5a.m. In India

It’s 5 a.m. and the scurry of the plastic slippers the anis use as their shoes is heard as they scamper to the sound calling them to their morning puja, the morning prayers that they recite, accompanied by drum and cymbals, chant and recitation. There is the slow banging of a gong that is gradually increased in frequency and this, this ritual and call to prayer, is how we begin our day here at Samtenling nunnery; in India. The noise of the clanging that first awakes the nuns at 4:30, the gong of the morning prayers, only competes soon enough with the sound from loud speakers as bajans begin in the Hindu temples, as the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer in the Muslim conclave of families that is part of our village, Nagal Hatnala.


All over India, the day begins with this call to prayer. Shrines and temples to deities and icons line the streets and colors compete as well with the costumes of custom, language, culture and tradition. But still, it is this call. It is why I am in India. I, too, heard a call. It began long ago and it began with the same clanging and banging of drums and cymbals and shocking sounds of grief and suffering and which eventually called me to awaken! This sound, this call, invited me to tread a path that countless other beings have walked and invited me to join them in going beyond the appearances of differences, language and to celebrate something that joins all beings! How great. I set out on pilgrimage.

I once asked a nun who is quite young if she liked to go to the long pujas, or prayers, that can last for days and she answered without hesitation, “Oh, yes; it is our duty to pray for those who are suffering.” How great is that? So, I am surrounded here by anis whose dharma or life purpose as Buddhist nuns is to answer their own call to pray and to find that place within our minds where everything comes back together.

Other anis are sweeping and brushing the courtyard with brooms that look like they are made of twigs; they work in a cadence and rhythm that matches the chants and incantations they mumble in Tibetan as they sweep the debris of the day and clear away the constant dust and leaves that accumulates. Someone, a lama I think, is doing, a walking contemplation as he circumambulates the Kalachackra Temple on our monastery grounds, close to the new nun’s hostel and just outside the entrance to the area where others stay in the traditional 3 year retreat in huts, holed in and Wholed up with stacks of Tibetan teachings, transmissions and practices.

Earlier, the 3 anis who are rotated for their service in the kitchen; their call came around 3 a.m. and in the kitchen they go and even now are preparing palips and butter tea for the teachers, called geylas here and the other contemplatives and staff. The palip or chapati, as the Hindu people call it, is a staple of this simple diet and consists of a flat bread that the nuns kneed each day and then shape like a flour tortilla, cooking each one on a small burner. I prefer the barley flour mixed with butter tea that was the great staple of a people who lived in the high altitudes of Tibet and which is known as tsampa, but we are out of it now as the woman who grounds the barley and prepares the flour and who lives close by in the Tibetan colony of Dykiling has taken sick.

My own day is now finding its own shape as well and as I go to bed quite early here, by 8 pm at the latest, I usually arise around 2 a.m. and begin to read and contemplate and savor, oh how I savor, the quiet and the light the darkness brings! I can make out only a few stars from my window but here in this region, without the city lights I’ve become used to in the states, the sky is more luminous. There are fires as well from the shrines along the mountains around us and all create this bowl and embrace. I can make a cup of instant coffee which tastes better than any latte I enjoyed back home and sitting here, I have hours to rest in that great peace; in this stillness; in this quiet. But only for a short time, for many will arise soon and the sweepings, cleaning and noise of the bathrooms and showers above will be heard as we all awaken to greet this day.

Last night, throughout the night, one could hear from the nearby village the loud celebratory bajans or chants coming from the Sai Baba Ashram as all of India begins to ready for the most important holiday of the year, The Festival of Lights; Diwali. Sikhs and Hindus alike boarded the plane in London that I took to Delhi and packing in luggage filled with treats and gifts, made their own pilgrimage home to join with family and clan in waving lights to God and in their own Christmas, return their lives and hearts to their devotions.

Going to Dehradun for errands yesterday was absurd and comical with the confusion of crowds and chaos made worse in the frenzy as families dressed up in colorful saris and students in the uniforms were grabbing the wrapped packages of nuts and dried fruit, lights and gifts to bring to family and friends. The atmosphere is filled with this spirit that seems to be increasing day by day as it builds to the culmination later this week for 2 days of puja and a crescendo of sounds and celebration in chants and in fireworks that mark the sky each night.

The call to prayer. It is our life. It has become mine. Writing this, I come home and sigh. To walk quietly with rosary or not, to just be where this purpose can be expressed and rooted within my heart it healing and calming; just that realization! How great.

The nuns in the temple and the sadhus in theirs. The lamas at Jangchubling, our brother monastery and the students of Kagyu College who follow in theirs an hour later. The Muslims beginning their invocations and the Christians who gather at the old Catholic Church in town; how great! This is India. These calls will soon compete with the sounds that will soon join us as the villagers all around begin to make their fires and sweeping their own courtyards and the small shops, the metal awnings are pushed up and the wares are sold off of the old roads here, pocked marked and graveling and dusty, crowded now with motorcycles and small cars and trucks. Other calls will become heard as vendors yell out their wares and bicycles and carts make their way up this old dusty and pockmarked road to sell to us and the surrounding villagers here. Even in our village where I saw so few vehicles, I see many more!

