My First Indian Teacher: Shakedown in Delhi

Standing on the street at Connaught Circus, he says “you will come with me to have tea?” It is not a question. I see a young Indian prince with a beaming smile, white teeth, tailored tunic, dignified cut. This is very suitable. I am a young Danish prince as well, fifteen minutes just off the Aeroflot Russian airline from Moscow to Delhi. On his first state visit. I accept.

We drive to old Delhi in a two-person taxi scooter, through more side streets and back alleys than can be remembered. We walk up too many staircases and corridors. Inside a large room my new very good friend asks me to sit down on the floor.

Steaming hot spiced tea arrives in tall gleaming metal cups. Suddenly two humongous men slip in and sit down, flanking the only door. It is Samson and Obelix. They don’t smile. They don’t speak. My host doesn’t look at them. They are just flies on the wall. Somehow this absence of introduction feels even more ominous. Their inconspicuousness takes over mind.

Samson will cut my throat as easy as nothing. It will take no more than one gesture from his master to sic Obelix on me, breaking my brittle Danish neck like a twig between his huge hands. These two monsters will feel no hate for me. They won’t even frown. The famous Indian equanimity is anchored in their bones. This makes the finale: the twenty years of the Danish incarnation; the endless, boring hours in school; the inheritance from my mother spent on the ticket to India; and all the wishes to learn the Dharma in India and Nepal—all of this—is sucked into my mind’s black hole in Old Delhi.

I wonder where this Danish body can be disappeared. Eaten by rats and dogs in a damp cellar? Chopped up and served as mutton curry to non-vegetarian hippies? Who will ever know? Who will care? How could I be so stupid? Are all Danish people dumb like this?

“You must drink tea while it’s hot,” he says, the well-mannered traitor. Indeed. A convict has the right to enjoy a last cup of tea before execution. I agree with him; the tea is quite good.

“You have some things you want to give me?” This again is not a question.

He grins, more a sneer than a smile, revealing yellow stained teeth, like a wolf trying to ingratiate itself to a lam. I see grime on his collar; the sleeve is dusty and wrinkled. In his eyes a mixture of greed and joy, like a child. Like any human child.

After all, he just wants “some things”. Not my body snuffed out and away from this earth, leaving the bones to bleach under the scorching Indian sun. And not the entire existence of I who tried to erase it daily in zazen, unsuccessfully.

And was at not me who several years back convinced my father’s wife to help me cart off my own things collected since childhood and place them on walls here and there along the streets in my hometown for other people to take, if they so preferred? Am I still attached to “some things”? (Of cause I was, but I was still in the habit of pretending to be unattached.) I look over at my backpack. The gracious host nods at it and Samson jumps up and carries it over to us with two fingers, strengthened from snapping stupid Scandinavian necks.

Perhaps Prince Traitor and I can make a pact. A trade of base matter to which the human’s heart entwines itself, in exchange for a life. I’m not sure if my feeling is empathy or cunning. A gentle appreciation for this opportunity. What are my two most treasured items here?

“This is a cashmere sweater,” I say. My last girlfriend gave it to me. She also broke my heart. I divorce this painful reminder. “And here is a finely crafted knife from Finland. I would like you to have them both.” The bodhisattva is now defenseless.

Surprise and gratitude flickers behind his eyes and are gone. Appeasement has been transacted. We carry on conversation as if nothing has happened. His uncles are making fine Persian carpets, employing childrens’ delicate fingers for low or no pay. I hear that it’s a good business. We are friends; I’m just visiting for a cup of tea, like on any other day.

Back on the street near the railroad station, I look at my watch. Two hours and a small eternity have passed since I met my Indian teacher at Connaught Circus. The Danish ego has danced once more his to-be-or-not-to-be tango in the charnel ground of Old Delhi. My luggage feels much lighter.

The Great Adventure Awaits

After graduating from high school, I bought an airline ticket to the Himalayas. I had spent several months looking at maps and atlases, tracing routes and looking at pictures of mountains imagining what an adventure it was going to be. As I personally wasn’t aware of anyone like this who lived in Denmark, when I turned 20, I received a small inheritance from my mother who had passed away many years before. My mother had passed away, and on my twentieth birthday I received an inheritance of $1000. So I used this money to buy an air ticket to India. It wasn’t much, but enough to buy a roundtrip ticket to India and stay for seven months.

As I had no ties to Denmark, my plan was actually to stay in India and never return. During my senior year in high school, we were each given a box with all the choices of professions such as doctor, lawyer, businessman etc. However going through them all there wasn’t a single one which interested me. I only wanted to connect with Padmasambhava’s teachings. So with my $1000 I bought a ticket, and felt like a rich man with whatever was left over. In fact, on the advice of a friend, I exchanged some of this into Lebanese currency as its value was on the rise at the time, which wasn’t the best advice. The rest I changed into German marks, which was better but I soon discovered that in India, unlike American dollars, this currency could only be exchanged in New Delhi.

Before leaving for India, a wonderful friend named Jack Hurtigkarl, who had spent a lot of time in India and Nepal, had given me a list important places to visit and people to meet there and in the Himalayas. This list included Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche and he was also the person who explained how to get to Sikkim to meet the Karmapa. Also on my list was Sonada, where Kalu Rinpoche whom I had met in Europe resided, as well as Rewalsar in Himichal Pradesh, the sacred Lotus Lake known in Tibetan as Tso Pema. I went to most of the places and met many of the people he had suggested, but I also met many other people I never expected to.

