The Norbulingka Institute, a beautiful and idyllic place where Tibetan arts and crafts are taught and kept alive, is a registered trust under the leadership of the Dalai Lama, and it is preserving Tibetan culture. This complex includes: offices and reception, guest house, café, workshops, academy for Tibetan culture, Deden Tsukhang (the Seat of Happiness Temple), Norling Arts Shop, and the Losel Doll Museum.
At the Norbulingka Institute, we passed through a Tibetan-style gateway into a courtyard of tree-lined paths, landscaping, potted plants, ponds and waterfalls. It was like paradise—or perhaps I should say it was like Shangri-la. I noticed in the distance Shantum talking on a cell phone, and his posture and movements suggested that he was impatient. I tried to ignore this as we followed a path up to a café, where we sat at small round tables in front of a Tibetan-style building colorfully painted in flowery murals, and a couple of young Tibetans gave us menus and took our orders. I sat with Sheila, Lynn, and John, and a very friendly brown dog came along and let Sheila and me pet her.
John’s lunch came first, and it looked yummy, a stir-fry concoction, while I waited for my lunch. Maybe it was just as well I overdid the snack at the nunnery. Finally after everyone except me had lunch, the waiter came back to the table, and John reminded him that I didn’t have my lunch yet, and the waiter finally informed me that they didn’t have that particular dish; so I pointed at John’s plate and said, “I’ll have that instead.” The lunch, when it finally came, was as delicious as it had looked on John’s plate. Meanwhile, I enjoyed the company of the other people at my table, to say nothing of the dog.
On the previous day, Jagdish had handed me his cell phone, and Bina had informed me that it turns out that the travel agent hadn’t mentioned $300 that I still owed for staying in Kathmandu. Sitting at the Norbulingka café after finishing my lunch, I wrote a check and gave it to Shantum, who suddenly snapped at me. He began by saying imperiously, “Ms. Susan;” it’s odd how people most often use my name when they’re chastising me as though I were a bad little girl, an attitude that has not improved my relationship with my name—but going by a different name wouldn’t make it any better, because no doubt people would use it the same way. That might indeed be the reason why I almost never address people by their names.
In short, Shantum demanded to know why I wrote “so many checks.” I was shocked by his behavior, in part because I had already had this discussion, or rather a much more civil version of it, with Bina via e-mail, when I explained that I was concerned about checks getting lost in the mail, and she had informed me that the bank charges a fee for every check and that if the check didn’t get to them, I could cancel it. Since I was deeply shocked and hurt by Shantum’s behavior (even though it was nothing compared to the verbal attacks I have continually received from relatives ever since I moved to Kansas), I did not know what to say and spoke in a stilted voice. “I wrote this check because Bina called the other day and said I owed another three hundred dollars for Kathmandu.”
Shantum sternly explained in front of everyone why it was a nuisance to receive so many checks. The entire time he spoke, I sat slumped in my chair, staring at my lap and not seeing anything, and feeling deeply humiliated and hurt. Without even knowing what he was saying, I muttered a couple things like, “Oh, is that so,” and, “I didn’t know,” and felt too shocked and incapable of speech to actually point out to him that Bina had explained everything to me.
During last year’s pilgrimage, Shantum had seemed very nurturing and supportive and kind, and he had paid me complements (the opposite of what I am accustomed to) and had seemed to have a grasp of psychology, since he figured out that I’m shy. I had subconsciously turned him into a surrogate mother to make up for my verbally abusive relatives and for the fact that I had been bullied instead of nurtured throughout my childhood. Shantum was the second person I stupidly turned into a surrogate mother and who had rejected me. I finally figured out that the only person who can nurture me is myself.
While we still sat at the café tables, Shantum also acted impatient with Mimi for not being decisive about what she wanted to do this afternoon. I put on a cheerful façade and said, “Somebody’s a grumpy Buddha.” John and Lynn got a good laugh out of that, but it didn’t change my overwhelming sense of rejection and despair.
Another “mother” had rejected me and once again I was completely rootless. I have known since the age of five that I am on my own and that nobody is around to truly nurture me, so it is absurd for me to not be accustomed and resigned to this. If I were not still traumatized by my childhood, if I had not just been through six years of regular verbal abuse from relatives, and if I had not put Shantum up on a pedestal and turned him into a surrogate mother, I would not be hurt by his behavior.
