It seems strange to say it, but I didn’t realize how profound of an impact Pattabhi Jois had on my life.  Our personal connection was not that strong; I don’t think he ever knew my name. But for the past 17 years, his presence on this earth has impacted almost every aspect of my life.

Obviously, the daily practice. The friends I have made through yoga:  almost all my dear friends have come into my life through yoga. My extended family has learned about yoga now, through early morning family holiday practices in unlikely places:  the terrace of my grandmother’s Florida apartment, the dock on the St. Lawrence river in Thousand Island Park, New York,   the weight room in Steamboat Springs Health Club, living room floors, back yards, beaches throughout the world. I’ve changed through Ashtanga, matured if I dare say.

My livelihood is thanks to Guruji. Paris, Sri Lanka, Amsterdam, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong, now Bhutan…I have been so lucky to be able to see the world, sharing what I love and surviving on it.  Thriving even.  What would I have done with my life, if not for his Ashtanga yoga?  Some of my family might have initially been more comfortable if I had chosen a more conservative career path, but surely I would be a less happy person.

In Boulder, before I met Guruji, I knew only his photo on the wall of the Yoga Workshop.  Stern-faced samastithi. Richard and Mary would share stories about the various ways that Guruji had lovingly tortured them.  I decided that I, too, needed torturing.  So I went to Mysore to meet him,  1997.

But Guruji never tortured me; he only showed me the loving part.  My second day in Laxmipuram (there were 12 of us) he said to me during backbending: now You Take your knees.  You take. Having never considered whether this was possible or not, I just did.  I took.  And when I came up, dizzy and exhilarated, he held me for a long time.  And this is how I mostly remember his adjustments:  just being held, like grandpa.  Lovingly.  Grandpasana.

In those days, conference meant going to his house at 5 to sit on the steps and see if he would come out to join us.  Amaji would come too and I remember mostly laughter. It was like the neighborhood kids getting together.

Years later, in Boulder while he was on tour, I got my first “bad lady!” and I cried.  He chastised me, “Why you crying?” and then held me an extra long time until I stopped.

Once again in Mysore, an older, softer and less agile Guruji in Calvin Klein shorts lay on me in paschimottasana.  To both of our surprise, he could not then get off.  We both laughed so hard he finally rolled off.

Laughter, tears

Evolving through the years

I’ve done my practice

And all has come.

But now you’re gone.

I will miss you Great Guru Grandpaji.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

A few of us girls hiked the gorgeous one hour up to the Kila Nunnery on Sunday.  Starting from the top of Cheli La (La means mountain pass) we climbed through thick old forest and bright blooming red rhododendron.  On all sides, in the distance, were snow covered mountain ranges.  Above is a snow packed 22,000 ft Jhomolhari, Bhutans most sacred peak.  Climbing it is forbidden, as it would displease the gods.

One of the nuns, 23 year old Tenzin, and her kitten, showed us the main shrine, just above at the top of the steps.  A lovely bright girl whose easy laugh and educated english made the whole scenario seem quite ordinary.  But in fact, this is a community of 40 women living in retreat huts built into a dizzying cliffside, a days walk from anywhere.  Choden, another nun, arrived at Kila 3 years ago after having run away from abusive parents.  She first ran to her uncle, who put her to work tending buffalos, but one day she was raped by 2 village men who then threw her in the river.  So she fled again and found her way to the nunnery.  She is now 16.

With Isabel, our sparkley spa manager at Uma Paro, and Jil, our rock star chef.

I was looking out over the vast valley this chilly morning, the high peaks covered in fresh snow, and there was a moment of expansion.  Perspective, perhaps.  How easy it is to get caught in our own little world, to fixate on pain and discomfort.

Standing there staring into the immense space created by sky and mountain, its not only laughable but embarrassing that one would waste a precious instant complaining about an injustice, an unfulfilled desire, an unwanted intrusion.  How insignificant these phenomena seem in comparison to the utter stillness created by the forces of nature.  I decided to ally with the stillness, instead of the chatter.

