TALK: The Green Mountain College Blog

It was a bit of a ride to the ferry-crossing place, and even then, it wasn’t much of a ferry. My goodness. It was TINY. Those who were closer to the engine swore to me that it was actually just a lawn mower engine that had been hitched to a small boat. I’m uncertain of this, but it was a bit sketchy. I guess, though, that while we were crossing the river, one of the two belts snapped suddenly, but the boat just kept going, only a little slower this time. Jeeze. What crazy days we were having! Beautiful ride, though. Took some pictures, sang some songs, attempted to solve some riddles that various people posed (this was quite fun), etc.

Here are some of the pictures I took.

Here’s a better picture of the boat we were on.

And then, to make matters even better, we all boarded one of the smallest buses I’ve ever seen in my life. There weren’t enough actual seats for everyone, so we had these upside down buckets for people to sit on in the aisles. My goodness.

Here’s an outsider’s view of the bus.

I’m not sure why I’m laughing in this picture? Caitlyn, the girl next to me, must have said something hilarious.

And another view of the inside of the bus. That’s Tenmpa waving at me. Haha.

And then, about half an hour later, we were at Samye. YAY!

It was a very pretty place—the monastery grounds were fairly large, too. There’s a certain, specific way that mandalas are set up in Buddhist philosophy (I’m not going to get into this—it involves their concept of the center of the universe combined with some Buddhist metaphysics and philosophy, etc). The entire monastery grounds was actually set up so that if you took an aerial view of it, it would be the perfect example of a mandala. It was a not-so-perfect mandala when we saw it because of the results of the Cultural Revolution… but we got the point.

There were also several different stupas around the monastery grounds that looked like miniature Kumbums—they all had the crazy eyes of compassion on the tops of them.

Here are some pictures of said various stupas.

There was a part of the monastery that we climbed up to in order to get these grand views. Crystal took a quick snap of me as we were up in this area.

At least I look happy and healthy in this picture, eh? I actually had the strength to change my clothing that morning, whereas the day before, moving more than an inch was a rather painful experience. So yeah. I was happy enough.

There was this really neat chapel that was there devoted to the Longevity Buddha. There were 1,000 miniature statues of this Buddha in the room, and that’s about it. It was quite insane. I personally also bumped into a dude from America—I think he said that he went to the University of Michigan, perhaps? I don’t remember exactly. He said he was over in Beijing working for the summer and was on a bit of a vacation so he decided to visit some of the monasteries in the area. He was actually sitting down and chilling with one of the monks, and since he could speak a form of Chinese (and so can most Tibetans), he was attempting to teach the monk English. It was so random. Yet so cool. I hadn’t seen anyone from America during my travels beyond the people in our group, so I was almost floored when I heard him speak to me initially. I had assumed he was European, since we had bumped into a number of Europeans during our travels, so I was expecting a thick accent. But no, an American! It was pretty awesome.

After a while, we found a place to have our final Buddhist philosophy lecture on “the correct view.” This is the final meditation that actual monks try to master during their own studies. The meditation involves searching for the actual “self” within you. Is it a part of your body? No, because if you lose an arm, you are still yourself. Is the self your consciousness? No, because you can be conscious of the conscious as well as conscious of the self—they are not synonyms… etc. So basically you take apart everything that you might think is the self and eventually realize that the self does not exist, it is a human-created concept. Basically, the self exists relatively, but not ultimately. The further one explores this meditation, the more they realize this is true with essentially everything… and then it seems that nothing actually exists besides what you choose to make exist at any moment. It’s really really deep and monks will study this concept all their lives without actually understanding it on more than a philosophical level. Some of them actually live it. Crazy stuff.

We then had a bite to eat at a restaurant that was actually on monastery grounds. At this point, I actually had an appetite, which almost made me cry (in joy!) Still, I was extremely precautious with absolutely everything I ate from then on for obvious reasons. After this, there was a period of time when people were allowed to explore. A number of people climbed this rather steep hill on one side of the monastery so they could see all of the monastery grounds and the mandala it formed. I, however, was still not feeling my best, and decided to take the time to journal on some steps and watch three little boys goof around. They were quite cute, I must admit.

Here’s a picture of the steps I was chilling on while others were doing their thing.

After about an hour, we all grouped up again and took the bus back to the ferry. This time, however, there were many more people looking to catch the ferry back, as it was the last one of the day. It was quite overloaded, in my perspective, especially since one dude was bringing his motorcycle back! It was also an interesting experience, as four Buddhist nuns were aboard and interacted with us during the hour ride back. Bud commented on how hilarious the entire situation was, and even made it into a joke: “What do you get when you put 22 Americans, 2 Mexicans, 4 Buddhist nuns, and a motorcycle on a lawn-mower-engine-propelled ferry that’s crossing Tibet’s holiest river?” The punch line was the fact that we were actually living it.

Here’s a picture of said event.

