Tiki Tour to Ohio to collect a visiting teacher

Noreen and I were on a mission! To pick up Lopon Damchoe from the Palyul Ohio Center in Ohio! The Center was in Richfield to be exact, on the outskirts of Cleveland. My friend Ely has regaled me about stories of Cleveland where she grew up so I felt a familiarity of association. It was definitely a calmer and quieter place than the pace of the Washington DC area near where I am living.

Not only was it great to get on the road with Noreen, it was a great opportunity to re-connect with Lopon who I had first met in India at Namdröling at our mother monastery in India. 

Lopon is a title given to graduates of a nine year rigorous Buddhist study program. Lopon Damchoe (whose English name is Heather) is a Canadian Buddhist Nun a and the first-ever Western graduate of the Ngagyur Nyingma Nunnery Institute at Namdröling Monastery. Here is a picture of her teaching at the Palyul Ohio Center.

What was also great about Ohio was connecting with other members of our larger Palyul community - and being able to visit their beautiful Temple. Here are a few pictures of the the Temple.

Thank you Palyul Ohio . You made us feel so welcome. And a special thanks to Ani Ginger and Ling Ni. And uber driving buddy Noreeeeeeeen!

And here's us all together just before we get in the car to return to Kunzang Palyul Chöling in Maryland with Lopon. Thanks for the teachings you gave Lopon - and the chocolate you offered!

There is a bear in there

Well I didn't see the black bear but I saw it's poo - and it was rather bigger than Winnie the Pooh's and ought to be called scat not poo I was informed. The bear was having a fine time at the temple getting into the bird feeders. (Upon inspection the contents of the poo seemed in equal measure bird seed).

This bear  also quite liked the rubbish bins (translation - 'trash cans'). Here's a picture of post-bear trash - and after the bear came the foxes and after the foxes came the turkey vultures...

There were various night sightings of the bear by others and in the end we had to lock up the 'trash' and the bird seed and remove all the bird feeders.

A Maryland bear expert thought perhaps it was a young (year old) male black bear. I read about their behaviour (Bear primer 1 Bear Primer 2) which it turns out is very similar to racoons who are also part of the bear family apparently. One mans aid that that black bears were very intelligent and shy of humans. Well he was intelligent. He ran rings around us for a while. And I know he ran the other way when startled by humans.In one such encounter he frightened the dickens out of a Nun walking her pooch on the porch. They (the nun with her pooch) and the bear quickly beat a retreat from one another.

My very limited knowledge of any kind of bear (including koala bears) didn't prepare me for what happened next which involved clearing vegetation to make way for an electric fence which did deter the bear it seems. And perhaps the lack of rubbish and bird seed was another big factor and then there were the ammonia filled balloons - perfectly safe but another deterrent.

When clearing the fence I was trying to avoid sun burn - turns out it's good protection against poison ivy. Here I am with comrades.

So where is the bear now? Has he found a more stable food source far from humans - perhaps not. Will he make annual pilgrimages to the Buddhist Temple and will he have a long life? I don't know. My wish is that he finds a safe home in the forest with other furry friends. But where humans and animals coincide who knows?

Phone Home E.T. - An Extra Terrestrial moment.

A few weeks ago it was my job to clean out an old filing cabinet fully of 'Mani Jewel' paraphernalia. The Mani Jewel is our small shop located at the Temple in Maryland. The Mani Jewel is a church shop except its Buddhist!

In this filing cabinet I found all sorts of 'blast from the past' 1980s promotional material that the Mani Jewell had been sent from various vendors. My fave is this one - the title says it all; 'E.T. 101'. The 1982 Stephen Spielberg film E.T. with cutie-pie ET's signature phrase "E.T. Phone Home" had a few inspired beings (otherwise known as earthlings) riding on it's coat tails for interstellar advertising purposes!

The real clincher is written on the back! "Did you arrive on this planet without a set of instructions? Have you ever secretly suspected that you were adopted – from another, less dysfunctional world? Is your genetic coding giving you trouble recently? Do you vaguely recall a reason for being here but are pretty sure your current job’s not it? Hang in there. This book’s for you E.T. 101.’"

