Talk To The White Heron Sangha at Unity Church, San Luis Obispo, Ca. August 25, 2012 by Jan Sprague

Talk for White Heron Buddhist Sangha-San Luis Obispo, CA.

August 25, 2012 (click here to read more)

By Jan Sprague, HANDS in Nepal

“Buddhism and Social Activisim Through Service To Others”

“In getting ready for this talk tonight, I had the most difficulty in thinking about how to start-For the past five years, my “other” job has been supporting my son in his efforts to run a small non profit organization he calls HANDS in Nepal-Hands standing for ‘Humanitarian Acts in Nepal Developing Schools.’

We have had so many experiences while building schools and a library in Nepal, and then tutoring English to Tibetan refugees, and then my side branch, buying sewing machines for poor women , that it all seems a big stew pot of lots of ambitions that have grown out of our respect and love for the teachings of Lord Buddha.

Then it occurred to me I really don’t know much about social activism and Buddhism, except that I have put the words of two respected Buddhist teachers into action in my life, and have found their words to ring true in bringing about my own feelings of contentment.

The Dalai Lama says:

‘If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ‘

I keep that quote up in my classroom and it has become the number one rule for my life.

One the Dalai Lama’s favorite authors is Shantideva

Shantideva … an 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar at Nalanda University and an adherent of the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nagarjuna.

Shantideva is most well known for his book “ The Way of the Bohdisattva”

He writes:

‘Through these actions now performed

And all the virtues I have gained

May all the pain of every living being

Be wholly scattered and destroyed

For all those ailing in the world

Until their every sickness has been healed

May I myself become for them

The doctor nurse, the medicine’

Now I am not so full of ego to feel that I am capable or able to literally follow the teaching of a great bodhisattva like Shantideva or the Dalai Lama-but why not try and see if it’s true that working for compassion, peace and to eliminate suffering can possible be a wonderful journey towards Nirvana, or at least a wonderful way to spend this current life.

So there I was sweating like a pig on a fire, walking in a hot, rice patty landscape of the lower Himalayas in Nepal, legs numb from hiking, tired, and feeling like the sky was pressing on my head with heat and humidity. This wasn’t nirvana, it was samsara, but I was on my way to see the first school my son built in a village in an area known as the Ganesh Himalayas, in a district called Dhading, and I was determined to keep putting one soggy foot in front of the other until I got there.

To get there, we had to get up very early, catch a local public bus crammed with all sorts of living beings in various states of health-goats and people on top when it was too full to fit anyone else inside, and bumped and churned our way on Nepal’s notorious only highway where sheer drop-offs and drivers playing chicken with oncoming traffic make you a believer in Shiva in no time, and then unbending yourself enough to disembark and wrangle a fee for a 4 x 4 Indian made jeep to take you and numerous other villagers on another 4-6 hr. ride on dirt trails, where you once again unravel and stagger to a simple hut, (by now it’s dark) where for a few Nepali rubees you can get tea overly sweetened with sugar and a bowl of noodles, and a bed roll on a mat of straw, or sleep on the table outside under an amazenly brilliant blanket of stars.

In the morning we began our ascent up ancient stone steps, and for those who have hiked in the Himalayas, you know what I mean by ascent-it is straight up and up for a long, long time. People live here, perched on the sides of these amazing mtns. In homes that sometimes look like any minute they will topple down the mountainside, and some do during the heavy monsoon rains.

The people in these remote villages are amazing, to say the least. Their sheer will to live in one of the most extreme environments I have ever seen puts our spoiled life to shame, and the very few material possessions I saw made me realize how simple their life really is. But the one thing they do crave is education, for their children, and a dream that life will somehow be better for the next generation because their children will be able to read and write. That was what we came to do and share with them, and two schools and one library later, we feel satisfied that we made that dream a reality for two villages who now have that opportunity .

Building schools in remote Himalayan villages was only one part, we realized, in bringing education to Nepal.  Children in the city, who live in poverty in this part of the world, work hard-in hotels, doing laundry, becoming tea wallahs, rag pickers, and worse.

Danny had started his adventures in Nepal working at an orphanage called Buddhist Child Home in Kathmandu, and we had become frequent visitors to the home of some 48 children, run by a middle-class Nepali woman named Durga Manali. Durga had started the home with two children, and subsequently, had police and others in authority bring her more. Sometimes the children were rescued in child trafficking raids and brought to her home, because the children are too young to remember where they came from originally, and sometimes Durga told me, the youngest children are from beggars, who tie them up at temples and leave them, hoping a kind-hearted stranger will take them home.

We began to raise money for scholarships for the older kids at the orphange, so they may stay in school, and continue to this day to track and support 6 of the older kids through HANDS in Nepal.

