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Published: July 24th 2006
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July 12
Time to leave Dharamsala, and several friends and students come to see me off.
Nyima - she’s one of my best students, and the only one to come to both class, day after day. When all of the students are too shy to ask a question, it’s always Nyima who is the one to ask. She writes everything down and seldom forgets what she has learned. “Nyima” means “sun” in Tibetan. About 300 years ago, when some monks went out interviewing the most likely candidates for the child reincarnation of a recently deceased monk similar to the Dalai Lama in esteem, one clue they were given was that the child would be sitting in the lap of the sun. When they arrived in one of the villages the candidate was being held by his mother. When they asked the woman her name she replied “Nyima”. They stopped their search. (That’s her son in the picture - he performed with his kindergarten class at the Dalai Lama’s birthday party.)
Jamyang - always ready to laugh and make a joke. Jamyang is the class celebrity. He acted in the movie Samsara and had about 30 minutes of screen
time as the main character’s best friend in the monastery (warning to those with little kids - it’s a beautiful movie, but if you decide to watch it, the last half of the movie shows that the ancient art of the kama sutra has not been lost). He is trying to get a role in the director’s next movie.
Lhamo - I really just got to know Lhamo at the end of my time, but she was so pretty in her traditional clothes as she sang and danced at the Dalai Lama’s birthday party I had to include her picture.
Rinzin - this is one funny monk. He is always laughing and cracking jokes; even when his jokes are in Tibetan and I don’t know a single word, just watching his face as he makes his jokes never failed to make me laugh. Rinzin is also a chef, and he takes cooking classes with the Dalai Lama’s chef and prepares the food at his meditation center whenever his rinpoche visits. Always a surprise, Rinzin also has experience rockclimbing; we practiced rope knots one day over lunch and his whole face just lit up.
Tsering - Tsering and
Rinzin are roommates at the Tushita (Pure Land) meditation center just outside out of town. Several days on weekends I would visit Tsering and Rinzin at Tushita, where we talk about anything and everything for the afternoon and then go for the best pizza in town. I wound up spending a lot of time with Tsering, because his English is very, very good and he is very determined to make his English perfect. Tsering and Rinzin are studying English so that they may be translators at their monastery, which has a large following of Westerners. He is also a very serious student and monk. When I learned that he might have a chance to travel a lot as a translator, my first reaction was “How fun, you can travel and see a lot of the world.” And his immediate reply was “Yes, but it is also important because I’ll be able to help spread the Dharma.” To which I give the sheepish reply “Oh yeah, that too, of course.” A philosopher since the age eight, perfecting his fourth language, training for the incredibly hard job of translator, and blessed with a tremendous curiosity and knowledge about the world, I was
always aware that I was in the presence of a very thoughtful and intelligent man whenever we were together.
Jampa - the man, the legend. Jampa is studying English so that he can teach English at his monastery in south India. In preparing for this, Jampa was very interested in learning grammar, as he felt he could he could improve his vocabulary easily enough on his own. Nearly every day after class we would have lunch together. On my last night in town, we went to the pool at Bhagsu for swimming and kicking around a footbag made of rubber bands. It’s normally crowded there in the afternoon, but this day there were very few people there, and we spent a couple of hours just kicking the bag back and forth, drinking chai and talking. A few times I would think to myself that I should really get back and do some things, but then I would stop and realize that this was absolutely where I wanted to be at that moment, and we walked back to town in the dark, when Jampa cooked rice, dal, and vegetables in his room and I showed him pictures of home. Turns
out he’s a pretty damn good cook, too.
Thanks, everybody, for the great times and the wonderful friendships.
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