Tag Archives: Nepal

Dec 13 2012

The Power of Place

I keep meeting people whose life was transformed in Nepal.  What is it about this place?   What triggers change here?

I’m now in the Boudha region of Kathmandu at the stupa, a beautiful mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics.  I’m trying to understand the benefit as I circumambulate this greatly revered stupa with a throng of Tibetans of all ages, many in traditional dress.  We walk clockwise, emulating the movement of the sun across the sky.  It’s a very distracting environment.  Maybe that’s part of the point.  It’s training in being vividly present in the moment, not remembering the past or anticipating the future?  Embracing the moment, not being irritated by folks around?

This morning at breakfast an American at the next table who spends a big part of every day doing prostrations was complaining to an English monk that someone removed the stones from under the plank where he does his prostrations.  There’s a wall round the stupa with many wooden planks between it and the stupa.  People use them for prostrations.  “Why would anyone remove the stones from under my plank?   I’d got it angled perfectly.  And why do all those Tibetans just sit on the planks and chat?  It’s so distracting, so disrespectful.”  I’m pretty sure he’s missing the point.  Maybe it will come to him, though.

Hey, there’s Jampa, one of my classmates last year!  He came here years ago from his home in New Zealand to go mountain biking.  Now he’s a Tibetan Buddhist monk who no longer has a home.   Last year he’d just come from a long stay at a monastery in Colorado.  I wonder where he’s been this year?  I speed up and join him.  “Hi Jampa.  Great to see you.  Are you coming to this year’s class?”  “No, I don’t know yet what I’m going to be doing.”  I almost ask why he’s here but that’s probably a bigger question than he can answer.  I ask instead what is the benefit of circumambulating the stupa?  “It has great power,” he says. “We get benefit just by being here.”  “Even if we’re just chatting while we walk?”  “Yes.  But there’s more benefit depending on our intention.  Also, it helps to chant mantras.”  “Most people doing that are doing it silently.”  “That’s OK.”

We walk on with everyone else circling the stupa.  It’s still quite early so there are not many tourists.  Some of the Tibetans are chatting animatedly, many are walking silently.  In both cases they’re counting their chants on a string of beads in their left hand.  A few are twirling a prayer wheel, an ornate cylinder that turns on a stick.  Inside the cylinder is a scroll filled with the mantra Om Mani Madme Hum, the aspiration for compassion.  It’s said that each revolution has the same effect as saying the words aloud as many times as they’re written on the scroll, so the more mantras are inside a prayer wheel, the greater the benefit.  The effect is enhanced by simultaneously chanting the mantra with the profound aspiration to attain perfect wisdom in order to free every sentient being permanently from suffering.  It’s a means of training the mind.

Rene, my Mexican classmate  this year who dresses entirely in black and has long black hair and a bushy black beard was instructed by his Tibetan guru to memorize a mantra created especially for his benefit and circumambulate the stupa chanting it as loudly as he could.  He was puzzled by the reaction.  At last a young Tibetan asked if he knew what he was saying.  “No, I don’t know Tibetan.  My guru taught it to me.”  “I think I should tell you what you are saying.”  “Thank you.”  “You are shouting, ‘I am a black man with a very big dick’.”  I’ve met Rene’s guru.  I don’t understand his trick on Rene soon after he arrived but his deep insight and caring are unmistakable.  Rene came to Kathmandu for a month before college and stayed two years.  What he met here led him to other places then he came back.  Now it looks like he’s here for good.

I don’t know what to make of the power of place.  It’s very significant to animists.  Dhiren, our Nepali trek crew boss, is always respectful of places where devis live, the spirits that protect villages but are wrathful if disturbed.  He knows the kinds of places they tend to be and always makes sure we also behave respectfully.  Temples are considered by all religions to have powerful effects.  Feng Shui has spread to the West.  The power of place is recognized in all cultures.  I’d never really thought about it though.  I dismissed it as an obvious delusion.  What would be the origin and nature of such power?

I’m still skeptical about the power of place but I do know we can train our mind.  If we expect training to work better in a particular place, presumably it will.    But change happens to many people who come to Nepal with no expectation.  It just seems to happen.  Maybe geography and cumulative past behaviors form a feedback loop here?

