<\/a><\/center>\nWe spun the wheels of time, adding one mantra to our karma for each revolution. (“So I’ve got that going for me\u2014which is nice.”)<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nApparently no shoe was safe at the entrance to the temple. (Read the sign.)<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nOne of the main temples, when empty.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nTibetan Buddhist monks chanting in the same temple. (I think I burned up all my karma by taking this photo.)<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nOur irrepressible simian friends patrolled the grounds.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nBrenna snapped this photo of a fellow tourist’s sleeping child. She talks more and more seriously about stealing an Indian baby each day. I fear for the children.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nAround 2pm, monks started gathering in the central courtyard. We were just about to leave but decided to stay and see what’s up. We weren’t disappointed.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nThe monks paired up and began conversing\u2014arguing, more like it\u2014with one sitting and the other standing, swaying, and intermittently emphasizing a point with a stomping of the foot and a clap of the hands. Each monk fingered a string of rosary beads in the process.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nAs we later learned from an elder monk in a restaurant, these young monks were debating Buddhist philosophy: one of their many forms of meditation practice. The standing monk posed philosophical challenges or questions to the sitting monk, who then had to respond. <\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nSome of them REALLY got into it. I was a little jealous. I wanted to participate, but it was all in Tibetan. And, I suppose, I’m not a monk. (But there were a handful of apparent lay people in the mix.)<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nThat evening we attempted to join our first conversational English class (as volunteers) for Tibetan refugees. We were a bit late, so we grabbed dinner at the “Peace Cafe” instead, where we ran into a weird, weird old man (more on that later) and a positively delightful little Korean-Tibetan girl.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center>\nBrenna asked me to get the chloroform and burlap sack. I resisted.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
April 12th, 2011- This morning we visited Tsuglagkhang, the main complex of important Tibetan temples and buildings, including the official home of the Dalai Lama. I didn’t see the Lama himself, but I did think often and fondly of Bill Murray’s Dalai Lama story in the movie Caddyshack. Good views of the Himalaya and central […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blakeboles.com\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blakeboles.com\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blakeboles.com\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blakeboles.com\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blakeboles.com\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.blakeboles.com\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":431,"href":"http:\/\/www.blakeboles.com\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions\/431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blakeboles.com\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blakeboles.com\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blakeboles.com\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}