grass there is in Nepal – and the game had to stop while a couple of water buffalo just wandered slowly across the pitch. The batting team used it as a drink’s break! It was surreal because up the road were busloads of Indian pilgrims being herded by loudspeaker on to their buses to get going to the next holy spot, the sun was setting, fields were being burnt in preparation for the next sowing and a cricket game just stops to make way for buffalo. I have completely fallen in love with the place.
Am avoiding Kathmandu because it becomes nothing more than a boggy marsh in the monsoon and too many revolting men keep asking to sleep with me. Yuk! And then there is the bus ride there.
I am sooooo over Nepali buses. The stuff of nightmares. Hot, over-crowded, smelly, breakdowns, roadblocks, washed away bridges. They have it all going for ’em.
I am supposed to be at a meditation session now but my body was just so exhausted.
I am due to come home in about four weeks!!! Man, how time flies.
A

Introduction to Nepal

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May 2, 2013

HELLO FROM NEPAL!
Wow! I honestly don’t know where to start. I sat next to an English coal miner’s daughter between Brisbane and Singapore (really!!!) who wanted to tell me all about her dying mother – an occupational hazard; eneryone feels a need to tell journos their life story! The flight in was extraordinary (not including the poor Nepalese woman who passed out on her way to the loo, directly in front of my seat (still waiting to make sure she had no contagious disease!). The view of the Himalayas was breathaking, amazing, awe-inspiring. I had the same reaction when I saw the Taj Mahal but this time was with a plane full of people, many of whom were experiencing the same level of awe as me.
Kathmandu is bizarre, No other word for it really. Hot, heavily populated with locals hoping to make a quick buck from “rich” tourists. My hotel room is as basic as a room can get. The shower is quite literally a hole in the wall. There is no air con which is fine as there is very often no power (up to 12 hours a day Nepal “power sheds” which means the switch is flicked and the power is out.) Thankfully my motel has a generator which works some of the time. It kept sputtering and then shutting off last night. I watched as they drained fuel from a motorcycle and fed it in to the generator which duly sputtered back into action for about 20 minutes – making the entire building shake with its noise and vibration as it did so. The toilet flushes only when there is power (truly a mystery to me!), my room clock says it is 4 at all times and there is no bin or even facilities to make tea. Yet a guy in the street yesterday told me the hotel I am staying at is kind of top notch. I seem to have one of the best rooms in the place thanks to a former colleague arranging the room through an old school friend. My room overlooks the courtyard/garden (read carpark) and the residence of the motel owner Kiran and his extended family. It is humbling to see how this family lives. I realised last night that everything I packed in my suitcase and backpack was probably more than most Nepalese own!!!
Cows have right of way on the road on the odd occasion when they do move – except when they stop in the middle of the street which is unfortunate for motorists and pedestrians alike. Strays dogs are a dime a dozen spending hours searching for food but ignoring people. I wanna feed them all.
Buffalo, it turns out, does not taste at all like chicken. More gamey and well, kind of yuck!
More to come. Hopefully some of this will start to make sense soon – or not!