Dharma Lesson in Dharamsala

It's late again. I grumble to myself because I'm stuck in McLeod Ganj long after sunset. It is too late to walk the dark road to the Library and getting a taxi may be difficult. I grumble at the expense of the taxi. The taxi stand at the Temple is empty. I walk up the long dark road to the bus stand. I feel the chill of the evening on my chest and wrap my hooded fleece tight around me. There are no taxis at the taxi stand and only one three-wheeler vehicle is left.

"How much to the Library?" I ask, trying not to sound too desperate.

"Thirty rupees."

I'm glad it is less than a regular taxi, but it is still too much for a no-gas-consumption ride. I am wary about riding DOWN the steep roads in a vehicle which looks like it is already out of control. And then there is the open-air draft you get in the back seat. I close the latch of the door (a metal frame with fabric wrapped around it) and we begin to rattle and bump along. I give myself over to it as we noisily pick up speed and go hurtling downhill, and I chant some mantras and prayers. At each sharp hairpin turn it seems inevitable that we will go over the edge. "Om Mane Padme Hum" effortlessly escapes my lips.

After recovering from the disbelief that we are still on the road, I begin to wonder if my back will survive as we go over each slow-speed hump along the way. I remind myself that the driver was my mother in some past lifetime. She is back again and still trying to teach me the basics: impermanence, illusion, emptiness. But I'm slow. Eons of lifetimes later I am still trying to get it. As I sit in the three-wheeler, I hope that impermanence at least applies to my own ignorance. At the moment my ignorance seems to be so durable that it could pass for being intrinsically self-existent.

I hope that the illusion of being about to go over the cliff will be enough for me to learn by (as opposed to actually going over the cliff and having to start all over again in the next life). Ahhh, these dharma dilemmas.

Finally the driver stops at the bottom of the Library steps and turns to me with a big white-toothed smile.

"Library," he says.

I get out and try to defrost my fingers enough to pull out thirty rupees.

"Dhanyavad," I say, in thanks for getting me there alive and for being such a good mother and teacher.