Cosmic reward

"It can be hard to wait for the flow to start, but when you have to wait, you have to wait. In the meantime, assume you're dead" Mr Honda.

"This is my last life" says Ania in a proud tone in between 2 sips of chai.
"Funny" I reply "you're the second person I hear this from this week.
Personally, I don't think life ever ends, it can only change. In that sense, every moment is your last moment."
Sipping on my own cup, Michel next to me, silent as always, rolling his ever present joint, I recall a friend of mine who used to say the same thing, in the same tone of achievement and pride that Ania uses when he says that it is his "last life".
The mantra like sentence is always said in a sense of accomplishement and self satisfaction... as if there was anything to accomplish. A "last life" thought of as a cosmic reward for having done some great work. A
last life, implying a sense of meaningfullness, of concrete end, a complission. Most of all it implies a sense of an existing and static "self". "I" have done my duty, "I" am a great person, and now "I" get a reward.
"I'd love to believe that this is my last life" I say with a smirk on my face "infinity can seem like a really long time".
Not to fall into nihilism, or eternalism, but it seems to me that dealing with the life we have at the present moment is complicated enough, not to get too carried away by considerations of "other lives". If pondering such "other lives" can be a valid source of meditation, we can not forget that any answers gotten can only be speculations.

Michel passes the joint, Ania gets busy with his cans of spraypaint, I gaze at the fishing boats passing by on the green lake, it's a morning as any other at one of the thousands of Shiva Restaurants across Asia.


"But after all, Mr Osaka, when one is speaking of the essence of things, it often happens that one can only speak in generalities. Concrete things capture one's attention, but they are often little more than trivia. Side shows. The more one tries to see into the distance, the more generalized things become." Malto Kano.

A week laters I am back in North India Dharamshala, after the 4 days travel it takes to get from Nepal to Himachal Pradesh. The moonsoon season permeating everything, all is mold, dampness; mudd covering the
ground in a brown coat of uniformity.
The travel was done in company of Padam, a handsome Nepalese in his early 20's married to a british woman with milk skin. Son of a Lama, Padam and his wife are serious Dharma students. He's going to meet her so they can both attend the Dalai Lama's teachings in Ladakh. Sitting in Gorakhpur, the most used border town between India and Nepal, waiting for the next day train to Delhi, we philosophize in front of a dhal, rice and chapatis. Being well versed in Hindology, I enjoy listening to his stories of the many Hindu gods such as this tale of the creation of the Universe:
"Brahma asked Shiva and Parvati to go travel the Universe and see what is in it. So, Shiva and Parvati went around travelling the Universe. After they had gone everywhere, they came back to Brahma and reported what they found. Nothing, they had found that there was nothing in the whole known Universe. And, so, Brahma decided to fill the Universe with various things."
"Why do you think the gods decided to put things in the Universe?" I ask Padam in between chapatis.
"I don't know"
"Maybe they were bored?" I suggest seriously.
Padam laughs a bit, almost embarrassed at my suggestion of gods being bored.


"Maybe when people take their eyes of them, inanimate objects become even more inanimate."Malto Kano.

In the train station, utter filth is the only word that comes to my mind to describe the scene. The walls smeared with hours and nights of groups of Hindus waiting for their train, like brown organic graffitis marking the passing of time. Babies diaria being washed right onto the train tracks, people spitting and drooling, cows shitting in the train station and staring at the walls. In the "woman and tourist line", trying to purchase a train ticket, a fat and monstrous looking woman in a shiny leopard skin impression sari pushes me asides to pass in front of me eventhough we're the only 2 persons waiting behind the lady being served at the counter. She gives me a look that reminds me of the cows, I mention to her politely that she's a rude woman, as she tries to smile apologetically.
The cows pass by, sorting through their sacred garbage piles, walking on the train track; the omelet, chai, and miscellenous items peddlers attaches for a moment to the incoming trains. You never know when you might need a 80's Motley Crue, military, or ganga impression hankerchief after all. It is an unreal and crowded Indian train station.


