With the half way point of our time here in asia come and gone, now is a time to pause and reflect. My thoughts over the last two months have been rampant and dissoriented, but i think that i have gleened at least enough knowledge from india and nepal to last a lifetime of contemplation.

Almost every day i learn so much about nepal, and while this knowledge would be enough for this trip to be worth it, i would not say that this collection of information is the reason for my stay here. Like all of the members of the group here in Bansbari Kathmandu, i am here to learn about myself. It sounds terrible, but when it comes down to it, what else is it that we as human beings should be doing with our time other than this crucial exploration into our own minds. It occurs to me now that i have bitten of more than i can chew. To simplify, i will give some incite into the more life changing of the events i have encountered in my time here so far.

1. Nee

Nee, a small village in rural Ladakh, had a very profound effect on me. My time there was spent mostly in solitude and contemplation of the things i had heard and seen in even the few days following my arrival to India. I was able to read a life changing book about the nature of spirituality and i was also able to come to terms with the many different religions and sources of faith all around me. The differences in religions seemed small to me compared to overbearing message of compassion and wisdom that they all share. Although perhaps i over simplify, part of my recollections have brought me to the conlcusion that to dwell on the differences of a culture or religion is only to perpetuate misconceptions and separations in your own view. I feel that without travelling to such a country of polar opposition in a peoples apporach to spirituality and the world surroudning i would never have understood these things that i find now a simple and apparent fact.

2. Kopan

I learned much about Buddhist teachings at Kopan, but was more enthralled and fascinated by the basic moral lessons taught by Ani Karin and Geshe Sheraf. The buddhist idea of Bodhichita, or the spreading of compassion to all sentient beings, is a hard concept to swallow as an american born and bred on the capitalist system of individuality and self reliance but i walked away from kopan with the feeling that i had genuinely found something important to my life. The idea of loving everyone and treating all things equally, of not harboring anger or jealousy, is something that everybody that everybody will accept in words, but is the hardest thing to act upon i have ever found. I had been struggling with putting this concept into my everyday life since finding my own spiritual ideas in Nee, but with the teachings at Kopan was able to learn more about preserving my own mindfulness of actions. One exercise i found particularly helpful was the act of 'cultivating a good motivation' or finding an idea that you would like to act upon and thinking about it often. For example, Every morning since the retreat i have woken up and spent a minute or two thinking of the things i would like to accomplish that day, such as having positive interactions with everyone i meet, or being fair to everyone i interact with, or just smiling more often. I have found this extremely helpful in preserving my presence of mind throughout the day. Another thing that i found to be extremely important is giving credit to all the things in your life that deserve thanks or credit, many people, including myself, take things such as food and comfort for granted in a world as priveleged as our own. Before a meal i often sit down and think of all the work that has gone into its preparation and availablity before digging in, this helps one to be grateful for all the things we have and the things that we would normally assume available.

A path of utter mindfulness and compassion would take more than a lifetime to follow to the end, and i would not assume to even have walked half a yard yet, but each minute that we spend in midfulness of our own actions is a step in the right direction.

3. 'The Art of Happiness' by HH the Dalai Lama

This book is not a teaching of buddhism, but a general dissertation on morals in human culture. It stresses compassion and wisdom in our lives and changed the way i think about the other people in my life. I would not claim to be a buddhist, because, like all religions i have explored, i have found in it ideas and dogma that my personal beliefs do not correspond with, but that does not mean that i think it, or any other relgion is wrong, on the contrary i think that all the religions i have found lead many people down the right path, and that religion is a personal decision for each person to make. I think that the Dalai Lama does a good job of describing the moral teachings of buddhism without directly refering to specific religious teachings. I would not deign to describe the many good ideas in this book, so just go read it.

Well, there you have it, a small part of what i have learned so far in my travels in India and Nepal. I hope this text does justice to these many amazing experiences i have have had so far.

These past days on this trek have had some of the most jaw dropping views I have ever seen in my life. There were more colors and things to look at than my mind could process. I walked from the snow covered Andes into the humid Amazon and through all ecological layers in between. I have seen thousands of different species in a single blink of my eye. This trek has kept my jaw covered in dirt as it dragged along by my feet in awe. I found myself constantly without thoughts or words just trying to take in everything around me.

