Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 G I F T S 06he kept his eyes open and saw what he could do. He’d blend the compassionto respond with the equanimity to stay sane.As far as the residents went, after the local Bihari folk, the most sizeablecommunity was the Tibetan traders. Their simple but clean teashops were frequented by Westerners in mystically inscribed T-shirtssmoking beedees and enjoying the wholesome food. Tibetans are aresourceful folk; they had learned to adapt and to relate to Westerners—who in turn were naturally sympathetically inclined to them as refugeesfrom a holy land. They did a brisk business selling goods on the street.You could never haggle a price; compared with the local people, theywere quick-witted and bright. While the Indians seemed to be just aboutgetting by, the Tibetans got the business.But there was always the sacred power of Tibetan Buddhism. At theend of 1990, out for a stroll, heading for the Bhutanese temple for nospecial reason, we rounded the corner of the road and were confrontedby a loosely defined procession of monks in Tibetan robes. Itsnaked like a carnival dragon, with a large bare-chested Tibetan manin a wheelchair as its head, coloured gifts on its back, and cymbals andtrumpets bristling from its sides. There were Western laypeople inthere too. At the gates of the temple, it cheerfully swallowed us upwithout breaking its stride, swept up the temple steps and disintegratedin the main hall. The mass of blood-red and yellow robes withone saffron misfit, something covered in red hair, and assortedhumans swirled and settled before the huge bulging-eyed gaze ofGuru Padmasambhava. A silent Buddha was in the centre of the shrinewith Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion to his left, butthe Guru on his right was the real host of the occasion. He was brandishinga vajra to drive away all forms of delusion. Visually, the placewas vibrating with the suffusions of turquoise, the waves of passionatereds, the jewel adornments of citrus yellow, blue, and emeraldspheres. Cascades of gorgeously arrayed Buddhas, bodhisattvas,2 8 1