Since June 2009, we’ve been working hard. Busy days. Catherine is teaching two Tibetan language classes and running our Translator Training program, while I have been helping students find homes, Tibetan homestays, health and healing. From mid-June to mid-July I taught a meditation course at eight in the morning to the Buddhist Study Program students. It was fun, and centered around shamata, or sitting exercises in concentration and becoming calm (which are the foundation of meditation), as well as guided meditations on immeasurable loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The twelve or so students who were in the class seemed to enjoy it, and even though I have no experience in teaching, I had fun. It was a good way for them to start a day of more complicated Buddhist philosophy and logic.
I’ve also been organizing various field trips, from hikes and bus rides to distant monasteries and tours of cultural centers of Kathmandu, like Patan, to movie nights and Fourth of July parties. And, as usual, I’ve been doing my fair share of counseling students through the ups and downs of their brief time in Kathmandu.
These days Catherine and I end most of our days feeling exhausted. Of course some of that is due to the muggy, oppressive heat. You sweat and it just sticks to you all day. Nothing like New Mexico. I miss dry heat. Dry heat and good beer.
1 comment:
You are a wonderfully witty writer!
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