I Wanna Go to Tibet Today, Now!
I met John-Lee Stevens in a small
apartment building in Frishman Street, when he moved next door with a
travel mattress and a guitar.
He’s got such charming looks: tall with wide shoulders, quite skinny.
His muscles are rounded yet solid, his skin color like carob chocolate
mixed with orange peel. His eyes tilted and always smiling. Square
chin, his black hair short and brush-like. Kinda awesome combination of
East and West.
If you’re sensitive enough then you’d see right away that he’s got this
expression of real love for people. Don’t judge me by my quarrels with
Mom, I know real love when I look at it face to face. John-Lee arrived
wearing his earth-red t-shirt and Indian style thin pan ts, with bamboo flip flops on his feet. On his
head, always, the same cream-azure baseball cap. “Gift from Dad,” he
says.
He never saw his dad, an American delegate to Tibet, since John-Lee was
a year and a half old. His father was a good looking man who loved
John-Lee’s mother very much, and wanted to take her with him to
America. One day he disappeared on a reportedly routine mission in the
Himalayas. The consulate people couldn’t find him, or so they told his
wife, and refused to divulge any details about his disappearance. They
only granted her permission to immigrate to America with her son.
Although she didn’t like the Chinese oppression, she decided to stay
and help her people from inside Tibet.
John-Lee (telling Liberty):
"You,
John-Lee, will be able to do in the big wide world what I couldn’t do
for the freedom of Tibet" is what mom used to say to me.
She always described my father with warm loving words. All I’ve got
left of him are memories from when he’d come home from a mission and
play with me in the yard or take me on his shoulders for a track up the
hills. He also gave me this hat, of course. If I ever see him again,
I’ll recognize him at once.”
“And your mom, how is she?”
“She is a charming young lady of Tibet. Beautiful like the Lotus
blooming to the light of the Full Moon.”
When John-Lee talks to me, it’s like a whole picture is being painted,
at least as clear as his words if not more. I could actually see his
mom’s beauty, smiling her delicate, mysterious smile, with a little
village in the background.
“Young lady, you said?”
“When she had me she was younger than 19, a Tibetan girl madly in love
with the American hunk that for her was a symbol of the Big Free World.”
“I see. Say, I still don’t get it – how did you get all the way from a
distant monastery in Tibet to Frishman street in Tel-Aviv???”
“You’ll be surprised to hear that I started this adventure trip with my
Mom. She taught me many wisdom bits that school didn’t even mention.
Things she heard from my dad, things her mother told her, and things
she discovered on her own. Back then I did not fully appreciate the
strong base she was giving me. I just listened to her every world and
absorbed it with love.”
“She’s a unique woman I can see.”
“Sure, I wouldn’t take just any mother,” he said with a wink, “When I
grew up a bit, at about age ten Mom sent me to an ancient Dzong
(Tibetan monastery) still  active
in the area. In the area, just so you understand, is 200 miles away
from the village where I grew up, so I rarely saw Mom in the monastery
years. But I enjoyed that place so much! The landscape is such a charm
that if you had to work eight hours a day in that view and that
peaceful atmosphere, I’m sure you would gladly pay for it. But the part
I loved best is evening study time.”
Photo:
Katarina Stefanović
“Ah so you didn’t study in the morning?”
“With dawn we only prayed before going out to work. You sit all
together in the big hall, facing the sunrise: the hall is built so that
the sunrise enters through the big windows and builds up your new day
gradually and pleasantly. We were sitting together but prayer was
totally personal. Our Shrine Master, we called him Yu-Dzong, made sure
our teachers let us disciples pray only personal prays. Public or
dictated prayer, he used to say, defies the personal freedoms given us
by god, or Wuji as he used to
name it which means limitless or
infinite.”
“Amazing, wonderful and amazing!
Listen, I like this word ‘Wuji’
because it sounds more like my God as I know her.”
“Cool,” he replied with an even bigger smile.
“So what did you like about the evening study?”
“When I arrived at the monastery I
saw it as just another school. Pretty soon I realized that here was an
unbelievable treasure of wisdom to be found. In my old school they had
Chinese books about the birds and the bees. And shallow, robotic
teachers.
“Here, to the contrary, we had a
giant library of ancient wisdom books. Most copies were rare and unique
and we had to flip their pages with extreme caution. Apart from the
books there were wise teachers, and disciples with whom you could
discuss any matter to its full depth. And the real gem was Master
Yu-Dzong. He’s the spirit of the place, lighting up every dark corner
of the monastery. You could even feel his presence when you worked in
the fields, miles away from the monastery. We quickly became friends
although we didn’t speak beyond ‘Good Morning Master’ with a bow of
mutual respect, when I’d pass by him on the way to prayer. There was
something in our exchange of looks that was beyond Shrine Master and
disciple.
“As Mom had taught me, I did not take anything for
granted. I was always on the lookout for the non-obvious, the unknown
yet to be discovered. And so, after a year of study I realized what
Yu-Dzong was trying to convey to us: that staying at the monastery was
only a framework and not THE WAY ITSELF, that the wisdom gems in those
big books were nothing more than milestones we should be using to find
OUR OWN WAY; that each one of us must make his own choices, thus
building up to a personal wisdom we can actually do something with.”
