Belly of the Whale

The past few days have been interestingly dualistic and dynamic. They have been restful in that I haven't had to work. Today was the Dalai Lama's birthday. Since Tuesday I haven't worked actually. They were study days. Friday all the students had examinations. Then we had holidays for the birthday today. Everyone was so excited, like a Nepali Christmas.

However, the Chinese government influenced the Nepali government to prohibit any celebration. Police were around the stupa all day to make certain that no Buddhist was causing trouble by singing or dancing or any other form public nussence. It was very sad for me to see. I had taught my students the meaning of the word 'repression' and now I was experiencing it with them. Imagine having Christmas cancelled and the only reason given was that the authorities just didn't think Christmas was a good think to celebrate because they didn't believe in Santa. Regardless of the damp quiet of the day, I saw many smiles, and many people reminded me, the foriegner, that today was his Holiness' birthday with apparent joy and mirth in the revelation.

All day I sat alone and through myself blindly into a new book. I nearly covered, superficially, the entirety of the book by jumping from here to there, following different shards of thought and interest. The book is called Ayurvedic Healing and is an amazing work that in twenty years I will still be learning from and incorporating into my life. Ayurveda means the knowledge of healing. The knowledge it contains has been tested and improved for the last 5000 years and comes directly from the tradition of the Veda's, ancient Indian books of wisdom. It is so holistic and natural and personal. There is no general prescriptions - you must be the student of your own body, you make your own medicine, which can be as simple as the herbs found in the back yard: add water. Really it is a beautiful mirror for learning about your own state of health, learning yardsticks for how to grow and also recognize illness. Like yoga, it is another eliment of health. Yoga also comes out of the Vedas.

Eastern philosophy is so enticing because of its subjective nature. It is at once religion but transcends religion. The Vedas, Yin and Yang, the I Ching, Taoism, Tantra - all of these are claimed and understood, assimilated into one or numerous religions, but they all predate the religions that claim them. Taoism was already old before the Tao Te Ching was written. The I Ching was already written but was improved on by Confusius and was then assimilated; the Yin and Yang practically permeates all world philosophy. Unlike the west, the east lives in this state of religious practice, regardless of the title. The Vedas are a shining, and to me glorious, example.

Today the practical application is getting control of my allergies. This is the opposite pole of the dualism that I began by mentioning (now, way back). Happily my allergies have gone haywire and given me great motivation to learn about medical self-practice. So I have been diligent. I have a friend who is an expert and in the next few days we will make some herbal teas that help my nose and itchy eyes. Dust has long been a burden to me and I am excited about this road to a new level of health.

My other program is my stretching. I am indescribably tight and it hinders my overall physical health and also my ability to sit comfortably while meditating, making meditating in a seated posture impossible. So this is another long term comitment and goal, a path just started that will likely be carried to my grave.

These are two elements of my life here that are only seeds recently planted but are wholly rewarding in their beginnings, and promising in their futures. It is so absorbing, these days fly past me and nothing has been done - I have read; I have talked; I have written, but most of all I have absorbed, learned and begun a process that is invigorating and decorating my path. It is the same path as before, but now stregthened. Or at least the process is begun.

Enough about that. But it brings me joy so I willl share it. I will also include an essay I wrote while reading some form of criticism last semester. The criticism was about the nature of experience and reflection. I don't remember the details but this was written in disagreement. It dissgressed into a statement of the value of journalling. I attach it because I believe in it. It is a statement of the obvious, but from a deeper perspective that has some amnount of insight into the nature of how we grow as spiritual beings. It is rough. Nothing more than a sketch on an idea. Nothing more. Take it for what it is.


Experience vs. Reflection:
the importance of journalling

Experience is sensual by nature. We percieve the world by various feelings, images, smells, sounds, ect.

However, if we are to learn from our experience, thus reflection, then we must reflect on them after the fact. I stress the "after the fact." If we are having good sex, it is our sensual data that informs us. We do not pause, and think, "Wow, this is great sex," because this reflection would take us out of our sensual experience and the caliber of the experience would be tainted.

It is only after that we should look back and reflect on our experiences - think about what it was about the sex that made it so special, ect. If we do not later reflect on our daily experiences, then the learning that we should gain is mostly lost. There is a heightened point of view with retrospection, a detachment of sorts, that can stimulate understanding that would not be available at the point of the experience. This is congruent with dialectical thought. Reflection is a revisiting of an experience. As seeing an important film twice inevitably heightens your understanding of the themes, so to does reflection heighten your awareness of your own experiences.

In this way, a journal is invaluable. It instigates the thinking about and writing of daily experience. It promotes questions and thought. Inevitablely, we all reflect on experience when we are confronted with similar experiences and look back for assistance with the present. In many ways, this is only marginally effective. Time skews memories in a biased way, and often the things which we should be wary of are the very things our memories erase. This is not necessarily true for all of us. Reflection, early on, marks or flags these possible pitfalls that we might like to forget otherwise.

Journals also preserve the reflection and the experience for later days. Looking back at a journal awakens the sensual experiences of the past with the questing of the mind’s reflections to understand them. Recollections of the past cannot serve to awaken the past in such a lucid way as the reading of your own hand with all the pain and pleasure that was present in that now historic moment.

Dreams are an example of sensuous experience that we can have limited understanding of without prolonged reflection. How quickly dreams can fade from our memories. It seems they are stored in the most temporary lodgings of our brains. By writing them, we are free to reflect whenever the time presents itself. Oftren, days and weeks may pass before the key to a dream will become available. With that key, and the dream still at our access, we now are able to unlock secret sectors our our being that were previously inaccessible to us.

I feel that this is powerful learning, the most important, the self-growth which is essential to our own well-being and peace.

I have neglected to discuss the like-value of solitude. Solitude offers similar opportunities for reflection and growth of understanding. Alone, one is free to ponder questions of all kinds. Often, the questions of the day’s tribulations arise and confront us: was this right?, what could I have done better?

Solitude is healthy and wonderful for many other reasons that I won’t here pursue, but for self-understanding it is of premium importance.