Jerry has come home, once again...
A year and a half after his maha-departure from this world in which we live, eat, write and love, Jerry's mortal ashes, the quiet remains of his wry, charming, effervescent, insouciant, clever, aesthetic, humorous, lovable material substance was brought back to the spirit of Nepal he adored by his adoring wife, Monique.
I picked Monique up at Tribhuvan airport on Thursday about 3:30 pm, leaving work early to meet her after ten years away from Kathmandu. She and Jerry were here last just when we'd finished our new home in Budhanilkantha, a decade past by now...
I'd planned to take Monique straight home, but Shakun had remembered in the morning that I was bringing Jerry's ashes home that day and her Hindu-Buddhist upbringing recoiled at the thought of transporting these spiritually endowed ashes into our compound before they were adequately blessed and ritually 'cleansed' by the deities that be.
I didn't have a problem with that need (though I'm a bit more of a Western 'materialistic' in my spiritual thinking about such earthly remains...). It's just that my dear wife knew for a month that M was bringing J's ashes and hadn't said anything about it until the morning I was going to meet M at the airport, of course...
Husbands and wives... Chapter 108... ;-)
Yet, as life and marriage will have it, everything worked out more beautifully due to Shakun's insistence. Both Shakun and I made a few phone calls in the morning to align our plans with spiritual requirements or recommendations. Shakun reached out through her indigenous Nepali Buddhist associations about protocols while I went to dear Reena at Save the Children to see if she could contact Balaram, our previous chowkidar (guard) who had always doubled as our Tamang Buddhist lama, to see if Balaram could help with the ritual blessings at home.
Thus, before even reaching the airport in the afternoon, I knew that I would take Monique with Jerry's ashes to Choki Nima's Seto Gompa at Boudha on the way home. There was already a major Amitabha puja for long life being conducted there (as Carrie Sengleman had advised me).
We went up into the magnificent prayer chamber, where the monks were chanting and intoning while the drums were being beaten and the horns blowing and the Buddhas looking down from their glass cases and the walls shimmering with paintings of mandala and scenes of saints and rishis and rimpoches and devotees while we mere mortals made our way around the sitted monks to the front of the sanctuary where Choki Nima was perched on his sacred throne cross-legged holding his bell and vajra swaying gently to the sound of the prayers and Tibetan sutra.
Choki Nima smiled in knowledge and self-knowledge seeing me again so recently after the major Buddhist monlam that Shakun had organized a few weeks before. I don't know if he remembers that I had taken refuge with him decades before in his gompa, under the wise shadow of the great sages and teachers of his long lineage. But although profoundly attracted and deeply affected by that wisdom literature and psychological insights, I had hewn closer back to my Jewish faith over the years -- always seeking my own balance among the Hebraic truths of my family, the Buddhist insights into impermanence and, as I grew older, my natural attraction to the softly swaying Taoist bamboo groves of this world.
Thus, we stood, bowed our heads in respect and handed over our kata (silken ritual shawls) to Choki Nima for his meditative words and incantations over our all-so-human souls and the tender earthly remains of one so dear, so near and yet so far from us. We looked at each other, surrounded by the sanctity of the setting and the moment, then smiled peacefully knowing we had Jerry's ashes fully and thoroughly blessed before bringing them home.
Of course, Monique was incredibly moved to have had that sacred moment w/ all of the beauty, transcendence and peacefulness of a profoundly traditional Mahayana Tibetan Buddhist ceremony within an hour of her first stop in Kathmandu on this deeply personal and vulnerable mission to bring Jerry 'home' to Nepal.
Not everyone knows how far back goes Jerry's love of Nepal, as he was the Deputy Peace Corps Director here in the late 60s. You can imagine how innocent, serene and ancient the country must have been at that time! All of the modernization, traffic, congestion, construction, environmental decay, population explosion, sewage rivers, high rises, shopping malls and international influence was still decades in the future.
For those westerners fortunate enough to have come here at that time, it must have been a dream, an ein-believable dream...
Jerry offered me a remarkable insight into his life one of the last times I saw him at his beautiful home in Concord, MA, on a late August day, when his illness, yet to be diagnosed as cancer, was eating him from the inside and Monique had gone out to buy him some antibiotics. He said that there had only been three days in his life when he didn't think of food all day -- as those of us who knew him knew he was first a gourmand, second a chef and third everything else... First, he said, when he graduated from college, second when he left Nepal after Peace Corps in tears on his flight out of Kathmandu and third, that day, when he could hardly breathe due to the illness ravaging him from the inside.
