India, 2023

June 27, 2023 

Now we're back in California, but I'm not feeling whole as if I left my heart, I left a piece of my soul back in India. I've seen the world, but there's hardly any place like India, such a precious jewel of spirituality and enlightenment. Each stone, each tree, each story is radiating the timeless light of peace, kindness, acceptance, and tolerance. 

True freedom comes within. Satisfaction and peace derived from enlightenment only could grant you the ability to realize who you are and the freedom to be who you are. Thus, you could eventually make peace with yourself and with your existence. Most of human suffering is due to the deprivation of such freedom. But India, India is the only place in the world where you could obtain freedom in whatever way you prefer and in whatever shape or form you are in. 

The ancient wisdom of good and evil, light and darkness, the timeless chant of truth and deception, peace and war, the enlightenment and nirvana achieved by our ancestors, has prevailed and been passed on in calmful whispers and murmurs, in spite of all that loud destruction human brought upon because of the ugliness in our soul. And that's the power of India. 

A few days ago, a driver was chatting with us regarding what was happening in Russia. "Social structures like authoritarianism and dictatorship, ideologies like communism and extrem socialism never really work. On the contrary, freedom and democracy is the main reason humans could progress." We three reached a mutual agreement. "Sigh, India is so lucky to have freedom and democracy! We are so lucky!" The driver had the exclamation from his heart. 

Of course, India is lucky, India gave birth to human beings' oldest idea of freedom and tolerance, and that idea got carried on throughout thousands of years' ups and downs, of course India is lucky!

June 25, 2023

I think I found my favorite place in India (and the world) and wish to go back again and again. These temples are like living museums, I learned so much about history, culture, religion, and spirituality, I am also profoundly inspired by the openness and inclusiveness of the artists whose arts survived time and space. It's ultimately a very spiritual place where you can find peace, kindness, and acceptance, where you can deeply feel your connections with deities, with the people you love, and with yourself. I am forever grateful for Indian culture to fruit such timeless beauty, to connect us with our past and future, to allow us to take a pause, and cherish our significance and insignificance in this vast universe. At Khajuraho The World Heritage City.

June 21, 2023

After visiting Dalai Lama's Temple in McLeod Ganj, we took a little rest in this little café outside the temple. Sitting next to us were two senior Tibetan monks and an extremely handsome young Tibetan guy, chatting contentedly and respectfully with the seniors in Tibetan. Before we left I asked the Tibetan lady who owns the café where to shop high quality things, she replied each shop is different, some of the street stands are also good. 

Just a few doors up, we got into a little old shop with canvas paintings, the paintings exhibited outside the shop were mostly old and torn. The owner of the shop, a Tibetan woman with disabilities, walked into the shop after we did a scan of some art works indoor. The woman is a painter, the artist herself painted most of the paintings and they are hats-off fabulous. She showed us more of her works which were rolled up, some of them were painted in real gold and indeed are valuable art pieces. We eventually picked a white Tara (a Tibeban Goddess) on lotus, we all loved it, the painting is colorful, lively and exquisitely fine, we will frame it when we get home. 

The artist respectfully answered all of our questions, taught us different Tibetan Gods and Goddesses, their looks and meanings. While we were chatting, there was a French girl purhased a painting and respectfully took a photo of the artist with permission. The artist was born in India, her parents ran away from Tibet in the early times, her son who now 22 years old will start the training of painting. She lives upstairs to the shop which is a neiboring house to Dalai Lama's Temple, hence she meets Dalai Lama very often. 

The artist used the simplest tools you could imagine to pack our purchases, Shiva asked, "You don't have a scissors?" Raj replied, "They use whatever it's there for them, the simplest things, it's Dalai Lama's teaching." The artist replied with a light "haan" and a little nod. 

Then we kept walking up the street, checked up some stores but didn't find what we wanted. Right across the street to Dharamshala Sky, a ropeway connects McLeod Ganj to Dharamshala, there was a clean looking store, some Tibetan monks were shopping in there. The products there are fine and in high quality, we assume local Tibetan monks shop there for their daily prayer wears. 

The kids and I were quietly chatting in Chinese while choosing things to buy. When we were ready to go, the owner told us in Chinese that he was from Yunnan, now a province in China but before it was part of Tibet. His hometown is Shangri-la, now an extremely popular tourism destination among Chinese, famous for its naturally colorful water and Gods' own work beautiful nature. He escaped China 30 years ago when he was 13 years old, together with him there were boys as young as 8 years old. They walked for weeks across the snowy mountains in Nepal and reached east India. We chatted a whole lot of stuff for quite some time, before we left the shop, he told us he really loved it here in India, life is simple and content, and protected by law, he has the freedom to be himself and flourish in whatever he likes to do. The slow life here in McLeod Ganj is not making him rich but he would not give up that freedom for anything.

June 18, 2023

Had a great trip visiting home after 3 years, great as always, kids had a lot of fun and received a lot of love. I'm very glad to see how India, even in the most underdeveloped part where our hometown is, is growing and progressing little by little, some good changes here and there each time. 

India has freedom to thoughts and expression, India is rich and diversified in races, cultures, ethnicities and ideologies, Indian citizens have fundamental rights to speech, religion, movement and migration, ownership of property, protest, assembly and vote, these are all crucial factors to grant the trajectory of progress, no matter how slow. 

As how I carry a heavy heart seeing the too-quick-to-grasp ups and downs by the unethical, greedy and ruthless authoritarian Chinese regime, as how I witness China is falling uncontrollably again into a dark time of ignorance, exclusionism and most probably, extreme poverty of the suppressed and deprived, I take the highest regard of what India holds and wish to remind all Indians to never let go of your fundamental rights and freedom. All those rights I mentioned above, most Chinese have never seen throughout our lifetime. Yes, I mean All. 

If I, a Chinese who has now no home to go back to, doesn't allow myself to give up hope on fighting for the freedom of my country, then you, the Indians, should use whatever you have in hand to guard the light as how you guard your life against dark and evil. The light that shines upon you, is the fruit of selfless sacrifices and unimaginable bravery from countless Indian freedom fighters before you. Never let go of that light. 

As we finished our trip to hometown, we are starting our little trip to Dharmashala. We had planned to come here 10 years ago but this is the real first time. I have always wanted to come and take a look, to see what true Tibetan culture looks like, how exiled Tibetans live freely without the threat of cultural extinction and day to day suppression and discrimination. As a Chinese, I forever carry that heaviness and guilt for them, and for myself.