This is my second trip to India. The first time, I arrived in October of 2008 and remained until May 28, 2009, teaching English in this monastery as a volunteer as I tried to make sense of a 40 year process of healing and a spiritual pilgrimage that I call my life.

Even though it’s hard to get out of bed when that clanging first arouses us out of our deep slumber; even though we are snuggled in these sheets and on our fancy beds; even though we resist what calls to us - to answer at all guarantees great joy and completion. I know this now and although my own journey and path was often misunderstood and judged from the outside as absurd and not realistic, it has come to this deep and peaceful reservoir that I only realized over the past year and a half since I first left and returned to the states.

I didn’t know I was going to go back to India again although I might have mentioned it to some; I just didn’t know what my life had in store for me and I have come to trust this unknowing. I used to know a lot, so that is no small accomplishment! A great saint once said that only the past is known and that the present is always unknown! Makes such sense but only have much investigation and exploration. I have had to sweep out my own heart of so much attachment, what we might call projections and perceptions and assumptions and what I call, demographics. I have had to look at the very small and limited way in which I saw myself and how I saw the world and others and only through this investigation, have I come to realize this great peace.

In the tradition I was raised, Catholicism, the search for peace comes through Jesus and his life becomes the template. Jesus became known as the Christ, a word translated from Greek to be the “Anointed One.” In Buddhism, the man who is their Christ is known as the Buddha, which is translated to mean the “Awakened One,” and was the state a historical prince accomplished centuries before Jesus’ life and who was known in his time as Siddhartha. For some reason, these 2 have become my own brothers and it is their footsteps that led me here. In this monastery, I have come to know and appreciate the parallel paths of these masters who through their own lives, invite each of us to enjoy the peace they each found. The words might be different, but the states of awareness are, of course, the same.

Whenever I think of this I think of the Fred Astaire song that is iconic: “You say banana and I say baNAna!” The emphasis is on a different syllable but created such a humorous dichotomy as he sang to Ginger Rogers his reasons they can’t connect! We say the same words but differently! We describe the same states but owing to culture, language, time, region and many other variables, the words and pictures are all that are different. I wanted to go beyond all that. I wanted to find that peace and Samtenling seems to be the place I can rest in awareness of it. How great!

Now, again, the nunnery is so quiet and I can sit on this simple bed with the newly acquired spread I bought from a street vendor yesterday, venturing into Rajpur, the village behind us. My room is finally unpacked and I am ready to face my first day of teaching the 4 classes I have, 5 days a week. There is only the sound of birds riotously signing and crashing onto branches and tweeting their morning greeting. This rare quiet descends for this nunnery is not the quiet contemplative life I expected! What was I thinking? This is India after all!

The nuns make a lot of noise and their shoes slap plastic sticatto in the halls and often they are yelling to each other from the courtyard or from the roof where our clothes hang to dry and they can go to study and practice the dharma through loud repetitions! Even the first night I arrived in 2008, as we past on the dusty streets the collapsed buildings and the closed shops, even then, I could see the trash and the people and the masses of stimuli but I was deluded into thinking eventually the driver would bring me to a North Carolina kind of situation. Instead, I found myself facing a big red painted gate which opened onto the monastery grounds of our nunnery and I was quickly dispatched to a bare room with no water. I look back and laugh. I was in shock but I had enough spiritual practice and support to know that this was the chance and change I have waited for, for lifetimes! I got to wrestle with my own mind.

The noise out there I knew was only in my own mind and coming back, it is not so much a distraction as an embrace. The noise everywhere we go; it is just a background for something else that India offers, like refuge for the thousands of Tibetan refugees who fleeing the Chinese invasion of 1959, seek to re-establish the Buddhadharma in the country in which it was born!

The Tibetans came back and I came back. Maybe for the same reason. Maybe to go beyond all the difficulties at last. I think of their determination to cross the great altitudes of the Himalayas and I am inspired to continue my own crossing. How willing are we to awaken? What are we willing to do to find peace? I think I was desperate enough to do anything and those many years ago, after the pain of my childhood and the deaths of my parents, I was turned around and the outward seeking goals were abandoned and the inward journey began.

As I write this, the laborers contracted to assist Lama Tsewang in maintaining this monastery arrive and begin their own practice. Squatting all the way down, they work by hand crushing rock to make pathways. I have watched men gathering boulders by hand to build the bridge just beyond our walls to cross a washed out road. I watch them in wonder. I hear them just outside my own window here as Rakesh, our driver who lives on the hill above us with his family, turns on the noisy truck we are lucky to have and begins his own rounds carrying canisters to be filled with fuel for the nuns in the kitchen and the lamas. A huge truck, probably a Tata, is making its way up the road with a load of gravel and across this valley the smell of wood fires fill the air and the sounds of children stirring and this one universal family comes alive to face this day.

How Great!