Spokane

June 29, 2017 Evening

Currently I'm typing this while in a cool room on the north side of the Padma Ling Tibetan Buddhist center in Spokane. It is a Chagdud Gonpa center, and teaches the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. I came for a White Taraand Tibetan yoga practice. I heard about the event back in February in Lama Inge's newsletter and immediately wrote her that I would be coming and to please let me know if she had a room available at the center. She replied that she would save me a room, and was looking forward to seeing me.

Lama Inge is a small old woman with a huge personality. She is a German Tibetan Buddhist Lama. She became a Lama under Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche back in the 80's. He set her up in the center in Spokane where she has taught ever since. I met her at a Red Tara event in Cottage Grove in 1999. Jeff Pearson introduced us. I liked her immediately because she seemed to be both compassionate yet realistic, and had a knack for spotting bullshit and calling it that. At the same time she is mystical. She is one of my role models. Not that I intend to be a Lama, but she is a teacher, and she has a strength of knowing when to be firm, and when to be soft.

I am always nervous about coming to Buddhist events. I've had mostly amazing experiences, but It's always awkward to try to remember on which side of my texts to place my bell (the left), the order of my texts is always wrong no matter what practice I'm doing because I'm not regular enough, I mumble most of the Tibetan words because I have a hard time with the language, I forget which mudras to do and when, I forget which direction to do my prostrations and awkwardly stand around waiting for someone to go first. There is so much nuance, so many details, that if you aren't practicing at a center you forget. Judy and I do practice most Sundays during the school year, but we aren't super formal.

To make it to this event I had to ask Jeff to take days off work so he could hang with Ruben, and I would be missing Ruben's 14^th birthday. (I'll make it up to him by taking him to Disneyland in another week) I had to drive from Salem to Spokane by myself.

I GOT to drive from Salem to Spokane by myself. I haven't had 4 days to myself since before Ruben.

Really

All

By

Myself.

So it took me a while to get going this morning. I got up feeling out of sorts, and slowly packed. I cleaned the kitchen, and Cab came by and dropped off my big cooler. I packed most of my food for a few days, so I wouldn't have to break my diet very much. I intend to keep it up as much as possible.

I finally hit the road at 11:00, and then was back at the apartment getting my sunglasses 2 minutes later. Having kissed Ruben and leaving a second time the journey was then uneventful. I stopped at a few rest areas, ate some healthy snacks, and arrived at the Gonpa in time for evening prayers.

I arrived and went in the front door, listening for sounds of people and found Lama Inge in the kitchen preparing dinner. She paused and showed me my choice of rooms, the hot room in the front next to the door or the cool room on the garden side of the house with the flowing white curtains and the cute little bed. So I put my suitcase in the room with the flowing curtains and considered myself settled.

I quickly changed into my prayer skirt and joined in. I didn't have my evening prayers in order, but at least I had them. I shared one with a young man who sat next to me I later learned was Michael. After we finished evening prayers, Lama Inge insisted I try some of her soup which was indeed delicious. Totally not on my diet, but I had a little bit anyway. It was potsticker soup with rice and herbs. She made it for the visiting Lama and his wife. Tibetans always have soup as their evening meal she said. I volunteered to make tea for the Lamas tomorrow and during the event. I met two of the fellows who are staying here, Josh and Michael. Lama Inge often has students of hers stay here, and also she rents rooms to college students as well if she has space. There are always people around, different people every time I come.

Let me tell you about the house. It's huge. It's old. The wiring is iffy, the porches had been turned into small unheated bedrooms, The kitchen is small. The sitting room and the living room are used as practice spaces, and the dining room for dining. Lama Inge loves to garden, and the yard and it's plants are lush and thriving. There is a path around the house for circumambulations, and a stupa in the back with a little path around it. There is a small attached sun room off the back of the kitchen, and there is a large patio area with chairs and tables for dining outside.

Every spot in the house to put something, has something in it. It is cluttered with a mix of yard sale finds, Buddhist items and decorations, live plants, dried plants, lamps, instruments, knick knacks, and remarkably little dust. Every floor is covered with a rug, with a rug covering the rug. Some spots have three layers of rug.

For example the room I stayed in had a four poster wooden bed in the corner, a red painted chest of drawers, a chest, three small wicker chairs with pads of different colors, another chest of drawers made of plywood and unpainted, with a lamp that is shaped and painted like a basket of fruit, and an ottoman. For some reason the walls are covered in shingles painted brown. The door is white with a glass panel in the middle (even the bathroom door has a glass panel in the middle) and covered with a curtain. The window is permanently open for summer with mosquito netting pinned into the opening. Somehow the entire house comes off as charming, this room in particular. It has two rugs.

