I moved across town to a new apartment!

And I'm exhausted.

I am now dwelling in Bohemia, or rather the Hawthorne-Belmont neighborhood in Portland. I went on an expedition, tunneling through furniture and boxes full of books to the far corner of the living room in order to set up my computer and phone. Priorities. The Internet is working, but I haven't gotten any calls from telemarketers yet. Still, if I can use the Internet, surely I can use the phone.

After the movers went away, I headed back to my old apartment to do some last-minute cleaning up before my 4 pm appointment with the apartment manager and her husband. Unfortunately, my vacuum cleaner died in the cleaning process, although not because of the long hair wrapped around and around the rolly thing. The clear plastic thing in the center wasn't filling up with dust and cat hair like it should; instead, dust and cat hair were building up inside a hose...and finally it stopped working altogether and I could smell something reminiscent of a hot iron. The managers said the problem is definitely in the big part at the bottom--the section that rolls around on the floor. I'm thinking I'll open it myself before looking for someone else to repair it. I'll probably find a huge, tumor-like wad of hair in the center. It'll wave its tentacles at me and say in a raspy voice, "I am the nucleus!" Well, that was my Doctor Who joke for the day. Sometimes I think I should move to London just so people understand my Doctor Who jokes.

Anyway, the apartment's lovely--slightly smaller than the previous one but with twice the closet space and a location that suits me so much better. I am not a soccer mom. This apartment has a groovy sunken living room with a fake fireplace that serves as an electric heater, and it's got a metal railing separating it from the slightly higher dining room. The two glass display cases flank my dollhouse in the living room, right in front of the railing, so you'll be able to see both sides of most of the sculptures. Unfortunately, there's carpeting rather than hardwood floors, so it's not perfect. I currently happen to be reading a book called The Search for Shangri-la.

Thubten Chodron on the Economy

This is from a dharma talk I attended at Matrepa College in SE Portland. Thubten Chodron is a Tibetan Buddhist nun and a highly respected teacher. I’ve read some of her stuff and she has helped me understand some important things, psychology-related things.

The Beatles song “Money Can’t Buy Me Love” ran through my head for a long time after this dharma talk.

Living with less, we feel more humble and more equal with everyone else. We can become more generous, because we relate more to people in poverty and can feel more compassion toward others.

Living in a less wealthy situation = great opportunity for dharma practice.
You can be happy living in a one-room shack with a dirt floor.
Abundance of wellness in heart = sharing with others, don’t feel poor even if we don’t have material wealth.

“I give without a sense of loss.”—saying with mandalas. [I certainly felt that way in India and after I returned from India and took carloads to thrift stores, but I didn’t feel that way when I took my youngest cats to a humane shelter, even though it was a no-kill shelter. That was one renunciation for which I was not ready.] It’s hard to give something away because you’re sure you might use it someday (cardboard boxes, containers, etc). Generosity—“we’re reluctant to give away a dusty, empty box because we might use it someday.” We can feel poor when we have a house full of stuff. Inner mental state—no matter what our living standard is, we can feel rich.

Having less could result in sharing with others, bring yourselves together. For instance, a family that has two TVs and watches them in separate rooms can instead have one TV and gather together in the same room. There is extraordinary potential, even with the economy going downhill; families could get closer together and feel more compassion and generosity. [In my case, getting close to relatives is unfathomably unhealthy. No, thanks. I’ll join a commune instead.]

Miserly, greedy mind = what got us into this mess. Living on credit, spending money we don’t have, buying stuff we don’t need. We can’t blame it all on AIG. We bought into it—the consumers lived on credit cards with high interest without thinking about paying credit cards debt. Obscene greed. [There you have it: no amount of pressure will convince me to get a credit card. So there!] Obscene greed = more broken families and alcohol abuse, etc. Getting more and more stuff didn’t make things better. [At the Nalanda architecture museum there’s a carving of a large face with a wide open mouth and hands in the mouth; it symbolizes greed. At the Portland Art Museum there’s a huge disturbing, dark painting that’s also called Greed; it has soldiers with guns, cigarettes, Coca-cola cans, McDonald’s lunches, and they’re shooting guns and killing a wolf and the canvas has a lot of gushing blood on it.]

