Dear Friends, Yogis and Yoginis,

Tenzin’s Journey
This essay begins with a reflection on my India journey and then Tenzin’s journey to India.

As I reflect back on my journey in India, one of the most poignant experiences was sitting with Tenzin for his teachings, but more significantly, for his story of escaping from Tibet. I’m sure we all consider, from time to time, our escapades and journeys in the world as a metaphor for life. But listening to his story impressed this upon me much more powerfully.
Some questions that arose for me were perennial questions marked by the deeper urgency in his journey…

• What does it mean to have a sense of home? A sense of family?
• How do we create our home or family in the world?
• To what are we moving towards as our journey meanders through life events?
• Is there a guiding star or beacon encouraging our journey?
• From what do we have to protect or guard ourselves along the way?
• How do we keep cultivating, continuously and persistently, radical acceptance of the unfortunate, unknown or even devastating steps of our journey without giving up on the goal?
• What are we required to carry with us along the way? And what is inessential?
• If everything were stripped from us, would we find the courage to go on?

My general sense of myself traveling through the world is one of ease in the twists and turns along the way. Even when I occasionally find myself facing upstream in confusion or disappointment, I usually feel enlivened when I remember to surrender to the unknown; and I find exhilaration letting go into the currents of a journey.

I experienced my journey through India in very similar ways as this, though I had to apply more effort from time to time. While I was prepared to be exposed to poverty and illness, to be uncomfortable, and to relax into the “chaos,” the regular exposure impacted me in ways I hadn’t expected.

I was confronted with the question of Home repeatedly as people slept under their thin blankets on the side of the road with the dogs, or under the stairs of the railway stations with their whole family under one sheet.

Family took on a whole new meaning as both the group I traveled with became family (right down to discussions on bodily functions) and as I witnessed the creation of family based on circumstances. All Tibetans are family, for example. And so are the railway residents.

As my senses were assaulted by sights, smells and sounds I was previously unaccustomed to, I got to stretch myself to include a new form of “everything” in my meditations. I also learned to see within the sights, smells and sounds a kind of Godliness as mangy dogs, divine cows, men with leprosy, beggars, filthy children, and aged, toothless women became my companions on planet earth as our paths crossed.

While most of these fellow companions seemed to have basic survival as their goal or beacon, I many times witnessed moments of prayer or connection between them. Eknath Easwaran is quoted on the back of his book, Love is God, as saying that one of humanity’s basic needs is for love, not just food, shelter and survival.

Still, witnessing their daily goal of a few rupees, a handful of food, or simple acknowledgement, I recognized the great luxuries in my own life where my “path to God” is concerned: basic survival is already established and I have good health, time for study and practice, kindred spirits taking up the same path, and the resources to support both my life and my studies. I know that I live simply compared to many Americans; but in comparison to the world community, I do have great riches and the enormous fortune of understanding inner wealth as a higher priority than “worldly wealth.”

When I got sick six days before the end of my trip, I was given an opportunity (said with a smile) to practice the travel as life metaphor assignment imposed on me by my headache, wavy tummy, fever and chills. Of course, I would prefer not to be sick. But sick was the reality!

I watched my thoughts come and go through resistance and affection, for myself and my “opportunity.” Fortunately, my illness began the day of the celebration of the Dalai Lama’s teachings. So from very early in the morning, I could hear the monks chanting their deep throated prayers, a great reminder to me of both an over-arching sense of devotion and gratitude for life, and the struggles of the Tibetan people for their basic, cultural and spiritual survival. Surviving a fevered illness should be no problem compared to this!

The resistant thoughts were more informative teachers than my affectionate, perspective-based thoughts. In some moments, I prayed only for orange juice (I could not get out of bed at 2 am and expect this to be available), while other moments I wanted to be home in my own bed in Portland. At times, I despaired about India altogether, now irritated by the pervasive and unmanageable pollution. My greatest resistance, though, showed up as ongoing annoyance at the sound of the door to my room being blown by the wind. Every time it creaked, my own body’s aches and chills creaked again and my headache seemed to worsen. I smile now to think that this noise was worse than the hammering construction next door, or the wild dogs at night, or the sound of my stomach turning over the incremental portions of food I had been able to ingest.

Under these conditions, I wondered how people survive any number of much more major conditions and illnesses, even those brought on by medical interventions such as chemotherapy, burn therapy, or induced vomiting after overdose.

In between hot showers followed by layers of clothing and blankets, I prayed. I can’t say I prayed for anything specific in terms of relief. Rather I prayed for my own willingness to be right here, right now. For this was the moment to moment life I was living. And I knew this to be the only true home.

Willingness is one of the most profound healers available to us as it shifts us bio-chemically out of resistance, frustration, or anger, all of which have profoundly debilitating effects on our system and our health, and back to awareness, presence and love.