After I ate I retired to my little room exhausted. The drive was long and although I was thoroughly entertained with podcasts (Skeptics guide to the universe), music (FBI setlist), and audiobooks (Choose your own Autobiography by Neil Patrick Harris) I felt very tired as soon as I sat down. As I sit on my cute little bed typing this, my plan is to wash my face, and go to bed early, and perhaps get a walk in before breakfast. There is a natural food store just a few blocks up the hill that I can go eat at. Lama Inge says she gets up at 4am to do her morning practice and finished by 5am. Josh usually starts at 5am. I don't know if I'll be up that early, but I hope to get a start on the day. The yoga lesson starts at 10am.

June 30 Midday

This morning I got up at 6:30, I slept late! I put on some workout clothes and I went for a walk up the hill. I don't know how far I went, I jogged a bit on the flat parts, and when I figured I'd gone about half an hour I turned back. I stopped at the market and bought a yogurt and some blueberries to go with my seeds and nuts for breakfast. When I got back I helped Lama Inge clean up breakfast and dried the dishes, took a quick shower, and changed into practice clothes.

While we were chatting and washing up Lama Inge and I were talking about Ngondro practice (She was checking up on me.) and about prostrations. I asked if there was a special way to do them so that you didn't get so sore. She said just to work up to doing 100 a day. She did 100 a day (or more) for decades and still does 50 a day and she is in her 70's. She credits prostrations for keeping her healthy.

Ngondro is a preliminary Buddhist practice. It involves doing many thousands of several different mantras, andany thousands full prostrations. I started it, but haven't gotten very far. It is hard physical work, but for me it's also extremely hard mental work.

People started milling around the front room, at 9:30am, and one of the regular practitioners asked me “Is that Josh?” I told her it was and then I made the connection. Lama Inge had been down through the valley recently to get Josh. He had been in a retreat in southern Oregon for FOUR YEARS. Later we talked about it a little. He said he did the practice we are learning every day. He said it is very powerful when you do all the motions in one breath. He said it was difficult to talk to people at first. He had spent three months not speaking, and when he started speaking again he was surprised at the sound of his own voice.

About 8 more people showed up, and we began the practice. It's a combination of yoga and diety visualization. It was tricky for me, partly because I had an outdated text, but I'll have the new one for the afternoon session. The movements will be easy enough to get when I have been through them a few times. Thanks to years of martial arts training I learn quickly from watching other people move. The breathing will be the tricky part.

Lama Pema Dorje

My body doesn't like sitting on the floor in a meditation posture. It hurts. It hurts in my thighs, in my glutes, in my lower back, and mostly across my shoulders. It feels like fires in my body. I don't have any trouble sitting on the floor, but usually I have a backrest, or I can wiggle. Practicing with Judy I wiggle a lot. Anyway I was glad that today part of the time we were doing the yoga moves because I was hurting, and it was only the first session of six over the course of the weekend. When we finished I gratefully stood up and bowed. I stood there a long time relishing the feeling of standing. Actually it could have been worse, sometimes my legs get pins and needles then go numb.

I helped Lama Inge serve lunch by putting grapes on the little plates for dessert, then I retired to my little room to eat my lunch and write this. The afternoon session is from 3-5pm.

Friday June 30 in the evening

I fell asleep for a while before the afternoon session. I'm just so relaxed. I feel like I've been here for days and not for 24 hours.

I woke up at 2:30pm and went out to greet the practitioners. I bought the text that Lama Pema wrote. It says on the cover “Refining the Body for Longevity: A Gift of the Splendor of Immortality”. The practice consists of breathing, meditation, deity practice, mantras, 13 physical trainings, mantras, and dedication. Sitting on the floor hurt just as badly. I was wondering if meditation is supposed to be so painful. I wiggled more this time. Tomorrow I hope I can sit in the back where my wiggling won't bother anyone. Today I was right in front of Lama Pema.

After the practice I was so hungry! I went out to the car and got my salad, avocado, chicken breast, and egg and dug in. As soon as I had finished I went outside to hang out and help with the cooking for the Lama's dinner. Jan was making salmon on the hibachi. Jan and I talked for a while, she is my age, lives on an Indian reservation, and plays the harp. Michael joined us and told us a very sad story about his mother having surgery for a brain tumor.