The Norbulingka Institute is a remarkable learning center where Tibetans learn and practice woodworking, thangka painting, making appliquéd thangkas and banners, furniture building, and other crafts. We climbed precarious stairs and passed stone structures, including a wall that curved around dramatically. I should have enjoyed the tour, but the entire time I felt so humiliated and ashamed of whom I am, that it was as if a dark raincloud hovered above me and nobody else. A Tibetan boy gave us a tour of the Institute before the group went on our own, and while I should have been excited to see students painting thangkas in a studio with the Dalai Lama’s voice on the radio, and to see colorful murals on a woodworking studio’s walls while students built an embossed cabinet or wardrobe, I wanted to be invisible.
After we parted with the tour guide, we ended up in a gift shop, but I didn’t feel like buying anything and would have been very ashamed if I had done so. But really, I feel ashamed of everything I do and of being myself. I wish I could be someone else, a decent human being, someone whom people respect, but I’m stuck with being a worthless loser. Feeling miserable and dejected, I idly wandered around the shop while everyone else seemed to be eagerly chatting and looking at merchandise. I would have preferred to go to the doll museum, but it had a separate entrance fee and I didn’t think I would have enough time, for I was under the impression that we would be leaving soon.
People dispersed from the gift shop, and I overheard some people, including Paula and Richard, were going to the temple, and so I tagged along. In the center of the Norbulingka Institute is a standard Tibetan temple with a shiny gold roof and with colorful murals galore. I followed the others up the temple steps and stared around at the murals. I looked down at my feet and to my utter embarrassment saw that I was still wearing my hiking boots. I hurried back to the entrance to slip them off. I couldn’t even feel good in a Buddhist temple; the positive energy that it might have contained did not penetrate the oppressive raincloud that surrounded me.
In the taxi with Shantum and me, Etiel said something about Shantum as a tour guide, and I made a sarcastic remark in response. She said, “I think he’s doing a fabulous job! It’s hard to be a guide for so many people.” She said it plenty loud enough for Shantum to hear, and she tapped the top of his seat back.
Shantum said, “I am unemployable.” He added something to the effect that people have labeled him “unemployable.”
“I know the feeling,” I said, thinking nobody could be as unemployable as I, but Etiel also agreed, although it was hard for me to think of her as unemployable. Shantum proceeded to talk about some of his previous employment, how he’d get a job and try to do it his way, but his employers didn’t want him to do it his way. He worked for one dollar a year for the UN for six years, and he tried to make the program work, but the UN didn’t like the way he did things.
After a brief pause in the conversation, Shantum brought up the subject of my pilgrimage memoir, and of my including the notes I took during his storytelling. He said, “I’m not sure it’s kosher, you see. It took me twenty years of research. Penguin has a contract for me to write a book, and it’s been sitting on my desk—I just haven’t gotten around to it.”
I explained that the book is about both my path and the Buddha’s path, and that I wrote his comments in quotation marks, as dialogue. I also said that I’d go ahead and send him the current draft by snail mail, since it’s five hundred pages and would be easier to read in print rather than on a computer screen.
In the late afternoon to early evening we went to a tea plantation, or more specifically the tea plantation owner’s guesthouse, to admire the view and watch the sunset. The guesthouse included two charming white bungalows, and we went through the main building, admired the décor in the process, and went through glass doors at the back of the house to step out into the back yard. There we had a view not of tea plants as I had expected, but of what looked like a forest touching the borders of the yard, and best of all we saw the Himalayas in the distance.
We met a very friendly older man, whom I at first thought was the owner of the plantation, but he was more like the butler; he wore a business suit and a blue turban and spoke English very fluently, with more or less a British accent. He told us all about the plantation and the guesthouse. (We even saw Western guests sit out on the patio at some point in the evening).
Male servants in dark brown Nehru suits served us beverages, and they set up a table with tea and snacks, something breaded and similar to tempura vegetables, with green minty dipping sauce. I got a small plate and would have served myself a tiny portion, but Jagdish served me a generous portion of breaded veggies and sauce. He knows my gluttonous ways too well. If I had not been around people, I would have eaten nothing for the rest of the day, because I didn’t think I deserved to eat.
While those of us who had gone on this particular outing—for it was not the entire sangha—sat admiring the view and snacking, we had a discussion. Shantum reminded us that today is Thursday and we need to turn in our Mindfulness Training essays tomorrow. This led to some discussion about the Mindfulness Training, which a surprising number of people have said they wish to do, even though some of them aren’t even Buddhists. Not that I’m into labels or identification with just one religion or spiritual tradition. I much prefer the word “spirituality” to “religion,” of course.
Marsha asked about alcohol and said that she drinks wine at night. Shantum said, “You should drink mindfully and think about whether you’re causing suffering…and you might just end up swearing off alcohol.” Shantum explained that originally he only did four trainings; he didn’t drink alcohol and was at the time only interested in ganja. (I had no idea what ganja is, but since then I have looked it up and learned that it’s a Sanskrit or Hindi word for “marijuana.”)