One of the Buddhist nuns was quite embarrassed when Pauline, a special education teacher and member of our tourgroup, asked her if she would wear her I Love Tibet hat so she could take a picture of her. The nun was blushing because she was unaccustomed to wearing anything beyond her normal garb. She had that look on her face as if she was doing something wrong but it was exhilarating, so she was going to do it anyways. So she finally did, and Pauline’s got the picture floating around somewhere. Hahaha. All over a hat. Can you imagine? It was so cute.

And then it was time to return to the hotel. We offered to give a couple of the nuns that were headed in our direction a ride (rather than making them ride on the local tractor which serves as public transportation over there), because a)they were young Buddhist nuns and had a while to go before they actually reached civilization and b) it was beginning to rain. On the way over, however, one of the vehicles got a flat tire! So we all had to pull over and fix the issue. My driver was all on top of this. He seriously changed that tire faster than I’ve ever seen someone change a tire in my life. He’s the main man!

And so then we dropped off the nuns and headed back to the hotel. We had a bit of free-time before dinner—the last dinner we were to have in Tibet, as Tuesday meant returning to Beijing. Poo on that. There was a big dinner planned, so everyone was getting clean or washing their nice clothes or pampering themselves, etc for this big event. Now, beforehand, Jim had told us we would have to prepare three songs to sing for the drivers on the final night in Tibet, and that they would be singing three songs for us as well. By “prepare,” Jim really meant we had to know the words to whatever song and sing it to the drivers either as a group or have a small group sing one song and another small group sing another. Of course Linda, the good old choir teacher, had to actually PREPARE a song, and ended up writing different lyrics to a number of Wizard of Oz songs about our trips throughout Beijing and Tibet. It was such a HOOT. My god. I honestly wish I had the lyrics to share with you. They were soo funny. So during this free-time, she dragged me into the room with her and Mary, another special education teacher, so we could practice singing the song together for the second time (we had one previous rehearsal). After hearing me sing on the rooftop of the Everest Hotel, they decided to give me the beginning solo (the rest of it was a group piece). Needless to say, I was quite flattered, and more than happy to sing along.

And then it was dinner time. It was quite emotional. Tenmpa made a speech in which he thanked us for coming to Tibet and helping his people, both by donating items, fueling the economy (we not only bought gifts for others, we also kept several dudes—our drivers—employed for a period of time), and for spreading the word. Then he went on a rant about how amazing Jim was, etc. Jim made a speech about how compassionate and wonderful Tenmpa was. Ibit, another absolutely awesome individual on the trip, as well as a professor from UVM, made a speech about the entire experience which made nearly everyone burst into tears. It’s just unreal how close you can become with others when you are put into such crazy conditions with them. I honestly miss Tenmpa. He is the nicest person I’ve ever met and it honestly does sadden me that I will never get to see him again. The entire time we were in Tibet, however, we didn’t think about it all coming to an end… we just took for granted that Tenmpa was amazing and that we had met some really cool people... and then it was over. We also made a speech about our superb drivers—you really need to be a good driver in Tibet to avoid crashing, and these guys were the best dudes I saw on the road... And then it was singing time.

Joy fun!

Unfortunately I do not have a picture of my performance. But I’m sure it was wonderful. Hahaha.

Here’s a picture of Ted and Adam doing a quick rap for everyone. It was hilarious. The drivers really thought it was neat, too.

And here’s a picture of the two aforementioned Mexicans—Claudia and Hector. They were such a friendly couple, and very outgoing with others even when with one another, too. I remember when I first met them I assumed they’d be so wrapped up in one another they would fail to make relationships with other people in the group, but they were awesome! In this picture, they are singing their rendition of a Spanish pop-song. I thought they did rather well, though they wouldn’t admit to it.

And then it was the drivers’ turn (plus Tenmpa!!). Not only did they sing, they danced!

And then they got shy on us, so they asked two of the waitresses at the hotel to sing some traditional Tibetan tunes for us. My goodness! The lady on the right in this picture had crazy lungs and such a range! Don’t get me wrong, they both had beautiful voices (and these were the waitresses???), but the one on the right had a voice that knocked me over. Crazy.

And then it was over. A lot of people lingered for a while after we were done with dinner and singing and everything… we didn’t really know how to say goodbye. Honestly. Emotional.

We spent the rest of the evening doing various things. Some people wrote in their journals, some people went bowling across the street, some people called home. A few of us wandered around town and met some of the locals at this restaurant/kereoke place. This guy was probably the coolest of them all—his name is Bossen (I’m not sure how it’s spelled…) and he dances!

We actually got to meet a bunch of his friends who were hanging out there, too. They were wicked nice. The only reason we actually entered the place (we were just looking into different places that were open along the main drag to see how nice the interiors looked and to decide whether or not we wanted to hang out for a while, maybe have dessert or sing kereoke). But Bossen learned English at the university he attended, so he, naturally, had to practice it on the Americans who randomly popped their heads in to see what was inside. So he ushered us in, sat down with us, introduced us to his friends (whom we couldn’t talk to) and then invited us to dance with him and his group later on. It was really cool.

Oh. And he also informed us that although America is a pretty cool country, Tibet is the best country in the world. :)

And that’s how we spent the last night in Tibet. Quite a great way to say goodbye.