And what occurred is that I realized this:  we are all doing this same thing.  We all have our own version of pain and woe, some more, some less.  So merging with the vastness, I sent some of that stillness to those in need.  To parents without jobs, to farmers without water, to women in Afghanistan, to children in Darfur, to patients in hospitals, to people everywhere with broken hearts.  My tight breath relaxed.

Yet from an even broader perspective, it occurs that this too is insignificant. Tomorrow, next year, in 100 years, will it matter?  What we take to be so important, if viewed from a larger perspective, is but a wrinkle in the fabric of time.  Events unfold in a timeframe, or return again and again, only to be consumed by the stillness, the vastness of space. We spend our lives fixating on particular aspects of phenomena that we either want or don’t want.  Caught up in the appearance of reality, we ignore the real, which is simply the spacious clear awareness of that appearance.  And immediately, once this awareness is recognized, there is peace.

Paro Valley

Wandering back to the house
Raindrops on fresh cherry blossoms
Green bamboo by the secret path
A wisp of past like smoke

Still winter here I forgot
A chill in the old red dragon room
Cold air on my bare painted toes
They welcome me with the news

Journeys to places I already knew
Long forgotten sorrows that never were
New life in the trees happily stupidly
Scurries scuttles and skitters

Winds bring blessings
From far up and out
A peace lay hazily
Over the blue river

Horizons have changed
High hills all around
Mind settles deeply
In a bright quiet bliss

Come home again
As rain scours earth
Rinsing away the dust of ages
To leave only a glow

Over the past few weeks we have gone up to Neyphug Monastery to make offerings to the little monks:  shoes, hats, longjohns.  The 60 young monks are either orphaned, from abusive homes, or otherwise disadvantaged, and Neyphug Tulku has given them a home and education at the monastery.

This past week I was a student again at a week-long yoga retreat.  It was lovely and we all learned a lot, but some of what I learned, is what I need not to do.

I was reminded of the old days when I used to go to many different yoga workshops.  What I so often heard was “PUSH PUSH” as the mantra with the muscles and the skeleton being the language.  And this is simply no longer what practice is about for me.  I have learned, finally, after years of ‘PUSH PUSHing’ through, to back off.

There is something about being in Bhutan that is driving this message home more clearly than ever before.  I don’t know if it is altitude or Guru Rinpoche in the air, or perhaps simply age catching up with me, but I notice that a little goes a long way now. I don’t need so much movement and activity to drop into the deep details.  Less is definitely becoming more, and more.  Practice seems to happen on its own, if I simply get out of my own way.

Some days, the idea of pushing and jumping around through the same sequences admonishing myself, or students, to pull stretch reach push repeat over and over seems quite ridiculous. Some days, it feels more important to slow down, to breathe and to listen.  This feels more like yoga to me:  a practice that reflects the impermanent nature of things.

Now I don’t claim to have attained an enlightened view of what yoga is.  But following the Neti Neti (not this, not that) paradigm, I am slowly narrowing it down.

I learned this week that we need to be sensitive to the current circumstances in our lives.  When just back from a long and demanding hike, we need restorative postures and deep breathing, inversions after being on the feet all day.  We don’t need more difficult legwork!  If we are hyperflexible, we don’t need to overdo hip openers.  We need to learn stability, strength and connection – the retracting movement of tying it all together.  Otherwise we simply exaggerate the stretching and spreading ourselves all over the mat and all over our lives.  This has taken me much too long to understand.  In the meantime, I have worked my hardest to accommodate every teacher who I have come across, trying to please them with how flexible I can be, ignoring my body’s pleas and cries to please back off and get a grip.  Literally.

So it was an interesting week.  I have learned that constantly pushing when there is a weak foundation is simply not helpful. Awareness and rest can be as powerful as work – we need balance.  And so rather than forging eagerly ahead to the next step, I am now sitting still, deepening the breath and strengthening the foundations, waiting for the next step to arise out of those depths.

