About an hour walk down steep mountain roads (or a hour and a half back up) from Bhagsu is The Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, a gorgeous compound akin to Aladdin's cave for people like me. The Library offers nearly-free courses (a twenty dollar donation for one month's worth of classes) in Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan language. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect curriculum and signed up without the slightest deliberation.
So every day (okay, except Sundays), I wake up just after the sun and make my way down to the classrooms. First is beginner's Tibetan language, followed by a short break (and cheap tea next door) and a Buddhist philosophy class. It's usually about 1:30 in the afternoon before I make my way back up to Mcleod for my various shenanigans (flaky as they have been as of late) and thangka painting lessons.
2. Now I know my Ra, Ma, Las...
It seems only fitting that I play both rolls in my Indian experience. First I taught children their ABCs and 123s, then I moved to teaching adults their "Days of the Week," and now I've taken the role of helpless, speechless child as I flounder over the sounds of Tibetan language and clumsily scribble unfamiliar letters over and over again.
Let's say it gives me appreciation for the human experience.
Between classes, the students often sit together, going over notes and thoughts about the sounds, shapes, and rules of the simple act of putting words together in Tibetan. As an undergrad, I studied French and Italian, the act of studying which now seems more akin to lounging on the beach then studying the language from the roof of the world .
29 consonants, 5 vowels (which show themselves through curly and bending accent marks), then another 23 surmounting letters, 40 subjoining letters, a few Tibetanized Sanskrit letters (including "thick letters" and "reverse letters"). At this point, you can start to sound out words (ka ya-ta kya, kya ki-ku, kyi: there you have it, one letter successfully read).
We're taught by a middle-aged ani (Tibetan nun), whom we call Ani-La (or Ani-Lak). She's a vivacious woman who becomes very animated when she teaches us the sounds of Tibetan. Her mouth opens wide as she teaches us the sound for "Nga," for example, revealing rows of crooked teeth and giving her a slightly cartoonish quality. When one of the stray dogs enter the classroom (as they often do), she takes her robes and shoos him away; when one refuses to go, rolling on his back and starting to play with her, she laughs and acts just as playful. To teach us about the specialization of tongue muscles and the need to practice, she draws a picture of a duck on the whiteboard (pointing to the feet).
In short, she's an interesting and lovable teacher.
But who am I kidding? I'm loving every minute of it. I'm one of those people who seeks out books of riddles and logic puzzles out of boredom, so this is the perfect challenge for me. Every time I see a Tibetan letter, I feel like I need a decoder ring. Recognizing it is a bit like being in a secret club.
I've taken to pausing in the street to read Tibetan signs, even though I don't know the meaning once I've figured out the sounds. And joy of all joys, I finally, successfully read a sign- Lhasa! One night, while painting, I taught Mittsu (whose name, I learned, is anglicized as Mitthu just as often) how to spell her name in Tibetan. Like her husband, she came from a low-income household and never received a formal education (beyond her painting apprenticeship). On slow days, she sits on the cliffside by her table and does the same thing as me- slowly reading Tibetan letters out of a school notebook.
In my free time, I play alphabet games on the internet, slowly accumulating monks and other Tibetans cheering me on at Shangri-La restaurant. (http://www.digitaldialects.com/Tibetan.htm)
3. Once Again on a Meditation Cushion
My 11am class is Buddhist Philosophy 2, the Secular Practitioner's Way of Life. Here, Lama Geshe Sonam Rinchen teaches Tibetans and Westerners alike, from nuns to wives, the way to live as a Buddhist Householder. As with most Tibetan teachings I have experienced, the Lama is teaching from a book; in this case, a very ancient poem, Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend. A four-line verse can take up to twenty minutes for him to expound upon, and thus a very small book has become a very long class.
Luckily for us.
The classroom is set up very much like an average Tibetan shrine/meditation room: intricately painted, a hardwood floor covered with meditation cushions, a teacher's chair (and translator's chair) at the front, before a gigantic Shakyamuni statue (about the size of a ten year old child) and picture of HH Dalai Lama. Spending time in this room very much reminds me of Sunday teachings at Columbus KTC (and, of course, there's something comforting about this familiarity).
While Lama, semi-channeling Nagarjuna, tells us about choosing a significant other and friends, about how to deal with sleeping and eating and material possessions, about those beneficial qualities and poisonous ones which we must be aware, the young Tibetan ani next to me rapidly scribbles down notes in English and the European man to my right sways gently forward and backward.
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Because it is places of learning where the largest part of my heart will always reside, I've left a fair few cranes at the Library complex over the past few weeks. Almost always made from my practices sheets (drawing over and over again, Ba, Ra, Ha, Nga...), cranes 49-59 are my way of marking my territory (for, I hope, many future returns).
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| Outside the classroom building |
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| The Library Courtyard (the sky is such that you can almost miss the snowcapped mountains). |
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| The door to the philosophy classroom |
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| From above, looking down into the valley |
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