How I Almost Became a Monk in Tibet
This morning we visited the Ganden Monestary, a holy place about 40 km outside of Lhasa. after we toured the
monestary, we split up and some of us circumanbulated (my new favorite word) a holy mountain next to the monestary. The others of us climed the mountain.
I decided to climb. However, my goal was not to make it to the top, but rather find a scenic, secluded place to journal, pray, and read the bible...all trying to answer the abundant questions of what
comes next in my life.
After about 45 minutes of this, I decided to walk back down to the bus, which was parked infront of the main entrance to the monestary. But when I got there, the bus was gone. Immediately I realized that the bus went to pick up my group at the back side of the mountain. So here I was, stuck in a secluded tibetan monestary, where
most of the monks don't speak chinese or english (since they speak tibetan in tibet) . I asked around for a phone, but none of the monks I could find understood chinese. So I decided to reverse circumanbigate the mountain, and luckily I ran into the bus before I had to make any turns in the
road, or I would have walked right by them since they were on a road lower on the mountain than i was.
thankfully, I made it back to lhasa safely. I was briefly
worried that I would have to spend the rest of my life as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, but i'm clearly not predistened to do that.