After completing ten days of interviews with Tibetan elders living in exile in India for an oral history project we've come to call Voices of Tibet, Tashi Chodron, Silas Hagerty and I climb into a car to begin the careening six-hour drive north that will return us to Bangalore from Bylakuppe.
On our way out of town, we pay a visit to The Karuna Home for the Disabled, outside of which, thumbtacked to a bulletin board, is the following message. It's entitled "Rites of Passage." The paper upon which it is printed is torn and weathered. No author is credited. And as I read, I can't help but think of the occupants of this place, the elders of Bylakuppe, me.
Given our unique space, context and notional truths, time comes and goes away. Its passage is marked by arrivals and departures of people, places and events. The observance of these rites of passage becomes important as all of us arrive to depart. The brook emerges from a hill to merge into a stream. Time flows into space and man dissolves into oblivion. There may be homogeneity in these processes as each assimilates the other to define its own uniqueness, and the end of one signals the beginning of the other. All of them are ephemeral in their own distinctive way. Therein lies their beauty. We die to be reborn; we go away only to return.
If need be, there's always the next life to figure stuff out.
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