Saying goodbye to Karmapa

The Karmapa had traveled through Europe on his first trip to the West in 1975. I had followed along with a small group of people from Denmark through Germany, Holland and finally Paris. I had a growing sense that rather than just pursuing a great master and being in his presence as I had been doing, I should instead do some practice starting with finishing my ngondro.

I had begun my prostrations back in Denmark when I was 19 years old. Even though it was hard it brought deep joy and a lightness of being, together with a compassion and devotion that I had never known. I felt as if I was actually connecting with a living lineage of realization. Rather than just sitting quietly and developing a feeling of serenity, the ngondro seemed to give rise to a more intimate connection to the buddhas which I now wanted to strengthen. So, one January day, having decided to return home to get back to practicing, at Kalu Rinpoche’s center in Paris I went to have a final interview with the Karmapa to say good bye. I took along the bulb of a huge red flower that had four blossoms.

Entering his room I prostrated three times and then presented him with this potential flower and told him that I was returning to practice and to save up enough money to go to India. The Karmapa smiled, reached behind him and gave me a large apple the same size as the bulb. He then gave me a blessing by touching the crown of my head and through his interpreter said, “You will do good practice.” I left to start hitchhiking back to Denmark in the cold winter night.

Back in Denmark, I found work as a substitute teacher and did prostrations on a “prostration board.” It is not easy to continue the ngondro on your own, and after my initial enthusiasm waned I found myself getting disheartened and often finding excuses not to do my sessions. But I did my best and continued as I could. After three months, I received an inheritance from my mother which had been held in trust and immediately took it to buy a ticket to India. And off I went.

The Captain’s Blue Tie: Meeting the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama in Copenhagen 1973. Photo: Benny Gunnø

The blacktop glimmers in the morning frost. I’m standing on a Swedish highway. Sometimes walking, sometimes extending my right thumb. My favorite means of transportation, very cost-effective. Hitchhiking. Back to another day of high school in Denmark.

Last year I gave up earning money, that work of the devil. I get by on the monthly allowance of ten bucks, which my father graciously doles out, the last day of the month. It’s enough. It goes to bus tickets and to some tahini for a special mixture of honey and peanut butter with corn flakes. I use it for bread spread to the great disgust of my father’s wife. And that’s why I’m standing here on the freezing road, on a Swedish winter morning, instead of sitting in a warm bus. And that’s also why all of a sudden a car screeches to a halt.

“Erik jump in!” Some Buddhist friends have recognized Erik’s figure. I’m wearing a standard issue sheepskin coat from the Swedish Army’s surplus. I sport a mane of greasy hair almost to my shoulders; underneath I wear a jacket from the mountains in Nepal that smells like goat when it gets wet. It’s tied together with a handmade belt. I have pimples, and no girlfriend. Over my shoulder is a knapsack, big enough to fit a sleeping bag and the Surangama Sutra, the one where a line of bodhisattvas tell about how they discovered the entrance door to the inconceivable nature of reality by reversing their senses.

My friends yell: “Don’t you know that the Dalai Lama is coming to Denmark today on his first visit. We know which ferry he’s on. We can just make it, if we drive 100 km an hour.” The speed limit is 60. Looking out the window, I see the road is covered with a thin layer of glittering ice, like an endless mirror stretched out under the sky to reflect the morning sun. “Great idea,” I respond.

The Dalai Lama is ushered on to a small ferry. He travels with a large retinue. I never heard about this small ferry connection, very incognito. As he leaves the boat, the captain, who obviously has had a conversation with him, is charmed, smitten. He has taken off his tie and holds it, offering it as a scarf. Perhaps he knows it is the Tibetan way. By chance I happen to stand right there, surprising the bodyguard.

The Dalai Lama folds his hands around the captain’s and I hear for the first time the now famous Big D Laugh. The laughs that is famous for not laughing at someone but with someone. It seems the King of Tibet laughs of much more than can be said in words.

“Thank you very much. But I don’t wear ties.” Whisked into the waiting cars, the Dalai Lama and his retinue are quickly gone.

I see the captain still stands there on the bridge, holding his blue tie.

A Ticker-Parade for Three Tired Astronauts

The sky is very blue this summer. Just a few clouds on the horizon. We are lying on our backs, doing nothing. I guess we’re either eleven or twelve years old. There are fields outside my home town. In the old days cows would grace here. Nowadays they’re just for us, and for dogs to run free.

I’m not sure who first came up with the idea. But one of us says: “Imagine that we are hanging under the ceiling. Instead of looking up, we’re looking down.”

There’s a shift and then a gasp, as when air is sucked out from the abdomen. All of a sudden we look down into infinity, into an endless chasm. Involuntarily our small hands grasp for a tuft of grass to hold onto, even though we know it’s futile. This beats every free-falling parachuter. There’s nothing to say.

At some point we sit up and my friend says, “This is not real. What you see is not real, it’s just an illusion.” We sit for a while, looking around. Slowly we walk back through town. No one says a word.

We stop at the ice cream shop of Mrs. Frandsen. My friend says, “Let’s eat some ice cream.” We each buy an extra-large homemade ice cream in a waffle with whipped cream and strawberry jam.