Namaste…greetings from Nepal…Option A!
This is slightly off-piste post so feel free to merely enjoy the photographs if you’re not up for rumination about stuff! Or go for Option B which is more about what I am doing here!
It’s been said that in Nepal you make Plan A so you know what isn’t going to happen. There’s a kind of truth in that. You learn pretty fast that things may not turn out the way you planned! And that sometimes, that might be better!
As most of you know, Nepal is like a second home to me. So I think about control (or lack of it) and the concept of home a lot when I am here.
There was quite a long time several years ago when home was a hospital bed and beyond that there was no home! We’d rented out our place in Australia and had been in Nepal for 6 months when visa issues meant we suddenly had to return to Australia, leaving our Nepal life packed into 6 suitcases! Then I got ill and the prospect of returning to Nepal looked unlikely.
Years of planning seemed pointless and I realised I basically had no control over my circumstances. I also learnt how unhelpful it was to have based so much of my happiness on those uncontrollable, changeable circumstances. (Photo: Sagarmatha/ Chongalongma/ Mt Everest from the plane. I’ve lost count of how many times I have seen this, and I still get emotional! )
This was a tough lesson and I needed remedial classes. Maybe I am a very thick student. Now I remind myself every day that everything ends and that change is inevitable. I know how precious this shot at life is. I remind myself that, while I can’t control the circumstances of my life, I can try to control how I respond to them. And training my mind helps with that!
Recently I have been revisiting the 59 slogans for Training the Mind. These are also called the Lojong slogans and while these are from Buddhist writings, they are (like a lot of Buddhist teaching) very accessible to non Buddhists. For me, they are a way to take the benefits of mindfulness meditation from the cushion into my daily life. (Photo: Breakfast!)
I first started to learn the slogans during that really tough time. Over the years since, I remembered some very well and come back to them again and again, but I’d forgotten a lot of them and wanted to review them with a commentary by Norman Fischer, a Zen Buddhist.
People often come to places like Nepal seeking enlightenment…or being awake to what is in each moment. What the slogans emphasise is that it is the gritty (often mundane) stuff of life anywhere that is the path to being awake. And that being awake is a moment by moment thing. Now, when something unexpected, unplanned or unhoped for happens, I think I remember sooner that it’s another chance to see what’s happening for what it is. I hope that by practising with the small things, I’ll be better at doing it with the big stuff. Again.
Photo: We all wore samples of our jewellery when the travellers came!