We used to have black and white TVs, smaller screens, just one TV and the whole family stayed in the same room. Kids now have their own room with their own TV and iPod, etc—they don’t learn how to be a human. Bad economy could be good for us and get us to reach out toward our neighbors instead of locking doors and cutting off.

How else can I spend my time if I can’t run around meeting all kinds of enjoyment? [I confess that last night I went to the Bagdad Theater and saw Slumdog Millionaire, and the ticket was only $3, no concessions.] “I don’t have time” is our national saying. If we had more time people say, “Get a life.” What do you do? Have time to do a daily practice—what happens when your excuse goes away? Volunteering in the community instead of being too busy all the time. If you lose your job, you can volunteer [I’ve been doing that], instead of getting another job you don’t like just for the paycheck and shopping.

A simpler life is a great opportunity to reach out to others, share with others. 20% of the world’s resources = North America (I’m thinking I read that it’s more like 24%). Contentment and dharma practice. When you sit down to meditate, what distracts you? Everything we want? Content with what we have = less distraction while meditating. [Lately I’m distracted with what I’m willing to get rid of.]

This is a good time for us to think about how to prepare for our future lives. If we’re not so greedy in this life, we have time for it. We think of other people: You should be generous, and I’m glad to be you’re recipient. But do we turn it around and try to be generous ourselves? Do we cultivate a stingy heart or a generous heart? This is an opportunity to look at our own personal greed. It’s easy to blame Wall Street, but aren’t we like these people? If we had the position of power, would we do the same thing? It’s tempting to blame everybody else, but it’s good to look inside.

Because of greed and fear, we make up fearful stories about what may happen, getting all stressed out.

Money doesn’t buy us happiness, and the more we have, the more we have to lose.
A German millionaire lost an investment and committed suicide recently. He felt like a failure. Another guy kept watching his stock and seeing it grow and grow and watching it go up and up… from $18,000, it went poof and he only had $150 of his inheritance. He took that money and donated it to a Buddhist nunnery, saying it’s time he started investing in something more meaningful.

We should prepare for future lives, without practicing escapism. In this lifetime, we have to create the cause of a better world. We shouldn’t just pray, but rather take action. Cause and effect—What we’re experiencing now is because of things we did before. One good future life is good, but it’ll end. How about getting out of the cycle? How do I create the case? That’s why we study the dharma—what to do, to actualize spiritual states that we aspire, study and put in practice, create the causes for something you want (like to become a Buddha) = the process becomes joyful and exciting. Causes will bring results.

Being generous is one of the causes. Fortitude, effort, kindness, compassion, lovingkindness. But we have to do something, not just sit around and say that sounds really good.

For people who think they’re a failure for not having a job or not having a house, tell them they’re not. Everything, including the economy, is impermanent. We can encourage them to get new skills so they can go get a job they’ll enjoy more. If you encourage others to think big, you can think big.

We have so many walls around us—there are so many people who scare me, etc. Maybe you should go there—like do volunteer work in that scary area.

It’s hard not to be judgmental toward people who live lavishly. Could you be experiencing jealousy, or perhaps sadness because you know what they’re doing is not working? But when you’re feeling judgmental—you should reflect that “I have the same thing inside myself.” You cannot control what they do, so you should take care of that potential that’s in yourself. Other people’s behavior can help us to reflect and transform ourselves. That judgmental mind is not a happy mind—it’s implanting negativity in our own mind, and this brings about more suffering and negative karma.

Getting together with a friend and gossiping about how bad others are—this is not helping your karma or self-esteem [mindful speech].

Having things isn’t the problem—it’s the attachment and craving. Have things without being attached to them. How can you tell if you’re attached? If you think of something that you have, and the thought of losing it makes you unhappy, then there’s attachment.

Does this apply to loved ones? We’re very attached to someone, and someday we’ll separate—it’s inevitable. Thinking if you hold on good enough they won’t die—doesn’t work. For their benefit—how can I act in a way that will benefit them the most? Does it benefit them if I’m clinging and trying to make them do things they don’t want to do? Maybe it’s better for them to go do something else, go somewhere else. Do you care about them, or about how they make you feel? If you really are, then you let them do what they need to do. This won’t always be the same person that they are right now. They’re just a karmic bubble. You can’t hold onto them forever.