When the salmon had finished cooking, Michael put a steak on the coals. He asked how to cook it and I think I gave him good advice. For the past 15 years he had been a vegetarian, but had recently “fallen off the wagon”. I asked him what did him in. It was sushi. It will henceforth be known as the gateway meat. His steak turned out good and Jen and I sampled the leftover salmon.

After dinner and washing up I went to the store to get m&m's for Lama Pema and ice for my cooler. I totally lost track of time and came back 15 minutes too late for evening practices. Michael had made torma dough and Jan and Josh helped Lama Inge to form, paint, and butter the tormas so they would be ready for the empowerment tomorrow.

For those that don't know, in order to do a Buddhist deity practice you need to have an empowerment from a qualified lineage holder of that practice. Some empowerments are rarely given, and all provide more opportunity to try different practices. You can't purchase a text to do a practice unless you can say from whom you received the empowerment and when.

I was fortunate to live in Cottage Grove when Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche and his wife Chagdud Khadro were doing many empowerments before moving permanently to Brazil. I remember going with baby Ruben (who also received them) but not knowing why I would need that many. I am SO GLAD I got them though, because they have allowed me to do many practices I now love.

The empowerment has many parts, but the main idea is that it prepares your mind for accepting and using the practice. This one is for White Tara. I do Red Tara practice with Judy most Sundays during the school year. White Tara is a longevity practice. Perhaps it's time in life to start thinking about longevity.

Saturday at bedtime

I woke up this morning at 5:30am and thought I'd snooze another minute and woke up for real at 7am. Considering I went to bed at 9:30pm, that was a lot of sleep. I dressed and hit the sidewalk. I went to a park about 30 minutes away (by foot) that I had spotted yesterday and did some yoga and calisthenics. There was a vicious swarm of gnats that tried to stick on my sweat every time I stood still so I moved on pretty quickly. I was back at the center around 8, ate my breakfast of leftovers from yesterday, and took a quick shower.

Lama Pema was starting his part of the ritual at 9am so everyone needed to be quiet and away from the shrine room to allow him to prepare.

I went to my room and started working on some Spotify play lists for the Funky Beats Initiative. I had sent them an email yesterday asking for more songs for Elke and I to learn. Did I you all blog readers that last week Elke auditioned to be co-lead singer with me? She did, she nailed it, we are awesome together. (Elke and I sang together in the Madrigal group the past three years.) It will really help save both our voices to only have to sing half as much, and we can both do backups. So anyway, I got an email reply from Agent Eddie Orange, and Agent Micheal Forgetaboutit which stated all the songs they were doing, and songs they might want to add. Elke and I texted and will get together Monday to review the list and perhaps learn a few new tunes. I was making playlists in Spotify to listen to all the material on my way home from Spokane tomorrow night.

So Micheal knocked on my door to let me know it was time to start and we all took our places for the empowerment. I sat near the back so I could wiggle without disturbing anyone. Despite the yoga I had done at the park my back feels like it has been bruised. Sitting up straight muscles are being used instead of leaning and hunching muscles, and they are upset about it.

The empowerment was lovely. I don't have much to say about it, it was what I expected, and it all felt very peaceful. The group was not too large, maybe 16 people, and everyone was respectful and engaged.

We finished at 11:30am and I wasn't hungry yet so I went to my room and laid down for a while to rest my back. I fell asleep. I slept until 1:30pm. I had a dream that I was buying some kind of dessert for which I needed to fill a huge cup with ice cream and another huge cup with soda, then bring them to the counter for the attendant to combine them. The attendant was yelling at a coworker and nobody was helping me. I watched the ice cream start melting. Minutes went by. Finally I just left the cups on the counter and walked out.

Now because I'm at a Buddhist retreat I want to think that the dreams I have are significant, but really it was just a dream about ice cream and frustration, I have those all the time.

I had my salad, egg, and cheese for lunch and soon the group was gathering for the long life yoga practice. I met Josh's mother who is a school counselor and we talked shop for a while. I had introduced myself to her because as part of the practice I would be laying on my back wiggling into her space. I didn't want to wiggle in a stranger's space.

After the practice ended we learned that Lama Pema will be leaving Sunday by 2pm, so although there will be two sessions on Sunday they will be earlier. I will leave on Sunday after the practices instead of Monday, and then I'll have less driving to do on Monday when I go pick up Ruben in Cottage Grove.

