We saw some wonderful fireworks last night at Leon sur Verze. Today we continued on with the teachings. I can’t say I was a very good vessel for the teachings, having missed out on sleep last night, but I managed to stay awake. After a nap I started trying to study (I’m so behind!) but A. and D. came over. Nonetheless, I did manage to read for perhaps twenty minutes, then when I walked into the dining room (on my way to the kitchen for coffee), well hello there was Tulku Pema Wangyal Rinpoche. What ensued was a very nice afternoon with Rinpoche, Khenpo, and A. and D.

We finished this year's installment of Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend. Perhaps it will be completed next year. I met a young French monk, Venerable A., he says he'd like to learn Tibetan and study in our shedra. I hope he can do so. Before I came to India I imagined I'd find many international students at Namdroling, but actually there are very few. I also had the pleasure of seeing my dear old friends A. and D., two of my fellow injees at Namdroling. I think we'll be spending a lot more time together in the days to come. Injee is the Tibetan word for white folk.

8 August 2009

Khenpo didn’t even have a bruise from the door incident, thank Buddha! Today was a busy day with two teachings. We had Yontan Dzod in the morning and then in the afternoon Khenpo resumed his ongoing teachings on Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend. Mattieu is translating into English for the morning and French for the afternoon, he really is tremendously skilled. I’m also enjoying spending time with Venerable S. a British monk. I’ve never met a Westerner who speaks such flawless fluent Tibetan! J.C. too is a veteran translator and is great fun to talk with.
In the evening I got to work on my memorization for shedra.

7 August 2009

I can already feel myself getting attached to life in France. In ways it is like being back in Canada- the luxuries of electricity day and night, hot showers, and high-speed internet. The food is rather better, though. I can feel myself getting healthier from all this wonderful organic vegetarian food. Our dharma friend J.C. is constantly brining us fruit, vegetables, bread, and amazing French cheese. Yeah, yeah I know… I’m an awful glutton and I’ll never leave samsara.
We had more teachings in the afternoon. Khenpo had a bit of a run-in with a glass door. He commented, “If I had horns, the glass would have broken.”

6 August 2009

I woke up at about 4 am (7:30 am India time). I did some practice and spent several hours studying for shedra. In the afternoon, Khenpo began his first teachings of this tour. For most of the last decade he has been gradually teaching Yontan Dzod to the translators and three year retreat graduates here at Chanteloube. We are very luckly to have the peerless Matthieu Ricard as our translator for these teachings. Although I am on this trip as a translator for Khenpo, I am still in training and my skills are poor. Dharma teachings don’t get more difficult to translate than what we are studying now.

5 August 2009

We had a big breakfast and took a taxi to Station Austerlitz. The taxi driver was enthusiastic about Buddhism and even had a Dalai Lama book in his car. I finally got some coffee after a tough 24 hours surviving on tea. There was this weird painting – which appears (to me and Pema) to be a monk with his lower robe over his head, perhaps taking a nap. We took the train to Brieve where we were met by several members of the Padmakara translation group. We drove to La Sonnerie, a wonderful farm house near Chanteloube where many sublime beings have stayed and taught over the years.

4 August 2009

We flew on Air France to Paris. It took 8.5 hours and yes, flying with your lama and his attendant is more fun than flying alone. It was really frigid in the plane, Ani Pema actually caught a cold. We were met at the CDG airport by Ani Ngawang Chodron who took us to the Paris version of Shechen House- a very beautiful flat near L’arc de Triomphe. Later in the day we did some visa business and I caught glimpses of the Eiffle Tower and the Champs de Elysees. Back at the flat I helped Ani Ngawang with the cooking and learned some new vegetable chopping techniques.