But I didn’t want to stop there, and while my son felt a need to strike out to more remote areas than that, where poverty and lack of schools have created a backwash of ignorance that feeds a terrible state of child trafficking, I turned my sights to the third world squalor of Kathmandu and the struggles of street children and women living in poverty there.

One thing I noticed in my trips to Kathmandu was that women seemed to make up the majority of the back-breaking physically demanding construction force. Over and over I was incredulous to see thin, scrawny women who looked mal nourished to say the least, often with a baby tied on the back and small children nearby, lifting heavy baskets to their heads and hauling sand, cement, rocks, mud, even bricks to and thro job sites. It was heart-breaking to see their struggles in the heat, and often two women manning a shovel, one digging, the other pulling it up with a rope tied to the shovel end. And then heaving the dirt into a basket that another women who thrust up on her back, adjust a head trump line and carry off like a mule.

After reading the book, Half The Sky, where they talk about how much a difference a treadle sewing machine can make in the life of a poor woman, I looked into buying sewing machines in Kathmandu. I found a funky, ancient shop, all chalk a block stacked with machines of various age and style, and found for $150 usd, one could buy a fairly good heavy duty treadle machine that came on a table.

I bought two the first year and through Durga, found two women who were desperate for an opportunity to start a tailoring business.

After meeting two lovely young people completing yoga training in Kathmandu, who were interested in how to help poor women, I arranged for them to buy and deliver a machine once I had returned to the states.

This past summer, I bought two more and with Durga we are starting a small microfinance project where poor women can apply for a machine and pay back the original purchase cost a few dollars at a time.

The exciting caveat to this project was that if a poor woman has the means to earn enough money for food and shelter, her children, including her daughters, get to go to school. Now I felt like we were really getting somewhere. I began to explore the local markets looking for women sewing products I could buy to support them, and bring back to the States to sell. I literally stumbled upon two cooperatives, both made up of Tibetan refugees, and have been working them to design and make computer bags and now ipad bags to sell in the US.

And then I found the women of the Jawalekeil Tibetan Refugee Center, who weave yak hair blankets on large, foot operated looms. The blankets I brought back were loved by those who saw them, and they sell well enough for me to return each year to the camp and purchase more. When I show up, the women are very happy and give me many “Tahsi Deleks” and press my left forearm, which is tattooed with the words Free Tibet in Tibetan, onto their forehead. The tattoo was a gift from a Tibetan refugee in Dharmasla who wanted to give me something in return for the help we had given him. He did it with a bamboo stick and ink, while the two of us sat across from each other on the not very clean floor of his tiny, musky sleeping quarters, decorated only with his hand-painted thangkas that he had carried out of Tibet with him.

But what about the girls? You hear so often about girls and sex trafficking and it’s a very real problem in Nepal and India, where poverty drives parents and the girls themselves to desperate means.

I found out about a school run by the Tibetan nun Ani Choying in a town above Kathamndu called Pharping. The school, called the Arya Tara school for Poor and Destitute Girls, had been built and started by Ani Choying to house the most desperate and poorest of girls, those who are discarded and tossed out for reasons as minute as not having enough money to feed everyone, or a new marriage and the girl not wanted or needed anymore. Ani Choying (she herself the victim of a brutal and abusive childhood) has to measure and weigh the needs of each girl, and takes only those of the most dire circumstances, and now has 50 girls from age 5 to in to their teens.  We decided supporting a girl here was a worthy effort and raised money to pay one years support for a 5 year old “nun” named Urgan Dolma-or Urgi for short.

ON the other side of the border, there is Dharamsala, India, now the home of HHDL and site of the Tibetan gov’t in exhile. It wasn’t long before we began to incorporate visits to Dharmasala and McLeod gang into our yearly trips to Nepal. While Nepal was a tough, gritty, dirty, extreme place in its poverty, Dharmasala seemed alive, vital, beautiful and refreshing in the energy brought by the Tibetan people, always smiling, always spinning prayer wheels, and always positive in their in-shakable faith of Tibetan Buddhism and their leader, HHDL.  

At first, we came as curious sightseers and seekers of some good, solid Buddhist teachings, but we also found a way to further our volunteering and practice here- almost everywhere we looked, there was a funky hand-lettered sign or flyer posted on a wall that pleaded for English teachers. One such place was called Tibet Hope Project, and it was here we spent our afternoons in small chat circles, practicing English with Tibetan monks and young Tibetan men and women, most who had only recently arrived out of Tibet. Their stories were heart-breaking and just as humbling as traveling around the back country of Nepal, stories of traveling at night over steep, snowy Himalayan passes, trying to avoid detection by Chinese soldiers eating grass when their tsampa ran out, taking cover in caves during snow storms, and sometimes having to watch loved ones die on the trail or end up with amputated fingers and toes due to extreme frost bite.