Dec 9 2012

Waiting for Godot in Kathmandu

The easy part is sleeping the first day or two after a long journey.  What takes longer is sleeping at the right time once you’ve caught up on sleep.  That teaches patience.  So I enjoy my masala omelet for breakfast, veg momos for lunch, chicken fried rice for dinner, I circumambulate Boudha stupa, do laundry, take showers when the water is warm, email when there’s power, and read Steven Pinker’s “How the Mind Works” while waiting for my own to become functional again.

Nepal’s political situation hasn’t changed.  The politicians are still arguing about anything and everything.  They almost agreed there should be an election for a new Constituent Assembly (CA) to draft a Constitution.  They almost agreed that before.  There was going to be an election in November.  Now they’re saying, if they agree, that is, there could be an election next May.  There has to be an amendment to the existing interim constitution to authorize the election because the first CA was supposed to draft the new constitution and there was no expectation they might fail to do that.  The politicians can’t agree what form the modification to the interim constitution should take.  They also can’t agree who should lead the government during the interim.

The issue cited as the roadblock to agreement about the new constitution, the one the CA was supposed to draft, is the number of districts (pradeshes) in Nepal’s new secular, democratic federal republic.  The UCPN-M (Maoist party) says there must be 10 or 14 pradeshes with no more than 2 in the Tarai (the area in the south adjoining India).  The UDMF (Madhesi confederation of Tarai folks) currently agrees about that.  The NC (Nepali Congress, Nepal’s first political party) says there must be 6 pradeshes, or 11.  The UML (United Marxist-Leninist party) says there must be exactly 7.  There are many fringe parties with only a few members in the disbanded CA but nobody cares what they think.  The four major parties do agree that demarcation and naming of the pradeshes can wait until after the election.

This got me thinking about the French Revolution.  They were against the provincial structure that existed under the monarchy.  They favored the rights of the individual and a strong nation.  They considered the state architecture based on parochial cultural traditions and local privileges to be reactionary.  They were for a uni-lingual state.  The underlying issue in Nepal is indigenous rights vs unification.  The Maoists got much of their support by promising the tribal folks they could self-administer, follow their own cultural traditions, and use their own languages.  But Nepali speaking Hindus don’t want to lose the privileged position they had under the former Hindu monarchy.  Also, there’s philosophical disagreement about the best national architecture for Nepal.

What could be learned from existing models?  France is centralized, unilingual and has a president who behaves in many ways as monarchs did.  India is a multilingual, multiethnic secular federation.  The US is a federation of states whose number and boundaries evolved over time.  Maine split off from Massachusetts, for example.  US States have substantial rights, everything not explicitly granted to the center.  How much scope should be provided for evolution?  The US is secular per the constitution but added “under God” when feeling threatened by communism, was primarily unilingual but is becoming bilingual, briefly split into two nations, and so on.

Nepal’s politicians have no experience forming agreements to take action.  How will that develop?  They are ignorant of how to govern because there have been no Nepali leaders to show the way.

So why am I thinking about Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot?   In that absurdist play, two men wait vainly for someone named Godot to arrive.  They claim he’s an acquaintance but admit they would not recognize him.  To occupy the time they eat, sleep, converse, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide.  It’s a sadly apt metaphor for today’s Nepal.

Not for me.  For one thing, there’s nobody here with whom I could swap hats.  For another, I’m not here to wait.  I’m here to practice not waiting for some fantasy about the future.  I’m here to practice not replaying stories about the past.  I’m here to practice being 100% aware right now in this moment.  If I get another moment, I’ll try to be 100% aware then, too.  That way, I’ll know what to do in each moment.  It’s like the better I’d practice playing tennis like Roger Federer, the fewer shots I’d miss.  The better I practice being awake, the fewer moments I’ll waste.

Dec 8 2012

Why Go On Journeys?

Because in new surroundings we must look more closely.  Seeing something familiar in a new context could disrupt how we’ve been imagining it to be.  We might recognize how it really is, how it is now.

