Metro Woman

Namaste,

He saw her through a window when the metro pulled in.

Alone and cold, she waited for the green metro door to open.

It was late. She wore a thin black sweater and long gray skirt.

She was slight...olive pale skin, black hair pulled back, around 45. 

She limped into the car dragging her right foot. Her left foot was normal. Her right foot looked like a case of elephantiasis. She sat twenty feet away. 

She bent over and slowly raised her skirt from around her ankles. The burned and bloody skin damage ran three inches across and ten inches high. Either first or second degree burns. A layer of skin was exposed, red, lined with white. Bare and exposed. She needed medical attention.

Two men across from her stared and diverted their eyes.

She sat, fingered a phone and grimaced. No tears, just a stoic face. 

The metro rolled through night. It passed a river, a neon bright Everest furniture store, fast food emptiness and an expensive private hospital filled with antiseptics, bandages, lotions and potions and patients with money.

She inspected her ankle, touching an edge of fried skin with a white tissue. Clear cold air sent shivers through her central nervous system shutting down pain receptors. 

Metta.

Cycles

Namaste,

The cycle of existence.

A person creates subjective reality and illusions. People feel pure joy with compassion, gratitude and forgiveness. Your center is clear and unified. No past regrets, no future fears.

The Chinese-Tibetan puppet leaders in Lhasa ordered monks to increase 24/7 patriotic education classes in all monasteries. Re-education through reform, ideology, propaganda and control.

It’s about power and control, ruling through fear and intimidation. The Chinese after looting and destroying monasteries in Tibet and mainland China during the 10-year Cultural Revolution, restricted the number of monks at the three major Lhasa monasteries, Sera, Drepung and Ganden.

They recruited Tibetan monks to live and work as spies and infamous informers. This system proved effective during the Cultural Revolution when family members reported on each other, neighbors and capitalist running dogs. It was a practical peoples campaign of fear and suspicion creating paranoia and ideological control.

Monks and nuns allowed to live and practice who resist or question this form of subtle patriotic education risk imprisonment, torture and death. They well know what has and continues to happen to liberal monks and nuns at the notorious Drapchi prison outside Lhasa.

There are two kinds of suffering, said a girl weaving wool carpets in her yurt on the Tibetan plateau below bare brown mountains. Suffering you run away from and suffering you face.

Metta.

88 seconds in Nepal

Namaste,

Namaste means I salute the light (god) within you.

 

It is the daily Hindu greeting between people with your palms and fingers together raised toward your eyes in a blessing. Smile. 

 

He visited Nepal for 88 seconds. First was Bhaktapur, outside Kathmandu.

No traffic. No pollution. Cool fresh air. Limited electricity access. Daily power outages are the norm. Ironic considering Nepal has the second highest water volume energy source on Earth.

 

It is an ancient town, filled with Hindu temples, daily rituals, ringing bells, flowers and incense offerings, old hand carved wooden windows, brick homes, brick streets, tiled roofs, pottery, yogurt, vegetable and fruit life street market squares, amazing flowing sari and shawl rainbows, gentle people. It's on the old trading route from Tibet to India. 

 

There is no home plumbing. If you need water you go to the community well after dawn and before dusk. You drop your plastic container down brick shafts. You haul it up hand over hand. You pour it into narrow necked brass or copper urns.

 

You drop it again. You haul it up. Repeat until urns are full. You carry them on your hips through narrow brick alleys filled with friends and families. At home you filter it.

You boil it.

You drink it.

You use it for cooking, washing clothes, brushing teeth (a popular outdoor activity) and bathing.

Recycle, reuse, refresh. You return to the well.

Women and girls do all the water hauling, heavy water lifting and daily manual labor. So it goes. 

Metta.

child labor

Namaste,

190 countries celebrate World Day Against Child Labor on 12 June.

1.5 billion children labor around the world.

2.14 million child workers in Nepal are in industries, service and agriculture. 

In Nepal 600,000 children work in hazardous jobs. Half of the child workers are 10-14. Fifty-percent are between 5-9. 

12% work away from home.

Poverty and illiteracy are the primary causes.

Let's celebrate! sang 1.5 billion children.

Metta.

truth has few friends

Namaste,

Take a plane to the airport. Take a taxi across the sky. See Himalayas. Open your window. Breathe deep.

Truth will provide more than 1 billion people with access to safe drinking water.

Truth will enable literacy for 850,000,000 million people worldwide who cannot read.

Woman are 2/3 of this number.

Truth will employ 2.8 billion people surviving on less than $2 a day.

Truth will employ 1.1 billion people existing on less than $1 a day.

Truth will assist 70% of the people in the developing world having no access to electricity in their homes, health clinics and schools. Truth is a fatal disease, like peace, love and blindness.

Truth is a sledgehammer.

This is the Truth Channel. Your eyes lie. You cannot eat technology. Truth has few friends and they are suicides.

Metta.