Monks are people, too...

Before teaching at the monastery, I guess I never thought about the normal lives of monks. I thought all they did was pray and meditate and... I suppose... eat meals. However being at the monastery and interacting with monks all day I learned one important fact. Monks are people, too (this may or may not be a quote from one of my students). Monks do all sorts of things you wouldn't imagine them doing initially.

One thing we did twice a week was have a movie night for the monks so they could practice their English doing something fun. The most popular movies were action movies. They love Jackie Chan and martial arts. Mission Impossible was a big hit with them, as was Rush Hour. I mean, really, they are mostly a bunch of men in their 20's. Why wouldn't they enjoy that stuff, right?

And speaking of them being men, what else to men like better than sports? Sports are huge in the monastery. Apparently, during the main program, the monks' free time is very limited and they only have one or two days a week that they are allowed to play, but during the winter holiday when I was visiting, there were essentially no rules about when they had to do anything (except show up to English class if they had enrolled, of course) and so whenever it was light outside, you could find monks out playing sports. The three most popular sports I saw there were basketball, cricket, and football (soccer). Due to the immense popularity of cricket, not just in the monastery, but throughout India, I was forced to learn the rules of the peculiar game in order to understand what I was watching...

 Monks playing basketball

 Monks playing cricket

 Pitching form is quite important in cricket... apparently...

Another growing passion among the monks is technology. Despite the price of iPads, iPhones, Smartphones and tablets,  it was not so hard to find these devices around the monastery, particularly among the graduate monks who work there. But, even among student monks, there were quite a few smartphones to be had. The Khenpo (instructor) who looks after the English program had an iPhone... which ran on 2G internet. It was literally impossible to do anything with it when it was running on 2G, but it didn't matter. He had it!

 

Me, one of my students, and one of the administrators

Up to the snow: Birling, Himachal Pradesh

 

On my first day off, my boss decided our staff should have a staff lunch, and we figured before lunch we’d make a quick stop to check out the view from Birling, a small settlement at the top of a local mountain which also happens to be one of the world’s top spots for paragliding. We knew there would be snow up there, so we figured it would be fun to play in the snow (down here in Chauntra it never gets cold enough to snow) and see the view. So, before going to the restaurant, which was near the bottom of the mountain, we jumped in two cars, one of our staff member’s cars and one taxi and headed up the mountain. I kind of felt like I was on a Korean ‘MT’.

The mountain road was a little scary at times. The road was only wide enough for one car (as most roads are here), though it of course supported two way traffic, which made passing both oncoming traffic and slow traffic ahead of us difficult, and at times scary, since there were rarely barriers protecting us from the steep mountainside next to us. 

However, things were going along smoothly until we reached the snow line on the mountain. Here we quickly realized that our little ultra compact cars could go no further in the snowy and icy conditions. Clearly no one up here owned anything like a snow plow. 

But, we figured we’d just walk the rest of the way up. It was only 11am, and our lunch reservation was for 2pm, so we figured we’d have plenty of time. The local folks from our staff assured us that we were just a quick hike from the top.

We found a small path on the sunny side of the mountain with not so much snow and started our assent. Some members of our staff were not prepared with proper shoes for hiking...

I'm not sure if it's a Tibetan thing, or a mountain people thing, or just a human nature thing, but we found that, just like in China, whenever we asked the locals "How much further?", they always reply in a way that makes it sound like you'll reach your destination in 10 minutes. However, just as in China, this hike took us much longer than expected. We finally reached the store near the top at 1:30.

Here we collapsed and had a cup of chai with some chips and cookies... and lots of water...

Around this time we called and informed our restaurant that we would be a bit late, to which we got a very angry response and hung up on. But, there was nothing we could do, so we continued our way up to the top of Birling.

 

Me and my co-workers at Dzongsar Monastary

Finally we made it to the top. There was some pretty fantastic views and despite all the snow, we felt quite warm. I've never had a snowball fight where I didn't mind picking up snow with my bare hands or wanted to take off my jacket before...