Drukgyal Dzong

Well it seems I have more to do here…on the eve of my departure a sudden shift in the fabric of the universe created an invitation to return to teach here for another month, at another resort.

I never even made it to Bangkok. Two weeks of prostrating under the Bodhi Tree in Bodhgaya must have purified me enough to return to the peace and quiet and pure (if freezing) air of Bhutan.

An interesting place, Gaya.  Apart from the area just underneath the Bodhi Tree, which is easily one of my favorite places on Earth, Buddhagaya, as it is sometimes called, is easily NOT my favorite place, anywhere.  Dusty dirty crowded loud, there are not many places to rest peacefully here, except under The Tree, so here is where I spend my time.

Early mornings I would take a bicycle rickshaw from the Sikkim Guest House to the Mahabodhi temple, just next to the famous tree, and join Neyphug Tulku Rinpoche and a few friends for the morning session.  Wooden prostration boards crowd the lawn surrounding the temple where masses of people, mostly red-robed monks, practice purifying karma for the benefit of all sentient beings.  The first few days it was a bit quiet, so I was able to borrow a board, eventually I had to buy my own, which I will donate to the Bhutanese monastery there.  By the time I arrive most mornings it is already 6:30, well into the morning for most of the monks.

After a few hours of bowing to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, our small, impromptu and evolving group would gather for chapattis and omelettes and chai at a restaurant somewhere around the temple.  Beggar season is now, and they are everywhere.  Seems they travel throughout the year, finding the tourists or pilgrims wherever they happen to be at that time of the year.  They are ruthless in their pleading, using their legless, armless, pantless and dirty children as decoys.

After a long siesta and shower, the afternoon sessions generally begin around 3 or 4.  Sounds around the temple relay the time of day…early morning is silent, mid-morning Tibetan style puja with horns and cymbals and deep throated chanting, several times a day the Muslim call from the nearby mosque (and “Muslim Grave Yard”). Around 6 the inner shrine hosts various groups for evening chants:  these weeks it has mostly been the Thais.

After the evening session we again go to eat, usually at the cozy veg restaurant with the big booths at Mahayana guest house.  After prostrating all day, bedtime never seems soon enough, and it is a treat that I appreciate rarely elsewhere like I do here.  It also means I don’t have to breath nasty dust anymore for a few hours, as one tends to do all day long here.

So basically this is how I spent 2 and a half weeks, while waiting for a new Bhutanese visa.  Now that I am back again in the high cold hills, I will resume the mystical tale of the Paro valley and beyond…

Well things are winding down here, sadly. I would stay a lot longer if I could. Drove to Ha, the next valley over with a few friends, 2 Bhutanese girls (Sonam and Sonam) and firey Sri Lankan Ashok, giggling most of the day. We brought a big picnic and a camera, and when we arrived at the valley, there was a monastery at the top of the hill where we heard Machig Labdron had left her footprint, so we went. She had spent time in a cliffside retreat house behind the monastery, so we asked a monk to take us. Ashok turned around the minute it started getting steep, and good thing, cause it got steeper each step. When the trail did finally level out, at times it was so thin my foot barely fit on it, and on one side of that thin trail was steep rock wall going up, and on the other side was steep rock wall going down, and down, and down. I have never said my mantra so fervently: OmManiPadmaHumOmManiPadmaHumOmManiPadmaHum, knees shaking, hands sweating, mind trying to convince myself that I have been a good girl and don’t deserve to die on my way to pay respects to a woman of wisdom, Buddhist saint, vajrayana master, fellow pilgrim. And I will admit without shame that yes, I did part of that trail on my hands and knees. Call it bowing to the goddess.