 And if you want to chill out after reading E.T. 101 try these 'chakra tuned' crystals bowls.

 Or tune in to the direct source - music from the Pleiades.

I think I will now 'go home' and straighten out my antennae!

Tip Toe Botanicals

So it was off to Brookside Gardens with my friend Maura who so enjoys the great outdoors and who is also a keen gardener and actively involved in land care.

It was a wonderful time to turn up at the onset of spring - a real riot of colour that I still find amazing and so-Australian! Perhaps some of these flowers would stand a better chance in New Zealand.

I've sprinkled a few Latin plant names liberally throughout this tour to indicate my fascination with names along with my botanical credentials-not. Here are some to start with.

And here is a founding founder!

They even grow libraries with lovely sculpted roof fungus!

And here is a reminder of ground friends.

Off to the Atrium and a tropical dash of colour.

I am not in Holland.

I am in the USA not Canada say these geese.

I am not in Japan.

I am in conifer country. I'd like to introduce you to Picea Pungens 'Hunnewelliana.'

And Pinus Densiflora 'Aurea'.

And one of my faves - a flowering quince called Orange Storm.

And this evocatively named Burning-Bush - a Japanese offering named 'Kosho Myumi'.

Just seeing the flowering trees and the new leaves for me was uplifting.

Thanks for joining me on my tour. Thank you Montgomery County for continuing to support such a great space. Thank you Maura for bringing me here. Vita est arcus colore. I must remember to spiritus vitae.

Eye am watching!

You have 10 seconds to guess whose eye this is? Your 10 seconds are now over! It's George Washington. On a beautiful spring day I had the good fortune to spend time with one of our visiting teacher's - Khenpo Tenzin Norgey, a visiting teaching monk, Lama Tenzin, Tashi Dawa a monk from my immediate community and moi. Khenpo wanted to introduce Lama Tenzin, who had never been to the capital before, to the American capital. However, the inner city area was blocked off due to the Nuclear Summit so we (Khenpo, Lama Tenzin, Tashi Dawa and I) found ourselves at Mt Vernon - apparently the most visited historic site in the USA. It is a beautiful place but I couldn't help but feel ghosts of the past walking between, in and around us. An extraordinary leader, George Washington was a man of his times. He was a founding father of the fledgling United States who turned out to be trickier than the British who tried to defeat him and his men (and that's saying something), and he was a generous host within societal norms, interested in architecture and design, a man of many letters - and he was a slave owner.

Here is Khenpo with George Washington's 'Valet' - Christian - who methodically provided us with information on the number of slaves George and his wife owned - 300 plus.

And here is Khenpo and Lama Tenzin with a two more historic characters - they stayed in character now matter what! Our new friends were very surprised we had come from so far away (Bhutan, India, Australia) to see them. The exception was Tashi Dawa. He came from Bethesda but they still expressed an interest in meeting him.

And now for something completely different - ablutions - which in that period were called Necessaries. I think the name should have been slightly longer - 'Absolutely Necessary'.

It was hard to know what to make of some of the exhibits.

And in between peering into dark and light places we had opportunities to be in the great outdoors on a penultimate spring day just enjoying the day and/or each other's company.

And you can see why the main house was located where it was - just a stunning view.

 And after the great outdoors there was the sometimes great indoors - which was testimony to the question - how do you capture the spirit of place and people? Apparently taxidermy and wax works helps.Here's an unasked for close-up of George Washington's waxy visage. This is the 'watching those pesky British on the Battlefield' look.

Here is a close up of his horse. I suspect this horse is saying "not my choice but here I stand."

And one of the great exhibits - with fanfare - are George Washington's false teeth -not as easy to wear or make in that day and age: clackety clack!

So thank you everyone for a fine- slightly off the wall - historic tour kind of a day with good company and wonderful weather. Lama Tenzin offered that 17th century America was not that different to 17th century elsewhere. Notwithstanding Mt Vernon's beauty it is also a place where the tendrils of the past reach out reminding me to turn around and see that history is the light and the dark and all shades in between.

Travel well Khenpo and Lama Tenzin. I'll see you on Friday Tashi Dawa!