There’s no doubt… when I was first planning this adventure I had fear in me… and other people were scared for me and had no problem communicating that to me… and some are still even scared for me. What I can tell you is that I have been able to adapt to a different way of being. Yup… when you are out of your element, removed from your own personally created creature comforts of home and place yourself in a different culture there is no choice but to adapt to a new way of being and even a new way of thinking. I would like to call it, yielding… yielding to myself and my attachment to things needing to be a certain way in order for me to be happy.
Reflecting (by writing) on my past with the intention of learning truth out of my experiences is something I have been practicing for many years. This is something I feel strongly about even in the classroom with my students. After all the years if this being a practice even some the college began to adopt this practice.
I have been immersed in the cultures of India and Nepal. The primary religion is Hinduism with some other religions of Buddhism and Catholicism interspersed where I’ve been. I’ve learned a lot about “pooja”, about the 33 million gods and goddesses and why people study the veda’s in the Hindu faith.
I learned the Buddhist meditation practice of vipassana and its Dhamma is not to be confused with Buddhism itself. I learned that Buddha’s teachings talk how the creation of the universe was not the product of chance, or caused by the will of some mysterious god, but by the result of the Law of Nature and the Law of Cause and Effect. It is also in the theory of evolution we find the biological evolution of atomic particles and how they came together to form more complex forms of life. Whomever came up with the idea of the multitude of gods and idols taught that man is not the slave of metaphysics and the people who created them from their imagination. Theologians found in religion and the god-idea a weapon to enslave the people. I digress a little.
By living in such poverty-stricken cultures for these months I’ve learned the concept of being “happy” as a state of being that we can cultivate within ourselves and not depend on the outside world for was given a more secure place in my mind and in daily practices. This is something I believe we are all obligated to figure out on our own, so we can teach it to the next generations.
America is NOT the next best thing to sliced bread like so many people in India and Nepal think. We each need to go through and overcome our own attachments to desires of having the best jobs, homes, lots of money, collecting of stuff (consumerism) to find out the answer to our happiness and peace is NOT in any of those things. I have a friend that sold their 200-million-dollar company in the USA only to tell me that they didn’t find the happiness they thought they would in all of that money. Seeing people in this part of the world so poor and yet so HAPPY was a big lesson for me.
Having spent a month in Nepal and on the foothills of the Himalayas I learned how important it is to me to be IN nature. Humans are not separate from nature as much as people like to think and we fall under all the Laws of Nature. To experience the beauty and perfection of nature the way it was created is a fabulous reminder that as humans, we are created in the same idea of perfection. Being human means being part of nature. That’s so important to understand.
I think I’ve written enough about the practices around living a happy and peaceful existence.
I’ve learned to appreciate how fortunate I am (we are in the USA) to have clean air, sanitary conditions, access to modern medicine in combination with holistic medicine and the opportunity to make better lives for ourselves and the people that live in the USA. That isn’t always the case in this part of the world.
OMG… the food! How backwards we have it in the USA. In these cultures, people actually eat together with their families. They understand the big carbon footprint that raising animals takes which is why most people are vegetarians in these poverty stricken countries…. Because meat costs more money than vegetables. Teaching culinary basics and the making of stocks and broths is thrown out the window by the use of all the herbs and spices here… you don’t even need those stocks/broths anymore.
Witnessing the developing countries and how they are trying to educate their youth the concept of being of service to humanity keeps getting reinforced inside of me. Once we can get past the self-centeredness of the ego inside of all of us… it’s so important to ask ourselves… How we can be the best of service to humanity? Find your most true and unique self… your purpose in life… so you can offer the gifts you have to give back to the world that nobody else can do other than YOU.
I am off to Thailand tomorrow. To experience the Buddhist religion and the traditions in the culture. Learn about the food and cooking there. And to hang out at the beaches in Southern Thailand for the winter.
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