Cody’s blog

The first session was scheduled to begin at 9:30 Friday morning. but it was recommended that we arrive at the Convention Center two to three hours early  in order to have time to go through security. My hotel was right across the street from the Convention Center, so at least I didn’t have far to go!

I set my alarm for 7 am, thinking I’d try to get out the door by 7:30 am. But I slept badly again and was awake early, so I dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 am and set about getting ready. I was so tired my head hurt, my stomach was queasy, and I felt absolutely miserable. I considered skipping the morning session, but I knew I’d be sorry if I came all that way and didn’t even make the effort to go. I told myself that I could always leave early, but I had to at least give it a chance. So I drank my cocoa and took a shower and firmly kicked myself out the door .

Once I got out of the hotel, I was fine. The morning was sunny and pleasant, and I joined the crowds of people heading towards the Convention Center entrance. At the end of a long line, I met another woman who was attending alone, and we had a nice time chatting while we meandered around the parking lot and up to the door. We had to go through metal detectors and have our bags searched before going in. We weren’t allowed to take in cameras, cell phones, outside food or drink, anything resembling a weapon, signs or banners—a whole list of stuff.

The tickets were not reserved seating, but were divided into four sections. My line companion and I had tickets for the balcony section, so we went up and found seats together.

There was still over an hour to go before the teaching was scheduled to begin, so I went to check out the dealers. I had no idea there were going to be so many interesting things for sale! There were quite a few dealers selling art, jewelry, clothing, books, and other items, mostly Buddhist-related but some not. I bought myself a new mala (prayer beads, like a Buddhist rosary) made of Bodhi seeds with a few turquoise and red beads. I have already enjoyed chanting 108 “Kwan Seum Bosal” several times with it.

I also bought a long-sleeved shirt made in India, decorated with embroidery and sequins. Something to wear to dinner that night so I wouldn’t freeze! I had to ask the woman behind the counter and several other shoppers to help me choose a color, since there were no mirrors. The first shirt I picked, in a mustard-gold color, was a unanimous “No! You need another color!” Heh. The dark green one I picked next was a hit.

Then I went back to my seat, and presently the Dalai Lama arrived. My line companion said she’d heard that 12,000 people were expected to attend, and the Long Beach Arena was nearly full. The stage was set up with four tapestries hanging in back. Two large ones depicted the Amitabha Buddha and the Medicine Buddha. In the center of the stage was a large throne-like chair with red and gold designs, on which the Dalai Lama sat cross-legged. In front of the Dalai Lama, monks sat on cushions, facing towards the center of the stage.

The Dalai Lama began by asking three of the monks to chant the Heart Sutra, first in Sanskrit, then Chinese, then Vietnamese. The Dalai Lama himself chanted it in Tibetan. I only know it in Korean, but it was interesting to hear it in the other languages. Then the Dalai Lama spoke for a while in English, talking about his belief that all religions are valuable and have the same ultimate goal, which is to lead people to have compassion and loving kindness, and to be happy. He said that no one religion is right for everyone, so it’s good that there are many different religions for people to choose from. He believes that all religions should strive to exist together in harmony.

He thinks that people should stay in the traditional religion of their culture, as long as it helps them. He said that he’d talked to many practitioners of other religions and found them to be sincere and dedicated to their beliefs.

Then he explained a bit about Buddhism, saying that it’s different from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other religions that believe in a Creator God, being a non-theistic religion that believes in emptiness: that there is no concrete, unchanging reality at the heart of things. He also talked about what he thought people could gain by learning about Buddhism. A Buddhist, of course, wants to learn the teachings of the Buddha. A religious person who isn’t Buddhist can gain an understanding of other religions, and learn how Buddhist teachings can provide insight to complement their own religion’s teachings. A non-religious person can appreciate the parts of Buddhist teaching that are based on intellectual thought and reasoning and have no specific religious connotation.