This type of scene is what some well thinking people like to call "kaos". Yet, it seems to me, that it is just the opposite of kaos. This filth is what the real order of things is. In Simone De Beauvoir's own words: "Man is a social animal".
The things that well thinking people would like to call "order" is only a forced order, a false order programed on mechanized insect like, slave like mentalities. The real order is the filth onto which human life would naturally fall back into, if there was no one with a stick forcing them to behave in such and such ways. The real order of humans is to get back to animal state. The "civilized", pet like human state is like a constant beating of the monkey sleeping in each of us, as forgotten as the monkey might have become for some of us. The stick in front of the monkey is held by a minority of humans only, the rest basically lazy, unimaginative and programed by the few crazy ones who dare taming their inner monkey. Until it becomes the next one's turn to hold the carrot in front of the donkey.
Man is born a human animla, and ideally developps into a human.
Such pictures of train stations smelling of human waste and smeared with trash is what I'd like to show any Asian who dares telling me of the times when Asians were cleaner than Westerners. Once upon a time perhaps, in some parts of Asia and for some people perhaps...once upon a time it was and this is now.

India being the complex and gigantic land it is, after a night in the "rats town" as Joe calls it, Padam and I are sitting in a train compartment almost all to ourselves. The windows open to the land covered in
the moonsoon water glittering under the setting sun, the smells of the small towns passing by, the road works lasting for kilometers on ends, the land unveils it's immensity in front of my open eyes. My hand
plays with the wind, like a child I embrace this sense of freedom. Along the train tracks, I notice quite a few squatters relieving themselves while looking at the train pass by. I am once again reminded of the cows, so inseperable from India. The train slowly takes us into the night, wake up in Dehli.
I use the stop in Dehli to treat myself to a new simple digital camera, my old one having given up after the trek in the Pokhara mountains.

At 16:00 PM the bus packed with Israelis leaves for Dharamsala. The Israeli tourists do not have the best reputation amongst the Indians. Most of the Israelis neither having any real interest in discovering Indian
culture nor being big spenders, they moslty come to smoke hash as long as their visas allow. Most of them having just finished a military service of 2 years, their desires to sit on their ass for a while is quite understandable. To make the ride easier, I gladly take a puff of the joint being passed by the couple sitting in front of Padam and I. As I have not been smoking herb since I started this Indian trip, the occasional puff being passed around always feels nice and fuzzy.

A night on the bus laters, a sun rise on the green and lush mountains, light giving a foggy aura to a near by peak, and the next day I am back to giving English classes to a couple of Tibetan women and doing computer work with my monk Choeyang. One of the women, Tsumo (lake in tibetan), is a 27 year old mother of a 2 year old little girl. A nun for 10 years, now married to an ex-monk, she is a modern tibetan as any
other: kind, patient, with a thermos full of tea always ready and interested in others cultures. Sometimes her 7 month pregant neighbour friend stops by, sometimes another friend, sometimes a monk. The house smells of dri cheese (female yak), tsempa and urine. Sometimes we watch chinese soaps, as the kid sucks on mam's breast, the women chatting in tibetan, making string bracelets.
"Do you have yaks in your country?"
"No, but, we have buffalos" I answer sipping on my tea.
The days are spent quietly between morning computer and afternoon english, hang with kashmirians and Joe or sit at a chai shop browing books. A lot of being indoors, as the rain doesn't leave much time for outdoors activities, which gives me plenty of time in my little room, study , read, and moslty just sit.

"Sounds like zen. Interesting enough in itself as a system of thought, but not much good for explaining anything." hero of Wind up Bird Chronicles.

Choeyang, 30 something year old monk, and I cook lunch and dinner together, watching hours of tibetan music videos with the occasional chinese ones. I have now become fluent in the main tibetan dishes, which moslty consist of noodles of various shapes made with flour and water. Either served in soups or fried, a few pieces of available vegetables thrown in there, and it's a meal of thenktuk, gyathuk or other, served with timo, the steamed bread. Tibetans love and eat a lot of meat, and get as much mutton meat as they can afford. In Tibet, the weather being what it is, meat is plenty while vegetables are few, the notion of vegetarianism does not come into daily Tibetan pratice. Tsempa can also be eaten with the meal, traditionally eaten for breakfast, it is one of the main foods for the nomads. Made of barley flour, mixed with some butter or oil and hot water, it is rolled into a dow and eaten as bread. Here, there is no " don't play with your food" for my greatest enjoyment, I can make little balls and cubes with my tsempa, I can play with my food all I want.