The beginning of our journey was a perfect display of just how diverse our trip would be. We started down into the Amazon with snow falling and biting cold, not quite what one would expect to be just a short distance from the jungle. The first two nights were spent huddled in sleeping bags and attempting to dry wet socks and clothing. Through discomfort and frustration we all managed to always see the beauty of our surroundings and situations.

After those two nights though the method of keeping comfortable turned completely on its head. From trying to avoid wet clothes, we have started dunking them in lakes to try to keep them wet. From huddling in sleeping bags and doing the boot dance to stay warm we have gone to avoiding sleeping bags all together and just trying to stay cool. We have now entered the Yungas and the Amazon regions. These lands are almost as mysterious as the deep oceans or even deep space. The instructors have told me that only about 3% of the species living in the jungle have been identified, accurate or not (I believe it is) it is amazing to think about. Every square inch of the jungle is inhabited by something living. Every dead leaf I picked up had something else growing off of it. Every tree was covered in multiple other plants and vines. The things we have seen cannot be explained by words or anything like that because they are unknown.

This is why I wish I had video camera eyes. I wish I could post a video of everything I have looked at on this trek. I can write for pages and pages about the diversity, the colors, the way the mountains become blue in the distance, the full moon rising above a peak as you descend into the jungle in a cramped pickup truck on a road that is more of a glorified llama trail, or the sun setting behind a seemingly endless row of mountains, but this would give nothing close to a good description about what I've seen. I've tried taking pictures just to realize that the image without the sound is nothing like what I've seen. When looking at an amazing mountain range or deep into the jungle, what do you take a picture of? A still picture does no justice to these things. I wish you could all see what I have been seeing.

Now here we are in Apolo, a town that seems to have sprouted up out of no where with electricity and cars and phones. We stayed the last night in a convent, I slept like a baby in the first raised bed in a while. We dined like kings on lemon cake and hard boiled eggs. This town is awesome, but I am so excited to leave and see what else this month has to offer me. Every other town we have gone through has been a tiny community way off the grid and has been an amazing place to stay.

Hope everyone is doing well back home, I know we're all well and having a blast.

Danny

recently i have been thinking back to when i first decided that i wanted to take this trip to india. when i told people that i was going to india, i usually got one of two responses:

1. "um... why?" (accompanied by a look of genuine confusion, or that classic "you're wierd!" look that seemed so popular in middle school)

2. "whoa, thats cool! thats going to be a Life Changing experience." ("Life Changing" said in that tone that implies that it should be capitalized)

as i happen to think of 3 months in india as a pretty awesome opportunity, im going to ignore the first response. (how would i even answer that question anyway? there are so many good reasons its hard to know where to begin. i suppose with those people the confusion we feel about each other is mutual...) the second response, however, has stayed with me.

now i have been in india for one month and i am starting to wonder- where is this Change? will it magically come upon me as i am walking along assi ghat? will i stumble over a cow and find enlightenment? do i look for it or will it just happen to me? i glance at the past month and think "oh no!  i dont have a Life Change yet! what have i been doing with myself?!"

but then i stop.

i certainly havent reached moksha, but when i think about the things i learn every day i realize i certainly havent been slacking. when i compare what i am learning here to what i would have learned in a semester at UVM, its like the wires in my brain short circuit- its just not comparable. almost every moment of every day i am learning or seeing something new, and i love it! (sure there are times- like when the power cuts for the third time in the day and the oppressive humidity wraps settles like a blanket- that i am less than thrilled with the present. but the ratio of good to bad is definitely favorable).

just in this single day i have learned more hindi. and how to make sterling silver and pound it flat. and a new yoga pose. and about the goddess durga and her many forms. i could continue this list if you wanted, but it would be long.

the point is: maybe all this hype about Life Change is not worth paying attention to. maybe it will happen and maybe it wont. but its not worth feeling the pressure to have some great revelation- its probably one of those things you cant force anyway. if i had to take a guess, id say that maybe this Life Change isnt going to come to any of us in a flash of light and brilliance (though it might- we've still got some serious meditation coming our way!)- my guess is that the sum of all we've learned and the impressions it has made on us will lead to a shift in perspective.