Then he switched to talking in his own language, Tibetan, to talk about Buddhist concepts. An English translator spoke after he did. Translations in Chinese and Vietnamese were also available via FM receivers. (This part of the talk was a bit dry and I had some trouble paying attention, especially since I was still so sleepy. My mind would wander while the Dalai Lama talked, then all of a sudden I’d realize the translator had taken over and I’d missed half of what he said! I should have taken notes.)

He talked about the Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of cessation, and the truth of the path leading to cessation. The Four Noble Truths are based on the principle of Dependent Origination, which states that all things arise due to the causes and conditions that create them. Nothing exists as an independent object; everything comes about as the result of causes and effects. Therefore, suffering only exists due to conditions that arise to cause it, and so it is possible to remove the causes and conditions of suffering. He said that if suffering were inevitable and unchangeable, there would be no point in dwelling on its existence! The whole point of talking about suffering is that it is possible to remove its causes and eliminate it.

The morning session lasted two hours. The afternoon session was for the Amitabha Buddha Permission Initiation. The Dalai Lama said that the Amitabha Initiation would only take a few minutes, so he would first continue talking about the Four Noble Truths, and he would also offer the Bodhicitta Intention to Buddhists who wished to take it.

Before we broke for lunch, it was announced that if we intended to take the Bodhicitta Intention, we should eat strictly vegetarian that day. Which caused me a bit of concern, because I’d already drunk cocoa for breakfast, which has milk in it. By “strict vegetarian,” did he mean no animals, or no animal products at all? Would milk be okay? What about the fact that I’d drunk it before I knew about the vow? I decided finally that I would eat vegan for lunch, and take the vow.

To be continued.

This past week, I went to Long Beach to attend a two-day teaching event by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. It was hosted by the Geden Shoeling Center and held at the Long Beach Convention Center.

I found out about it through my temple, Mountain Spirit Center. Someone had photocopied a stack of ticket requests and left them on the table by the kitchen door. At first, I thought it sounded great, but figured it would be too expensive to go, since I’d have to stay in a hotel for at least two days. Then, the very next week, I got an email from the Westin Long Beach hotel, where we stayed when I ran in the Long Beach Half Marathon, advertising special $109 a night rates for trips through the end of September. Perfect! I went ahead and reserved a room for Thursday and Friday nights, and sent for my tickets.

The teaching was scheduled for two sessions on Friday, at 9:30 am and 2 pm, and one on Saturday morning at 9:30 am. I drove down Thursday afternoon so I’d be rested and ready to go Friday morning.

Theoretically, anyway. Thursday turned out to be a long, exhausting day. I hadn’t slept well to begin with, and then I decided at the last minute that I couldn’t leave the house in such a mess for my mom, who stays at my place to take care of the cats and fish while I’m gone, so I spent a couple of hours cleaning. Then a couple of hours packing. Then cleaned the fish tank, my usual Thursday chore. Then packed some more. I was only going to be gone for two days! You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to pack. Yet I always manage to forget at least one thing I need. (Once, it was socks. I wore the same socks for three days. Once it was scissors and tape for my bandages. I ended up buying a box of bandaids at the hotel gift shop and cutting the adhesive strips from them with my pocket knife.) This time, the one thing I forgot was a sweater or long-sleeved shirt. I knew it would be warm in Long Beach, but warm weather often equals cold air conditioning indoors, and I knew perfectly well from my previous stay that the hotel restaurant air conditioning was kept at refrigeration levels.

By the time I was finally ready to hit the road, I just wanted to go back to bed, not get in my truck and drive for three hours. But onward! I left home at around 1:30 pm, made a few stops in town (for gas, money, wash my truck, and to pick up a spare roll of cloth tape for my bandages), then finally headed out.

The drive was fine until I got to the 405 South just before LA. It was stop and go all the way to the 710. I knew that leaving in the afternoon I was going to have to deal with rush hour traffic when I hit LA, but I had no idea just how bad it was going to be. I turned up the stereo and crept along.

Finally arrived at the hotel at around 6 pm. What should have been at most a three hour drive took four and a half hours. I checked in, called my mom, set up my computer and tried to get online. Couldn’t get the Ethernet to connect, so, after restarting the modem and the computer and fussing with diagnostics, I finally called guest services. Thankfully, a very nice engineer came fairly quickly to replace the modem and make sure I was up and running. I promptly took the opportunity to catch a yellow dino egg from the Dragon Cave. Yay!