When I am not showing Dreamweaver, Fireworks or a Video Editing program, and when there is not one of the many almost daily power outages, Choeyang and I spend hours sitting in the silence of melodic chants in the glow of the computer screen. Sometimes I think I'd like to talk more with him, ask him about his Dharma practice, ask him about his life as a nomad before he became a monk at 17, ask him about the time he walked through the mountains of Nepal and India with 40 other men, as many tibetans do. Choeyang gives classes of his own to friends, basic Word. Others stop by his little room to get some music taken out of DVDs and ripped into other CDs, others come and just visit.

Sometimes I'd like to tell him why I will not take refuge, taking refuge being the first step in becoming a Buddhist. But his current level of english does not allow for philosophical discussions. Taking refuge
consists of taking refuge in the Dharma (the Buddhist Way), the Buddhas (The Awakened Ones) and the Sanghas (a group of Dharma students). So we sit in silence, we eat our flour noddles, watching the same videos, over and over again, like kids. The videos all melting into one long and enchanting melody coming from another space and time. Images of Amdo, flowers of all sorts, nomads dressed in traditional clothing, decorated in heavy coral necklaces and other stones, the long leaves of the women dancers flying through the grasslands, horses and rivers, mountains and the sound of mandoline with a singer telling the story of this Hymalayan slice of life.

As much as I find Buddhist philosophy to be one of the most, if not the most, challenging and refined systems expressed so far, there are still some points in it with which I can not fully agree with. The concept of Precious Human Birth being one of those points. From a Buddhist point of view, being born a Human is seen as the highest birth one could attain. Higher than the animal and other various organic realms. Paradoxically enough, the Dalai Lama himself when adressing to beginner students, calls the Human body a "garbage can", "a producer of piss, puss and shit", as a way to not get attached to the human body.

Yet, we can not forget, that as in any systems of thoughts, there are many schools of difering opinions. In Buddhism, only the lower schools regard the body as being a hindrance to liberation from Samsara, The Wheel of Birth and Rebirth, which most of us are stuck into. For the higher schools, the tantric school of Vajrayana (NOT to be confused with the gross misinterpretations by too many based on physical sexuality) , the liberation from Samsara, the ultimate goal of buddhism, the body is not a hindrance, but is seen as a means to work through our respective karma (action). For the highest tantric schools, Samsara does not differentiate from Nirvana, the blissfull like state; for those schools, Samsara is Nirvana and Nirvana is Samsara. In Vajrayana, YOU are the Dharma.
As Precious as a birth Human might be to Buddhists, I just can not be so anthropomorphic as to see human as being any more special than any other life forms. I can only seem humans as being diferent from animals,
diferent from a stone, from a river or a cloud, but I can not see it as being "higher".

One way humans could seem higher than other Earthian life forms, would be in their arrogance. As Voltaire so beautifully pointed out in his Micromegas story, one trait that could resume humans is arrogance.
Human is so arrogant that it fools itself in believing that it is actually capable of any great thinking.

It justifies itself with sophisticated reasons and feelings of self importance. Humans are so arrogant that they can even figure out the gods that govern them. They are so important that the gods even have tasks for them to do, like dogs jumping through hoops, and as a cosmic reward getting one of those "last life" bone thrown to them. Humans like to think they have goals to acheive, things to do, they like to think that they matter, that they have a place in the evolution of the universe diferent from any of the other quadrupillions specks of dust floating about the cosmos.
The only gods humans can communicate with are the ones contained in themselves, each disguised under the many forms the human "self" can take, an internal dialogue.
The arrogance of man seems to be with no ends, as infinite as the Universe itself. This arrogance is also a reason to be interested in men. How dare such a little creature think that it can know anything while faced with infinite space. How beautifully vain of humans. This arrogance can also be seen as man's creative powers, reflecting in a kaleidoscope like miror.
It can makes humans fascinating and even lovable creatures. Yet, humans are doing just what the cows staring at the walls in the train station are doing. They are merely being human, with all that being human entitles. If I was a dog sniffing it's bowls, I doubt that I'd be doing something more meaningfull than sitting here thinking that I am having any thoughts at all.
Even their arrogance being a point of view, man really being as emtpy of independant meaning as any other concepts. Another speck of dust floating through the vaste Universe, giving itself reasons and goals.