That illness, the cancer in his lungs, eventually killed him three months later, after two strokes, more than a month in the hospital and through his supreme effort to beat the sickness back to restore his health and to plan his next meal. But the cancer, as so often is the case, was too strong, too malevolent, too aggressive, too unrelenting, uncaring of our human loves and concerns to push away. Fortunately, Jerry went quickly that autumn, watching the leaves fall one by one on his yard and pond, creating a pyre of color around him. For Jerry was not the type of person who would have wanted to linger weakened, dependent, unable to live the full, adventurous, creative and culinary life that he always enjoyed.
So, this w/end, with Monique and Sam we were able to bring Jerry's essence back to the country he so loved and which had given him such early inspiration in his remarkable and geographically radiant life.
Then that evening at home, through the kindness of beloved simple-hearted Reens, we had a household puja under our tea house by the pond in the front yard on the pathway to our home. Balaram and Ambar conducted a three hour puja in the tea house with four of their monastic Tamang brothers. It was so illusively beautiful in the quiet of the night under the powerful protection of Shivapuri w/ the frogs croaking in our pond. There was an old photo of a younger Jerry with flowers in his hair at his Buddhist wedding with Monique on the table in the candle light surrounded by sacred iconography, the monks in maroon and yellow robes, chanting, praying, blowing their horns, hitting their cymbals and effortlessly bringing a sacred spiritual quiet to our private landscapes, internal, external and communal.
Monique was at peace, at last, after her long travels from Boston to Kathmandu. She felt and knew that she'd brought her beloved husband, friend and partner's holy remains back where he always wanted to be, below the Himalaya.
She had completed one more of her profoundly personal commitments to him.
And, in doing so, brought herself a bit more acceptance of this necessary, if painful, transition in her earthly life.
For me, too, as you know, this puja offering was a gift for Jerry who had given me so much in my life, not the least many years ago, convincing my then boss, Joy Carol, in 1987 that I was the right person to be the next director of Save in Nepal after Gary Shaye. Jerry helped me in so many ways on the path that I've followed for the past 30 years. In so many ways he was the inspiration, the professional and personal guide/guru that every young man can benefit from in their 20s when they are trying to figure out the adult world around them with its games, opportunities, requirements and joys.
Jerry had that unique gift of joy and generosity. He touched people in a certain special way. He made them feel more alive, more appreciative, more awake, more aware, more important. He was one of my dearest friends and companions during that early middle of my life. We knew that we were different in certain ways of love and family, but we knew even more how much we were connected from the source in a way that mirrored our lives and our natures...
In this and in so many, many ways, Jerry was a second father and big brother to me -- as he will remain for the rest of my life...
Om Shanti. Om Shalom.
You are loved...
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Friendship n Time
Friendship is an enviable current of life that can flow like a river or become stagnant over time. Time itself is one factor as is fresh air, open emotions and honesty...
Monday, March 21, 2011
The Heart That Leads Us...
As we know, it's all a gift, no matter which way we go... it's the heart that leads us.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Dark Shimmering over Pokhara's Waters
Well, it's 10 am Pokhara time. Spent the night at Mike's lakeside, still the choice spot for morning views across the lake, not to mention the Big Dipper last night in the dark shimmering above the still waters.
Even w/ all the hopes, confusion and construction of our Naya Nepal, this Phew Tal lake-side spot has kept its charm and peacefulness.
The lovely walkway that the YCL built along the shore by the pastel boats simply adds to the historic charm.
I came here first in 1979 and, sans doubt, I still love these idyllic and sentimental Pokhara scenes...
Not exactly Lago Lugano, but with those pure snows of Machhupuchare and the Annapurnas profoundly visible on the horizon, this compares w/ the sanctity and Nepali charm of our own backyard Budhanilkantha...
Even w/ all the hopes, confusion and construction of our Naya Nepal, this Phew Tal lake-side spot has kept its charm and peacefulness.
The lovely walkway that the YCL built along the shore by the pastel boats simply adds to the historic charm.
I came here first in 1979 and, sans doubt, I still love these idyllic and sentimental Pokhara scenes...
Not exactly Lago Lugano, but with those pure snows of Machhupuchare and the Annapurnas profoundly visible on the horizon, this compares w/ the sanctity and Nepali charm of our own backyard Budhanilkantha...
Monday, March 14, 2011
The Quest for American Boarding Schools
It's a helluva a funny world...
And I mean that in every Woody Allen, Marx Brothers, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth-ian sense of the ironies, joys and despairs of this ever-shifting, mercurial physical and moral universe...
