Buttercupchappati Chronicles

taxi truths

I was in a taxi recently, having a chat with the driver, as I do.

side note: taxi drivers have people hop in and out of their cars all day who mostly either complain or barely say hello. Talk to them, they love it.

Anyhow, this particular driver is Chinese and I was asking him where home is, which led to discussions of Quinghai, which led to questioning why I was in that part of the world.

I love how the universe unfolds.

Anyway, we get to the Tibetan medicine part and it all becomes very otherworldly. He has seemed a very pragmatic and practical man so far.

Ah, he says, really long pause. I love Tibetan medicine, it is very magical.

I could only agree, delighted that this person who I had never laid eyes on before felt the same way I do.

Taxi drivers are our gatekeepers to many many places, most of them unexpected. 

 This picture of me freezing in the (summer) snow on the grasslands near Mahlo was taken by my fabulous driver. We had a shocking trip from Mahlo to Xining that day. It snowed for hours, then rain and mud made the road nearly impossible once we got to a lower altitude. He was cheerful and kind the whole way.

just so you know

because I don't want anyone to feel left out (although if you have not heard my elated screeches - where have you hidden your eardrums?)

I GOT MY VISA! Yes, it is in hand, and in the other is a ticket to Beijing. Smiling sounds too simple for what is going on, but it will do.

So, much happy dancing, and much much excitement at the thought of spending three whole months studying and practicing TTM. And of course huge amounts of gratitude to all those who helped make this opportunity mine.

Did I mention I was excited?

The countdown is on, leaving at the end of July.

And yes, already worrying about three months worth of reading in a place where there are no english language books for sale. (And let's not even go there thinking about three months without a hair dryer!) Minor sacrifices - especially the hair, I don't have to look at me.

Serious thinking about language skills as well. Classes are on in earnest and I am trying to quell the thought that I am way too old to be learning Tibetan. Come on, even Tibetans find it hard. And really, I need to improve my repertoire in the Chinese area as well; two phrases - hello and thank you - get you points for politeness but that's about it. (And they tend to lead taxi drivers to leap to the assumption that I speak fluent Chinese, sorry, I smile in many languages however).

"Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good"
 

 

exhaling

nearly

What a time it has been! I take Dr Nida to the airport tomorrow and wave him off to Singapore and then there will be time to take in everything I have learned in the last fifteen days. Tibetan Medicine, Dream Analysis, Mantra Healing and of course our wonderful Yuthok Nyingthik practice.

It has been headspinning, tiring, challenging and all colours of awesome - as usual and of course.

Going to bed now, happy happy happy to have had this opportunity from our amazing teacher.

Thank you Dr Nida, may you travel safely back home to your family and we look forward to your return.

 

 

so, back to the list

If you ever read more than a few words here, you will know that I am a list girl, Queen of lists, oh who am I kidding - Empress!

This morning, as D-Day approaches this weekend and I collect Dr Nida from the airport and we embark on 15 days of TTM studies and other great and amazing courses like Mantra Healing and Dream Analysis, I thought it was timely to sit down and make a little list of the things I have left to do.

Two full pages later...

Today I realised something, lists beget lists. They take on a momentum of their own. (Then I realised I was making sub-lists and had almost worked out my own Dewey system for cataloguing them.)

But that's ok, because nothing is better than ticking stuff as done.

I am half way through the main list and have - you will be proud, I am - resisted the urge to make a new list out of the old half crossed off one for tomorrows round of tasks.

If God is in the details, then I am totally a whole universe of divinity just walking around, truly! 

books for work don't count

or do they.

Oh well, five books is not what you would call a binge is it?

I suspect it is, but what to do, some books on Tibetan medicine that I have been looking for (no, actually I don't have them all - yet) had appeared for a good price at
Better World Books.

But no novels, or poetry, or books about interesting places and people, or dharma, or cook books.  And after all, Tibetan medicine is my work, so it's in a different shelf I might say.

I knew I wouldn't last the first month ...

Now I just have to hope they don't all arrive at the same time; much easier to slip them into the shelves if the family get home after I have collected the mail. And recycled the packaging. Not like before Christmas when the parcel delivery system clearly had some troubles and we all arrived home at the same time to a large pile of packages, all for me, all books. Caught out badly!