What struck me first on this year’s journey to Nepal is air travel may be at the peak of an unsustainable growth path.  The first time I flew on a 747 was 1970 when I came to the USA.  They’re magnificent aircraft.  No surprise they’re still in service more than 40 years later.   In information theory no surprise means no information.  We have not been surprised by changes in air travel in the last four decades because the experience is little different.  Less than 40 years before 1970, however, it took not hours but 6 days to fly from England to India.  That was a dramatically different experience.

The great change in air travel since 1970 is enormously increased volume.  We do notice more crowding, less service and so on, but because the degradation has been stepwise we haven’t been provoked to think about the cumulative effect.  I do notice it on this trip, first because when my flight from Boston arrives at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5, the shuttle, with no stops or traffic jams, takes fully 15 minutes to reach Terminal 4 for my flight to Doha.

When we approach Doha, it’s over scattered islands of apartment buildings propagated as if by winds over the featureless desert.  The airport, already a vast expanse of runways and buildings, is soon to be replaced by an even greater complex.  Even now it’s a 20 minute walk from where I disembark to the gate for Kathmandu.  When we take off, it’s over a mass of shiny new skyscrapers.  The entire spectacle is surreal.

All this vibrant life is possible only because there’s oil under the desert.  I remember Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias, whose statue was the only thing left of the empire it once surveyed.  How will these colonies survive when the oil is gone?  How long can we continue to fly?

 

May 28 2012

Another Sad Day for Nepal

The Constituent Assembly did not reach agreement by their final deadline last night on how many Federal districts Nepal should have, their geographical boundaries or, most contentiously, if they should be set up on ethnic lines.

Prime Minister Bhattarai recommended that President Yadav should dissolve the CA and hold elections for a new assembly on November 22.  “We have no other option but to go back to the people and elect a new assembly to write the constitution,” he announced on TV. “We had completed the army integration process by taking a big risk and tried to forge consensus but the peace and the constitution drafting process could not move forward.”  He said leaders of other parties were “not cooperating with the government’s move to draft the constitution based on the principle of federal structure”.

Bhatterai said executive powers now rest with him and his cabinet who will serve as the interim government and hold the election to replace themselves.

Five major parties promptly demanded Bhatterai’s resignation, declared his move “unconstitutional” and issued a joint statement: “The Prime Minister’s unilateral move to conduct fresh election by allowing to dissolve the most representative Constituent Assembly was aimed at capturing power and this has created frustration in the minds of the general public  …  It has ended the politics of consensus and created a situation in which people’s democratic rights are suppressed”.  The public has long been more than frustrated, the CA never did exhibit politics of consensus and the people have yet to experience democratic rights.  The CA was elected to develop the Constitution and reintegrate the Maoist soldiers into society within two years.  Instead, they wasted four years.

The Nepali Congress leader said the CA should be replaced by a national unity government to hold the election because “one who is not a member of the Parliament cannot hold the post of the PM.”  These politicians would never agree on who would lead such a government, of course.

A senior CPN-UML leader said Bhatterai’s proposal is not viable because there is no provision in the Interim Constitution for another CA election.  He said:  “The PM should have made attempt to amend the provision of the constitution before announcing the fresh election by forging consensus”.  These politicians could never agree even on a forgery.

President Yadav must now rule on the legal issues and decide what to try next so Nepal’s secular democratic republic can become a reality.  Today is a public holiday observing Republic Day when Nepal’s Parliament abolished the Hindu monarchy on May 28, 2008.

May 16 2012

Nepal’s Constitution

Nepal’s Constituent Assembly (CA) just settled one of the remaining big issues for the new constitution.  There will be a directly elected President and a parliament-elected Prime Minister.  Unresolved issues include the most contentious of all, how the states should be structured.  The Maoist party, whose vice-chairman Baburam Bhatterai is currently Prime Minister, wants eleven federal states.  The other big parties, the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML, want eight.  The alliance of small Madhesi parties wants a single province for the Madhesis who make up around half of Nepal’s total population.

The fundamental issue is whether states should be based primarily on language/ethnicity, economics or geography.

The CA was elected on 10 April 2008 to establish a new constitution within two years.  Earlier election dates in June and November of 2007 had been missed.  When the CA failed to meet its April 2010 deadline they granted themselves another year.  With little progress made by then, they granted themselves a further year.  When they missed that deadline, too, they were given a hard one of May 27.

