After spinning all the little mani wheels at the smaller campus of Mindroling Monastery, I circumambulated the stories high Golden Buddha and observed many younger Indian people celebrating in the usual young person’s appreciation: selfies and group pictures with timer set. All seemed happy to be there. Then I ate at the little restaurant across from the variety store and tasted the best vegetable Thenthuk ever. Feeling fatigued from the nasty virus I picked up in either Cambodia or India, I temporized. I witnessed Tibetan monks riding scooters, and a Tibetan dressed in brown robes with an impressive over jacket, cradling a baby while hitching a ride on back a scooter. In Cambodia the monks seldom drive anything. But then they usually have zero money as well. I headed over to the larger campus, which looked like the monastery proper, and tackled circumambulations there. When you come in the main gate there’s lots of placards explaining the history, intention, and the typology of the stupas. To the left there is a stories high Guru Rinpoche, Pema Jungnei, statue. Its mantra is etched in gold Tibetan letters saying, Om Ah Hung Bendza Guru Pema Siddhi Hung. I said the mantra and circled three times, feeling pretty weak. Then I saw a very strange anomaly. Inside a small glass garage was a yellowing, ripening colored Benz. Not a bendza (dorje), but a Mercedes Benz. About twenty plus years old. Circling it, I discovered it was HH Dahli Lama’s personal ride for many years. The glass reflected the eight different chortens, the Lha bap Duchen Chorten (celebrating Buddha’s descent from heaven after teaching his mother Maya the Abhidharma) among them. There were toilets, and sighs saying don’t do this and don’t do that, the most ironic one being: ‘No Public Displays of Affection’, which was exactly the reason Pema Jungnei (lotus born) and his consort were persecuted, burned at the stake, thrown in the river, and so forth. Of course, they prevailed and became icons of Enlightenment. At variety store outside the main gate, I stopped to pick up Wi-Fi to arrange an Uber ride. I figured it wasn’t going to be easy, finding free Wi-Fi amongst the mostly Indian shops. I sat down outside the busiest store to use my phone. There was a big black shaggy dog, like in the stories, who looked dumb as toast and held between his jaws what looked like a red ball. Meanwhile, and the air became a little charged just then, a well dressed sadhu whom I’d earlier given two rupee coins to approached me with a fake spiritual but also hangdog expression and stared quietly at me. Just then the big black dog with that something in its mouth also approached, all wagging tail and sashaying hind quarters. For some reason I decided to pet him. I usually don’t. Maybe it was the sadhu. Anyway, his big fury head came closer, and as I reached out to pet him he bit down on what I now realized was a tomato and it’s innards splashed all over the crotch of my pants and pants leg, staining and littering it with seeds. These were to be the pants I’d wear to go see His Holiness once I recovered from my illness. The sadhu seemed oblivious to this pitiful traveler’s plight and starting saying, “This is my help. This is my help.” At first I took it personally, thinking, in short, he had power over me so I must do what he wants. I soon discounted that notion, as he seemed in the moment just an unaccomplished, greedy person. Then he pulled out a roll of bills, 10, 20, and 50 rupee notes. He said again, “This is my help. This is my help.” At that point, as I scrubbed at the orangish-red stains on my nice white pants, I became perturbed and said, “Do you know Vajrapani?” I then made a threatening Mudra, the common wrathful one, and said, “You should get to know him.” I confess now it was a veiled threat, like offering someone a ‘knuckle sandwich.’ He replied he did not know Vajrapani, and persisted in showing me the rupee notes saying, “This is my help. This is my help.” Clearly I didn’t have my interpreter’s cap on. Later, I realized what he meant was: ‘Don’t give me small change. I’m too good for that. I only take higher rupee notes. That is what helps me.’ But I was too involved in the sheer idiocy, and unfairness, of a real shaggy dog story. In other words, there I was, once again, being very greedy in several directions. The Buddha’s Enlightenment, if I understand the foundation of all Theravada teachings, and the backbone of the Mahanikaya, Cambodian, Dharma Songs correctly, rests on his overcoming all greediness, giving his very flesh and blood, as the Jatakas Tales remind us, for others in need.
But this sigh, as it were, was just a taste of troubles to come. After seeking out Wi-Fi in a hip cafe, where I noted a few rather sad looking, disaffected Tibetan teenagers, I pushed on until I found a cell phone store. There, a young mister Khan agreed to give hotspot after I promised to buy an iPhone cover. Connecting with Uber and charting my directions, it immediately let me know there were no cars available. There were however ‘autos’, i.e., tuk-tuks. How bad can it be from a car ride? I thought, unable to imagine a thrifty-five or forty minute ride in a jostling, no suspension, auto. Besides, what choice did I have? So I ordered an auto, the driver of which turned out to be a human equivalent of that big black shaggy dog who messed up my pants. After I waited and waited for him, as he was dumbly parked twenty meters from the point of my pickup, I walked up the incline, still having breathing problems, and confirmed his PIN number pickup with mine, making sure he entered it into his phone. And then we were off on Mr Toad’s Wild Ride. It should be noted here that when someone is genuinely abused, it’s difficult for them to talk about it. Essentially I was tortured, and paying for it, as the seats of the auto slammed my backside repeatedly for fifteen minutes while he made wrong turn after wrong turn. I began to think it was a technique to have the rider jump from the back seat and running screaming away so he‘d make his prepaid fare and save all the gas. Of course, that kind of thinking is almost always incorrect. But it’s then I blurted out, “Do you know where you’re going?” Clearly he didn’t, and it was just before or after that he almost crashed into a motorcycle—the driver and passenger roundly chiding him. Eventually, while I thought once or twice I might lose my mind in the backstreets of the Clement Town maze, he found the main road. From that point on, it became at least barely tolerable for an old hand at Asian transits. Except there was then a kicker to this torturous ride. Just before dropping me off at the Hotel Deepshika, there was a giant speed bump he hit going twenty to twenty-five km. While my head did not hit the roof, as it once did in a film-crew teamster van, it wracked my bottom and lower back with such pain I groaned out loud. I saw the driver wince and read his mind that this passenger’s reports back to Uber might tank his career.
But something changed inside me after that lightening jolt, and before we got to the destination, I felt sorry for him. I equated him with that big, stupid, lumbering dog who wanted to share his tomato with me, using my white trousers as our napkin. So I found it in myself to say thank you to him. He then checked his phone, I suppose making sure he’d actually gotten paid, and said in return ‘teek-aa’—which I later realized had come to mean, in a contemporary, trendy India, something like ‘bitchen.’ Once in my room, alone with my conscience, and those Uber evaluation stars twinkling out at me from the screen of my iPhone, I gave him a three out of five stars, stating the reason for two less as wrong turns, and tipped him as well.
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