The Lha center also requested volunteers and we signed up to be paired with Tibetans who were trying hard to learn a vocation or further their English training to apply for jobs in India-jobs in media, computer technology or teaching. Their strong will to learn and optimism was so impressive, every trip I returned devoted to never complain or whine about anything every again in my life and felt an even deeper conviction in the words of the Buddha to work towards ending suffering for everyone, not just myself.

This year I brought books to Nepal for our library, along with over 40 solar lights for the villages, and continued to buy sewing machines for my sewing machine project.  But I also decided to incorporate a little “me” time into my second trip of the year during the summer, and took a flight over to Thailand to work at an elephant refugee camp. There I found again, an interesting way to explore my Buddhist practice, by walking to one of the many monk chat programs in Chiang Mai, where young novice monks sit waiting to practice English- and added a new twist, teaching English to young Burmese mahouts in Northern Thailand.

It’s impossible to accomplish this on ones own, and we have been blessed with compassionate and kind people along this journey who have donated hundreds and even thousands of dollars to build our schools and library, such as the Dworak family in Minnesota, who’s son was touched by the poverty of Nepal on a trekking trip there, and vowed to give back in the form of providing education. Another man, who wishes to remain anonymous, has donated money to education projects and The Rotary Clubs have been supportive with helping us earn grants to buy solar lamps for our school and library in Phulkharta. Parents at my school, touched by photos I keep on my desk, have donated money for shoes for the orphanage, this from people who are themselves migrants and living at or below poverty level. Students at an elementary school in Morgan Hill, Ca., held a bake sale a year ago and sent us $800 from that sale, to go to the orphans at Buddhist Child Home.  Teacher friends have made contributions to support scholarships, and have written education grants in our honor for helping to buy books. My family and friends, as well, ever the diligent supporters, have contributed donations towards sewing machines and always buy a yak hair blanket when a gift is needed.

Little by little, the funds continue to trickle in enough to keep our programs going. We are by no means at a level such as “3 Cups of Tea” author Greg Mortenson,” but it is enough, and we feel so supported and buoyed up by those who believe enough in our mission, to ease the burden of women and children in one of the world’s poorest countries, to keep it going.

So here now, I’d like to leave you with a short slide show I’ve composed of images and scenes from my quote unquote “social activism.”

Whatever you choose to do with your social activism, however you feel your life should be used, my hope is it brings you contentment and peace.

Thank you for this opportunity to share-and Many Tashi Deleks to you all!

Sewing For Dollars

A sewing machine can mean a way to earn a living for a poor family


I have seen a certain evolution in my thinking since I've been traveling to Nepal, helping my son Danny  with his NGO: HANDS in Nepal. Danny's objective has always been to bring education to the most remote areas of the Nepali villages, where schools are either nonexistent or far away. I've seen how poor a country Nepal is, (click here to read more) and providing education opportunities is certainly a start for solving issues of poverty.
Following Danny around the maze of Kathamandu to get business done, I was startled at the large number of women on the streets, either begging, with the baby on the back, small toddlers in tow, or their children also hounding passersby for a rubee, and not in school, or squatting over a small cloth upon which are laid out a few pitiful items that you can't imagine anyone needing or buying. Somehow these women put enough food in their mouths and their children's to exist from day to day. Education seemed a luxury when I took note of their meager lives. How could we expect their children to go to school when their very existence depended, or seemed to depend, on every member of the family begging?

A young boy in Kathmandu is a "rag picker" instead of a student

Our frequent tea breaks in Kathmandu were often dominated by ongoing discussions on how to promote education among the poorest of the poor. We thought our two schools and one library spread out over Dhading District in the Ganesh Himals was a good start. But although village life is without the material trappings we are all used to, people have enough food, supplies and livestock to have a decent life. It is in the cities we really noticed the extreme poverty. Those who can't even afford a shack, who live under plastic or make a hovel out of recycled rags on the river bank, that was true poverty.

A woman sews prayer flags with her machine to sell in Boudha

How to help and even begin to help such desperation? Drawing on a wonderful book I had read a few years back called Half The Sky, I remember the authors talking about how something as simple as a sewing machine could help a poor woman start a small business. Could it be so easy as buying a machine in Nepal and delivering it to someone who needed a hand up, a woman who could use a modern day machine for a traditional way to make a living? I asked my Tibetan friend Kelsang Lodue to find a shop that sold treadle machines so we could investigate-how much, how would we choose someone from the hordes of women who could use a machine, and how would we deliver it?