The Maoists had gotten a third of the seats in the CA in the 2008 election by promising representation to Nepal’s ethnic minorities.  Four years later, as the May 27 deadline draws near there are rallies, protests and strikes all across the country.  Hard deadlines usually don’t mean much in Nepal but the people are angry at long last.  There’s no electricity 14 hours a day, food and fuel prices are rising fast, unemployment is high and soaring.  Everything is hard and getting worse for almost everyone except the politicians.  They are getting richer and, Nepalis say, doing nothing.  There could be mass violence if the CA is still deadlocked on May 27.

The pressure is high enough it seems likely the CA can pass a constitution by May 27 with everything resolved except state structure.   They might defer that to a new commission, which would likely be acceptable to UN observers following the process and India, which would have to intervene if Nepal became overtly ungovernable.

Baburam Bhatterai is the only politician who commands any respect from Nepalis.  He surprised almost everyone by resolving the equally long-standing issue of reintegrating the Maoist “soldiers” into society and he may succeed in getting a compromise of this kind accepted.

Apr 25 2012

Getting Directions in Kathmandu

Sep 28, 2011 – D helps me find a place to stay during the Buddhist teachings.  I have a list of guest houses and the name of the subsidiary monastery where the teachings will be held.  All Kathmandu is a maze of narrow streets with no names.  With considerable difficulty we at last find the best-sounding one .  It has no free rooms.  I decide to go to the main monastery for help.  It, too, takes a very long time to find.

Most people are happy to provide directions.  What you cannot know is whether they have any relevant information.  We are directed with great precision to many wrong monasteries.  The right one turns out to have nobody in the office today and my contact is in any case out of the country.  So the man thinks.  He’s not sure.

I figure we deserve, or at the very least need, lunch.    After lunch we look for the second best sounding guest house.  Again, very difficult  but as it turns out, very close to Boudha stupa and a fine place.  I book an excllent $7/night room.  The man takes us to the roof to show us the monastery where the classes will be held.  He can’t be right but he is very certain.  The one he points out is at least 40 minutes away.  The right one is less than 5 minutes.  That’s a problem for another day.

Apr 25 2012

Truck Drivers’ Insurance in Nepal

Sep 24. 2011 – Today we went by buses to the western outskirts of Kathmandu on Nepal’s only east-west road.  Further from where we stopped is the road south into India.  It’s very busy because so much of Nepalis’ basic necessities come from India, rice, salt, oil and so on.  The crazy traffic prompted G to tell me about the system for road accidents.

Truck drivers all contribute to a fund that pays out if they have an accident.  We’d call that insurance.  Sounds normal so far.  But back when the Rana family operated the country as a tax farm (prior to 1951) and they were the only ones who could have trucks, they established that the penalty for killing someone on the road is just a fine.  That law remains in effect.  If you run over someone you pay a fine and that’s the end of the problem.

What this means is if a truck driver injures someone, the insurance fund may have to pay out large medical fees and compensation for the rest of the victim’s life whereas if the victim is killed there is only the fine to pay.  Consequently, if a driver hits and only injures someone they will normally go on to run over and kill them.

An American guy at the next restaurant table yesterday who has spent several months a year here for 17 years was chatting with three others and expressing surprise that an accident the previous day had resulted in the death of a man who was one of a large crowd of pedestrians.  How come nobody else was injured but this one guy was squashed?  Now we know.  This also explains why road accidents often result in locals blocking the road for a day or so.  They know there was not just an accident but also a mortal crime.

Apr 25 2012

Why Buffalo are Sacrificed

Sep 29, 2011 – Today is the first day of Dashain. Hindus start to do the ritually prescribed things.  Today they plant barley seeds.  Others will wait a few more days.

The part everyone looks forward to is feasting.  Huge numbers of animals will be ritually sacrificed then eaten. It is projected that only 15-20% of the necessary goats will be of Nepali origin this year.  The remaining 80%+ will be imported from India. Ideally one should sacrifice a buffalo but most people cannot afford that.  A goat is next best.  If you can’t afford a goat, a chicken is OK. For the last few days chicken trucks have been coming in to Kathmandu.  Men walk along the streets carrying a chicken casually suspended from where its wings are attached to its back.  Most of  the birds look alert and surprisingly calm.