When you have attachment for someone else, how do you deal with grief at parting? Don't judge your emotions—what we feel we feel. But do we want to continue feeling it? Feeling anger: don’t label yourself a bad person for being angry, but ask if you want to continue feeling that way. Move away from grief—don’t always want to feel that way. We shared so much love, I’m going to take the love I had with this person and share this love with the world. It makes you feel so rich, you want to share. Honor the feeling of connection and recognize it doesn’t have to be with one person.

Spiritual Journey and True Self

Mythology around the world describes a descent into darkness, such as the goddess Innana’s descent into the underworld. She descends deeper and deeper, shedding jewelry and clothing, and it gets darker and darker, and when she ascends back up into the light, she is reborn. The darkness is similar to meditation: meditators don’t just focus mindfully on pleasant things but also on unpleasant, even extremely painful things and disturbing things. You sit there with disturbance in the darkness and observe it closely. Rising up from the darkness is like enlightenment.

My descent into darkness was my deeply depressing and alienating six years of dwelling in Topeka, Kansas. I was rather reclusive and quiet while surrounded by the most hostile community I’ve ever encountered, an androcentric and oppressive place completely at odds with my beliefs and discouraging any possibility of healing. Poisonous relatives verbally abused me to an extreme before I finally stopped having denial about what my relatives are truly like and how I feel about them. As a result—while on one hand I was psychologically traumatized—I analyzed these relatives, and I analyzed and figured out my own past and my own life’s path. Meanwhile I could not sleep without having dreams that involved long white hallways representing the path of my life.

During that time, I sat with the unpleasant and the profoundly disturbing and the deeply depressing. Meanwhile, I could not find my True Self in that environment, which I realized is just the thing my poisonous relatives have wanted all my life: for me to be completely disconnected from my True Self, which most people in this dysfunctional patriarchal society lose in very early childhood. Despite meditation and intellectual understanding, I lost myself and through fear and loathing somewhat regressed to my childhood, to the point that I almost returned to the voluntary muteness of my childhood. Nobody wanted to hear what I had to say, so why should I speak? Nobody would listen to me but would attack me no matter what I did, so why should I speak? In this deeply hateful and alienating environment, I experienced almost constant fear and loathing and had no sense of belonging. I even lost that false sense of belonging in a family to which I had clung for all those years. Despite that regression, I still had wisdom coming through in thin beams of light.

Moving from Kansas to Portland, Oregon, is not only a geographical move but also a spiritual one. I do not mean to imply that when I moved I reached enlightenment and became a Buddha, but rather that I have moved from that poisonous Goddess-rejecting environment, the dark underworld, to a city that is very progressive and creative, supportive of artistic creativity, and rich in fertile soil for spiritual growth. In Portland I have joined a meditation community that is genuinely helpful in the healing process (and more like group therapy than organized religion). Not only the meditation community but much of my experience in Portland, such as my nonviolent communication classes and meeting up with feminists, give me a sense of safety and an ability to say what I genuinely think and feel rather than wear a mask. I have moved to a community where it is possible to find your True Self.

During my first trip to India, an amazing Buddhist pilgrimage, I thought I found acceptance with a temporary traveling sangha, but during my second trip to the other side of the world I came to realize that India, Nepal and Tibet are not ultimately where my path was pointing me. I became all the more eager to head for the west coast, which seemed to be drawing me in. Ever since I graduated from college I have felt an urge to move to the west coast, but fresh out of college I didn’t have the courage to go through with it (even though now it doesn’t seem particularly courageous). I think the healing and supportive energy of the west coast was calling me all along. I don’t believe in “manifest destiny,” an excuse that arrogant white people used for attempted genocide and greed as they moved west in the nineteenth century; this is something very different. If a community just like Portland existed in the Midwest, I still would have moved to it.

