Dharamshala Dreams

I visited India and Nepal for the first time on a Buddhist pilgrimage led by Shantum Seth in 2007. The following — which I wrote in a travel journal in Dharamshala, India — is from my 2008 trip, about a year later.

I dreamed I was in Dharamshala but simultaneously watching a historical documentary about Dharamshala. According to this dream, the British took over it in the nineteenth century. Later India took it back and then the British took it from them again. And there may have been some military types in this dream.

Earlier, I had a dream involving the Dalai Lama and Dharamshala, but now it escapes me.

I vaguely recall a weird and disturbing dream involving monsters of some sort. I think it involved a field and vehicles. I hoped if I kept writing I’d remember, but it’s not working. Maybe that dream involving monsters was about the Chinese picking on Tibetans. Or the creatures fighting on the roof during the thunderstorm. Or maybe it was about my inner monsters.

After dinner last night, Shantum announced we would have a forty-minute talk with the Tibetan prime minister of the government in exile, so we should think of some questions to ask him.

Questions I could ask the prime minister:

Do you agree with the Dalai Lama’s intention of not making Tibet completely independent, but…