The latest version I’ve read of why buffaloes should be sacrificed goes like this:  Once upon a time all the Gods and Goddesses were being bothered by demons.  None had enough power to defeat them.  At last all the deities began to dance.  They danced with such vigor that great clouds of dust arose.  At that moment Goddess Kali manifested from a lock of Lord Shiva’s hair (he is the member of the Hindu trinity who is responsible for destruction and creation; Kali handles just destruction).  Kali was immediately covered with dust particles energized by the deities’ dancing.  She gained all that power and had enough to kill the demons’ vehicles, which were buffaloes.  The demons fell to the ground where they were easier to kill.  Therefore, we should kill buffaloes on this date to commemorate Kali’s triumph.

Apr 25 2012

Nagas and Jewels in Kathmandu Valley

Sep 21, 2011 – Today G and I walk to another village where it’s probable no Westerner ever came before.  There’s no temple or historical site in this area, just very poor villages an hour-long slog through the “jungle”.

We stop at a tea shop where locals gather.  The proprietor is excited to find an American in his shop.  “America is the richest country in the world” he tells G then proposes to sell me a jewel he took from a snake deity, a naga that lives in rivers.  Nagas produce one jewel from their body during their entire incalculably long life.  It casts intense light 21 feet in every direction.  They need it to hunt for food at night.  If you can take such a jewel when the naga is not looking you can keep it, but if the naga sees you it will bite you and you will die, not after one minute or one second but instantaneously.  That’s why such jewels are so rare.

The man says I can see the jewel if I’m interested but to buy it will cost eighty thousand million rupees.  That’s a little over one billion dollars.  G admits I do not have so much money in my pocket today.  The man says he is sorry, in that case he cannot show us the jewel.  G says he has read about such jewels but never imagined he might meet someone who possessed one.

The man’s wife prepares tea for us.  It is exceptionally tasty but appears to lack magical properties.

Apr 25 2012

Zombies and Tara

Nov 7, 2011 – One of the manifestations of Tara, supreme goddess of compassion, subdues zombies.  She subdues all manner of other beings, too, including ones with horse heads and human bodies.  All such beings are ways to visualize negative emotions that lead to negative actions.  Lama who teaches us occasionally entertains us with stories about these imaginary but also real beings.  He has many tales about zombies.

Five manifestations of Tara

Zombies are bodies inhabited by a demon who replaced the original occupant.  There are none now because high lamas killed them all.  It’s unfortunate in a way because wherever there were zombies you could be sure a high lama would soon appear, too.  Those high lamas could make zombies work.  One took a long pilgrimage all across Tibet and needed to bring a lot of stuff with him.  He made a zombie carry it all.  At the end of each day he told the zombie to stop.  The zombie would crash to the ground and remain immobile ’til morning.  Toward the end of the pilgrimage it started making a funny noise as it walked.  That’s because its feet were almost worn through.

Another time the abbot of a monastery was nearing death.  He told his lamas they must at all costs cut up and burn his body within three days of his death.  When the time came, his lamas decided it wouldn’t be right to do that because even the lowest person is allowed to rest for a week.  They laid him to rest and respectfully slept where his body lay.  On the third night in that room one young lama was too scared to sleep.  At last he turned and placed his head where his feet should be so he could keep a close watch on the abbot’s body.  Suddenly, its eyes opened.  It blinked and sat up.  It rose to its feet and began touching each sleeping monk’s head.  They instantly became zombies.  Only the young monk escaped.  That’s because it was his feet that were touched.  He ran from the room, locked all the zombies in, and probably burned the monastery to the ground. Lama says he can’t attest to the veracity of that last point.  It’s just his assumption based on other such incidents.

The reason for sky burial, the Tibetan tradition of cutting bodies into small pieces and leaving them for vultures, was to avert zombies.  Since there are no zombies now, sky burial is no longer necessary.  The workers who cut up the bodies had to hide the heads because vultures, who are in fact special-purpose deities, like brains best.  If they got brains first, they wouldn’t finish the flesh and other organs.