Machig's retreat hut is on the right

Anyway I am alive and today just back from Punakha, the ancient capital of Bhutan. The Punakha Dzong there reminds me of the scene of the witch’s castle in the wizard of oz – huge, mysterious, easy to get lost in, virtually surrounded by a moat as it is at the confluence of 2 rivers, and filled with roaming masses of men dressed in identical costumes. All their main monasteries are called dzongs, fortresses, because in the old days government administration shared the same building so they could save on building expenditures, and then they would all be safe in the huge and protected building in case of invasion. The Tibetans did in fact invade a few times, but no one ever conquered Bhutan. A fairly amazing accomplishment, given its size and strategic location.

The climate in Punakha is almost tropical – a refreshing treat from dry wintry Paro. Poinsettias as big as houses line the road on both sides entering the village, a flaming red tunnel of Christmas cheer. Oranges and guavas and bananas crowd their respective trees. I am told, thank goodness after the fact, that cobras also crowd these parts. Fortunately I did not learn this firsthand.

Students are few and far between these days; Bangkok’s political problems helped with that. The red rice has all been harvested and winnowed and now you can see great sacks of it in the marketplace on Sundays. A few straggling guests remain at the lodge, the season dwindling down and the staff making arrangements for holidays. Peasants haul huge loads of wood on their backs down the road, step by painstaking step back to their homes, preparing for winter.

Winter is in the air dropping pine needles on my head.   A velvet chill lines a good wind, fluttering prayer flags in its wake.  Puffs of chimney smoke cloud the road where I take my afternoon walk.  A new season has been announced, and I feel slightly wiser today.

Perhaps this is due to blessings received yesterday on the pilgrimage to Taktsang. It’s the one destination most everyone has heard of by the time they arrive in Bhutan: Tiger’s Nest, the cliff-side temple where Guru Rinpoche spent time in retreat.

Taktsang

Craning the neck from the drop-off point, it is difficult to imagine arriving there without ropes and equipment or a flying tigress, as was Guru Rinpoche’s preferred means of transportation.  The hike itself is a challenge (especially the coming down bit), but under 2 hours each way.  What is more of a challenge is to share the trail with the constant and thick flow of tourists.  I’ve become accustomed to the space here in Bhutan, trees being more numerous than humans.

To avoid this flow, I decide to visit the lesser-known temple dedicated to Machig Labdron just behind Taktsang.  A tiny sign on the main path indicates the side-trail.  Passing under a colorful canopy of frayed prayer flags, lush grass underfoot, one sees a thin dirt trail that climbs to the secret dwelling place of one of Vajrayana Buddhism’s most celebrated yoginis.

After visiting the temple and the cave where she left her footprint, and paying respects, the caretaker invites me into his small house for tea, where 5 other pilgrims are already gathered around an electric kettle of milk tea.  Taking a place in the corner, I quietly nibble on a biscuit.

Making our exit, one of the women taps me on the shoulder and, with a gesture, invites me to come with them.  We continue up a steep path over gigantic boulders, so big they need notched-log-ladders to climb up and the men hold my hand until I get solid footing.  Up, away from the trailhead, to who knows where..

We follow a crystal stream up a gently sloping grass field, past a prayer-mill, up the side of a forested mountain.  Coming to the top, the land suddenly flattens out and in the midst of a large field high above the valley is an imposing temple, Zangto Pelri Lakhang.  The dogs have announced our arrival, so the caretaker is ready with the keys to show us around. We pay our respects to Guru Rinpoche (3 prostrations) and the priest offers us amrita, blessed camphor water. Upstairs is a smaller shrine to 1000-armed Chenrezig, and on the top floor is still another shrine to Shakyamuni Buddha.

Afterwards we spread out on the grass with our picnic lunches and savor views of the expansive valley below.  Quite soon after, one of the men looks at his watch and they gather up to go, down the other side of the mountain we have just climbed.

Did I mention that no one speaks English?  I have no idea where we are going, if we are returning to the trailhead or perhaps spending the night in the wilderness, and as the sun is setting, it is too late for me to turn back.  I figure if its my time to go, it could be a lot worse than perishing on Guru Rinpoche’s sacred mountain.