Two women use a treadle sewing machine to start a tailoring business

It was so easy to make a sewing machine dream come true for women who needed a boost in starting their tailoring or repair business! Kelsang took me to an area of the market in Kathmandu were there is a row of sewing machine shops. Once we decided on a shop with fair prices, all I had to do was pick out which of the many models to buy. Not only price factored in, but given Nepal's iffy electricity situation, and the fact that most of the poor women would not be in places that had outlets even if there was power, the machine would have to be treadle, or foot-operated.

The sewing machine shop in Kathmandu

Getting my sewing machine primed and ready for delivery

Easy enough, there were more treadle machines, most made in India, but a few Singer and Chinese brands, to choose from. Finding a taxi willing to haul the machine to the poorer neighborhoods was the biggest challenge.

But offering a handsome sum to the taxi driver would get him on our side ($5 instead of $3). Then it was off through the crazy Kathmandu traffic to the deliver our machine-a vital tool to help someone get off the streets, start their own business and hopefully make it possible for their children to go to school instead of begging-all for about $150.

A business of her own!

Once I returned to the States with photos and stories of how a treadle sewing machine can help a poor woman earn a living, and keep her children off the streets and in school, friends began to give me donations to buy machines. My brother and his girlfriend gave me money for a machine, a few other friends made contributions. I began to bring back things sewn by the women who got the machines, simple "malla" drawstring bags, and potholders. The proceeds went back into buying more machines. What started as an idea and one machine has now spread. It's not a big deal in the world of big NGO's, but I am sure it's a big deal for the women who got the machines. In fact I know it is. I found out my friend Durga Manali, who runs the orphanage we help out, has started a micro-finance loan program to help poor women in Jorpati, a poor area of Kathmandu. Women can apply for a small loan to buy a machine, and pay back the loan in small increments at no interest. She took me around the neighborhood to introduce me to women who had small tailoring and sewing shops, thanks to her program. This seemed a more fair way to distribute the machines I could buy then just randomly giving them to women who "looked" poor enough to need them.
This year, I bought a machine for Durga, for her program, and she will be telling me soon who the lucky recipient of the machine will be.  Instead of hand outs, we'll be working to give a hand up.

Durga Manali and Jan, in Kathmandu, put their hands together to help put women in business

The Miracle School

They say things about pictures-how they say a thousand words, can sail a ship, inspire, teach, reach out to touch someone. Here is a visual tour of a very special school I visited in Kathmandu the other day-in one of the poorer of the neighborhoods. You remember Slum Dog Millionaire, the box office smash hit about Indian slum children and their challenges, from being trafficked to horrible people who treat children like livestock, and beggar kids trying to survive on the streets? (click to read more) It's real, and not just a movie. Here, some really amazingly compassionate women are trying to help in their corner of one if the world's poorest countries:

Mala Kharel greets me at the door of Bal Sarathi school on a rainy monsoon day in Kathmandu

Nursery School with some of the younger ones

Polite stares as I enter an upper grade class

An impromptu lesson on "Where is America?" ("Is the sun sleeping there now?")

Please click on above photo to hear these precious children share: "What do you want to be when you grow up?

PLEASE! Take two more minutes to watch the very moving, very touching video on the link below, made by my Nepali filmmaker friend Rajendra Pandey. It's excellent and really tells the whole story of this "miracle":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th13vNo810g&feature=plcp

NAMASTE FRIENDS!!

What Do You Have To Complain About?

"I bought some milk today for a lady and her baby," a nasal-toned Foreigner said to her friend at a cafe in Boudha, where I sat trying to load my gmail. "Oh, I don't give money to the beggars," said her friend, "because then they just bother you more and you can't get rid of them." I had to smile to myself, this being my fifth year coming to Nepal as a social worker, and helping my son with his small NGO, "HANDS in Nepal." I did not sit in judgement of either of the attractive young ladies, who not only had enough money to buy expensive air tickets to this far-away kingdom in the Himalayas, but also were wearing stylish jeans, nice shoes and expensive watches. (click here to read more)
What was a few rupees to them, which could mean a poor beggar could eat something today?  I realized I was seeing them more like a street person would and less like the spoiled American I am. Spoiled meaning we are blessed beyond believe in the amount of material possessions and comforts we have in the good 'ol USA. Even though buying milk for a baby is a big scam here in Nepal (and India) it does help the woman by giving her some money she otherwise would not have.
My friend Rajendra might disagree with me on giving money to beggars. He once reprimanded me as I dropped some rupees into the begging bowl of a monk standing in front of the great Buddhist stuppa in Boudhanath. "He can work you know," he said. "But he's a monk," I said, but something clicked in my brain about that. "They have so much money in the monasteries," Rajendra replied. I had to agree, almost every hilltop in Nepal is topped by an ornate, gold-frosted temple of some sort.
Rajendra is an amazing young Nepali professional who knows more than I about the consequences of life on the streets, and the molding of oneself into becoming someone or no one. He became someone, despite a very rough beginning of an abusive childhood, running away from his village home to try to find a way to go to school in Kathmandu, and living on the streets as a 'rag picker' at the ripe old age of 9 (someone who finds pieces of cloth in the streets or dumps and sells them as rags for a few rupees). "I made enough rupees somedays to eat, and somedays not." Rajendra told me.  He also worked as a child laborer in a tea shop (very common here to see children working in restaurants and hotels) but he never begged. Back in those early street days, Rajendra might have been the skinny, hardened raggedy street urchin I would have stepped over and tried not to see. I step over more than I'd like to admit these days when in the Thamel area of Kathmandu, where most of the street kids hang out to beg from tourists.