Sometimes I think Oscar Wilde wasn’t joking when he said, “Life imitates art.” I don’t know if everyone’s life has a strong plot and so much metaphor as mine. I suspect that since most people are stuck on the most basic need of safety, when it comes to attempting to meet their needs, they are oblivious to their needs and to their True Self. Even if their life does have the potential for a plot and a mythological connotation, they are completely oblivious to it. Actually, I suspect that people who are on that bottom level of needs are at the starting point of the journey and never actually take it. I don’t quite know why some people are truth seekers, while others have no inclination to seek truth.

I'm currently reading a book called Dancing in the Flames: the Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, by Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson. Another relevant book (also published by Shambhala Publications) is The Heroine's Journey by Maureen Murdock.

Snow Ducks

It's surprising that the ducks are sticking around this time of year. These are pictures I took from my balcony while it was snowing steadily.

I wasn't fast enough to take a picture while they were in flight, flying toward me after I opened the sliding door.

A tree with a couple of squirrels, despite the weather.

I Cannot Stop Marveling

I cannot stop marveling
at how tall the trees grow here,
like my true self
that family and other bullies
have tried so hard to suppress, to murder.
At last I have found a place
where growth and healing happen.

Portland in Autumn

Bamboo on the Fanno Creek Trail

I actually took these photos about three weeks ago, and it's high time I post them. Since then, the trees have fewer leaves and the sky has more rain. The ducks are happy.

I don't want to encourage people to move to Portland, simply because many people have been moving here lately, and it's hard to get a job. Very hard.

Holly on the Fanno Creek Trail

Ducks in the swimming pool at my apartment complex (they like the heated water)
The parking lot is under construction on the other side of the pool.

View at the Hoyt Arboritum, where trees are labeled so you know what to call what you're looking at.

Hoyt Arboritum.

Astonishing tree with fluffy red leaves at the Hoyt Arboritum

The photo doesn't do it justice; the bark on this tree is as green as the leaves, but with some red stripes. It's also shiny and looks as if someone painted the trunk, and yet it's natural.

Hoyt Arboritum

View of downtown Portland, from the Hoyt Arboritum

I was in Lhasa on Tibet Uprising Day

Immediately after I got home from a trip to India, Nepal, and Tibet, I turned on my computer, typed up the following eyewitness account, and sent it to the International Campaign for Tibet and various news media. I ultimately also sent it to the president of China and to Amnesty International, and perhaps a few other organizations. The Olympics in China are coming up, and currently the International Campaign for Tibet's website has a letter that you can send to Bush, because he's going to visit Beijing. (I could make a snide remark about how I'm sure someone who's literate will read the letter to him, but I'll refrain.)

Today is March 10, 2008, and I am writing by the light from a hotel room window, since the power is out, as it has been all afternoon, evening, and night. I have spent a week in Tibet, and this is the only day that there has been a power outage, quite unlike Kathmandu, Nepal, where power outages happen at least once a day and last for hours. I suspect that the authorities deliberately turned the electricity off in at least part of Lhasa, just because today is Tibet Uprising Day, when protests against the Chinese occupation are most likely to occur. On this day in 1959, the current Dalai Lama sneaked out of his summer palace, the Norbulingka, and began a long journey to exile in India; two days later, the Chinese bombed the palace and still thought he was inside.

This morning as I equanimously lived in the present moment, practicing my walking meditation around the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s palace which is perched high on a mountain. I occasionally spun big gold prayer wheels set in wooden frames while I observed the pilgrims around me, some of whom greeted me with the words, “Tashe delek,” or “Hello!” I didn’t think much about the fact that today was Tibet Uprising Day. I was the only Westerner in sight, but I wore a Tibetan-style chupa, or dress, like so many of the pilgrims. Some of them wore contemporary clothes, and I saw many women wearing sunhats, but other pilgrims who had traveled far away wore traditional clothing that was often somewhat ragged, and they carried prayer wheels and often had coral and turquoise beads braided in their black or grey hair. I could see different styles of chupas from different Tibetan regions, for pilgrims walked great distances to reach Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. During one of my perambulations, when I reached the back wall below the Potala, I was startled by the sight of a white police vehicle something like an extra large golf cart filled with six cops in formal uniforms as if they had dressed up to join a parade.
I walked around the palace only once before I crossed the street and stood in the center of the drab concrete-paved square, where I took a dead center picture of the Potala, a beautiful sprawling red and white building with flat roofs and Buddhist banners; at the very top, there are ornate pointed gold roofs over the tombs of the Dalai Lamas. Most of the present palace dates to the seventeenth century, and it is all in traditional Tibetan style, with walls slanting inward and with black-framed glass-less windows. The building is thirteen stories high, and earlier on my vacation I had enjoyed a tour and climbed many stairs. I had stood in the courtyard, looked up at the Dalai Lama’s look-out window, and imagined a much younger Fourteenth Dalai Lama looking down upon the courtyard, as he had before he went into exile in India.

