this cafe has midget servers wearing santa hats...
i just ate a very good pizza.
the monastery opening was very cool
lines and lines and lines of people giving gifts and asking for blessings...
My German travelling partner described it as an initiation into generosity.
As I just told Laila, I am learning a lot, mostly from my expectations being dashed.
The Buddhist religious institutions here serve an interesting social function.
They are very clean, and the young monks get an excellent education and three meals a day. It makes more sense for people in this region to send young children there.
Walk outside the walls, and there are people and goats sharing the same living space.
It's a big contrast, but I suppose if the monastery wasn't seperated from the world, it wouldn't be a monastery. This one also runs a school and a free clinic.
The place was "Namo Buddha" supposedly where the Buddha in a previous life offered his body to a hungry tigress.
I was so kind of blissed out after all the ceremony that coming back into town-- which involves coming through slums and very desperate areas, brought me back down.
Tibetan Buddhism also is incredibly hierarchical-- all of it has an inner meaning, but to an untrained western eye it seems a bit feudal.
The energy of these places, however, are very strong, and things sort themselves out a bit when I am practicing more.