 

a new one

Two thousand and eleven, a year well launched with friends and family, laughter, dancing, singing, momo's, Texas chili, margaritas and The Rocky Horror Picture Show on dvd.

I suspect the horror part was all of us doing the time warp some time around midnight, but anyway...

It was cozy - and that is one of my main words for this coming year. I want to snuggle in and read, study, work, create, be myself; with occasional outings for travel where I do all that, just in a different place.

Key words for 2011:

reflection

meditation

mantra

reading

study

music - really listening, not just playing in the background

healing - myself and my patients

art

writing

solitude

gratitude

poetry

a dharma year
a catching up year
a year where I return to Amdo - always!
a year where I say hello to myself, everyday

well - resolution comes from resolve, so let's just see.
Intention is everything, I tell everyone else that! Best listen to my own awesome advice.

Happy new year everyone!
Peaceful, safe, prosperous and brilliant.

how beautiful are these women

I love this picture.

I could stop right there really.

These remarkable women are such an inspiration to me on so many levels, I was looking at this photo today and wishing them well from the bottom of my heart.

They are both Tibetan Doctors at the Men-Tsee-Khang in Mcleoganj, India. So quite apart from all the other things they have to do and have done in their lives as women and wives and Tibetans living in exile in India, they have studied Tibetan Medicine for six years and then done another year as intern. And now they work all day for the good of all sentient beings, especially the sick ones!

They have both been very kind to me whenever I have visited Mcleodganj, spending time, answering my endless questions about TTM and how they practice it there. The MTK does not admit Westerners to its TTM course, so it is especially kind that they would find the time to help me when they can.

Dr Wangmo and Dr Sonam, may Yuthok bless you many many many times, and I am looking forward to the next time I sit in your clinic and we laugh together about my life as an injie  studying TTM.

three years, three months, three weeks and three days

I have just had an interesting experience.

I was offered the chance to do a three year retreat in India. This is the standing goal of many dharma students. To take yourself out of the temporal world with all its distractions and meditate for three years, under the guidance and instruction of a teacher.

I did not hesitate.

I refused.

As the words were coming out of my mouth, I was shocked, but knew I was hearing a truth.

The first thing that I thought was, no, that's too long to be away from my Tibetan Medicine practice, it's too many people I would not be able to help. And in that moment I knew I have taken into myself as an un-shakeable belief that compassion in action is my path. Our great Master of TTM, Yuthok Yonten Gonpo said that when faced with a choice of doing your practice or helping someone, help, because that is your practice.

This probably doesn't seem like a big thing to anyone else, and you might be scratching your head or yawning and wondering why I bothered to share.

For me however, it's huge. I know on an instinctive level that the choices I have made over the last few years, the work, the study, the conviction that I was not fooling myself into a dead end, are all right for me. Because I did not stop even for a micro second when I said no. It was like someone else's voice leaving my body and telling my truth.

But it was  my voice, and I am so very happy to have heard it at last.

 

my life in a lab coat

It's funny. For someone who was and is a bookish nerd, and was being directed down the path to be an English Teacher, my life has taken some very interesting sidesteps. And it's really funny that some of them have put me into a lab coat.

Before I immersed myself in the healing profession I spent 14 odd years working and studying in the wine industry - really. (sshh, I'm a corporate refugee). During that time I studied at Roseworthy College in South Australia, Australia's oldest and most prestigious wine studies institution. As the wine industry here was going ahead in giant steps it had been realised that to promote the product and indeed the industry, we needed people with marketing skills and qualifications who really understood the product, from the ground up literally. So this course was divided between mainstream marketing subjects and hard core wine subjects like viticulture, winemaking and sensory evaluation (wine tasting in a fancy mood).

Which is where the first lab coat comes in. For viticulture we spent as much time in the lab as we did in the vineyard and a coat was also a requirement for the tasting lab. Trust me, all that spitting of red wine - you don't want it on your clothes. It takes practice to become an acurate wine spitter. In one way wearing the coats was kind of amusing, expecially as we had got mine at a seconds outlet and one arm was longer than the other ... On the other hand, one winemaker I did a lot of work for, who was and is very gifted at his craft but very old school and scathing of the lab work, called those who wore these garments "white coated idiots." 