Street children in Thamel

Rajendra is a success story for sure. I feel so honored to have met him this past trip and his beautiful family of his wife, Preeti and son Loran and adopted son, another street child taken in by Rajendra.  Being someone who had to fight his way for every ounce of respect and upward mobility, expecting no handouts and somehow managing to survive an extremely harsh existence of being a child on the mean streets of an impoverished third world city, Rajendra represents to me what anyone can do if you believe in yourself.

Rajendra and wife Preeti: hard-work, a strong believe in self and lots of love, shown in his family and work

He now has a company making documentaries, holds a college degree in fine arts, has just built a house for his family and has a motorcycle. Educated, smart, with both feet planted firmly on the ground, Rajendra doesn't romanticize his life or the beggars. He knows what it takes to make it here, and it's not hand-outs.
In recent years. I've noticed more and more street children in Thamel, the tourist epicenter of Kathmandu. The children come mostly from villages of extreme poverty. I know, I've been to the villages, and seen how village life is. Although most live a simple and satisfying life of growing and making everything they eat and need, to our standards the lack of electricity, schools, and even roads makes Nepali village life something most Americans could not imagine.

Click on this photo for a brief glance into a typical Nepali village home

I had asked Rajendra how to best help street children, feeling who could give a more fair and reasonable answer then someone who was once on the streets himself. My education began at a school for children who would be on the streets or worse (yes, it can get worse, as in child slavery), where his American "father," Allan Aistrope, helps support and fundraise for the over 50 children at each of the buildings (one for girls, one for boys). The children get a roof over their heads, hot water showers, clean clothes, healthy meals and school.

  Across the street is the boy's building, in an ancient and historic rambling home, complete with a library/study room.

Rajendra shows me the library, a rarity in Kathmandu

Allan has been working for street children in Nepal for a long, long time and supports many programs and organizations that help the poorest of the poor. I encourage you to check out what Allan is doing at: Virtueschildren@hotmail.com
Meanwhile, Rajendra had one other place for me to see. It was a school in a very poor area of Kathamandu that was set up by mostly volunteer Nepali women who were concerned about the children living in squalled and desperate conditions on the banks of the holy yet polluted Bagmati River. These children are the beggar's kids, and most do not go to school, but also beg to have enough to eat.
We set off on a Sunday morning in the rain, to follow Rajendra on his motorcycle, his handsome young son clinging to his father and looking for all the world as if he loved nothing more than being with "Dad."

Rajendra and Loren "Follow Us!"

The Bal Sarathi School in Pingalasthan region of Kathmandu is in a very poor area but one rich in compassion and love. The beautiful lady who runs the school, Mala Kharel, is a volunteer there, as are most of the teachers. They take in about 100 beggar "slum" children daily, to wash, feed and educate the children. School is 7 hours a day, 6 days a week and the children I met looked like they loved every blessed minute of it. Clean, shiny faces, shy and smiling, peered anxiously at me as I asked them their names, their desires and dreams. The school, which I dubbed "Miracle School' in my mind as I got the tour from Mala, is indeed a miracle, and this is the type of giving Rajendra gives his stamp of approval on.

Some of the lucky girls at Bal Sarathi school

It is a place that deserves a blog entry of its own, so stay tuned as I upload photos of the children and the teachers.
As we walked down the muddy road away from the school, waving goodbye to Rajendra and Loran, I thought of how we, in America, have absolutely nothing to complain about!