The other day a friend was tearing her hair out (I exaggerate... slightly...) and kvetching w/ G-d over Andover ('beloved 4th generation Andover...') not even willing to countenance her child as a student('traitorous Andover...'), and then -- whoosh -- another innocent boarding school swoops in like the blessed shadow of the Archangel Michael with a message of FULL EXPENSES all covered++ for her beloved n cherished daughter ('she of four generations of Andover descent...'). Joy!!
Now, as our own deeply cherished and admired NMH struggles to figure out who to love and who to fund, another angelic voice comes from the American wilderness of Vermont to bless another friend's beloved, talented, charismatic son, heir-apparent to their dreams and aspirations, with a gift outright of $25k/year to join their splendid, idealistic and ambitious world of cows, youth and intellect. More Joy!!
As my friend Carl of fond Amherst memories told me years ago, on the cusp
of our own beloved, irreplaceable sons heading off to the mysterious scholastic world of NMH, the unspoken secret of American education is that these expensive, elite, unique and precocious US boarding schools have more $$ to give for scholarships to the offspring of we upper-middle-class pretenders than most US colleges or universities will have to offer.
It's a helluva funny world, brothers and sisters...
Each of us has strode across the worldly and spiritual chasms of our once idealistic, youthful, impressionable dreams to find our own way in this richly troubling, endearing and magnificent world.
Yet, as we cross that psychological, emotional gorge into 'middle age' (another challenging form of the wise, impossible and impartial Middle Path...), for some, into our mid-50s, our greatest joys and dreams have been grafted now within our children, their futures, their hopes, their dreams now... those human creatures most dear to us.
Whatever we can do to light and liberate their paths to offer them (as Hannah Montana sings...) 'the best of both worlds' is now our greatest treasure, meaning and aspiration.
That we share unbound...
And I mean that in every Woody Allen, Marx Brothers, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth-ian sense of the ironies, joys and despairs of this ever-shifting, mercurial physical and moral universe...
The other day a friend was tearing her hair out (I exaggerate... slightly...) and kvetching w/ G-d over Andover ('beloved 4th generation Andover...') not even willing to countenance her child as a student('traitorous Andover...'), and then -- whoosh -- another innocent boarding school swoops in like the blessed shadow of the Archangel Michael with a message of FULL EXPENSES all covered++ for her beloved n cherished daughter ('she of four generations of Andover descent...'). Joy!!
Now, as our own deeply cherished and admired NMH struggles to figure out who to love and who to fund, another angelic voice comes from the American wilderness of Vermont to bless another friend's beloved, talented, charismatic son, heir-apparent to their dreams and aspirations, with a gift outright of $25k/year to join their splendid, idealistic and ambitious world of cows, youth and intellect. More Joy!!
As my friend Carl of fond Amherst memories told me years ago, on the cusp
of our own beloved, irreplaceable sons heading off to the mysterious scholastic world of NMH, the unspoken secret of American education is that these expensive, elite, unique and precocious US boarding schools have more $$ to give for scholarships to the offspring of we upper-middle-class pretenders than most US colleges or universities will have to offer.
It's a helluva funny world, brothers and sisters...
Each of us has strode across the worldly and spiritual chasms of our once idealistic, youthful, impressionable dreams to find our own way in this richly troubling, endearing and magnificent world.
Yet, as we cross that psychological, emotional gorge into 'middle age' (another challenging form of the wise, impossible and impartial Middle Path...), for some, into our mid-50s, our greatest joys and dreams have been grafted now within our children, their futures, their hopes, their dreams now... those human creatures most dear to us.
Whatever we can do to light and liberate their paths to offer them (as Hannah Montana sings...) 'the best of both worlds' is now our greatest treasure, meaning and aspiration.
That we share unbound...
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Venice, Poetry & Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky on Venice:
"It is as though space, cognizant here more than anyplace else of its inferiority to time, answers it with the only property time doesn’t possess: with beauty. And that’s why water takes this answer, twists it, wallops and shreds it, but ultimately carries it by and large intact off into the Adriatic." 'Watermark'
Most people have probably never heard of 'Watermark', and perhaps not even of Joseph Brodsky. But he’s one of Russia’s most famous authors. Born in 1940 in Leningrad, he began writing poetry at the age of eighteen.
In 1963 (when he was just 23), Brodsky was arrested and a year later charged with social parasitism by the Soviet authorities. What follows is one of the most famous trial testimonies in the Soviet era (recorded in shorthand by journalist Friega Vigdorova):
Judge: And what is your profession in general?
