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Hi All~ Though it took me a little longer than expected,I'm now relatively settled in India. I'm sorry I was so out of touch for the last few months, but with and all-India mobile internet service not too far from my face or my lap, I will be easily reachable from now on. Not to mention my email was hijacked and my password and info changed! After a long phone call with yahoo, I actually recovered it...amazing. I suppose not as amazing as the naturally-appearing Om Mani Peme Hum mantra I saw on a rock in Tibet though. 
To backtrack a couple lifetimes, my visit with Lady Konchok in September was very productive overall, despite the fact that most of my actual meetings took place alone with Lama Pegyal since Lady K rested much of the time. Her health in general is remarkable considering her condition; you can see her several times a day down and up the stairs to the Marpa House kitchen. We had a good laugh when Lama Pegyal told me that all prasenas, mo's, and doctors gave a prognosis of an early death, no later than early sixties yet she is seventy-seven now.
Then, a quick dance in San Francisco and I landed in Beijing where I stayed with my friend Kamila and her brother Ally from Wolfville. He speaks fluent mandarin, so for the fifteen hours I had there I had no problems. The next day, I flew to Xining where Khenpo picked me up from the airport and put me up in one of the nicest hotels in the city! I was so grateful for him timing his work with my visit, I didn't dare ask him to change his schedule to accomodate my new relationship with the altitude. The next day, we drove all the way to Jekundo in a matter of hours, where I, not suprisingly, felt quite dizzy and faint. All in all, it took three days for me to get from Beijing to Surmang.Khenpo says that he's also the one 'running' marathons. (By the way, the spelling 'jekundo' is a dangerous phoneticization. I later found out by the unceassing nun-laughter that 'Je' in their dialect means, well, as they finally put it, a man's vajra. It should actually be pronounced more like 'chekundo'). Either I was completely distracted by the heart-opening beauty of the Surmang valley, or my nap and food were super-powered because from then on, I had no problem whatsoever with the 4000-4500 metre ranges. The plan was for Khenpo to drive me even as far as Wenchen if KSR didn't show up at Dutsitil, but on our way in, Khenpo's car pretty much died of dehydration. Oh, by the way, Khenpo had me drive some of the dirt road but I was nervous about the condition of his car, so he gave up on me when he figured out it would take at least three light years the way I was driving. Anywho, I think Khenpo and KSR must have had a little miscomminique about my arrival time, but it all worked out-- I hung out doing very little for three days at Dutsi Til. 
On the third day, I 'ran' into the old man who takes care of the retreatants at Dorje Khyung Dzong, who went on about how much he loved Chogyam Trungpa. I could understand little bits and pieces of what he was saying, but every time I pressed him for a kind of story, all he would do was announce over and over how incredible of a tulku he was. He did invite me up to visit the retreat house though, and even offered to bring all my food should I stay there sometime and do a few-month retreat. When I asked about the ngayab (sorry Larry--I didn't get any emails until back out to Beijing) they looked at me like some kind of non-buddhist-god worshipper, but when I explained further, they had me take a picture of a picture because they apologetically said that the one they had was only mediocre, and not accurate. Finally, they brought what they had in anyway. It just looked like a stick with a tuft of yak hair on the end of it.
With Khenpo back in his race, and KSR nowhere to be found, Khenpo's fellow monk-friend set out to drive me to Wenchen on his motorbike. Again, any cold or discomfort was completely overpowered by the glory of the scenery. I just could not believe such a place existed. About three or four hours in, we came upon a small village. Lo and behold, Karma Senge was just standing there. He thought I would arrive two days following, but in any case, he just took my hands in his and ordered immediate hospitality from the house he was standing next to, which turned out to be the house of the mother of one of his kids. So I met her and their little girl for the afternoon, and then got taken around sight-seeing a bit before heading out to Wenchen. 
This is getting rather long....We were received at Wenchen with incredible warmth from all the nuns there. Even the little Kham dialect I know proved priceless. They were hugging, hitting and tickling me on the first day. The first week, KSR taught on the Yeshe Nyima commentary twice a day. During that time, I got used to licking tsampa for breakfast, peeing and pooing among the juniper bushes, and not showering. He then went back to visit his Sangyum, but we were hit with a huge snow storm, so he stayed there and I got a chance to hang with the nuns on my own without having to watch Chinese action flicks (on the solar-battery-powered portable dvd player Rinpoche has). I tried not to feel too special about the fact that the nuns would subtly fight over who would get to host me for any of the day's meals--and for them there are, fortunately or unfortunately, five: breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, dinner, and after dinner.
