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October 26, 2011

What I Iearned in Tibet this Summer: A Poem ~ Marianna Pease

You can survive off of green tea, steamed rolls, and Nescafe.

If you have the strong feeling you must go somewhere, go.

I want to go to India.

There will be a strong pull to fall in love when in a foreign country. This love will not be real or sustainable, just like your memories.

Becoming homesick is a state of love.

Travel is a series of comfortable seats.

I was only able to get in to Tibet because I was too naive to know at the time, what it means.

People are suffering all over this earth.

People all over this earth are doing what they can.

Even if you travel to the other side of the earth, it will still feel, in some way, like home. The earth is our home.

If you are grounded enough in yourself, no place on earth will feel as exotic as the moon.

You could have been born anywhere.

You can relate to anyone. Even a beggar with one eye.

Freeze dried yak cheese smells terrible, especially on a rainy day. But, yak cheese grilled cheese is very good especially with tomato.

There is “probably” such a thing as ghosts. I asked a monk.

If you are lucky enough to study Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet, you had better do something with what you learn.

Knowledge is not meant to be held onto but shared.

It is easier to arrive than return. (Memories, sleep rythms, shrunken stomach, bowels)

No amount of words can properly convey experience.

We want memories to remain special so we buy trinkets.

Our teachers are the altitude sickness, the airplane bathrooms, and the smell of yak meat at the butcher’s on a hot summer day.

Nothing can be new if all our experience is already within us like a kaleidoscope. What is new is the light reflected through our vision.

I like to listen to my teacher talk.

I like to listen to my teacher talk about death and Karma beside a lotus pond in an outdoor tea café.

The most important thing to study is death.

We are deemed morbid if we so much as mention death.

It is very lucky to be born a human.

It is even luckier to be born a human that is not ill, with a home, and opportunities.

Karma is real. Just ask the beggar who popped up after I started to agonize over my negative Karma.

You will suffer if you want to suffer. You will be comfortable if you want to be comfortable. It will all be almost completely your choice.

We do not need much.

Sometime it is fun to shit in a hole.

Sometimes it is not so fun to shit in a hole.

There are many, many, people to love everywhere you go.

 

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Marianna Pease is a yogini living in NYC. She has her 200hr RYT through Yoga Works under Natasha Rizopolous and has studied Tibetan Buddhism with her teaching Michael Sheehy. Her favorite proverb is “Barn burned down, now I can see the Moon.” You can read her blog on yoga.

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