I began my trip to India the night that I boarded the Greyhound for Chicago on 07Jan. I had hours to think squeezed in my seat as we passed from Montana to North Dakota. The sun was rising and there were some low clouds in the southern sky which made my mind reflect on the different perspectives that I experience in my life. The steel grays and blues of shadowed clouds brightened to the pinks and reds that are revealed when the sun illuminates the same clouds from above. The colors also changed as the bus carried my eyes to a new location. I made notes of my ideas and settled in for the next full day aboard the BIG DOG.
I arrived at the bus station in Chicago during the hurrying pace of the rush hours Wed morning. I was disoriented as I had envisioned the bus station that I departed from for the move to Montana in 1981, but we were disembarking at a new place and a new building. After some reflection, or whatever your mind does after rolling down from the mountains for 33 hours can be called, I hailed a taxi to take me to a hostel on the near north side quite near to my family’s home when I was an infant. The taxi driver said that yes the old Randolf Street bus station was long gone as the real estate value had soared during the building craze of the last ten years. We cordially conversed as we exchanged handshakes and the fare. Chicago was home for the next 36 hours. I showered and slept in the room for the first few hours while two Germans were beginning to roust and move out. Later I phoned old friends, very old friends. We played together in the then-new suburbs south of Midway Airport, when it was the world’s busiest airport. That was 50 years ago. We would meet for a dinner later that evening. The rest of the day I explored Millenium Park that was so dazzling when I came through Chi-town on return from my stay in Toronto in 2006.
Chicagoans call it the Jelly Bean the artist calls it “CloudGate”, but what ever the name there is a polished stainless steel “amoeba” in the park near the Art Institute. It reflects everything around it and skews the usually reliable perspective that the visual cortex and the cerebellum coordinate. Buildings warp, people are bloated as in the old circus mirrors as they dance forward and back with their reflection, but the clouds look almost natural in the metal curves. The hard lines distort and the flowing skyscape seems almost unaffected. I recorded what I saw with my new camcorder, realizing I was also one more step removed from the engagement of my own body with the “Cloud Gate”. Wonder if the reference is to Huxley’s “Gates of Perception”?
Later on the “El” tracks, I recorded the famous elevated trains. Their wheels sparked and skreeched around the corners carrying passengers on ancient wooden platforms a floor or two above the engineered pavement busy with cars below. The relaxed ease of passengers entering and exiting the stainless steel cars was opposed with the frenetic pace below seen through the slats of the platform. The last video I shot I had to turn the camcorder 90 degrees to fit the skyscrapers in the field. But being a still photographer for 45 years, I failed to realize something as I prepared to review the clip: the video recorder sees in one perspective only. The clip then presented a funny though pleasing revelation of how the perspective when viewed according to the norms of video framing made its own true sense. Perspective was creeping into my reflective vocabulary: the vocabulary that is the genesis of ideas.
I enjoyed the dinner with those friends. The questions were directed to me about what could prompt me to take all my savings and book a trip to India for five months. I told them that once in my life I would go to my teacher, who lives in Dharamshala. I wanted to listen to teachings while seated with the world sangha assembled in the courtyard of Tsuglagkhang, surrounded by Namgyal Monastery. Tibetan Buddhist studies are important to me and the direction of my life. From my point of view, I knew that the dharma studies were influencing the second half of this life, this time. We parted with hugs and well wishes and promises of a longer visit on my return.
Thursday turned cold as I lugged my baggage to that same “El” train and rode with the early rush hour people to Ohare International Airport. The “El” goes from above ground to underground as it enters the final terminal lit with ribbons of spectrum shining through prismatic glass block walls. From the stopped train the lights evoke motion and once on the platform everybody is in motion at one of the world’s busiest travel junctions. Several hours would pass before we travelers were making new associations as we settled into the seats for the 8 hours to Zurich. Movies, music, radio, dinner snacks drinks and all were available for the flight. So strange after the simpler life I have adopted in my Montana apartment. Now I was Jim the international traveler and could view how others lived so much: very strange! After the night flight to Zurich, many would continue another 8 hours to land in Delhi near midnight local time. On the way to Delhi I relished the idea of an American flying in Iranian airspace while gazing at a sunlit Swiss white cross on red field on the wingtip. The only way to fly in Iranian airspace!
The Delhi stay could be another whole story even though only 36 hours long. Those hours were summed up by the owner of the hostel in Pahar Ganj who asked knowingly, “Culture shock?” Yes the perspective of the American on his first trip to India and his stay in the 400 year old bazarr was culture shock. How would you describe alley wide streets peopled with hawking merchants, beggars, lepers, dogs, holy cows, 3-wheeled motorized taxis, bicycle rickshaws, motorcycles, colors, smells, incessantly honking car and motorcycle horns, cars, police seated nonchalantly in the turn around, kids playing with rats, electrical wires that were more spaghetti than linear as they threaded from window to window and climbed up poles and around corners and…………and there were elephants?
I took an overnight bus to hill country and the home of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama. I would have a month to reflect on the whole of my life and this latest chapter. My cousin asked, “What are you looking for?” I would reflect.