“The Mindfulness Trainings aren’t vows, they’re just guidelines,” Shantum said. He said that at the wedding, he drank two sips of champagne, because they were doing a toast; he wasn’t going to drink, but someone put a glass in his hand. I was surprised to hear he actually drank even that much; the pilgrimage last year had seemed very anti-alcohol, and I had been comfortable with this after reading Sharon Salzburg’s remarks about alcohol and meditation being a bad mix. If you drink in front of children, Shantum said, “you’re planting the seed of alcohol in them.” (I’m glad my brother doesn’t drink in front of Malcolm.)
The topic of vegetarianism also came up. Someone said that animals feel fear, know that they’re going to be killed—on some level of consciousness, but they’re in fear when they’re about to die. Shantum said, “There are fear toxins in the meat—you’re eating fear.” (There’s another reason for me to see meat eating as unclean.) There are plenty of other reasons for being vegetarian, such as it’s much more ecological and economical to plant fields and eat the grains or produce directly rather than have animals grazing, using up the grain and causing deforestation, but I don’t think that came up in the conversation. And in my experience, taste buds are a perfectly sensible reason to be a vegetarian, even if it is self-centered and trivial compared to other reasons. I don’t need to do Mindfulness Trainings for that; laying off sweets and aspiring to use something that vaguely passes off as mindful speech are the biggest challenges for me when it comes to the Mindfulness Trainings, which I did on the pilgrimage last year.
Shantum talked a little about Indian vegetarianism and said that it is perfectly acceptable in Indian vegetarian tradition to eat eggs. Despite my overwhelming self-hate and rejection, I actually spoke up at this point. I said, “I’m not a vegan, but ninety-five percent of chickens in the United States live in inhumane conditions, packed tightly into cages and never seeing the light of day. That’s a good reason to refrain from eating eggs.” I have gotten the impression that chickens are treated the same way in Ireland; I remember eating a great many eggs there but only seeing chickens once. In India, however, it’s not unusual to see chickens and chicks running around, like so many animals in India.
Shantum, referring to his younger days, said he was “a guy with no limits, like a free bird,” only he wasn’t free because he was “trapped in samsara.” So the Mindfulness Trainings have been his guidelines.
You take refuge in the Buddha three times for these reasons: 1) the Buddha Shakyamuni, 2) your potential for awakening, and 3) your awakening. “This mindfulness practice is your refuge,” Shantum said. He also used the word “aspiration.”
We stayed at the tea plantation long enough to admire the sunset as Shantum had proposed earlier. I could see a very bright pinkish-orangey sunset between trees. We went around to the front of the house, and while people stood around talking and I didn’t feel like talking to anybody, I watched the sunset amid other trees that, since it was getting darker, looked like black silhouettes. The sunset was bright orange and very dramatic.
Here is my new insight poem:
Mindful Trek
Mindful steps over rough terrain
rocks glistening in the sun
sparrows singing and crows cawing
elk footprints and rhododendron trees
the scent of pine and cedar
hawks soaring in blueness with a backdrop
of snow-capped triangular mountains
are more spiritual to me
than any temple or ceremony.
During our dinner conversation at Cloud’s End, I heard such unusual phrases as, “Rather dishy monk” and “I think he’s rather yummy”—the sisters Jill and Pat were commenting on the Dalai Lam’s translator. As listening to them often is, it was like being in a British sitcom. They have charming British accents and are around seventy years old. Someone asked for my opinion and I said, “Yes, I think he’s attractive.” At some point, I did add, “but he’s Tibetan, so what do you expect?” but I don’t think anyone heard me in the big echoic room with all the talking going on.
The sentence, “Shantum is angry with me,” became a sort of mantra that I repeated in my head over and over again. At some point it shifted to: “Shantum despises me.” The unkosher aspect of my book dawned on me more and more in the evening, and I felt very foolish and ashamed for not having realized it. By midnight, I became convinced that I’ve done something horrible.
I had foolishly thought that if I went back to India, I’d again experience the bliss, happiness and confidence that I had had on the pilgrimage last year; I had, in short, tried to run away from my depression. But no matter how far I travel, I can never get away from myself.
Despite this depression, I began to very dubiously think that maybe there’s a possibility that my book will be fine without the notes…but it will have to at least include summaries of why each location was important to the Buddha, and I should still send it to Shantum. From what I have read about trying to get nonfiction books published, I have the impression that no publisher would be willing to publish the stupid book unless it had Shantum’s written approval, since he was the meditation teacher and tour guide.
