It’s been two days of extreme smoke on our disaster tourism jaunt to Ashland. Plays at the Shakespeare festival shut down. Ash in our hair. The pool and hot tub I dreamed of lounging in not the least bit appealing. We decide to leave for Mt. Shasta early, thinking that just maybe the smoke situation will be clearer down there.
As we head out Siskeyou Road I thought back to the number of shopkeepers I spoke with who admitted, like Helaine, that the summer had been really depressing. Tourism was down which meant business was down. Some shop owners were worried about what fire season might mean ultimately for their business if the trends continued the ways they had been. Kids were bouncing off the walls inside with parents fearful of damage to their health and the development of asthma or worse if they spent too much time outside. We’re feeling it too. More time inside than we were hoping for with a slim possibility of seeing much of Shasta either.
Noticing Dan’s irritability I suddenly remember something. A surprise! I lean over a give Dan a quick kiss at the red light. He looks startled.
“I’m going to take you somewhere!” I can barely contain myself.
“Where?”, he responds.
“A surprise!”
Dan knows I’m terrible with surprises. I hate keeping them, I hate receiving them.
“Oh, come on! Tell me! Dan cries.”
This one is too good. I know Dan will love it.
I remembered the monastery vaguely from three years ago, the last time I saw Helaine. We drove in at midnight down a narrow dirt road, across a creek, losing signal, hand-written directions, dodging deer, seemingly in the middle of nowhere about twenty miles outside of town somewhere in the Cascade-Siskeyou national forest. When we woke up in the morning light it felt just as remote as the night before and Helaine brought us walking down the road a mile to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. I had no idea its name, nor quite how to find it. But I knew Dan would love it, so I had to.
I texted Helaine, who thankfully texted right back, giving me the same twisted set of directions she gave us three years ago. No final address to plug into Waze. I pictured Dan spouting some sagely koan to this, but no, I couldn’t share. Instead, I told him to put on his headphones and close his eyes.
The smoke got thicker as we wound our way around the mountain. Down, down, down and finally turned off the main road to the narrow rocky dirt path I remembered. Still down, and down, surrounded by trees and narrow drop-offs.
“I know where we’re going!” Dan shouted excitedly. “But I’m not going to say.” Out of respect for my deflated heart, as I thought about how stupid surprises are and how they never work. But there was a twinkle in Dan’s eye as he reached for his phone and began scrolling. And then there it was, the musical acknowledgment of my discovered surprise:
Remembrance: Guru Rinpoche.
The acoustic guitar rang its brilliance in the opening stanza and I felt my breath slow and relax. We sat, transfixed, in utter silence watching the smoke on the trees and feeling our hearts grow in our chests.
We rounded a bend and there they were. The Tibetan prayer flags beckoning us. Dan smiled.
“I knew it”, he said. “Tashi Choling. I’ve always wanted to come here.”
We parked the car. Returned to silence. Watched the sky. And immersed ourselves in the music.
Tashi Chöling was founded in 1980 by the Buddhist master Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche. For over 20 years, students have gathered here to study and practice Vajrayana Buddhism under the guidance of Gyatrul Rinpoche, a lama greatly loved for his wit, compassion, profound insight, and genuine humility. Tashi Chöling provides a place of spiritual refuge and an established program of study and practice in order to preserve the authentic living tradition of Tibetan Buddhism for the benefit of all beings.
Prayer for the People and Nations of the Earth
At this very moment
For all the peoples and nations of the earth,
May not even the names
of disease, famine, war, and suffering be heard.
But rather may pure conduct, merit, wealth, and prosperity increase,
And may supreme good fortune and well being always arise.
~H.H Dudjom Rinpoche * Jigdral Yeshe Dorje~