Brodsky: Poet translator.
Judge: Who recognized you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?
Brodsky: No one. And who enrolled me in the ranks of humanity?
Judge: Did you study this?
Brodsky: This?
Judge: To become a poet. You did not try to finish high school where they prepare, where they teach?
Brodsky: I didn’t think you could get this from school.
Judge: How then?
Brodsky: I think that it . . . comes from God.
For his “crimes,” Brodsky was sentenced to five years of internal exile with obligation for physical work; he served 18 months in the Archangelsk region before his sentence was commuted in 1965. Brodsky emigrated to the United States in 1972 as an involuntary exile from the Soviet Union.
In 1987, Joseph Brodsky was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity.”
Joseph Brodsky died in New York City on January 28, 1996.
For Brodsky, as 'Watermark' attests, Venice was where his heart was forged, and where Brodsky’s spirit endures: he was buried at Isola di San Michele cemetery in Venice.
"It is as though space, cognizant here more than anyplace else of its inferiority to time, answers it with the only property time doesn’t possess: with beauty. And that’s why water takes this answer, twists it, wallops and shreds it, but ultimately carries it by and large intact off into the Adriatic." 'Watermark'
Most people have probably never heard of 'Watermark', and perhaps not even of Joseph Brodsky. But he’s one of Russia’s most famous authors. Born in 1940 in Leningrad, he began writing poetry at the age of eighteen.
In 1963 (when he was just 23), Brodsky was arrested and a year later charged with social parasitism by the Soviet authorities. What follows is one of the most famous trial testimonies in the Soviet era (recorded in shorthand by journalist Friega Vigdorova):
Judge: And what is your profession in general?
Brodsky: Poet translator.
Judge: Who recognized you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?
Brodsky: No one. And who enrolled me in the ranks of humanity?
Judge: Did you study this?
Brodsky: This?
Judge: To become a poet. You did not try to finish high school where they prepare, where they teach?
Brodsky: I didn’t think you could get this from school.
Judge: How then?
Brodsky: I think that it . . . comes from God.
For his “crimes,” Brodsky was sentenced to five years of internal exile with obligation for physical work; he served 18 months in the Archangelsk region before his sentence was commuted in 1965. Brodsky emigrated to the United States in 1972 as an involuntary exile from the Soviet Union.
In 1987, Joseph Brodsky was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity.”
Joseph Brodsky died in New York City on January 28, 1996.
For Brodsky, as 'Watermark' attests, Venice was where his heart was forged, and where Brodsky’s spirit endures: he was buried at Isola di San Michele cemetery in Venice.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Hearing Federalism Thinking Nature
Sitting in Pokhara listening to a discussion on federalism in Nepal...
I flew this morning from Kathmandu to Pokhara. The skies were that dark, troubling grey that is unusual at this time of year in the Himalaya. We'd had days of absolutely cerulean, clear skies -- so crisp that we could see the trails across the Valley on Chandragiri 20 kms away. But something changed in the world over night and there was a chill and something foreboding in the sky in the morning.
Our flight bounced around a bit en route to Pokhara. It's only a 30 minute flight, but Sita and Surendra were a bit uncomfortable by the way that the small plane was shaken (not stirred...) while in the air...
This morning, I was out in the garden early as I woke about 5:30 am. These days Shaku and I are in Leah's bed. It used to be Ezi's bed, but it was moved up to Leah's room (which used to be my study...) when Ezi returned last summer to the US to start college. We'd gone to bed relatively early, 10 pm, so when I woke when the computer turned on on its own (I'm used to this odd curiosity...), I decided to put on a jacket, my cashmere scarf and take a look at the yard while the light came back into the world.
Gita was a bit surprised to see me standing there by the pond when she came in the compound about 6:00 am. She's there that time most days to help Leah get ready for school, then us for work. If there is a true spirit to our home, I'd nominate Gita. She's been with us for 20 years, since just after Joshua was born. Sometimes I wonder who has the better life as we leave at 8 am for work and the mean streets of the city while Gita smiles gently, closes the gate and steps back into our lovely garden to spend the day while we don't get home until nearly 7:30 pm every day. What Gita enjoys most of the week, I long for when I get home on Friday night when I am in my boxers and wearing my crocs til Monday morning. If I can stay in this sanctuary for the whole w/end, I'm content.
This morning as the two Kalis (Kali mere and Sano Kali) were chasing me and themselves around the garden, I went back to where our dhungri bas is growing to observe the bright bursts of dense sheaves of rose colored peach blossoms and the five white petals and yellow stamen of the plum blossoms. Spring brings such beauty for free in our backyard.