and one of the coolest things for me is that i can see it happening with my friends, just as i listen to them talk. no one has become an entirely different, unrecognizable person, but with each of us i can see this growth and expansion of mind.

so for all those people who asked "why go to india?"-  put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I think it would be appropriate to give you all a mental image of where I am sitting as I type. I am currently in a wang ba, or internet cafe, that is three stories tall, covered in lurid plastic neon, and full of cigarette smoke. All the people around me seem to be playing some variation on world of war craft or halo (I am not entirely sure what they are.......) and I have a glass of kai shuei in front of me, which is boiled water, that I was given on arrival.

It's actually a pretty nice place. We were given down time today, which meant that I had a chance to breathe and think about the past two and a bit weeks of experiences. This is the first time this trip that I don't feel completely overwhelmed or terrified by China, and so I hope I've grown a little. I like to think I have at least.

I came on this trip for a variety of reasons, but one of them was something that I barely admitted to myself: I was running away from a culture and a school environment that had made me miserable for a number of years. Taking a gap year was a way out of the privileged upper middle class society I had been living in, with all of the competition, judgment and insecurities that that entailed, so I took one, along with the further judgment I recieved for taking one. I couldn't change my environment or my culture at home, and I didn't want to feel myself change to suit the environment, so I changed my surroundings, profoundly and irrevocably, for a three month period.

China seems to be the right place to have come. Having done a dragons program before, though on a much smaller scale and in a culture I was more familiar with and in a language I spoke, I knew that I would be challenged. I knew that I would be tired and dirty and smelly and hungry; that I would sit on cramped buses, and carry my own stuff, and get the runs (I am perpetually stuck at a two, for those in the p-scale know), and I also knew that I would re-learn how to be happy. Dragons programs teach contentment and appreciation, of amenities, beauty, and humanity, but I think they also teach one when and how to fight. When we were trekking in the Nujiang, I realized that one can spend time outdoors in a perpetual state of conflict, fighting the weather, your groupmates, the nature around you, and most especially yourself, or you can learn how to accept what you have, then, now, and be content. You can be happy with less.

It is a blessed relief to be in a place where I can't and don't want to fight my environment. I like China. I like the people, who are some of the most politely aggressive people I know. I've lived for the past six years in a country where everyone "queues" up like it's a religion; imagine my chagrin when I learned that people don't BELIEVE in lines in China. Their civilization is older than ours; I will give them the benefit of the doubt. There are many other things I like: I like the climate, which has been reasonably comfortable so far, and I LOVE the food, though I am heartily sick of white rice and noodles (I know I've said this, but you try going to china and being a vegetarian and not eating something glutinous every meal). Most of all I love the beauty here. I love the wonky towns that are oddly colored and battered; I love the thoughtfully dressed women who use umbrellas to protect their faces; I love the thoughtfulness of night buses that have duvets and pillows, which are dirty but so what; I love the rich sense of history and culture; I love the neat way the language often fits together, though I'm afraid I will never speak it; I love the attentive way chinese people listen when you ask a question, and the way they giggle politely when they aren't sure what you're saying; but most of all, I love the fact that we have seen many different nationalities and many different eco-zones and been on more bus rides than I want to think about, and I still feel like I've only scratched the surface of the seething, beautiful, terrifying mass that is China. This country is going to be a life-long project. I like projects.

I've stopped fighting here. I can't fight the weather or the culture or the pollution or the language; I am an outsider and I have no power over the people around me. I can't fight my groupmates, who are far too lovely to, and, for once, I don't want to fight myself. I want to just be present, to watch, to listen, to learn, to finally understand more. There are times when I want familiar things, like whole wheat toast or dark chocolate, but they are increasingly rarer. Relinquishing control, becoming, for a time, an agent of observation, has a beauty of its own. Jess keeps on reminding us we have to understand and then make ourselves understood. You have to get away from home in order to understand how to stop fighting so much and learn how to pay attention, how to appreciate, and how to be content.

I send much love to those at home.