Some days I actually thought I might explode, but lucky for them they didn't have to deal with any such ugliness. I could always make an exception though if it were yoghurt, which is probably at least forty percent milk fat and tastes like ratna's dessert. The food was totally palatable for my stomach, even "tu," which is the pinnacle of Tibetan culinary sophistication: cheese and butter mixed together. The only thing I had a bit of a hard time with was sometimes the intensly bitter winter vegetables that were more often than not close to rotten.
After the bulk of the sky had dumped itself on to us, we'd spend the mornings on the rooftops clearing off the snow with snow-pushers--definitely a good way to stay warm. It was hard enough to do even without a baby on our backs like the one nun who came to the nunnery just after her baby was born. A couple days later, Sangye Tenzin appeared out of nowhere to pick up some forty odd wooden planks for the house he's building at Kyere Monastery. Since he's a guy and has a 'Je' he wasn't allowed in the nunnery at all, even to sleep, so him and his friend had to bunker under a slanted rock for the night. He wasn't even allowed to see his relatives as they were retreatant nuns and had to stay out of sight. It actually turns out that all the nuns seem to be relatives of each other, except for the ones from Tsawa Gon and a few other excecptions. They parted the next day with their forty boards on their ten yaks. Kham dialect is so different than central Tibetan, nobody had any idea what I was talking about when I said "yak" because they call them "kheng." 
You must be procrastinating from your work if you've read this far. To put it simply, the nuns were absolutely fantastic and I wish even a couple of them could come to Canada to study. There were a few that were extremely bright, and all were so generous. I also developed a serious soft spot for KSR's son, Tenzin Tinley, who would keep us constantly entertained with his chinese-action-flick reenactments. By the time Rinpoche returned to the nunnery, it was already time for me to start heading back out of Surmang for my Beijing departure. We got word that Rinpoche's car had arrived down below (there's no road up the one kilometre from the small village to the nunnery) so we headed out.
Unfortunately, the car was there, but not running, so we took motorbikes to Kyere Gon. They figured it was the alternator, so for the next two days while I was breezing about the sacred sites of Kyere Shelkar with Sangye Tenzin and the young Drubju Tulku, Sonam Wandu (KSR's attendant in 2005) drove five hours and five hours back to Chamdo to get a new one. They were then able to drive the car up to Kyere Gon Monastery so we decided to set out the next day. After a restful visit on the mountain and a wonderful audience with Damcho Rinpoche (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's brother), we set out. About two-hundred metres from the monastery, the car died. This time they (the royal they, if there is such a thing,) meaning Sonam Wangdu realized it was some random part in the gas tank that makes something else rotate and somehow the whole contraption uses the car's electric signal to circulate the fuel i think. Again, he drove five hours to Chamdo and five hours back. They replaced the old part with the new, a again, no success. It took another half day to re-install, and I have to say I was severly impressed. Of course, I'm writing from India, so ,we did of course make it out, and me with six kilos of drolma (tiny Tibetan sweet potatos) no less.
Rinpoche was amazing the enitre time, making sure I was eating properly and getting adequate care. He took me all the way back out to Jekundo with a pitstop in Namgyaltse. Even though the current Trungpa Rinpoche reincarnation had just left for the Kagyu Monlam in Nangchen, by virtue of their cell phones, KSR request him to turn back just so that I could meet him! I guess he hadn't gotten very far out, because they were back in less than a half-an-hour. It was short but very sweet. KSR also introduced me to another lama there briefly, with whom I felt a very strong connection. He kept giving me things, including a very precious-looking locket with some kind of powder inside. I'll have to ask Karma Senge again what it is exactly, but I think it's very special.
Karma Senge wanted to make sure you all knew he sends his regards and looks forward to seeing us. I had a rather uneventful trip back to Beijing, slightly tinted with a longing to stay in a place lacking electricity and distractions but with an excitement to get back to India as well. Oh, plus a drunk guy from Golok who, on the bus ride back out to Xining, proclaimed me his khandro and who, after I'd ignore him after saying for the fifteenth time I wasn't going to go to bed with him, would resort to Mandarin thinking I would probably understand that better. He was nice though, and I felt worse for his friend who seemed horribly embarrassed by the whole drama. A nice train ride to Beijing, a belly full of sushi, and a sambha dance later, I flew to Delhi where, despite the stench, thieves, and diarrhea-upon-arrival, I somehow always feel at home in a way. So, now I'm here for a few weeks before my two-and-a-half month stay in Bodhgaya, planning to work full time more or less, so please keep me in the loop on any pertinent emails. Ok, love you all, and please let me know if there's anything I can do from here. jess |