There's always much to do back there and the source of endless joy and timelessness. This morning I found myself tossing stones that I'd piled up by an old unused green metal guardhouse in the way beyond. I began to create stone fields around some of the larger bamboo a year or so ago. These were bigger boulders, so heavy that I could just carry one at a time to pile them around some of the clumping bamboo that I didn't really want to spread very far from their cluster center. Then, a couple weeks ago, I started to do the same with smaller, fist-sized stones that I'd collected over the years while digging out the soil. I just toss them around these big bamboo culms so that they look like stone seas that surround the bamboo shoots, separating them from the open fields and defining their space. There's a bit of a Japanese zen style here, but for me, it's just a childhood pleasure, a boy's delight, in tossing these handsome stones onto new piles, forming rocky mandalas around these magnificent vertical grass stalks.
Nature... such shapes, textures, colors, images, full of life and cold, heavy and inanimate... all solid, material, impressive, beautiful, unusual, unique... if there was/is no mind of g-d, then all credit to the wonders and miracle of how atoms and energy combine to amuse and delight we human creatures... could they have really all been created for our pleasure... if so, thank-you, if one doesn't think too deeply on such things, they give great joy and satisfaction...
sometimes that's just enough...
I flew this morning from Kathmandu to Pokhara. The skies were that dark, troubling grey that is unusual at this time of year in the Himalaya. We'd had days of absolutely cerulean, clear skies -- so crisp that we could see the trails across the Valley on Chandragiri 20 kms away. But something changed in the world over night and there was a chill and something foreboding in the sky in the morning.
Our flight bounced around a bit en route to Pokhara. It's only a 30 minute flight, but Sita and Surendra were a bit uncomfortable by the way that the small plane was shaken (not stirred...) while in the air...
This morning, I was out in the garden early as I woke about 5:30 am. These days Shaku and I are in Leah's bed. It used to be Ezi's bed, but it was moved up to Leah's room (which used to be my study...) when Ezi returned last summer to the US to start college. We'd gone to bed relatively early, 10 pm, so when I woke when the computer turned on on its own (I'm used to this odd curiosity...), I decided to put on a jacket, my cashmere scarf and take a look at the yard while the light came back into the world.
Gita was a bit surprised to see me standing there by the pond when she came in the compound about 6:00 am. She's there that time most days to help Leah get ready for school, then us for work. If there is a true spirit to our home, I'd nominate Gita. She's been with us for 20 years, since just after Joshua was born. Sometimes I wonder who has the better life as we leave at 8 am for work and the mean streets of the city while Gita smiles gently, closes the gate and steps back into our lovely garden to spend the day while we don't get home until nearly 7:30 pm every day. What Gita enjoys most of the week, I long for when I get home on Friday night when I am in my boxers and wearing my crocs til Monday morning. If I can stay in this sanctuary for the whole w/end, I'm content.
This morning as the two Kalis (Kali mere and Sano Kali) were chasing me and themselves around the garden, I went back to where our dhungri bas is growing to observe the bright bursts of dense sheaves of rose colored peach blossoms and the five white petals and yellow stamen of the plum blossoms. Spring brings such beauty for free in our backyard.
There's always much to do back there and the source of endless joy and timelessness. This morning I found myself tossing stones that I'd piled up by an old unused green metal guardhouse in the way beyond. I began to create stone fields around some of the larger bamboo a year or so ago. These were bigger boulders, so heavy that I could just carry one at a time to pile them around some of the clumping bamboo that I didn't really want to spread very far from their cluster center. Then, a couple weeks ago, I started to do the same with smaller, fist-sized stones that I'd collected over the years while digging out the soil. I just toss them around these big bamboo culms so that they look like stone seas that surround the bamboo shoots, separating them from the open fields and defining their space. There's a bit of a Japanese zen style here, but for me, it's just a childhood pleasure, a boy's delight, in tossing these handsome stones onto new piles, forming rocky mandalas around these magnificent vertical grass stalks.
Nature... such shapes, textures, colors, images, full of life and cold, heavy and inanimate... all solid, material, impressive, beautiful, unusual, unique... if there was/is no mind of g-d, then all credit to the wonders and miracle of how atoms and energy combine to amuse and delight we human creatures... could they have really all been created for our pleasure... if so, thank-you, if one doesn't think too deeply on such things, they give great joy and satisfaction...
sometimes that's just enough...
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