Anything as long as it occupies time.

Throughout the ages, wise men tell others what they think a wise man is and is not, yet, even this is an opinion, a point of view. Man's wisdom can be seen in all it's wide diversity. It can be seen in it's stupidity and sparks of mind, in it's desires and non attachements, in it's selfishness and love for others, in it's inflated egos and lacks of it, in it's ridiculous and marvellous ideas, in it's inventions and regressions, in it's violence and imagination, in it's confusions and illusions. Man is man, and one can not take out the parts of man which do not fit one's own notions of what man should or should not be, without diminishing man. Either one loves man in all it's arrogance, ignorance, confusion and other not so praised traits, either one does not love Man.
The Ubermensh[/u rl] being yet another empty dream, a self fullfilling fantazy dreamed of by frustrated and hypercondriac minds. For really, man is already ubermensch, for it "exists".

"Opinions are points of views. Wisdom is only points" echos Michel from one of his rare spoken words uttered in an almost inaudible whispers.

Back in Mc Leod, I get deeper acquainted with the other side of Tibetan Buddhism, the human side. One can never forget that above all, no matter what clothes we wear, we are all human before anything else. The stories I now hear and live are far from the utopic pictures of the books glorifying the Buddhas. The stories are not about romantized wise men having acheived anything or having found any truth. The stories are about people like you and I, doing the best they can, day after day. It is the story of men and women, with all the confusing arrogance and beauty they can be. It is bickering, gripping at this or that person.
Hindus with their opinions, Tibetans with theirs, and cows with their sacred garbage.
It is the story of nothing, yet a nothing that can seem full of so many little things.


"There are no sides in this case. They simply don't exist. This is not the kind of things that has a top and a bottom, a right and a left, a front and a back." Mr Osaka.


"I read one day in a book, that after the Buddha found enlightment, he never taught. He stayed in the jungle and never shared what he learned under the Boddhi tree." says Fiery, one of the muslam kashmerians I
enjoy having chai with.
"ahahhaha! I never heard this version of the story!!" I say, "Nice one."

A few days ago was Choeyang's birthday. Birthday celebrations not being a tibetan tradition, except for kids under 3 years, I took my monk to a restaurant roof top terrasse, for a bowl of the usual noodle soup and fried momos, a lassi and a tea each. To finish, we got a brownie and an apple cake, a real treat for both of us. This day was also what would have been a 3 year anniversary with my last partner, this day was many things to many people around the world. This day was just a day: "un samedi soir sur la terre" (a saturday night on earth) sings Francis Cabrel, a poet singing with this charming southern french accent smelling of lavender, wood oven pizzas and rose wine.
On the terrasse, we sat in our common silence, looking at the sky wandering if it would rain or not.
Today, for lunch I tried to make some French toast, pain-perdu or "lost bread" as the french call it, topped with fried apples in sugar, a successfull change from flour noodles. As I sit finishing this note,
evening and lunches become a confortable noodle, Choeyang naps in his crimson clothes, another bowl of tuhkpa. Sounds of the rain falling in the alley outside the window, next door monks doing their chantings,
crikets reminding me of the South of France. The rain should last 20 more days according to the Indian farmer next door.

I'd like to share with Choeyang some of my thoughts. But really, what is there to say?

For now my cosmic reward is this silence, those days in which nothing happens, this quiet sense of peace and tranquility. My cosmic reward is the passing moments filled with grace and gentleness, it is now. It is
a Halometok, a cosmic flower. (metok being a flower in tibetan, halometok, being a kind of flower, a cosmos).

Until next moment, cosmos to cosmos...

For further inquiries into humans and other creatures, see you next time

[url=http://www.dailymotion.com/gamatron/video/x2vq2m_tibetan-music_music]T IBETAN VIDEO: see a video of tibetan nomad music.
Anyone interested in more, please do contact me.

Quotes from characters in The Wind Up Bird Chronicles.
Exept from Michel quote, who is a real life character met in Pokhara, Nepal.