Dal Lake, Buddhist Monk Debates

Yesterday and today were are first “weekend,” a chance to catch up on reading, explore outside of McLeod Ganj and have some alone time. Yesterday, six of us went on a trip to Dal Lake, a fill in lake for exiles of the sacred Dal Lake in Tibet. The lake is above the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) and the opposite direction from the waterfall, so for us that meant being able to explore the “third mountain.” The weather was beautiful, 55-60ish degrees and sunny. The walk was very beautiful, all in the trees and on a winding road. Very few cars compared to the town and even to the walk to the waterfall. We got lost a few times, mistaking an Indian military fort with TCV and then heading farther away than before. When we did finally find TCV, it wasn’t what I expected (a theme for the hike). Most of the buildings look like they are on the verge of falling apart and it wasn’t nearly as big as I expected for housing and schooling 500-700 students. We ended up wandering around for a while, and found the handicraft store. Students do not make much of the items in the store, but all funds help the school, so buying still feels like a good deed. On the way out, we happened upon some women doing traditional rug weaving, which was so amazing to watch. The details that go in to them, and how one even knows when to put a black thread instead of yellow to end up with a yak was pretty remarkable. Eventually, we made it to Dal lake, which was really disappointing. The lake is man-made, with about 2 inches of muddy, dirty water in it and about 20 coy, most of which looked dead.

Being disappointed as we were, we decided to continue to head up the mountain and see what else lay ahead. We ended up climbing straight up stairs as steep as the steeper parts of the incline to a small Indian village. By this point we were pretty hungry and it was threatening to rain, so we thought we would find a restaurant in which we could wait out the storm before heading the hour home. No luck there either. There were only two restaurants to be had, one in a hotel, which only had tea, and the other, a roadside shack, the kind we were warned not to eat at, and it only had outdoor seating anyway. So we decided it was a bust and headed home. Again, not that simple. We like to make things into adventures. We ended up taking a different path down which placed us about 4km underneath McLeod Ganj, so that the trip ended up being uphill both ways. And it was raining. But we came upon St. John in the Woods church, a relic from when the British had a military post here. The church is very gothic looking and certainly makes an impression.

After lunch, we as a group attempted to see a movie at the local cinema. Its basically 25 chairs and a projector, but they have American movies, which was certain to be better than all the Hindi stuff that is on TV 24/7. The deal with the theatre is that you can go anytime, choose from their collection and watch for 100 rupees. Well, we thought that since there was 15 of us, we shouldn’t have to each pay 100 rupees if we could come one at a time and watch for the same price. That didn’t go over too well with the owner, and we ended up just giving in since we were arguing over $3. We decided on Michael Clayton, but when the movie started, it was halfway through. We all got up, got our money back and left. So much for our movie attempt.

I spent late Monday afternoon in bed with a fever, which was fun, and ended up in bed by 8:30 (which is only 20 minutes earlier than usual).

I got up this morning, feeling much better after a restless night, and decided to head to the Temple to see if anything was going on. What was going on ended up being a Buddhist monk debate that was so incredible to watch, even though I had no idea what they were debating. A Tibetan tried to explain it to me, but I don’t know if he knew what was going on either. No matter, it was still unreal to watch. The Temple had about 200 monks around, sitting and watching the debate, or circumambulating or praying upstairs. The debate involved two sitting monks and then a series, one at a time, of standing monks. The standing monk uses a lot of hand smacking, stepping, and yelling to get their point across. When a monk feels like the standing monk isn’t doing a very good job, they stand up and basically shove them out of the “ring,” taking their place and continuing the debate. Evidently today’s topic was rather funny, as there was three or four times that the whole crowd erupted in laughter. The older teachers also make the younger monks get up and debate, its pretty obvious that they are getting their butt kicked, but no better way to get better than practice. I am definitely convinced that US presidential debates should be held in the monk style. They would be more interesting for one, two, they wouldn't have the personal attacks, three, there is awesome hand smacking and face touching, four, the audience gets to be involved and take people off stage who don't perform well, and five, we would probably actually learn something about the candidates we didn't already know.

After the debate, i circumambulated with some old Tibetan women. The first 7/8 of the trail was downhill, which was getting me worried, and as i expected, the last 1/8 was basically straight up. And to my surprise, the old women, who had probably been doing this for 40 years, kept right up with me the entire hill, saying prayers and spinning pray beads the entire time.

The rest of the day was spent enjoying the snow, the weather, and sitting outside attempting to do homework. I wasn't very successful, but the day was a success nonetheless. The teachings start thursday, so hopefully my next post will involve me seeing the Dalai Lama, and not just hearing him.