I don't work in the wine biz anymore but I still have my lab coat, with its dappling of red wine stains down the left side. Here is the evidence. I found this photo during a big clean up on the weekend, which started this train of thought. A hint, in those days I thought - perhaps wrongly - that I was really meant to be a red head!

 

Then many years and lifetimes later I find myself studying Tibetan medicine (and hey, all that wine evaluation comes in very handy for the urine analysis, except the tasting part). And when we are in Amdo studying we do rounds at the hospital in Xining. One time a patient asked if we were tourists and it was felt that it might be more professional if we wore white coats. Well yes.

So this year white coats were procured for us. To make it easy they just got one size - extra large! Now you might not know this about me, but I just scrape in at about 5'2". So this coat is flapping around my ankles. But, its fine, its appropriate to wear them, and the pockets are handy.

Our rounds this time were with a very lovely young doctor (who I am going to marry when I grow up, yes I know you have heard this before). We all, the girls of the group, developed instant crushes and there was a race to get our photo taken with him. He was very sweet when it was my turn, clasped my hand strongly, how nice he was to the old lady I thought. Then when I see the picture I just about died laughing. The gorgeous boy towers over me, I have my eyes closed, and with white coat dusting my ankles I look less Dr Karen, more like an escaped mental patient!

So there it is, a white coat is no guarantee of scientific anything in my experience. But I am glad I veered off to the right or the left or wherever these paths were, it's been fun.

 

Tibetan Medicine adds another leaf to its newly planted tree in Australia

In 2009 we were blessed to have the first intake of students for Traditional Tibetan Medicine studies here in Australia. At the end of that first course, our teacher Dr Nida Chenagtsang said it had long been a dream of his to teach TTM in Australia.

So coming back for our second year of studies felt like a real consolidation of that dream into a very real reality. Our TTM family had grown with the inclusion of some new students who had completed studies during the year to enable them to join the current group.

As always it is with great anticipation and excitement (and some fear – what have I forgotten!) that we start our classes with Dr Nida.

TTM is such a vast and rich subject, with it’s history going back thousands of years; deeply embedded in the indigenous Bon culture of the Tibetan people and then later entwined with Buddhism, as it became the predominant religion of Tibet. Tibetan medicine can encompass not only the things we expect from a healing system such as medicines, external therapies, suggestions for diet and lifestyle; it can also include dream studies, astrology and an understanding of Sa Che or geomancy or more esoteric techniques such as healing with mantra. So it’s no wonder that we feel a little daunted as westerners embarking on this journey.

We don’t need to worry, Dr Nida makes sure we don’t get lost, don’t feel left behind in the cultural or historical differences. The fundamental thing we all need to practice any kind of healing is compassion and he shows us that in so many ways. We laugh, cry, and learn a lot!

As our nine days fly by we learn more about pulse reading, urine analysis – everyone is used to coming to class with their small yellow jars now. We look at tongues and hear about leeches. We try not to set each other on fire as we practice moxibustion. We face the prospect of bloodletting – what is worse, giving or receiving?

We learn about the amazing infinite, internal journey of the fetus. Long before the advent of x-ray or scanning, Tibetan doctors had a clear understanding of the way a woman’s body becomes a whole universe for every child that is born. And of course the mysteries of the end of life journey, with its dissolution of the body back to the five elements from which we all are formed.

We find out there are 72,000 internal channels in the body (and I hope we are not expected to learn them all by next year!) The three humors become more detailed as we go further into the subtle energies at work in us all. Pathology studies begin, and understanding the systems of our amazing bodies.

We all so enjoy having the gentle energy of our Tibetan students with us in the classroom, and the opportunity to hear Tibetan spoken each day is lovely.

(And we learn that an orgasm every day is good for your health…)

And it’s here in this room in a hotel in Melbourne that we have taken another step forward on our TTM journey; and started to really comprehend how connected we are, to each other, to our chosen subject, to our teacher, our patients and everything in and around us. That seems to be the most important thing anyone who wants to work as a healer can learn; that there is no separation.