It was this unique setting and circumstance that began my love affair with Rebecca. Big Red Ted took me out of the musical funfest and led me towards that fantastic relationship.
Ted showed up at the studio with excitedly offered apologies and dragged me out of the session. On the way to the parking lot he told me that a Tibetan Lama had been smuggled into the U.S. from Canada and was hiding from the powers that be, including Nixon and Henry Kissinger. The State Department had an all-points bulletin out on the Lama just to appease the Communist Chinese. Ted said Nixon was going to play the “China Card” to get re-elected and Kissinger was going to make a big deal about deporting this Lama back to occupied Tibet as a diplomatic symbol of potential political cooperation between the two nations. I felt obliged to help my persuasive, concerned friend help this Lama.
My knowledge of Tibetan history, religion and politics was limited. I had read one chapter on Buddhism while taking a course on comparative religions when I went to college. Tibet I could find on a map. Ted said I would get a rush course and the Cliff Notes version on the way to a suitable hiding place.
“He’s a master of books and is bringing the ancient wisdom and knowledge of Tibet here in order to share it with the world,” said Ted. “You love to read and write,” he added. “It’s the perfect initiation for you.”
The Lama was known as Tarthang Tulku. He could speak English fairly well, having spent a period of his life as a refugee monk in Alexandria, Egypt. He chose Alexandria because of its infamy in human history for having its libraries burned. The Lama was hopeful the world would not allow it to happen again.
Big Ted suggested the Sierra Nevada Mountains, being similar to the geography of Tibet, might ease the fugitive Lama’s mind. It was summertime and fairly easy to secure a ski cabin in the Lake Tahoe area. Being off-season, the ski chalet only had a small TV, AM radio and paper plates. I explained sit-com TV and the rules of baseball. In halting English he explained the Path and how he meditated to physically change the brain for positive happiness; how to “center” oneself. By the fourth baseball game Tarthang Tulku was more than impressed by the variety of skills necessary to be a baseball player … throwing, hitting and especially a player running down a long fly ball.
During the next week, while attending to the Lama, I received a simple education in practical Buddhism from this incredible man who had traveled many a hard mile. He gave me unusual perspectives on life by debating intellectual thought. Tibetans are great debaters and much of their learning is tested in high powered and energetic debates. The Lama posed problems and spoke philosophically and in metaphors. His teachings would begin with a statement – such as, “you must go into the Tibetan mind, the mind that believed in times past that thunder comes from the roar of a dragon, to consider what I am now going to tell you.” He taught me the Tibetan style of theological and philosophical debate wherein points are emphasized by slapping one’s palm with the back of one’s other hand. This ritualistic part of the debate, he informed me, keeps the debate from getting too emotional and from being reduced to rigid argument rather than a fluid exchange of thought.
I was able to work in a good hike and swim every day in Lake Tahoe while the Lama did his meditations. After about ten days, Ted returned and told me he had made other living arrangements. An underground accommodation for Lama Tarthang Tulku seemed safe in Berkeley. Former Peace Corps volunteers had offered refuge.
Tarthang Tulku told us that, before we left for Berkeley, he must perform a blessing and water ceremony for Lake Tahoe. Ted explained that lakes were considered very sacred in Tibet, so to him it came as no surprise. I saw it as a last chance to be on a beautiful lake and suggested that we rent a boat and water ski out. I celebrated the end of my days of unexpected, enforced, though not unpleasant, spiritual training by skiing to where the Lama would perform his ceremony. Ted skied back.
The vision of me and Ted in bathing suits with the Lama in traditional saffron and burgundy robes was, no doubt, unusual when the rented speed boat returned to the marina.
A girl handled the paperwork for the rented boat dockside. The way the sun caught her golden tresses and healthy glow, she looked angelic. Her reaction to the burgundy and gold robed gentleman, carefully off-loading an ornate prayer box, was as if a Tibetan Lama arrived every hour or so. As Ted settled the bill, I officially ended my monkish period by throwing a couple of my best lines out. The lovely lass threw back a general invitation to a party that night with some of her college friends who were doing the “summer job in Tahoe thing.”
Rebecca and I were inseparable, although sometimes only in spirit, from that night on. She gave her employer two weeks notice and joined me in the Bay Area. Early in our relationship together, a bit of a hint of a previous romantic crush began to leak into our conversations. Though she had never met him, it seemed (to my ever more acute ears) that she had an infatuation with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. I knew a way to stomp any further thoughts of him out of my new love’s head. I wrangled an invitation into one of the last of the Wales/Garcia sessions and said I was going to bring a big fan. My plan was, at some point, to throw a few leading lines to Howard Wales that would set up one of his bitter, twisted remarks, hopefully, about Bobby Weir … “chinca, chinca.”
When we got to the studio, however, it was not the first, nor the last time, that I would see a musical collaboration that had changed totally and completely. Being in Tahoe and focused on the teachings of the lama, I hadn’t known that Jelly Roll Troy had been in a coma as a result of a gastro-intestinal attack. Though Jelly had recovered, there were near-death consequences. Jerry Garcia had brought John Kahn in to replace him on bass. Garcia had quite obviously taken over leadership and direction of not only the musicians but the recording sessions. He was pushing hard for completion of the new album. There were no Bobby Weir “chinca, chinca” jokes from Howard, so I foolishly and childishly blurted Weir’s name, caught myself and shut up as the session ended. Garcia casually replied that they always put Weir in the front-middle of the Grateful Dead promotion photos because “Bobby is the best looking guy in the band.”
Chapter Five
“There is a Bazaar where everyone seems to be buying and selling things from all over the world, and you meet all kinds of people. It is as noisy as hell and very dirty but a very nice and interesting place in a lovely valley.”
A CHINESE TRAVELER, 700 AD
ASIA, 1972
After the unrelenting difficulty of travel across India, part of which included the specter of war, Kathmandu exuded a feeling of welcome. Our friends, Bill and Patty and Ted and Cathy, were already there as previously agreed. We checked into the Snow Lion Hotel, famous for being the headquarters of Sir Edmund Hillary at the time he undertook his first successful ascent of Mt. Everest with the Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. Other hotels had their own history and attributes. The black market money exchange was in the Panorama. Hash and ganja came by room service at the Inn Eden.
I began searching for horses to provide local transport and we moved into a house known as the Double Dorje in Bodha. Horseback riding offered not only a pleasurable means to take in the remarkable scenery; it also served well during our forays to and from the commercial center.
Bodha is one of the more isolated corners of the Kathmandu Valley where Bill, Patty, Ted and Cathy had taken up residence. It was about eight miles from the city center of Kathmandu. Bodha is home to a giant stupa built at the time of the Buddha’s death and one of the eight most revered spots in the Buddhist world.
The giant eyes on top of the great stupa structure lend a certain