India has always been the inspiration for and the end-goal of this trip of mine. It was during a long meditation session at a yoga retreat, after all, that I first got the idea. I knew it would be tough, but I wanted the challenge. And so potent, so spiritually transformative were the ancient spiritual philosophies born here---Yoga, Tantra, Hinduism and Buddhism, I felt there was no way I could come and not be transformed by immersion.
I am being transformed alright, but not in the ways I would have liked or consciously chosen. India is hard for tourists---even, or perhaps especially for "spiritual tourists"---and I am proving no match for its chaos. In the past seven days, I've been scammed, food-poisoned, followed, honked and stared at, lost and reduced to tears more than I thought possible in that amount of time. My inflated traveler ego, built up over the past 9 months, has been completely decimated by one week in Uttar Pradesh, India.
It's not that I didnt expect this coming in. I had studied the guidebooks, talked to veteran travelers, and tried to prepare myself accordingly...I even cut off all my hair to be somewhat more androgynous (and I hoped, less hassled). But the sheer scale of this place is so beyond anything I could have imagined, no haircut or amount of prior research could have prepared me for it.
The plan was to avoid the toughest parts of traveling solo in India by packing my trip with as many insular, "spiritual" experiences as I could find---ashram and temple stays, meditation and Ayurvedic retreats---sheltered places where I could learn from Indian spiritual philosophy without struggling against mainstream Indian culture. But even these insular experiences are turning out to be less "spiritual" than I had hoped.
Take my first attempt: a month-long stay at a Tibetan Buddhist convent in the Indian Himalayas. I found the convent, called Jujik Shel, through a very small US-based organization that sends volunteers to underfunded convents in the region to teach English. Long-fascinated with peaceful, Tibetan Buddhism, I thought I'd spend a few hours a day teaching the nuns and the rest of my time studying the Dharma, practicing deep meditation, and wandering the crumbling mountainsides of the majestic Zanskar Valley.
Majestic Zanskar Valley. View from the convent
This turned out very quicky not to be the case. It was September, and the harsh Zanskari winter was on fast approach. The nuns spent most of their days in preparation: gathering grass and dung from the surrounding fields, hauling it up the steep, rocky hillsides, and piling it high on the flat rooftops of the shabby convent. Spiritual practice was limited to a few hours of 'puja' (prayer/chanting) in the morning and 45 minutes of Dharma study (in the local language of Ladhaki) in the evening, though the nuns were too tired most nights for this second bit.
One of the younger nuns sounding the conk shell call to morning puja.
By my second day at the convent, it had become clear that the nuns would have no time or energy to learn English.
I taught at the convent school for local village children instead. This was a whole different ball-game....15 students, ages 3-7, all in one tiny, low-ceilinged classroom for 5 hours a day. What this amounted to---as I'm sure any primary educators out there already know---was total. unbridled. chaos. Sometimes I managed to pull off a simple English or Math exercise or game. Most of the time, I was pulling children off the rafters, wiping glistening ropes of snot, dirt and god-knows-what-else from their eyes and noses, confiscating colored pencils just in time to prevent an eye-gauging. It was an exercise in crowd control and, without a doubt, the hardest job I've ever done. I spent the two hours after school let out every day flat on my back in the gravel about a mile from the convent grounds, too exhausted to move, let alone meditate.
(See sorry attempts at crowd control, *cough*--English-teaching below).
As much as I wanted to write about how "spiritually transformative" or "enlightening" my stay at the convent was, it just wouldn't be true. Most of the time, Jujik Shel felt more like a remote, all-female, subsistence farming-collective than a Tibetan Buddhist convent... the women just happened to have shaved heads and wear crimson robes. I know my experience was much more about navigating a difficult language barrier, trying to find ways to be helpful in a subsistence-farming community, and staying sane in the chaos of the classroom than it was about reaching any new heights in my private, esoteric practice. In the toughest moments, it was about doing everything I could not to scream at other people's children.
Tired nuns (and village orphans) at dinnertime.
I am learning, like I'm sure many "spiritual tourists" have before me, that spiritually transformative experiences don't come on demand...even in India.
But that doesn't mean they don't come at all. No, I'm not achieving nirvana on a mountaintop in Zanskar. And no, I haven't escaped samsara by attaining some perfect yogic pretzel at an ashram in Rishikesh. But India is still offering me plenty of opportunities to grow and change. They're just the breaking-down kind of change---that challenging, humbling, what-doesn't-kill-you-makes-you-stronger type of "spiritual transformation"... more like, spiritual cross-fit. And I have a choice.
I can wallow in self-pity and regret, constantly fighting against my reality and mourning the experiences I think I should be having. Or I can start learning from the experiences I'm actually having, difficult as they may be.
That means accepting everything that comes into my path as perfect, every experience I have as the one I needed, whether I wanted it or not. Even the scams. Even the antibiotic-resistant intestinal infections (that happened). All of it.
Because it is possible that my soul needed all of this challenging and humbling more than it needed another yoga course or meditation retreat. It is possible that I'm having the exact experience I'm supposed to have, whether I like it or not.
I have no proof of this. It's just a choice---a cognitive shift in the way I choose to process my unfolding experience that makes it that much more manageable, that much more liveable. And right now, it's the only way I know how to go on with this journey, however long it may last.
Making the most of it with the kiddos at Jujik Shel.
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