About ten days ago I went to a town called Pharping (pronounced with a p, not an f) that is well-known for having a lot of Tibetan Buddhist centers and monasteries. A guy from Italy named Chodrak who's staying at my guesthouse took me, because otherwise I was still too timid to go traveling on my own. We took three buses to get there, and each bus was ten to twenty rupees, not much at all. It's a very smoggy trip, even when you get out of the city and into the country, because the exhaust from even a single car is enough to choke you. I hold my breath as much as I can when I'm on the road. The countryside is very beautiful, green and peaceful. When we got off the bus, the first thing Chodrak took me to was a little cave that Padmasambhava spent some time meditating in. Padmasambhava is said to be an incarnation of the Buddha, and was the one who brought Buddhism to Tibet. Everyone will have to forgive me here. My buddhist friends will have to be patient with my explanations of very basic buddhist stuff, and my non-buddhist friends will hear a lot about things they may not understand. Before we could get to the cave, there were a number of people waiting to hound us into buying something. Two people in particular were very persistent about me buying a butterlamp from one of them. At one point, they both tried to shove a butterlamp in my hand at the same time, and had a collision, with one of the butterlamps falling to the ground. That seemed to sober them up a little, and I was able to finally have a moment of peace at the cave. There is a large concave impression in the roof of the cave, which you can see in the picture here, where they say that Padmasambhava pushed up the roof when it was falling in on him. There's a monastery one level above the cave, and we went in just as they were starting puja (ritual service). We did our own pujas in the foyer just outside the main temple. There definitely was some kind of special energy to the place.
Then we walked up further into the town and had a nice lunch at a Tibetan restaurant. I had some fried spicy tofu and chapatis with an orange Fanta. Fanta, Coke, and Sprite are in almost every eatery. The glass bottles are reused by the factory, which you can tell by the condition of the print on the bottle, and the bottles are usually dirty from their transport in the back of trucks in open racks. But the drink itself is great, and made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. Then we headed up the road a bit more and stopped in a cave-like room where, on a rock wall, a large image of Ganesha (an elephant headed Hindu deity), and a couple small images of Tara (a buddhist female deity called the Mother of the Buddhas) are self-arising from the rock, which means that they are spontaneously coming out of the rock on their own. Chodrak says that every time he comes, the images seem to have more detail. There's a lama there who does Tara puja in there all day and all night. On the constructed walls surrounding the rock are images of the twenty-one manifestations of Tara. There again was a lot of guys trying to push us into buying their prayer flags, which they said they'd put up for us. It's a popular spot, so there was quite a flurry of activity in small space of the room. I did my best to meditate a bit while Chodrak talked to the lama about having some pujas done for some of his friends and family. The energy was very charged there, palpable.
Then we went up the hill a little further, and stopped at a retreat center of Ralo Rinpoche. Chodrak said he's a very high nyingma lama. I still don't really know who he is, but I don't doubt that he's a high lama. After they let us in, and explained we were there to meet Ralo Rinpoche, his wife had us sit down for a bit and we talked a bit. Rinpoche's sister brought us sweet tea and cookies, very nice. Then we were shown up to a patio where Ralo Rinpoche was sitting on a couch. We did the usual presentation of the katak (a silk scarf) and an envelope with a bit of money, and he had us sit down. Chodrak asked for a lung (pronounced loong), which is a recitation of a text which grants permission to use the text for practice. He asked us to sit on the ground while he recited. I found it very difficult to look at Rinpoche. My inclination was to keep my head bowed. I had no idea until afterward what the text was we were receiving the lung for. It turned out to be four concise biographies of the life of Padmasambhava, a very auspicious text considering our visit to the cave where he practiced. It turned out that the text was very long, unexpectedly so. After it was over, I was shy to ask for my lung, but I did it anyway. It was for the text of the Twenty-One Praises to Arya (Noble) Tara. Some of you may know how important it was for me. After it was over, he gave us some packets of dutsi, which is little black peppery-tasting stuff that has a lot of blessings. My time with him left a big impression on my. I'm going to have to google him and see what I can find out.
