A Bad Thing Being a Good Thing
What our perceptions give and take away (and a long story about Nepal
What if life is practice, and that’s all? What if that’s what we’re meant to be doing here? What if knowing is impossible in our current state of consciousness? We know something for a fleeting moment, and then we attach meaning to it, we distort it, we change it, and we unravel our knowing.
I used to think I knew things, until my mom died by suicide. Then I wanted to find things out. I decided to be a writer. I went to school. I strove for greatness. I wrote my little heart out. I graduated in 2018 from the MFA program at Syracuse University without an agent or a book deal when I had (with arrogance) assumed I would have those things. I’d worked hard on a novel that I now understood would forever live in a drawer. Inaccurately, I had assumed that because of the pain of my mother’s suicide, because of the anguish I had endured in my childhood and adolescence and after her death, that I deserved a fucking break. It wasn’t fair.
I planned a trip to Nepal and Southeast Asia to work things out. I didn’t have enough money but I had credit cards, fuck it. I needed something to happen.
It did. I was terrified of my long trip. I wasn’t fully prepared (I never am, is what I’ve figured out now— it’s just how I do things); I was alone; I had C-PTSD; I was struggling with my eating disorder. But I went because, well, what can I say but that something called me there? There was something I was supposed to learn. Many things. I didn’t know how much the learning would hurt.
For a month I stayed in the jungle above Pokhara with a lovely Gurung family helmed by a matriarch named Dar Kumari. Her youngest son ran the homestay via Airbnb; it was $13 a night, all food provided. I took a rickety bus out to Gattichena, where Rabindra met me and we climbed the mountains stone step by stone step. For a month I slept under a mosquito net on a wooden plank, lived with gigantic huntsman spiders, took showers using a bucket and a small hose whose water was sometimes scarce, and ate Amma’s rice and curry (Dal Bat), made with the veggies she plucked from her garden. I drank düd (buffalo milk warm from the fire) and raksi (a distilled corn drink as strong as beer). In the daytime I wrote and read Virginia Woolf and James Baldwin and Homer. Evenings, I sat with a small glass of Raksi, in the dark the night, its stars enormously close and the rain reflecting the small porch light (on a generator because the power often went out) like little dripping diamonds off the banana tree leaves. Amma got a ladder one day and picked a bunch of guavas with pith pink as tongues and Arun and I relished them together. Sometimes Rabindra would show up with a bundle of fish he’d bought from someone who’d caught it in a nearby river that day. Refrigeration wasn’t a thing. Food was fresh or dried.
It was slow there; beautifully slow. What I’ve recognized as my natural pace. I helped care for Arun, and Amma brought me chai and cookies in the afternoon to fuel my writing. We didn’t speak each other’s language. Although I know a bit of Nepali and Hindi, she spoke Gurung, so instead of speaking she would mimic my typing hands and chuckle. Throughout the day she cooked, tended her bees and gardens, and never seemed to sit still unless one of the villagers came by for a chat. She spent most of her time in the kitchen and living area, where a thin layer of woodsmoke settled beneath the ceiling like lace adornment.
An American couple visited for three days; I felt assaulted by their strong scent of laundry detergent. They disliked the shower setup. They took out their ipad and let Arun watch Finding Nemo. On one of their hikes the man proposed to the woman and she came back holding her hand out as if she wanted someone to kiss it. I felt genuinely happy for them, and also indifferent. Their existence felt like a performance. They weren’t present. The woman was hurt by the villager’s non-reaction to her new ring, which she showed to everyone, expecting them to understand what it meant. Amma’s food didn’t taste right to them. They’d brought an abundance of Kit-Kats and the wrappers filled up the tiny woven trash bins. I was grateful when they left, and felt guilty for being grateful.
There were things I didn’t like, too. I was scared of tigers so didn’t venture far, although there were people everywhere. Hiking alone is something I am not mentally capable of unless I’m deeply familiar with a place, and in that little village I was ashamed for being tethered to the mud house, but also thoroughly enjoyed sticking close and spending so much time with the family. One day Dar Kumari took me down to another village and I attended a meeting with her about the washed out road to their village, which was impassible. She was a badass, and it was clear people respected her. People stared at me. There was no one like me around, no tourists in the area, and yet they passed the carafe of chai to me, filled my cup more than once, and gave me cookies. Dar Kumari, on the way back, carried her bag with the handle resting on her forehead, so the bulk of it rested on her upper back. She stepped over large stones placed along the path to prevent people’s feet from getting wet. On our long walk back to the hut she paused with her sunbrella and, gesturing, told me she wanted me to take a picture of us. Her heart was pure, but when the monkeys came around the village she’d quickly yell and throw rocks. A perfect combination as far as I’m concerned.
From there I went to a Vipassana retreat outside Pokhara, where we woke at 4 am for meditation every day and I collapsed into my sliver-thin bed on our “breaks.” I slowly entered a state I can only describe as very awake. In meditation, scanning my body, I sensed my blood pulsing through my body, stronger in my left arm, and was acutely aware of my heart beat. I asked the teacher if I was going to die and he laughed. It’s good, he said. I had never fully lived in my body before. We were in silence, without eye contact, and on some days we suffered. I came to enjoy long stretches of silent meditation, where I sat unmoving, focusing on the pain that shuddered through my legs, back, and neck, and calling it sensation. It’s just sensation. When my body dissolved and I became one with everything I reminded myself, it’s just sensation. Renouncing the definitions of bad and good. Embracing equanimity.