Monk Chat

                                                Me and my monk buddies

"Actually there are many rules, but they are easy to remember." This was the answer to one of my many questions to a small group of monks who sat at a table in the shade at a wat (Buddhist Temple) close to my guest house in Chiang Mai. A large sign next to the table said: "Monk Chat: Come Chat With Monk! Learn About Monk! Learn About Monk Life! Learn About Thai culture, diet, anything! If you just walk by, you will be so disappointed!" (click here to read more...)
Monk Chat is something of a phenomenon in Chiang Mai, a land of so many wats, they say there is a Buddhist wat on every corner of this city, and from what I've seen, that might be an understatement. The glittery, pagoda style wats with their naga-cobra serpents lining stairs up to an inner sanctum that houses one (or more) spectacular golden Buddha statues after another was historically the seat of many important Buddhist government entities in the historical past, and temples were built as means of "making merit" and furthering a possible guarantee of a good next life. Now populated by thousands of monks, many of the wats were allowing free time in the afternoons for monks to set up their version of English practice, and calling it "Monk Chat."

                                                    Naga at foot of stairs as "protector" of Buddha

How could I resist? A student of Buddhist studies for the last 15 years, I relished the opportunity to sit and "chat" with monks who applied their lives and studies 100% to achieving Nirvana, or as they say here "Nibanna." Because I am a self-proclaimed 'world's worst Buddhist' for not being able to follow many of the precepts set out by Buddha some 2,500 years ago, and teachings he gave for a happy life, like 'right speech,' right thought', and to not engage in 'sloth and torpor' (I still can't manage to make my bed in the morning), I sit in awe at people like monks who live, eat, chant and drink mostly only tea in accordance with Buddhist ideals.
So my first question is always, "Is it difficult to be a monk?" I asked this to many monks on my trip and all the answers, interestedly, were similar. It is not an easy life, but a simple one. There are many rules, but they are easy to follow because they are rules for living a moral life, such as 'do not kill, do not steal.' Actually, one monk told me, there are 227 precepts (the Buddha liked lists,living at a time of illiteracy among people, it made it easier to remember, such as, there are 4 Noble Truths, 8 fold path, 5 precepts, 6 of this, 8 of that...etc.). The monk precepts cover everything, from the biggie of do not kill (this can be debated to death, excuse the pun, and often is in Buddhist circles everywhere, as in , where do you draw the line??) They even have a Buddhist lent here in Thailand where monks are required to stay inside during monsoon season, so as not to step and possibly kill new plants. This however has been loosened, one monk told me, to you can go out during the day, but not spend overnight anywhere,  needing to return to your wat by evening. I thought of an elderly monk loosening that rule after so many monsoons of a wat full of young men stirring about. Anyway, the rules go down to the details of "no exercise, no beds, no luxurious seats, no beautification." You get the drift-the monk life is simple, as the young man said, but not easy. They sleep on mats and blankets in their rooms, and have no adornments, including clothes. Their wardrobe is two robes, I suppose one can spill tea and need a quick change sometimes.
"We chant the rules everyday, so easy to remember," one shaven head monk told me. Oh, so that's what the chanting was about. It is all for keeping the mind straight, and to get the mind on the right path, it needs to start first thing in the morning, to set your intention for the day.
"If your mind is thinking a bad thought, or having a bad intention, then you cannot become a monk," one said. Thinking a bad way is just as bad as acting on it. Hence the need for mediation, to clear the mind and prepare for the many good, or moral ways of living. Basically in Buddhism that means doing things to eliminate suffering and trying your best to not cause it.

                                               Sweeping Meditation

Many of the monks I talked to where from Burma, Laos or Cambodia, not all were from Thailand, and many came from very poor families. Becoming a monk guarantees an education, there is a large Buddhist University near my guest house and everyday the sidewalks around the neighborhood are colored orange by the hundreds of robed young men pouring out of class and walking down the streets back to their wats.

