Turning the Wheel of the Dharma
G.P. Dharma Friends Restaurant, Kathmandu, Nepal
I often eat dinner at a Tibetan restaurant down one of the alleys radiating off Boudha Stupa like spokes on a wheel. Five restaurants running in chain share inner walls like row houses. Diners walk through the outdoor section of one to get to the next. Strangely, the café at the alley’s enclosed end is often the busiest. I ate there once, but the confined cigarette smoke drove me back down the alley to another café.
hawking
tissue packs
beggars find me
The colorful menus posted on each café’s wall offer the same dishes at similar prices. Cooked-to-order, healthy and nutritious, I’ve never gotten sick eating at these cafés. Dinner typically costs a whisker above two dollars, a quarter of the stupa view tourist restaurants. I have never seen another westerner dining here. Most do not venture far down the alley, and if they did, my sense is they would quickly return to the perceived safety of a busy rooftop restaurant with a bird’s-eye view of the stupa’s whitewashed dome and harmika, blue Buddha eyes and gold pinnacle, the long streams of prayer flags flapping in the evening breeze carrying prayers to the ten directions.
round-bellied monks coming and going
Tonight, I choose to eat at the second café down the alley. Crowded, a girl, twelve to thirteen years old, rushes to take my order – thukpa soup, veggie momos and black tea. She holds the metal tip of the flexible cartridge of an ink pen tightly, pressing it into her notepad. In a soft voice she repeats my choices as she writes each dish. I take a plastic retractable pen out of my backpack and give it to her.
explosive smile
translation app
unnecessary
Michael G. Smith, Bozeman, MT, is a Zen Buddhist practitioner who tries to live by the koan There is someone at peace walking in the Tao.
You can see more of Michael's work in 13.3 and 13.1 and 13.1 and 12.2 and 12.2 and 12.1 and 11.1 and 11.1 and 11.1 and 10.2 and 9.2 and 9.2 and 9.2