Strangely, after my camera snapped a picture of the Potala, a cop seemed to yell at me from some distance, but I didn’t understand what he said. I looked at him for a moment, but he stood perfectly still in the square, so I shrugged, turned around, and took another picture of the Potala, to see what he would do. He didn’t do anything. Since I wore Tibetan clothing, perhaps he had at first mistaken me for a Tibetan. I soon crossed the street and happily circumambulated the Potala three more times. I remained equanimous even when I reached the left side of the building and megaphones blared out music from a shop and advertisements from a cart full of merchandise. I did not feel annoyed when I was at the back of the Potala and could hear pop music blaring from the park that includes the Naga Temple. Under the circumstances, I would have preferred to listen to Tibetan Buddhist monks or nuns chanting.

I was ready to head out toward the Jokhang Temple, when I noticed numerous blue uniforms standing around the street corner, so I jaywalked and moved on. I headed for the vicinity of the Barkhor, an alley or path that circles the Jokhang Temple, the most significant Buddhist temple in Tibet. I had lunch at a café near the temple and went to my hotel room to write in my journal and take a nap.

Around 4:30, I returned to the Barkhor and began a walking meditation around the Jokhang Temple. I was in basically the same mental state I had experienced while circumambulating the Potala. So much walking meditation, perhaps combined with the thin air, is enough to put me in a calm, content, and peaceful mood. In the past week, I’ve walked around the Jokhang and stood on its roof, and this was the first time I noticed police standing around the Barkhor, the paved and crowded circumambulation route for the Jokhang, where pilgrims from all over Tibet walk around and around, much as they do around the Potala. Espying the police reminded me what day it was, but I remained equanimous and continued my walking meditation while out of curiosity keeping an eye out for cops.

Some of the police wore navy blue uniforms: badges, caps, and all, like airline pilots. At first, those were the only police I noticed. I decided to circumambulate six times rather than only three. Next time around, I noticed not only several uniforms but also cops wearing navy blue, with navy blue windbreakers. Both kinds of police either stood around watching the steadily moving crowd or sat on stools or benches around the Barkhor. After that, I started noticing what I suspected were undercover cops, and one of them said, “Hello!” to me like anyone else. I am so sick of that word, which almost every Tibetan apparently knows, but I smiled faintly and said, “Hi.” I only saw three other Westerners the whole time I was circumambulating, and they all looked to be cheerfully shopping.

When I had walked around six times, I was about to depart through the large paved square in front of the Jokhang, when a police siren jolted me out of my walking meditation. A small police van drove onto the square, which is normally reserved only for pedestrians. Like many others, I stopped to gawk, as I noticed two white cop cars and a huge crowd of police in navy blue uniforms standing, many of them forming a wall facing the temple. Brimming with curiosity, I joined the growing crowd, in which I was the only Westerner. This would have been a great time to be fluent in Tibetan, so that I could have understood what people around me said. To the right was a white vehicle and a large number of people gathered; many blocked my view, but it looked like most of that crowd was young, perhaps teenagers, and they were just standing around staring. In front of them stood cops in full uniform.

My first thought was that a political demonstration had begun, even though I had assumed that nobody would demonstrate unless they were suicidal. But as I observed the crowd of cops in the center, most of whom from what I could see formed a line, I thought maybe they were attempting to incite the crowd to riot so that they would have an excuse to get ugly with the crowd. Finally, I came to the much more likely conclusion that this was all a power-tripping display. Nonetheless, putting on this display is just the thing that could encourage Tibetans who believe in freedom and who are loyal to the Dalai Lama to put on a political and hopefully nonviolent protest.