                                              Leaving class at Buddhist University

One young man told me he became a monk because it looked like fun. "Is it fun, now that you've been a monk for 6 years?" "Yes! I love this life!" He was 24 and had become a monk at 18. Life was going nowhere for him, his monk friends told him the monk life was really a good one, so he joined up. What was so fun about it? School, an education, learning meditation, studying Buddhism. "You have a peaceful mind. You are happy. You are content," he told me. "Some rich men, they are not happy, never have enough things, but monk learns to be happy in the present, for what you have now. I am not thinking of the past or future. I am satisfied now in the present. That is my definition of happiness."
Satisfied now in the present. That seemed a good measuring stick to use for gauging your happiness, if you needed to measure it at all. Happy for what you have. How I wish many of my American brothers and sisters could say they were happy for what they had (myself included), and not always seeking for what they don't have. Hanging out with the monks was making me happy, for being there, in the moment, with them.
Then my idolizing of them and their life free from material possessions bursts a little when one of them pulls a smart phone from under his robes. "You are from California," he says, "This is my favorite song!" With that he plays 'Hotel California' by the Eagles. In their broken English, the other monks chime in. It's one of those surreal moments of 'am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?" Actually singing is a great way to practice English. The monk then confessed he is a big fan of Elvis Presely. I am bowled over. How does a monk from Burma learn about an American Icon who died way before he was born? He plays "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog" next and taps his barefoot to the beat. "Do you like Bob Marley?" I ask, "Oh yes, Jamaican man! And he then pulls up a photo of a Rastafarian, not Bob Marely, on his phone, who is standing in a field of marijuana. "Sweet," I say, how about this. I open up my laptop and click on a song by Bob Marley called 'One Love,' the Playing For Change version. There is a video that accompanies it of musicians around the world singing and playing the song in harmony. The monks lean into my laptop to hear the song and seem enraptured by the images of a variety of ethnic people from different parts of the globe singing the same tune.

                                            Watching a Playing For Change Video on my laptop

We watch two more before my battery (ah! impermanence!) runs out. "That is very good-very good! One of the monks exclaims. He is excited to find out about Playing For Change, a wonderful "NGO" dedicated to using music to teach others about cultures around the world. "I will make you a mix CD and bring it next time, Elvis, the Eagles and Bob Marley." I tell them. They are really grateful for that and would give me a hug, but I can't touch monk. As a woman, we are forbidden from touching each other, and that pains me, because I'm a hugger! I have to really rein in my motherly love for these young guys and their positive vibrations. One ties a white piece of yarn around my left wrist, very carefully so not to touch my skin. It makes me feel a little like the dallies, or untouchables, of Nepal and India. The white yarn bracelet hangs loosely around my arm. "That is for protection and good luck" he says. A little of the ancient ways have crept into Thai Buddhism for sure. But today, many days later, sitting two countries removed from Thailand, in Kathmandu, the yarn still hangs there, loose. It is a small reminder of the power of monk chat and my new goal-to make my bed everyday, and set a good intention before I walk out the door.

                              Peace Out! Jan                

Signs At A Forest Monastery in Chaing Mai

Wandering around one of the oldest "Wats" (Buddhist Temples) in Chiang Mai today, at Wat U Mong, built in 1247 (!) I noticed many contemplative sayings on trees as you walked among the forest. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Do Not Dress Like This! Sign at forest Wat. Wish more people would follow this advice!
Do meditate for a peaceful mind (I happened upon this monk as I rounded the trail that led to a beautiful peaceful pond. ) It was like coming upon the Buddha himself!

"May All Beings Know Happiness and the Roots of Happiness"-Lord Buddha

Mae Chang (Mother Elephant)

Elephants trumpet and fill the air with their amazedly loud vocalizations-they are so happy to be going down to the watering hole and their flapping ears and joyful calls show it. The mahouts, all small, reddish brown men from Burma, sit on top these huge beasts, some smoking and some calling out to their friends, teasing and laughing-it's a scene I feel lucky to witness from up above, on the deck of my rustic quarters at the Baan Chang Elephant Camp. I wasn't sure what to expect coming here, but after reading and studying information from many of the elephant camps now dotting the Northern Thailand jungles, (click to continue reading) I picked Baan Chang. They not only had a program in training as a mahout and being able to work side by side with the real deal and their elephant buddies, but overnight accommodations (most are day camps). Staying multiple days seemed to me the best way to really get into the business of what it takes to manage and care for such a large, complex and intelligent beast, who at 2-3 tons can easily pick you up and toss you quite a ways like yesterday's bad tomatoes.

Some of the herd at Baan Chang (Elephant Family) Camp

One of the first things I learned at Baan Chang, day one, was never, ever go near the elephants unless their mahout is present. Apparently elephants aren't like horses, which once trained can be handled by just about anyone. Elephant training involves one handler (mahout) who lives, eats, sleeps and cares for his elephant-for as long as he's able. Our guide told us elephants are big animals with little hearts-meaning they are scared of many thing-snakes, dogs, mice, thunder, etc. The mahout becomes the "babysitter, brother, mother, father, boss and let's the elephant know what is good and bad-like not tossing someone to the ground, or to not be afraid of strangers, and the elephant will listen only to him. So our training, as much as we'd all like to think was going to make us mahouts, was just to show us an experience. "Tourists sometimes say, once I finish the training, I want to take my elephant on a ride alone." Not only a dangerous proposition, but you wouldn't get far. The working elephant, and these are all healthy, mid-age working elephants, knows one boss and one boss only. You may be on top of the elephants, but the mahout is nearby, and the elephant looks to him all the time for confirmation, and security.

