It’s early morning in Leh and the day is still putting its pants on. A dozen species of birds sing their single tune while crows cackle on about some ageless irritation no one pays heed to. What is it crows? What can we do to make it better?
From the vantage point of my balcony, cypress trees sway to a cool morning breeze and fluffy families of clouds migrate in herds across the sky. Apricot trees are incense to the air and the surrounding mountains can be convincing that this valley is all the world there is. Below me is a sight that sparks to life little pricks hopes that dance in my heart.
It’s 6am and the family who runs this guesthouse is already up to tend to their garden. The father, Tibetan, waters, and the mother, Islamic, weeds, while their oldest son hustle about his various chores. What is more beautiful than such a site?
The silent symmetry of their combined efforts, how it keeps their home lovely, how it keeps their garden growing—it all seems to be an ointment to these modern ailments we wonder what to do about.
Yesterday, I drove a motorbike to Thiksey Monastery where for 600 years Buddhist monks have been seeking answers to life’s glaring questions by following a 2,500 year old prescription given by a prince who left his life of luxury to search for unshakable Truth.
I find myself alone in one of the monastery’s smaller temples watching a monk clean a portrait of the Dalai Lama. He cleans like the fate of the world depends on removing every last mote of dust. And maybe it does?
At my roadside stop for lunch, a smiling German, Peter, approaches my table, “Is it all right if I join you?” He asks. We share the sort of lightly swimming conversation lone travelers happy with some company have. He is in IT back in Germany and in India for just two weeks, a trip prompted by the wedding of two of his outsourced coworkers. He asks with about my life and he listens with a smiling interest as i cough out the disparate details. I tell Peter about my writing, building project, and role with The Integral Heart Family in Guatemala. He jotted down the website and told me he could likely donate something.
As I drove my motorbike back, I felt so incredible that a trip to India could connect a German with the cause giving Guatemalan kids the context they need to taste the fruit of their dreams. In a more deliberate way, this is exactly what my friend Paul on his two-year trip around the world does. He’s trying to connect 200 people to the Integral Heart Family’s cause. “I don’t care if they give me $2”, he told me, “I just want people to see what we can all do together.”
The line I keep repeating from the teaching I attended with the Dalai Lama is when he said, “It’s when you feel you have no one to help, that’s when you really go into suffering.”
It makes me see that the work of The Integral Heart is not just about the kids in Guatemala. It’s also about helping people by connecting them with a way to help those kids.
The other week, after a yoga class in Manali, I small group of international wanderers lingered and shared a tea. When it came out I was American, someone brought up politics. That’s what people do when they find out you’re American (no one finds out your Estonian and brings up politics).
I told him that for the past year and a half I’ve mostly stopped following the news. I told him that ever since, the world started to seem fine. It’s not to say that I am adverse from learning what’s happening. It’s not that I’m blind to the problems in our world that maybe we should know about. But our media seems to inform us in the same way gradeschool gossips murmur about the embarrassing issues of others to bring attention and relevancy to themselves.
“What,” I had to ask myself, “does following the daily news really do for me?” I got upset on a daily basis, I formed opinions that led to arguments and pitted me against others who had formed different opinions and wanted me to have the same as them. Holding to such opinions has chronically led to arguments and anger in my family—some members so polarized to different sides they stopped talking to each other for an interval.
Better it seems to me to take in the world from my senses, where everywhere I look I see human beings being humane, people fighting good fights, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, but trying really hard to catch hold of contentment. And from where I write these words, I see a family working together to continue to have what they need to sustain their mutually dependent wives. Here is the world I choose to lose myself in on a daily observing and discovery of. I want to rest my eyes right in front of me, away from meaningless opinions about what’s wrong with the world and who has the answer.
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Thanks for popping by. If you enjoy this land, feel free to give a lil tip to the Integral Heart kids in Guatemala and check out my books on Amazon 🙂