After throwing snowballs around for a little while, we made our way down, this time along the switchback roads, back to our waiting taxi. Then we headed back down the mountain to Bir for our, now very late, lunch. 

Upon arriving at the restaurant (which, by the way, is a very special restaurant owned by a German-Indian who accepts only advanced reservations and has a wood fired oven in which he makes pizzas totally from scratch using whatever ingredients are available in the morning market), we were told by the owner's assistant that we were too late, that we could not eat. We sadly walked out and wondered where we should eat when the woman came back out and informed us that, actually, she had already made our pizzas that we had pre-ordered, and if we didn't mind that they were now a little soggy, she could heat them up in a pan for us. We jumped for joy that we hadn't completely missed our meal and headed back in to enjoy our pizzas. 

After our late lunch, my boss took me for a little tour of her 'neigborhood' in Bir, which was basically a house in the middle of a field. But, the terraced land sure was beautiful.... 

I got back to the monastery where I'm staying just in time for dark, and was a good first introduction to the area...

Breakfast with Khenpo

I am now finally situated in my home for the next five weeks, the Dzongsar Khyentse Chokyi Lodro Institute, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery situated in northern India. Here, I live in the monastery with the monks, eat my meals with the monks, and will be teaching the monks English during their winter program as a volunteer.

It's quite an opportunity to live in a monastery like this, something most people would never dream of being able to do (although apparently it's actually not on most people's to do list in life, though I can't imagine why...).

I've got to get used to the daily routine here, and today, as classes have not started yet, I thought I'd catch the morning tea served at 9:00am according to the schedule given to me as a new volunteer (I'd already missed breakfast, which is served at 7:00am). As I left my room and started to head toward the cafeteria, I was stopped before I even got out of the building by the monk living in the room next to mine. Upon asking him if it was tea time, he replied... "Yes, but tea is not hot.". I told him that was no problem for me but he insisted that he make me a cup of hot tea in his own room and invited me in.

I was told by the head teacher that this monk living next to me was no ordinary monk, but one of the most well respected instructors of philosophy in the monastery. Teachers here are known as Khenpos. As he introduced himself to me, he did not refer to himself as Khenpo, but just his first and last name. I feel terrible, but I can't remember it. Maybe I'm getting older, but these Tibetan names are making my head swim. Fortunately, I'm realizing that there are many common names that you hear again and again, so maybe after a few weeks the names won't be so hard for me.

He sat me down and brought me a cup of green tea and when he realized I hadn't yet eaten breakfast he whipped me up a bowl of Indian style ramen noodles... with some sort of snack like Cheetos sprinkled on top. Then we started chatting. His English was far from perfect, but good enough to understand and chat for a while. He started telling me about where he comes from, high in the mountains of Kashmir, much further north in India, an area with large ethnic Tibetan populations (however, he does not call himself Tibetan!). He showed me beautiful photos of the first monastery where he began his monastic studies and where he grew up.

Then we started chatting about Buddhism and I asked him all my questions about how Korean Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism differ (not about philosophy, because I still am far from understanding that, but just in simple things). He explained to me about the Tibetan prayer flags. Each string of flags should represent one form of Bodhisattvas. Depending on which Bodhisattva you may need (wisdom, compassion, happiness, etc.), you can buy the flag which reflects your need, and hang it where you like, often in a holy place.

We also discussed the relics left behind by Buddhist masters after cremations. In sandskrit they are known as sarira शरीर (in Korean 사리), however Khenpo was not familiar with this word, but the Tibetan word ringsel. These are small crystal balls that are found in the cremated remains after cremation of the most holy of masters. He told me as well that relics such as these, or teeth or other matter which are saved as relics can actually grow over time.

I'm sure he tried to explain other things to me, but I am so clueless about the philosophy of Buddhism that I can not hope to understand things yet.