I also started taking azithromycin, my antibiotic, which led to several hallucinogenic type early morning dreams that I found particularly hilarious. In order not to awaken my roommate with my laughter, each time I “hallucinated,” I forced myself awake by some miracle and a desire to check in with reality, and also forced myself not to laugh out loud. So, by the time I got out of bed, I’d had plenty of suppressed laughter that overflowed into yoga class and breakfast.

I was definitely on the mend!

It was that morning that Tenzin came to our hotel for his teachings.

***

Tenzin has been in India 18 years. Prior to crossing the border, he was a student/scholar and a monk. As part of his study and devotion, he once prostrated all the way to Lhasa, a 2400 kilometer journey, with his teacher. While this journey normally takes people several years, in one year and seven months he had laid down his body, walked to his finger tips, raised his prayer hands to his forehead (mind), his mouth (speech), his heart (heart/body), bent his knees and outstretched himself on the ground again. During this journey, they rested when it was too hot and resumed their prostrations in the afternoon and overnight through to morning. They ate only a few teaspoons of watery porridge once a day. He said in the first week he found it tremendously difficult and thought he might pass out many times. But once acclimated, he fell into a meditative trance. (With only porridge to eat, they didn’t spend prostration time fantasizing about their next meal; something I often did during my meditation retreat days!)

This journey, while requiring so much, was not rife with the dangers of his journey from Tibet to India, which I listened to with jaw-dropping attention. I’ll admit, I could not follow it entirely and, as a result, will report these details out of order.

Tenzin’s escape from Tibet took over three months time. He was caught and arrested repeatedly. Sometimes he and his group were handed over by Nepalese people. Other times, a slight slip in their plan landed them in danger. They were shot at many times.

In one prison, which was the “toilet room” of a house, the group was left for countless days. The room was constructed of cement with a trough around the outer rim where the Chinese would come in to urinate. Tenzin and the other prisoners huddled together in the center where they were fed once a day and where they slept and waited. He reported that his back bones still hurt him to this day from the time he spent in that latrine.

He escaped through a window high up on the wall. The escape, of course, was entirely into the unknown.

The next prison was a camp where the Chinese wanted him to catch a sheep by hand. If he could do this for them, they said they would let him go. He had caught sheep many times at home with a rope. But the Chinese offered no rope. And since the sheep did not belong to the Chinese, he refused to catch it as he would be stealing.

He and some others escaped this prison camp by jumping from a moving truck while they moved them through the mountains. They slid down a big cliff and he hid for two hours until it was dark. When he came out of hiding, he could find no one else from his group. He journeyed in the dark and found a cave to hide in for the remainder of the night.

In the morning, the Chinese found him with their dogs. He was back in prison again.

By this time he had lost anything he started his journey with, including his shoes (and keep in mind it is mountainous, snow covered and cold!). While at the next camp, as the prisoners were being moved from one area to the next, one of the prisoners suggested a plan of pushing the small Nepalese guards into the river and escaping that way. Since Tenzin knew these guards would then likely be tortured and killed for such an event, he could not agree with the plan. He would not risk the life of another, even to take steps towards his own freedom.

Over and over again he was arrested, tortured, schemed then risked an escape, and was arrested again. He held to his integrity and his monk’s vows through his entire journey. His final escape was also his arrival into India, his new homeland and the refuge for his Tibetan community.

Sitting in the presence of his wide smile and animated joy, there is no residue of the grueling journey it took for him to arrive in India, in his new home, in his freedom.

It’s this combination that compelled me to consider those life questions again. How many times have we been simply side-tracked and fallen into deflation, complaint, or resignation?!

In his book, Eknath Easwaran speaks eloquently and urgently to the aspect of human nature that gives up the goal at the first sign of challenge. While he’s speaking about our mental and life samskaras (woven grooves or brain patterns created out of reactions to life events), what’s required on our journey is, by degrees, the same kind of perseverance and diligence (though much more mild and with less apparent dangers) as those required of Tenzin.

Truly, our journey is one to our freedom and to our home. Whether sick in bed, facing professional challenges or unemployment, worrying over recession finances, being overwhelmed with parenting issues, watching a retirement account fade, living with terminal illness, or being imprisoned by our own mental, psychological or emotional dysfunctions, our journey takes us through mountainous passes, great beauty, “danger” by degrees, and requires us to keep seeking what one meditation teacher calls our “escape to freedom.” It is not an escape from our responsibilities nor from ourselves. What we are challenged to escape is our “ego,” our personal sense of agenda, of how things should be, or our continuous mental contraction into dissatisfaction and resistance. What we escape into, if done completely, sensitively, with maturity, and without causing harm to others, is that finest freedom and home-ground to which great teachers are pointing us. Love itself.

May this be the beacon in our lives!

Namaste,
Sarahjoy