similar spirits

9.10.12

A good morning to sleep in.  Heavy fog leaves visibility at a few feet.  The dining room is being painted with a menagerie of light blues, greens and orange.  Walking down and trekking up the mountain yesterday is a good reason to sit today and watch the eagle and hawks glide amongst the paragliders and consider meaning.

When I reached the road across from the main temple I hired a taxi to go to the Jangchug Choeling Monastery.  The taxi driver asked me the usual questions of my country, where am I staying, how long I am staying and so forth then he wanted to know about the US elections and without waiting for a response gave his own opinion and went on to give his schpiel about his own government.  At the Tibetan settlement the thin dark skinned man with thick black-framed glasses handed me a gold colored sitting Buddha, I said no thanks. “please no charge”.  Never before has a taxi driver given me anything for free let alone charged me local fares (I paid 300rs, a fair price I was told).

 

When I returned to the guesthouse the carpenters had built a small temple for the kitchen and considering the number of samyog we have experienced in the recent weeks this Buddha and the temple must be considered a coincidence as well. 

Similar minds thinking alike.  Similar spirits thinking alike. 

I don’t know when I’ll be trekking to the base camps.  If I go solo then it’s off with hopes I can get a permit along the trail, though I was told all trekkers must  have their permits before they enter the conservation area, which means getting the permit in Pokhara.  So, when and will the painters come to room six eventually?  Five more days, ten more days has me finishing closer to October and I’m not crazy about that.  And I get the feeling I will go solo because while Laxman wants to go and Maya is pushing him to do so, there’s too much going on here and I don’t think his heart is in it, to be honest. 

Which is alright just don’t keep me here with illusions.  So, another date to look at, we’ll wait three or four more days and then it’ll be back to Pokhara. 

A black mother ship cloud hovers above Sarangkot and the valley slowly turning until it lowers and the rain begins followed by the disappearance of everything.  The painters and the two carpenters continue inside.  Doors, another shelving unit, windows for the kitchen leaves me choking.  Close and sustained contact with paint fumes left Maya with a closed eye, eye drops helped this morning and she’s right back into it, sweeping, instructing those within earshot to move this, clean that and so forth. 

The rain intensifies, the wind picks up.  How would you do living in a monastery with nothing to do but meditate and study?  Does the darkness and intensity of the weather bring you closer to where you want to be?  All severe forms of weather bring some sort of contemplation, provided all are safe, but even then, that worry or fear of something imminent  is an indirect moment to contemplate fate, love, God, mercy.  Flashes and rumbles, wind flays the fields and trees. 

Suraksha dropped in after school for a few games of Uno and Hershey’s Dark Chocolate.  I see we’re playing for the chocolate.  In ten days she tells me the Teej festival starts and she will go to visit sisters and family in Daudana. “You want to come?” I’d better be trekking by then, kid. 

When does rain fall hard enough? 

A call to go up.  Seven pm dinner this week has been later, debates on color schemes, door sizes…timeless wavelengths who can argue the symmetry between human souls, such is a testimony and without empirical evidence, fact, energy flows freely between the pure in heart and compassionate, that’s right coincidences are our relationship with fourth dimension, nature and the top brass.