Put on my own chupa. Liz's roommate Kelsang taught a few of us last night. We took a video of it so as not to forget, then bought Kelsang tea at the canteen for her troubles.
Had an audience with a reincarnated lama. I forget his name right now, but he's the ninth in his lineage and pretty young, maybe 30. I didn't realize I would feel so nervous. When you walk in the room, you prostrate towards him, then walk towards him with a Kata (ritual scarf) held out. You kneel, he takes it and puts it on you as a blessing. He then said a few words on motivation and told us we were lucky to study the Dharma. Overall it was a weird experience, and he was one of the few monks we've met who hasn't seemed joyful.
Visited a preserved yogi's body. There are special monks who get picked from the monastery to meditate alone for about 20 years to become realized. Just before they die they often can meditate and appear dead without having their bodies decay. He didn't start to smell or have rigor mortus for about a week. His student decided his body should be preserved, so they use salt to drain it of fluid and then built a mandala to house his body. So we went into a house, walked to the top floor, circumambulated around what looks like a regular stupa, but when we got to the other side we could see his preserved body sitting up behind glass. They cover Ethe face with a cloth and built a beautiful red structure around it where people come to pray and meditate. We sat and had tea in front of his body! I though that was strange, but we learned a lot about the making of the mandala (it took about a year, but they don't work on it every day).
Met Ani Tenzin Palmo, a British woman who was ordained as a nun at 21. She's older now, but a firecracker, and answered some questions on her life and Buddhism generally. She had two great explanations.
The first was on our misunderstanding of the ego. Our nature is like the sky, where you can't grab on to a specific piece and say" this is mine." We're all kind of just the same thing. The second was on how to help the world. She's very much of the view that you must figure yourself out before you can help others, except the phrase she used was" breathe in, breathe out." In refers to working on yourself, out refers to helping others. She meant it as you must finish yourself before you help others, but in reality we do both all the time. You don't breathe in for 20 years and then start breathing out. I took that to mean that we should always be doing both.
Saw a temple in the process of construction. One of the weirdest things ever, because there were wires sticking out everywhere and paint splatters all over the walls. We also found out that it's always necessary to asl permission from the spirits whenever you build a house or a temple.
Sidenote: it's hard to sit crosslegged or prostrate in a chupa. But we looked great.
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I like "breathe in, breathe out."
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