During the retreat, I created stories about my fellow meditators. Some of my stories were quite intricate. I was sure the one of the morning bell ringers relished waking us; I was sure a woman in my bunkhouse was a drug smuggler of some sort. These stories had absolutely no grounding in reality, is what I found out on our last day, when we could all finally talk to each other. This was my most profound lesson. That I was essentially making up stories in my head, and believing them.
My awakening happened after I left the retreat. I was giddy. One of the women I’d met stayed with me at a hotel I’d come to adore (Hotel Pleasure Home, highly recommend). I wanted to go to Swayambhunath Stupa (the monkey temple), so I set out in the morning, following my maps.me as usual, which always took me on the strangest routes, through back alleys and away from the tourist areas. When I arrived at the temple I walked along the prayer wheels, and like the people in front of me, grazed my hand along them so they would spin and send their prayers. I passed a monk in a concrete rectangular structure, barefoot, his hands grasping a brass bar which stuck out from the largest prayer wheel I’ve ever seen. I stopped and stared, and he motioned for me to come inside. I grabbed hold of another brass bar and walked in circles with him, spinning the sacred prayer wheel. After a while I said goodbye and he kept at his work. At the bottom of the stairs to the stupa I watched the monkeys. Buddhist Monks sat on the benches, along with a couple tourists.
I gazed to the top of the stairs. I was carrying a canvas tote from Owl Books in London. In Pokhara I’d bought a small satchel made by tribal women. I had books with me, and not much money, because the next day I’d be flying to Vietnam.
I walked up the stairs. It was a cool morning, turning warm.
There were tourists, roasted peanuts, and many pilgrims who had come to pray. Monkeys and holy men. I was so awake, so open— as if everything were synced and I was alive to each movement of the world.
In a state of absolute trust, I circled the stupa. I walked through a crowd of women in saris and was jostled. I took pictures of pigeons eating red seeds. I inhaled deeply, in bliss. Though I had little money, I stopped at a painter’s stall and perused his small paintings. He offered me a good price on one, but I said I had no money. I would show him how little money I had, I said, but when I reached for my little satchel, it was gone.
I searched my bag several times, as if I could make my satchel, with everything in it, appear by will alone. Everything was in there: after retreat we’d been given all our valuables, our cards and passports, and I hadn’t yet redistributed my things as I’d been doing since I started traveling.
A succession of things happened: I went to the stall where I’d paid for entry and told them my wallet had been stolen. I cried, and people comforted me; people who likely had much less than I had. The tourist police arrived. In Nepal, there are special police just for tourists. They’re nicer than regular police. I was a white female-presenting tourist, which meant they wanted to preserve my safety (which is so fucked up, and a discussion for another time).
My state of mind was shattered. Scenarios unfurled like the little sulphur worms we light on the Fourth of July, piling one on top of the other. I had no identification. No money. No passport. Anything could happen to me. I felt assaulted b y the universe. How could this happen when I had spent the past ten days so deep in meditation? How was this my karma?
I walked down the steps with a tourist policewoman. She was much younger than me, with a kind face and demeanor. I’ll take care of you, she said, but her words traveled through me like water through a sieve. I was in fight or flight. My PTSD was activated. Although she was off duty, she took me on her scooter to my hotel so I could get a copy of my passport and leave a note for my friend, then to the police station. On the back of her scooter, in the raucous, dusty, and crowded Kathmandu streets, I was sure I wanted to die. I could see no solution.
I forgot about everything. The kindness and beauty of my jungle family. The profound realizations I’d had only a few days and hours before. My own resilience, which had kept me alive through homelessness and abuse and assault. I forgot that I had asked for something to happen.
I forgot about my request: to learn.
My friend flew out to her destination the next morning, but first she bought me a ticket to Vietnam. I still had my phone, which meant I could PayPal her. Another friend bought me a few more nights at Hotel Pleasure Home, and the hotel owners gave me a free night (and limitless tea). Another friend wired me money, which absolutely saved me.
I took cabs every day; first to the American Embassy, where I got a an emergency passport. I sat in there with an American girl who’d lost her passport while out drinking. I was so grateful for that sterile room. I watched many Nepali people waiting in line, hoping to be granted a visa to America. It wasn’t lost on me, how incredibly privileged I was. My terror ebbed and was replaced with a deeply uncomfortable feeling: I was safe. On a bulletin board there was a flyer with a picture of someone who looked like me, a trekker who had gone trekking by herself and had disappeared. Part warning, part plea. I stared at her picture. Why was I safe and she wasn’t? Why was I able to move freely from country to country, and others weren’t?
Everything was fine.
I made it to Vietnam. My trip ended early because of issues with getting my credit cards replaced. I got a good nanny job in Seattle. Months later, I sold my book on proposal.
I look back on that time, riding on the edge of the tourist police woman’s scooter, and wish I had handled things differently. Gotten her address. Been less scared. Trusted more. Truthfully, not every situation in my life has been that safe, that easy. I expected the worst.
At that sacred stupa I stood on sacred ground with a willingness to be awake, and in my awake state I was shown everything I had, and all the ways in which I didn’t recognize what I have. I felt a lot of guilt, but guilt inhibits me from my full expression. Pema Chodron says: “We can aspire for all beings to be free of their suffering and to enjoy the pleasures we ourselves enjoy.”
For a long time, I focused on the bad thing that happened, and perceived it as bad. But, like many of the “bad” things that have happened to me, it wasn’t personal. It was something that happened. The good things happened, too. They weren’t personal, either. I am not specifically deserving of them, either way. No more than anyone else.
What is it, not to be attached to those things, or averse to them? That is peace.