We didn't have time to visit another Padmasambhava cave Chodrak said was further up the mountain, as the last bus was at 6pm. I'll be going back to Pharping very soon, because there's a retreat center there in my lineage, and I'll be stopping at the Padmasambhava caves and Tara shrine again for sure.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
In Pharping 8/10/07
About ten days ago I went to a town called Pharping (pronounced with a p, not an f) that is well-known for having a lot of Tibetan Buddhist centers and monasteries. A guy from Italy named Chodrak who's staying at my guesthouse took me, because otherwise I was still too timid to go traveling on my own. We took three buses to get there, and each bus was ten to twenty rupees, not much at all. It's a very smoggy trip, even when you get out of the city and into the country, because the exhaust from even a single car is enough to choke you. I hold my breath as much as I can when I'm on the road. The countryside is very beautiful, green and peaceful. When we got off the bus, the first thing Chodrak took me to was a little cave that Padmasambhava spent some time meditating in. Padmasambhava is said to be an incarnation of the Buddha, and was the one who brought Buddhism to Tibet. Everyone will have to forgive me here. My buddhist friends will have to be patient with my explanations of very basic buddhist stuff, and my non-buddhist friends will hear a lot about things they may not understand. Before we could get to the cave, there were a number of people waiting to hound us into buying something. Two people in particular were very persistent about me buying a butterlamp from one of them. At one point, they both tried to shove a butterlamp in my hand at the same time, and had a collision, with one of the butterlamps falling to the ground. That seemed to sober them up a little, and I was able to finally have a moment of peace at the cave. There is a large concave impression in the roof of the cave, which you can see in the picture here, where they say that Padmasambhava pushed up the roof when it was falling in on him. There's a monastery one level above the cave, and we went in just as they were starting puja (ritual service). We did our own pujas in the foyer just outside the main temple. There definitely was some kind of special energy to the place.
Then we walked up further into the town and had a nice lunch at a Tibetan restaurant. I had some fried spicy tofu and chapatis with an orange Fanta. Fanta, Coke, and Sprite are in almost every eatery. The glass bottles are reused by the factory, which you can tell by the condition of the print on the bottle, and the bottles are usually dirty from their transport in the back of trucks in open racks. But the drink itself is great, and made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. Then we headed up the road a bit more and stopped in a cave-like room where, on a rock wall, a large image of Ganesha (an elephant headed Hindu deity), and a couple small images of Tara (a buddhist female deity called the Mother of the Buddhas) are self-arising from the rock, which means that they are spontaneously coming out of the rock on their own. Chodrak says that every time he comes, the images seem to have more detail. There's a lama there who does Tara puja in there all day and all night. On the constructed walls surrounding the rock are images of the twenty-one manifestations of Tara. There again was a lot of guys trying to push us into buying their prayer flags, which they said they'd put up for us. It's a popular spot, so there was quite a flurry of activity in small space of the room. I did my best to meditate a bit while Chodrak talked to the lama about having some pujas done for some of his friends and family. The energy was very charged there, palpable.
Then we went up the hill a little further, and stopped at a retreat center of Ralo Rinpoche. Chodrak said he's a very high nyingma lama. I still don't really know who he is, but I don't doubt that he's a high lama. After they let us in, and explained we were there to meet Ralo Rinpoche, his wife had us sit down for a bit and we talked a bit. Rinpoche's sister brought us sweet tea and cookies, very nice. Then we were shown up to a patio where Ralo Rinpoche was sitting on a couch. We did the usual presentation of the katak (a silk scarf) and an envelope with a bit of money, and he had us sit down. Chodrak asked for a lung (pronounced loong), which is a recitation of a text which grants permission to use the text for practice. He asked us to sit on the ground while he recited. I found it very difficult to look at Rinpoche. My inclination was to keep my head bowed. I had no idea until afterward what the text was we were receiving the lung for. It turned out to be four concise biographies of the life of Padmasambhava, a very auspicious text considering our visit to the cave where he practiced. It turned out that the text was very long, unexpectedly so. After it was over, I was shy to ask for my lung, but I did it anyway. It was for the text of the Twenty-One Praises to Arya (Noble) Tara. Some of you may know how important it was for me. After it was over, he gave us some packets of dutsi, which is little black peppery-tasting stuff that has a lot of blessings. My time with him left a big impression on my. I'm going to have to google him and see what I can find out.
We didn't have time to visit another Padmasambhava cave Chodrak said was further up the mountain, as the last bus was at 6pm. I'll be going back to Pharping very soon, because there's a retreat center there in my lineage, and I'll be stopping at the Padmasambhava caves and Tara shrine again for sure.
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