Twins

Namaste, 

In the street life of Bhaktapur is Pottery Square. 250 people from immediate families make clay, create pots, piggy banks, animals, bowls, living art, dolls, bells, oil lamp bases, and cooking containers. They dry them in the sun. They slow fire them using straw fuel in large kilns. 

"We live here as a family," said a girl, 12 with her twin sister. "My father makes piggy banks. My mother moves them into the sunlight." A potter uses a heavy staff to get his wheel turning, rotating faster and faster until it is a blur. He shapes a pot. 

Finished products are sold locally, throughout the Kathmandu valley and exported faster than light.

Metta.

a German woman

Namaste,

Yes, said the eighty-two year old woman in impeccable hard, stone cold German to her Nepalese guide across the dinner table after she sent the green glassed bottle of beer back because it wasn't cold enough for her aristocratic standards as her arthritic silver haired myopic husband stared vacant with his docile gleaming owl ears hearing her reminiscent warble, Our Further had it right. We missed our golden opportunity to achieve greatness.

She sighed and stabbed her salad.

She ran a death camp. She signed documents in blood. She was cold, efficient and pure ideology. She escaped to hide in Argentina from Nazi hunters. She changed her name, her hair style, her accent. She prospered. She returned to Vienna and opened a bakery selling stale crumbs.

Fake pearls glistening in the glow of a candle strangled her. Wax dripped into her melancholic debris. She adjusted her mask and stabilized her husband out into the long dark cold night.

Local dogs howled at her smell.

Metta.

Kid Fools

Namaste,

Said the young Nepalese girl carrying the world on her back.

Her world is a large plastic sack for collecting valuable garbage. She uses a piece of thin hooked metal to probe piles of refuse. She has children scavenger friends in Vietnam (bundled logs and firewood), Laos (twigs and firewood), Cambodia (trash, charcoal, plastic bottles) all singing and dancing under the weight. Down all the days of their youth.

The weight of childhood is heavy. Children are not fooled. No joke. 

The girl led a traveler to the national zoo. A huge magnificent orange and white striped Bengal tiger roared near the bars. Feed Me! He dragged raw red buffalo meat into the shade expanding canines, grinding flesh.

Two sad brown eyed crying Black Himalayan bears in a cramped cold cement cage with scraggly tree trunks pressed their noses through rusty bars whispering, Please open the cage and take us back to the mountains.

A Griffon's brown elegant wing span blocked the sun flying beneath wire limitations. Oh, it said, If only I could soar again on thermals. If only I could regain my dignity and freedom. 

I have seen many people in cages, said the girl.

Metta.

Draw water. Draw your dream.

Boudhanath

Namaste,

The road from Bhaktapur to Boudhanath is paved or broken or nonexistent.

Broken dirt rutted cement narrow filled with humans and black belching diseased smoke. Green fields, planting, turning dirt, harvesting beans, potatoes, cauliflower, hauling wicker baskets to market. Soldiers running their future, pounding old boots past a rising forest. Mountains run in shadows. Children in cold dawn light brush white teeth.

It's a returning to Tibet. Pilgrimage around around around circumambulation. Chanting prayers, earning merit. A shift from the Hindu spirit world of Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu. A feeling of peace and tranquility permeates your walking meditation.

Spin prayer wheels.

Lhasa Morning Meditation. We slow down. Each step is a breath. As before, in other planetary places we savor the beginning of a new day becoming - cold, isolated, sublime mysterious reality. The street blends into the circuit. Go to the main square.

Two large chorten furnaces are breathing fire, sending plumes of gray and black smoke into the sky. Figures of all ages and energies, sellers of juniper and cedar. Buyers collect their offerings - throw sweet smelling twigs into the roaring fire, finger prayer beads and resume their pilgrimage. Merit.

We join the flow, shuffling along. Feel the softness being with the ageless way of meditation, a walking meditation.

It is a peaceful manifestation of the eternal now. The  vast self vibration of frequencies in the flow. Our restless wandering ghost spirit feels the peace and serenity inside the flow.

The sky fills with clear light. As above, so below. Prayer flags lining roofs sing in the wind as incense smoke curls away. The shuffling pilgrims create a ceaseless wave - the sound of muted consistent steps, clicking of prayer beads, a gentle hum of turning prayer wheels, murmurs of mantras from lips. Everything is clear and focused on offering, sacrifice, gaining merit in the collective unconscious. Our river flows.

Dawn light blesses eastern snow capped mountains with a pink glow. A black faced half-naked boy throws himself down and out on his hands and knees prostrating the length of his skinny skeleton. He wears slabs of wood on his hands and an old brown apron. He edges forward, pulling himself along, rises, gestures to the sky, hands together, down along his skin out and down to the ground scrapping away flesh edging forward inside shuffling pilgrims. His eyes are on fire!

One completes one circuit after another, circling the Jokhang, the spiritual center of Tibet. More light, more people ascending into the square - handfuls of juniper feed roaring flames, Crack! Hiss! Burn! Back to Dust!

You will walk through the fire. Do this practice every day.

Metta.

 

Mandala

Namaste,

An old caretaker man lies on his back inside an erotic temple with 24 carved images of playful sexual pleasure. He welcomes devotees covered in their piety, devotion, shadows, offering flowers, oil flame light, petals, incense, foot worn stone paths. Interiors.

Ring a bell, many bells, fingerprints wear down stone. Human gestures vibrating bells across a valley.

Endless brick factories fill the Sudal valley. Humans living in brick shacks, using water, clay, wooden forms, creating gray bricks. Sand, dust, hand labor, coal fired smokestacks, piles of coal being crushed, hauled on backs to fire. Fire gray red. The scope and density of men, women and children pouring their lives into their daily effort.

This massive element of people surviving. You walk on streets made of bricks, seeing brick homes rising to blue sky. Brick by brick. 

A mandala. Centering the universe with non-attachment.

The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind. I have no reason to despair because I am already there, sings a Nepalese child.

Gallery.

Metta.