“John-Lee, are you trying to say that every monk eventually understands
this?”
“Not at all, that’s exactly the point. I went one evening to Yu-Dzong,
asked to talk to him and explained what I have realized. If there was
always a light of wisdom and love on his face, suddenly Yu-Dzong shone
like the morning sun...
“...and immediately he started up saying: ‘You
John-Lee are my first disciple who has ever said this – you understood
the essence. It is true, the wisdom is  not
what is in the books, neither am I or the staff. We are only the TORCH
to light up your way. Only the torch… it is YOU who is looking at the
way, examining it with your own eyes and can penetrate depths that even
the torch cannot light up. Because you add YOUR OWN INNER TORCH and you
see much more than I could ever tell you with words. John-Lee, for me
what you said today is a great prize, the fruit of a lifetime’s work.
It is a great gift to have a disciple like you. You get a prize from
me: a free day to do whatever you like and at the end of the day come
and share dinner with me at my table.’
“I was never so elated in my life! This was a prize that none of my
friends has ever won before.
“I spent the next day walking in
the mountains, smiling from head to toe, filling my lungs with curved
air and mind boggling landscapes. At noontime I rested in the
shadow of big a rock and chewed on some dried beef out of my pocket,
watching one of the snow capped tops of the Himalayas.
Suddenly I remembered my friends the disciples. What about them,
I thought. You could simply tell them! It’s a nice idea to let
them realize (like I’ve done) all by themselves, but not everybody
would – or it might take him a lifetime – not good...
“I contemplated this for a while and then got up and walked down to the
monastery. I knew what I wanted to say but I didn’t know how to explain
it to Yu-Dzong without offending him. He was the last man on Earth I
would want to offend, even if by a little bit.
“I only knew one thing: when comes the moment to speak I’d know what to
say to him. By the time we were going to dinner my friends had already
heard of my prize, they knew I was going to sit with Yu-Dzong and
understood the smile on my face. They too smiled at me with quiet
admiration, some tapping lightly on my shoulder. Master Yu-Dzong and I
ate silently, smiling at each other with our eyes. He knows I have
something to say, I thought, and I bet he knows it since lunch time.”
“Huge character. I can see how much you admire him,” said Liberty.
“You bet. I wish you could meet
him someday. To make a long story short, we’re sitting there looking at
each other and when finished eating I told Yu-Dzong, as gently as I
could, what I was thinking about. And then I asked him if he thought it
would be OK to tell the young disciples, as soon as they arrived at the
monastery, this point of self-observation of truth, rather than letting
them understand by themselves, if and when. Yu-Dzong listened to me,
and for a few minutes kept on smiling while looking at my eyes the
whole time. His eyes shined to the light of the lantern. Then he
answered with a quiet, crystal clear voice: ‘My
teacher, Master Trisong Detsen told me once that if I’d ever have the
privilege of learning something from one of my disciples, then I must
have done a very good job at teaching. Today it happened and I thank
you for giving me this privilege and prize. Tomorrow after Morning
Prayer I will address all our disciples and teachers and explain to
them this principle of self-observed truth. And from now on it will be
part of our curriculum and every new arrival will learn this as soon as
he comes to us'.”
“WWOWEE MAN!
A teacher willing to learn – and from his student!!! I wish Missis
Sheldon be willing to listen to what I was trying to tell her…”
“I know what you are saying,
Liberty. Yes, and so it was. The monks never forgot that day and every
year they open it with ceremonial tea drinking, after prayer and before
going out to work.”
“What an amazing story! I can only imagine the atmosphere and the
wisdom in the monastery. I wish I could be in Tibet right now… hey wait
a minute, why don’t we go to Tibet right now, what d'you say John-Lee,
won’t you take me to Tibet, please, please?”
“Sorry honey, Tibet is now stomped under the tyrannical boot of Chinese
oppression. The main suppression is over the ancient wisdom and its
freedom ideas that threaten the Chinese. I’m sure we’ll get there one
day but today is not a good time for a visit. However, don’t you be
sorry. Because wisdom is not somewhere out there on the Himalaya
mountain tops. It is right here and now within your reach. Like me as a
child and disciple, when I had to filter out my own truth and collect
my own wisdom bits from Mom and those heavy books, so it is here in
Tel-Aviv. We have smart people here and lots of knowledge. You just
need to find who has the broadest wisdom and cling to them like
precious treasures. Anyway, same here as in Tibet: you must examine the
information offered to you and decide IF IT IS TRUE FOR YOU – and only
then adopt it as your own wisdom.”
“You’re gonna end up turning me into an ancient Tibetan Master, haha.”
“Ancient Tel-Aviv Master,” he said with a frisky voice and blew air at
my hair.
He’s such a cutie that it feels like kissing him, I thought to myself.
“Sure, alright, John-Lee,” I answered, laughing. Kiss? Maybe some other
time…
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