The teachings from the Dalai Lama, The Jataka Tales, were going to review the many hundreds of rebirths that the perfected Buddha experienced. The ancient stories related the characteristics of one who seeks to unveil the compassionate nature hidden within us all. We all are Buddha, just not awake to our perfect nature. During the teachings, pamphlets were handed out near the gate to the temple grounds. Tibetan Animal Awareness, Tibetan Environmental Awareness, offerings of cooking classes, appeals for many things. But one particularly caught my new attention: Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement.
After the day’s teachings on compassion in action, I read the leaflet. It described the Lhasa, Tibet uprising on 10March 1959 that precipitated the flight of the Dalai Lama into exile. Each year since then the Tibetan people remember when they had Communist Chinese troops in their capital, presumably liberating them from the life of Tibetan Buddhism and culture they had voluntarily sustained for over 500 years. Each year they remember the 1.2 million Tibetans that have since been murdered for seeking the return of the Dalai Lama and the freedom to live a Tibetan life under their choice of governance and philosophy. Each year they yearn to regain their homeland, culture and pursuit of their brand of Buddhism. Each year they ask the international community to help end the ruthless murder and incarceration of Tibetans who only utter the words Free Tibet or Long Live Dalai Lama. Each year for 49 years!
As I reflected in the first month on my life I met and got to know several Tibetans. Lhamo taught me to make momos, thentuk and tingmo. He invited me to have Losar, Tibetan New years at his home. Pema befriended me over coffees at the shop where he works. My landlord, Sonam, walked with his parents and sister in 1959 over the high Himalayas to freedom. Little Tenzin walked to freedom a year ago at age ten. I reflected on the perspective of them all, such different lives from mine. I especially reflected on Tenzin.
He sat next to me at Losar and has such a wonderful smile. I considered him a happy little boy. His uncle, Lhamo, told me a story from Tenzin’s young life when I related how many of us in the west had seen the video from a couple of years ago when a nun was shot dead in the snows of a high pass seeking freedom. Lhamo pointed at Tenzin as he said, “He was there.”
I gasped and choked backed the tears. Would he tell me more? Tenzin and several others walked for days to get to the final pass and freedom. The Chinese marksmen were there. Hungarian cameramen documenting a climbing effort heard shots and trained their cameras on the line of Tibetans who started a run for the border. A figure fell as the rifles repeated their shots. Lhamo said the nun was shot in the head. The others ran. Some escaped across the border. Some were apprehended and returned to Lhasa to face prison. Tenzin, this young boy, was caught and went to prison. But he was sitting next to me!? Yes, he got released from prison and his parents, who still live in Lhasa, sent him again to face the rifles and the snows and the high passes to gain freedom. They sent their son twice to gain freedom in India and to live with his uncle, maybe never seeing him again, except in photos. This is one story. The stories are available from every face you see on the streets of Mcleod Ganj. Now I really had some ideas to reflect on!
If you stay in Mcleod Ganj or Upper Dharamshala or Little Lhasa, (all the same refugee 49 year old refugee camp) for a few weeks, as many do, you see many lovely faces and a lot of smiles. You see what you presume are families going about the chores of living. But if you live here for several months and speak and get to know people there are veneers that can be lifted with trust. People, these Tibetans, tell how many are not nuclear families but families of uncles and aunts taking care of their siblings’ children as they think of starting their own families. Children who dream of seeing their parents one day in a Tibet with secured human rights and self governance greet you with disarming smiles and laughter. People who walked tens of years ago to freedom, who wish to return to their land to see relatives before they die, welcome you into their homes for tea and biscuits as if you belong to their relations.
My Tibetan friends offer their humble and deep gratitude that I have joined the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement as a support marcher. They bow as they look into your eyes with such hope and optimism. It is wrenching to have people with tearful eyes offer thanks just for your deciding to walk with the core marchers, to bear witness to the nonviolent expression of their sorrow and hope. They know as I do that I risk recrimination from the Indian government for being a foreign witness to this heroic effort to shout to the world: Bod Gyalo!!!!!!!!!!
Victory for Tibet! Tibetans have been waiting and are again asking the world to resist the People’s Republic of China’s government claim that the human rights of 6 million Tibetans is an internal affair. Tibetans have launched a united effort to counter the white washing of China that human rights are protected for all the people of China. I have agreed with the Tibetan people since I joined The International Campaign for Tibet in 2001. But the perspective of agreeing and writing and thinking is not what I can do now. Enough talk, it is time to walk! On 10March I began to walk behind the 100 core marchers, as a witness to the non-violent effort of these friends to alert the world to the continuing genocide in Tibet.
The intent is to walk 2500 kilometers from Dharamshala, the home of Tibetan refugees who live closest to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to their homeland. The intent is to open the eyes of the world to the continued repression of the People’s Republic of China. To say much more right now would tell a different story. I wanted to share how my perspective has changed over these last months. Action is the next step to letter writing and words of support and cash donations so easily offered. Action, non-violent action to light the world’s dark lies. As I walk I say my Om Mani Pedme Hung mantra. My 100 days of walking can maybe give me the opportunity to say one million two hundred thousand mantras, one for each Tibetan assassinated by the People’s Liberation Army in Tibet. One for each monk and nun made to fornicate in the street before being killed. One for each Tibetan who dies and whose corpse must be left on the frozen high passes of the Himalaya mountains. Oh, I just read todays news. I have to walk some more. I have to say another 100 mantras for more lost Tibetans.

POSTSCRIPT:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.