Eventually we end up at a small cliff-hanging temple on the other side of the main complex, so high up its dizzy.  More prostrations and offerings.  Hugging the rock walls as we make our way back, precariously and with absolute awareness, as the sheer drop leaves no room for error.

We spend the rest of the afternoon skating down steep pine needle dusted trails through thick woods.  Ani is a bit older and frequently needs help navigating in her treadless shoes.  My companions are infinitely patient with her, chanting mantra quietly the whole way down, and we all arrive at the trailhead just as the sun disappears behind the mountains.

So last week I learned that Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s Yangsi (it means child incarnation before they assume their teaching responsibilities) lives just down the road from me here. He’s 15-16, just about to go away (to Bodhgaya and Kathmandu) for the winter, so I started asking around how I could go see him. Because he is the incarnation of such a high lama (his previous incarnation was the Dalai Lama’s teacher) and still doing his intensive studies, he (or rather those in charge of his education) don’t often grant interviews with him.

Then, coincidentally yesterday my new Tibetan (girl)friend, Deki, who runs a small café in Paro and makes me veg momos if I call ahead, calls and says, ‘I’m going for a blessing tomorrow with rinpoche’s tutor, a khenpo, do you want to come? We can go see rinpoche afterwards. So this morning on a glorious blue day with snow packed peaks all around the mist drenched valley, we went to see Khyentse Rinpoche.

First we went to see the Khenpo, an amazing kind and all-seeing man who gave us Tibetan happy pills and blessed our malas and doused our heads with camphor scented water to wash away our suffering (I’ll let you know if it works). Afterward his servant offered us milk tea and cookies (at 7:30am) and Khenpo went into his room to find little pictures of Guru Rinpoche for us. While we drank our tea he blessed a pile of thangka paintings another monk had brought in. Just before we left we bowed and he held our head in his hands strong like he was extracting all the irrelevance and muck.

We left his small new warm wooden retreat house and walked up the hill towards rinpoche’s quarters. Five playful dogs tormented a pony on the lawn. We diverted to make 3 koras around the stupa in a green and purple flower filled garden (end-october when everything else around here is brown and crumbling). Then one of the 4 other rinpoches who live here at Sechen monastery in Paro offered us more tea while we waited for rinpoche to receive us. 3 adorable tiny puppies were there among the many dogs and we each (Deki and I) held one on our laps while she talked in Tibetan to the lamas, who she knows from years of family ties.

So finally rinpoche is ready for us. We walk across the sun filled courtyard to his small charming house. The door opens and one of the monks takes our offerings of biscuits and incense, and we enter, place our bags and katas (white offering scarves) in the corner to make our 3 prostrations to this young and clearly full-on powerful rinpoche. We offer our scarves, immediately a monk comes to offer us a Handful (I mean my mouth was full) of dutsi (blessed amrita) dust and a protection cord and while I am chomping away trying to swallow my dust and tie my cord, Deki is suddenly insistent, “do you have anything to say to rinpoche?” so I’m like, go ahead, you first (it was rather like mgho amghead, ou fiirsph with a little spray of dust) and she goes, “you can say something” and I go “no please, you go” and she goes, “you don’t have anything to say?’ and so I go, brilliantly, “I am very happy to meet you” and rinpoche (who has been sitting back calmly watching this whole mini-drama unfold) goes (get this), “thank you”. And then Deki goes, “right. then. so shall we go?” and I go, “ok”, and so 60 seconds later we get up and like some comic silent film I step on the hem of my kira and almost stumble over her and into him as we collect ourselves to go. We bow for another blessing and as we do I make eye contact with rinpoche and I can’t tell if those fathomless wisdom eyes show deep deep compassion, or slight concern and on our way out the door, the 3 lamas in the corner snicker at us and try hard to suppress their laughter, which overtakes us in the sunlit garden.

And that, my dear friends, was the highlight of my today.