Spiritual Partners1

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After 800 miles on the road, I arrived in Bowie (pronounced BOO’wee) to the sight of a man pissing in his front yard. I couldn’t help but look twice, upon which he waved, in a way that suggested I join him. Instead, I continued past broken down cars, decrepit buildings and closed businesses. Bowie looks a lot like other rural American towns slipping into economic oblivion.
Granted, that is just a first impression and the town no doubt has a lot to love about it. Including being home to many dedicated servants of Diamond Mountain University, the 1000 acres of yurts and scrub out past the pistachio plantation.
I did get a nice welcome. A Romanian fella from Western Australia, perhaps his name is Bogdan, showed me the kitchen yurt, the yoga yurt and the toilet block, complete with a washing machine, yes! There’s a lovely white and gold stupa and the assortment of oil drums are organized behind a connex tool shed, the door held shut by a bungee attached to a 20-pound propane tank. It felt a lot like Alaska, only warmer.
In fact it was the first warm day in weeks. The sun was intense enough that I put on sunscreen. Even in January. Nearly all the snow that had fallen in the previous days had melted, but not before a herd of javelinas had left hoof prints in the mud of the wash.
In the next couple hours, I’d scoped out a place for my tent, staked it down, dodged sticker bushes and cactus and seen several mice, a chipmunk, a rabbit and a curly-billed thrush of some sort working through a wide range of calls. There’s no shortage of lively characters. Along the way, Brian the camp coordinator filled me in on life with bark scorpions, black widows and rattlesnakes.
“Don’t worry,” he said about the snakes. “You have like three days after a bite before your dead. We’ve only had one person bitten in six years out here.”

Tent pitched, I drove the two hours to Tuscon to see Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally offer one of an ongoing series of talks about Spiritual Partners. Here’s a brief rundown of what they offered, the key operating idea being one of emptiness, that is, everything we see in the outside world is a reflection of our own conditioned mind. So whatever qualities we want in a partner, we must first exhibit. And to increase the effectiveness of the practices, we cultivate each trait with people who are not our partners. For example, creating affection is cultivated by reaching out and being appropriately affectionate with coworkers or committing random acts of kindness. To encourage our partners to be more receptive, the prescription is to pay more attention to people we think are ‘below us.’ And increasing sensuality can be created by dressing to please. This last example spoke to me. I’ve always been one to dress down, arguing that a t-shirt is good enough, that people should value me for who I am, not what I look like. But within this Buddhist world view, McNally argued that in order for us to see more beauty, we should cultivate that beauty. Not for vanity, but to make human beings look better. It’s similar to keeping the church neat. Who wants to worship in a disheveled church?

I’m obviously shortening a longer discussion, but the gist of the teaching is similar to what Ghandi said: “Be the change you wish to see.” The additional factor here is to dedicate to our partners the actions we perform for others, without ever telling anyone about it.

It’s Karma practice. The old saying that ‘what comes around goes around’ or in this case, the actions we do will come back to us, good or bad. I’ll remember that next time I hesitate to practice generosity.


It already seems to be working. I was thinking about getting a cupcake from the bakesale when I approached my friend Mercedes who I first met in Shanghai. She was sitting by Christie during the break. Just as I sat down, Christie handed me a plate of cookies, with instructions that I take some and share them widely.

My sense is that this next five weeks will be full of similar experiences. Nice people, doing nice things, with no expectation of immediate return. It reminded me of a bumper sticker I saw several times today as I see-sawed places with another car on I-10. It said "The best way to predict the future is to create it."

Would that make me a creationist?


Happy trails - J

PS. For my travelblog subscribers, I’ve begun posting on commontales.com. I find the site easier to use and look at. Have a look.

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