Twice while I was part of this gawking crowd, a cop approached the cluster of people around me and yelled something while holding up his arms as if to push the people in front, and the crowd started to back away and disperse, but other people walked up and took the place of those who walked away. I finally decided that standing around and gawking like this was silly, so I turned away and continued circumambulating the temple and observing the police.

I have to admit that at this stage I was feeling rather less equanimous and was more interested in observing the police than in mindfully walking. Cops still stood or sat here and there around the Barkhor. Walking around the left front side of the Jokhang, I saw a cop standing on a wooden bench and holding onto the roof of a merchant’s booth. Eventually I heard a siren again, but this time I was not in front of the temple but rather surrounded by booths and shops behind the temple. A white police van with a blaring siren moved toward the crowd, counterclockwise, same as the golf cart-like vehicle I had seen while circumambulating the Potala. I have no doubt that this is deliberate, since Buddhists traditionally circumambulate temples clockwise. The crowd stepped out of the way of the police van and gawked. I kept looking back at the van, and it turned around behind me. This senseless driving around with a siren when there was no emergency struck me as ridiculous, and again the phrase “power-tripping display” came to my mind.

On another round, I saw a couple of young monks and maybe two other people standing in front of a wide and colorfully painted gateway, like the driveways to hotel courtyards in Lhasa. I stopped next to the monks and was quite astonished at what I saw. On the other side of the gateway, two white vehicles were parked with their right sides facing the entrance. A couple of little kids in pale blue school uniforms stood in front of the headlights, and next to them stood a military officer in a green uniform. Facing the children and the officer were at least four rows of green-clad soldiers, all squatting close to the ground, as if frozen in that position, and wearing helmets like motorcycle helmets but apparently used for riot gear. This was too bizarre! Nobody was rioting, and I had yet to even see a single protester. After gawking with my mouth hanging open, I looked up in search of a sign over the gateway and soon spotted a little square one overhead. It said “Police Station” in three languages.

I circumambulated a total of twelve times, not stopping till it was about seven in the evening and merchants had begun to take down their merchandise from the booths. I truly did not expect a demonstration to take place and therefore decided I had seen enough. I assumed that the rest of the evening would look much the same: the police and soldiers would continue their power-tripping nonsense, while the crowd would merely gawk and keep walking rather than protest or riot.

2
Today is the day after Tibet Uprising Day, and I have returned to Kathmandu, where the power is of course out; if the power were more reliable, I would go to the Cybercafé, type up my eyewitness account, and e-mail it to the International Campaign for Tibet and anyone else. Under the circumstances, I shall have to wait a few days, till I have returned to the United States.

In the morning, I was in the jeep with the driver and my tour guide on the way to the airport. Along the main drag, Beijing Road, we saw many green military trucks and green-clad soldiers, some still wearing riot gear helmets. The guide told me that monks at Drepung Monastery (which we had wandered around earlier in the week) fought with the military, and laymen joined in. The same thing happened at the Jokhang, perhaps only shortly after I left the Barkhor. I said, “I left the Jokhang around seven.” My guide also said that Drepung is now closed to tourists. On the outskirts of Lhasa, a military convoy was coming out of a base and we passed some of the vehicles; I counted at least nine trucks.

At the airport, a friendly guy in a uniform was stamping my passport and asked, “Was this your first visit to China?” I found the question startling, since I wasn’t in China, but I didn’t see any point in arguing and replied in the affirmative. He then asked, “Did you enjoy your first visit to China?”

I said, “Yes, it’s gorgeous! Maybe next time I’ll learn the language first.” I felt slightly ashamed of not arguing, of not righteously correcting him by pointing out that I haven’t visited China yet. But I do not like confrontation and did not know how to articulate such words. I had to be content with writing my eyewitness account and sending it to the media and to such organizations as the International Campaign for Tibet. It was a small bit of activism, but it was much more useful than arguing at the airport.