AS A 22-YEAR-OLD RECENT COLLEGE GRAD, I loved flying. Thirty thousand feet in the air, my book marked with a ticket to somewhere, was the only time in my life I knew where I was going and when I was going to get there.
I was on my way to Nepal – the next destination in a series of one-way tickets away from the expectations that surround a graduate who had moved back in with his parents. It wasn't that I had an issue with not knowing what I was doing with my life; it was that I had an issue with other people having an issue with it.
The maroon robe of the Tibetan monk in the seat next to me spilled over my armrest. He was in my space, and each time he moved his robe pulled at my headphone connection, interrupting the audio of the movie Osmosis Jones. Chris Rock was the voice of the white blood cell fighting infection on the streets of Bill Murray.
The monk would move; I'd sigh, and push my headphones in again. Occasionally we'd chuckle at the same point. I'm not sure if a white blood cell blowing his hair dry with a fart is physiologically correct, but it was humorous enough in a cross-cultural sort of way to make us share a moment.
We were on a flight from Bangkok, Thailand, where I had spent a few weeks island hopping. For less than 10 bucks a night, I rented beachside bungalows accessed by water taxis.
Before that I was budget backpacking through Australia.
This sounds luxurious, and in all of the important experiential ways it was, but I traveled on the cheap. Ate ramen. Camped in my tent. I knew my budget would run out before my desire to keep going waned.
My grandma, Frances Wilt, gave all of her grandchildren $5,000 when they graduated from college. This gift was why when my peers at Miami University were talking about the jobs they landed and how much they were going to get paid, I was shopping for a one-way flight away. Gone. I worked a few months swinging a hammer after I graduated to earn some money to add to Grandma's so I could be gone longer.
I graduated in 2001 with a degree in anthropology or, as one Cultural Anthropology textbook that wrote about me put it, “With only a bachelor's degree in anthropology, he set out on a global tour …”1 But I didn't only have a bachelor's degree. I had the curiosity that earning that degree inspired and the tools to pursue that curiosity. As someone who grew up in the rural Midwest at a school that had a “drive your tractor to school” day, I wasn't exposed to a lot of cultural diversity or diversity of thought. College, specifically my anthropology courses, introduced me to cultures I had never imagined.
College students are filled with potential. Seventeen years of building a base of knowledge and skills on which to build a career. As a first-year college student there is pressure to declare a major, to decide what you want to be when you grow up. Senior year is when all of the education and potential success and world-changing rubber meet the road. The “I want to be [blank]” becomes an “I am doing it!” or “I am not doing it because …” Potential and expectations are realized or they aren't.
In the eyes of many, I had not realized my potential, and I had not met expectations.
I envied the future med students and teachers and anyone else who knew what they wanted to do. Their itinerary was set. They'd have to go to school for so many years and then start a career with benefits. I didn't even know what I was going to do when I landed in Kathmandu.
I sort of hated arriving anywhere. I was more comfortable going – permanently in transit. My travels really didn't have a purpose and neither did I, but the monk next to me was about to change that.
Osmosis Jones ended. I took off my headphones.
We sat in silence. The monk chanted while turning the wooden beads of a necklace like my grandma praying the Rosary. A half hour before landing, our bond strengthened over stupid human tricks – a video of people spinning plates or juggling chainsaws, and one man who pulled a string out his ear after having inserted it into a small wound on his little toe.
“How to do? How to do?” The monk, whose name was Sange, laughed. His resting grimace turned into a face-swallowing smile.
“Is the airport close to the city?” I asked him.
“When you get to Kathmandu,” Sange said, “where do you stay?”
I didn't have any plans or a guidebook or reservations, just an idea of wanting to go hiking in the Himalayan Mountains we were flying over.
“You come with me,” he said. “If you good … stay longer … if not so good, we find you hotel.”
We walked out of the airport and were greeted by signs held by his followers. There were flowers, and people came up to him with white cloths known as khata. They'd bow before him and then he'd place the cloths around their necks.
Sange was your exact mental picture of a monk – chubby, glowing smile, shaved head, and bright robes – but apparently, given the welcome, he was not an average monk.
I thought he must've been some reincarnated, black belt, sensei monk. Obviously, I didn't know much about Buddhist culture.
We went to Sange's brother's house, where Sange held court.
Young lamas filled a brass cup with Coca-Cola before a straight-faced golden Buddha on an ornately decorated shrine. All of this world is suffering, but Lord Buddha needed his Coke. They lit two sticks of incense, backed away from the shrine, bowed, and left.
I sat across from the shrine on the floor, a steaming cup of putrid, buttery, salt tea before me, jealous of Buddha, wishing I could get a swig of his Coke to wash down my heaping bowl of noodles.
At the head of the room, Sange greeted a steady stream of people coming to pay their respects. They called him Khenpo Sange or simply Khenpo. Think of the title Khenpo as a terminal degree in Buddhist teaching. The respect payers did double takes in my direction, bowed three times, and discussed matters with Sange. Conversations took place in Tibetan, Nepalese, Taiwanese, and, occasionally, even a little English directed at me.
Hours passed, each marked by a plastic cuckoo clock, which chimed out “Happy Birthday” pathetically as if its batteries were running low.
We sat and ate so much – he entertaining audiences, me bored out of my mind.
“Are you bored?” he'd ask.
“Just mindful,” I'd respond instead of screaming.
When there was a lull in visitors, we'd chat. He asked about my travels in Thailand and I told him about a guy named Porn who said he would take me to the post office to mail a package and then took me unexpectedly to a whorehouse, which I promptly left. From his position at the head of a small gathering, he rolled in laughter.
My original intent was to go hiking in the Himalayan Mountains, maybe visit Everest base camp. When I told Sange this, he consulted his scrolls to see if it was a good day to start a journey.
“Not today,” he'd say.
“Tomorrow?” I'd ask.
And then tomorrow would come, and we'd load into the SUV and see some sights before heading back home.
It was like I was being held hostage by hospitality.
At night we'd walk around the local stupa, a large multitiered structure with a dome in the center and a spire on top. He'd answer my questions about Buddhism. He never evangelized. His lessons were about understanding the world, not understanding a religion – a philosophy more than a faith. Sange was a Mahayana Buddhist. As he described it, our compassion and happiness promote compassion and happiness toward all sentient beings. All living things are connected, and our lives should be in service to them.
Khenpo ...