Two mahouts and their elephants hanging out at the camp. The mahouts are never far from their ellies.

My days pretending to be a mahout began as soon as I got up. First thing is to put on the blue "mahout" clothes, for several reasons. One is, association. The elephants associate people in the dark blue outfits as "good", we bring bananas, and other treats, thereby lowering the risks and law suits should an elephant decide he doesn't like you (and I saw some elephants who definitely did not like some of the local staff, even picking up little rocks in their trunks to toss at them!) Second, the heavy cloth offers protection from all the ellie work you do during the day, one chore which is picking up elephant poo, with your bare hands. Because the great beasts eat fibrous corn stalks, sugar cane and fruit, their poo is amazenly dry, has a pleasant odor and stays in these nifty compact balls, about the size of a baseball.

Once cleaning up the poo is over, we take the ellies down to their watering hole for a drink and a morning bath. I climb up on the back of the my ellie of the day and ride her (they almost all are female) down with the rest. Into the water they charge, so happy to be getting wet and a good Thai elephant massage. We scrub them from top to bottom, ears, trunk and even around mouth and eyes. The mahouts stands by to keep the ellie down (they tuck their legs under and lay in the water so you can climb around them and get all the dirt out of every one of their cracks.) This was always a special time for me, because there would only be me, one or two others who spent the night, and the mahouts. It really felt like you were one of the gang, and the mahouts are more relaxed and love to tease each other and the "guests." There would usually be at least one water fight, with everyone getting drenched.

Mae Coup seems to smile as I give her a back rub with the scrub brush

After that, the elephants have their second meal of the day and we eat our first, usually fresh pineapple from the garden, eggs, toast and some kind of weird looking Thai sausage that was pretty tasty! Then it was back to elephant care, this time exercise.
By now, the day guests arrive by van, and get the basic training I had day one-how to mount, turn your elephant right and left, stop and the most important "down!" as in "non long" said very loudly, which means, 'get down' in Burmese. It is the only way up and off your elephant here-no ladders or platforms are used, and riding is done only bareback.

NON LONG! The only way to get on your elephant is if it gets down, then you grab the ears and climb aboard.

It's easy once you get the hang of it-what's not easy is getting used to the height!

Once everyone is on their elephants, we set off for the jungle-mahouts walking along, to "exercise" the elephants, and see the beauty of Thailand's green forests. One day, our guide "Nai" took me and a couple from London, since we were the only over night guest that day, on a jungle picnic. We rode our elephants up and up, into a dense forest, then the mahouts made a fire. Nai took banana leave packets out of his backpack and placed them on the fire. While our ellies roamed to eat and scratch, we ate a hot Thai rice and mixed veggie lunch, with chunks of chicken. It seemed surreal to be sitting on giant banana leaves for seats, and just feet away stood our elephants.

One of our elephants takes a moment during our picnic to have a scratch attack!
Mahouts make a fire for lunch, elephants roam around to find their own lunch...

Once back the elephants head straight to the water hole again, with riders on board, the fun part is sliding off into the water with your ellie.

Afternoons are amazing Thai food lunches, laying around in hammocks and then taking the ellies down to the water hole-again (elephants need ALOT of water!). There are babies here and they love water play, squirting, trumpeting and getting everyone wet. I never got tired of the water hole, and often jumped on a baby's back to get a free ride.

Me and "Fah sai" or 'Blue Sky'-a 5 year old male.

Nighttime at the camp were simple pleasures: a campfire made by the mahouts, guitar playing, the elephants snorting and eating their 8th or 9th meal of the day; one night we lit paper laterns and let them go with wishes, and made a sticky rice dessert by roasting it inside a bamboo stick. I feel asleep sore and exhausted each night, and tried to get up early enough each day to help the mahouts take the ellies down for their first morning drink, but usually didn't roll out of my bed up on the hillside until 8 or 9. Taking care of elephants is a huge job! I discovered it not only takes a lot of trips to a water hole, bushels and baskets of food, picking up after them and exercise, but you have to pair an elephant with a full-time bodyguard if they are going to be ridden or do any kind of work.
As I write this, now comfortable in a well-padded bed in a guest house in Chiang Mai, my back, shoulders and bum sore, I wonder what the ellies are doing tonight. And I really do wish I was still with them, but so grateful I had a chance to play at being a mahout for a little while. I've had two very different experiences here with elephants, and both have opened my eyes to the complexities of elephant management. One facet I hadn't thought much about are the mahouts. My next blog I will attempt to share the knowledge I gained talking to mahouts, and the little known side of choosing to dedicate your life to one elephant.

Two of my favorite buddies at Baan Chang Elephant Camp