Then I grabbed some dinner in the hotel restaurant (where I froze in the air conditioning without a sweater) and collapsed for the night. Not a terribly auspicious start for my trip, but I was in Long Beach!

To be continued

I took my mom, Edna, to Old Edna for Mother’s Day. She’d seen an article about it in Westways magazine and wanted to visit a town with her name.

Things got off to a slow start. As mentioned yesterday, I had horrible allergies and slept badly the night before, so I was feeling pretty awful when we hit the road a little before nine a.m. In fact, I’d considered postponing the trip, but I knew Mom was really looking forward to it, and it was Mother’s Day, so I wanted to do it if at all possible. But it was a nice, sunny day and my head had cleared up a little after a long, hot shower, so off we went.

We took Highway 58 through Bakersfield, then 46 West across California. That’s my usual route up to the Bay Area as far as I-5, so that part was familiar to me. I stopped at the gas station/food mart at 46 and 5 for a rest stop, bought a 20-oz Coke to keep me going and took another dose of Nasalcrom, which finally made it possible to breathe through my nose without a struggle, and we continued on 46 toward the ocean.

Route 46 is a long, mostly straight two-lane highway through central California. We first passed through Lost Hills, with its oil fields. There’s a road there called Brown Material Road. I… don’t want to know exactly what Brown Material it’s named after. Then there are vast fields of tumbleweeds, piled up against fences and in mounds wherever the wind has tossed them. Occasionally, there are cattle grazing on the hillsides, and wildflowers dotting the shoulders of the road. It was a lovely drive, not much traffic, beautiful scenery.

Eventually, we reached Paso Robles, where we got on 101 South and drove another twenty miles or so to San Luis Obispo. Then we got off the freeway and went another five miles or so down CA-227 until we reached Old Edna!

Old Edna is a small compound along the road with an antique store and café, a few historical outbuildings, and a bed and breakfast. It’s charming and rustic and full of many signs saying “Old Edna,” all of which I photographed my mother standing next to.

Our first stop was the Café, which, very luckily, was open—there was a sign on the door saying, “Now open on Sundays! Beginning May 11!” So we had, totally by chance, chosen the first Sunday they were actually open to visit. No, it never occurred to me to call ahead and make sure of their hours. Mom says she thought of it, but didn’t. So we’d taken a chance and got lucky. The antique store was closed, but we weren’t there for shopping, and we could see most of it from the café, which is in the same building with a half-wall separating them.

The café was very busy, and they were rapidly running out of most of their food. I had a fresh Mozzarella sandwich with pesto on focaccia and a walnut-date bar for lunch, very yummy. I had also forgotten to make sure I had enough cash with me, but fortunately I had enough to pay for our lunches and buy Mom a few postcards. Then we wandered around a bit and looked at the site and took pictures. Mom told the owners she was 88 years old and her name was Edna, so she was Old Edna, too! They thought it was very cool that we would drive all the way from Tehachapi just to see them. They told us about a nearby winery called Edna Valley Vineyards, so when we’d seen all there was to see at Old Edna, we headed off there to buy some Edna Valley wine for Mom to give to people.

The winery was also very beautiful and picturesque. Mom bought three bottles of Chardonnay, a tee-shirt, and a postcard. I bought a cap and some chocolates.

By then, it was 2 p.m., and time to head home. We made a couple of stops along the way, at a rest area, and then at Murray Family Farms. I picked up some local raw honey, which I’ve heard is good for pollen allergies, and used it in my morning cocoa. Pretty tasty! We’ll see if it actually does any good for my allergies. And I got some Rainier cherries, which are my favorite cherries, yum!

We got home around 6 p.m., tired but happy. My mom really enjoyed her day, so I’m glad we went, even though I was feeling pretty yucky a lot of the time. I had a good time, too.

Here are a few photos of Old Edna.