I rested my back for a few minutes then got about making my dinner. I had finished my nuts and seeds when Michael asked me to eat some leftover salad with him. So we ate cucumber salad, and greek salad, and chatted about life in general. He has traveled a lot, and shared some of his adventures with me.

Yesterday I felt bad about missing the evening protectors practice so I made sure to make it this time. I had my texts ready and felt good about joining in. I only got lost once, but Jen was sitting next to me and showed me where we were. Jen and I went to the store after we finished. I needed ice for my cooler and some items for the tsok tomorrow. She also needed tsok items.

We drove downtown to the Grocery Outlet and looked for jerky but couldn't find any. I asked the man at the register if they had any and he told me where it was. He was a very attractive large man with dark skin and dreads pulled back into a ponytail. He had tattoos all over his neck and arms. I brought the jerky to the check stand and asked for a bag of ice. He asked me what size. I went over to take a look and came back and asked for “one large” and smiled at him. He mentioned to be sure to check my receipt. Jan told me when we got to the car that he had written his phone number on it, and sure enough he did.

Jan and I listened to funk music on the way back to Padma Ling, and when I got back I helped Michael make Blintzes. I strained cottage cheese. They looked delicious, but NOT on my eating plan. We had a good conversation about families. Jan came in and showed us some pictures of their house/cabin. It is very rustic, made of steel and half buried under rock and dirt. She says it stays very cool in summer, and warm in winter. We discovered we are dharma sisters, we had our first Buddhist event in common.

I left them working in the kitchen after a while, and wrote this, and now I'm going to sleep.

Very late on 7/2/17

Today is Ruben's birthday and I'm not with him. Sad Face. 

I woke up at 6am, and stayed in bed till almost 7. I heard blintzes being made, but used the bathroom and snuck out for my walk. I was headed up the hill when I looked at my phone and it said the memory was full, so as I walked I deleted apps. I did a restart but my phone did not restart.

It got locked in a cycle of trying to restart, but not quite booting up. That lasted all day.

I finished my walk, but didn't get a chance to call anyone to wish them a happy birthday. I have a feeling that it was my own karma that broke my phone, but I won't tell you why.

Because of a glitch with the travel agent Lama Pema was to leave Spokane on Sunday at 4pm. This shortened the time to teach on Sunday so we did a short session of yoga from 9-9:45, then we set up for Tsok. I finally feel like I'm catching on to the movements of the practice, I'll need to keep it going for a while daily in order to make it really solid in my mind. My back still hurt, but it was a familiar hurt, and bothered me less.

There was good food for the Tsok. I ate quite a bit of it and wasn't hungry again till nearly dinnertime. While we ate Lama Pema described the work he was doing to build a retreat center in Nepal. He says it will be finished in two years. He and Lama Inge had a conversation about places in Nepal they found special.

We finished the Tsok/White Tara practice around noon. I cleaned my room, packed my belongings, and got ready to go.

I asked Michael if I could use his phone and I called Jeff and Ruben to say Happy Birthday and make plans for picking up Ruben tomorrow. I wrote down some directions to make it home, but as time would tell they weren't quite adequate. I gave Lama Inge a hug. I gave my contact info to my new friends and hopped in the car, immediately getting on the freeway in the wrong direction.

If you aren't yet reliant on technology you don't know how hard this was for me. No google maps, no navigator, no music, no calling on my bluetooth stereo, no gas buddy app to find a cheap station. No audio books.

So I got off the freeway headed east, drove around to find a gas station, and got on the freeway headed west. This lasted a while, a while too long when I found myself in Moses Lake. I should have turned south a ways back. So I took a cut off road and only added 45 minutes to my drive instead of the hour and a half it would have taken if I'd made it to Olympia then took 1-5 south.

Other than one more wrong turn that was corrected in 10 minutes I made it home tired, achy, and BORED. I'm really thankful to NPR, I learned about the Donner party, places to visit on Oahu, some horse race in Italy, Trumps latest tweet, and many other things. I might have also listened to some country music and sang very loudly but I wouldn't admit it to just anyone.

When I got home I unpacked, and found out how to do a hard reset on my phone. It worked fine after that so I called Ru and found out he had gone to Red Robin for his birthday. He said nobody had sang to him. so I did. 

Now I'm headed to bed with my kitties, and I'm all tuckered out.

White Tara