Lama Karmapa

Today: I was praying for a close family member of mine at Dalai Lama's temple last night, when a Tibetan monk asked me to come with him to the Holy Lama Karmapas Monastery. He was very sweet and his eyes were glowing by friendlyness and joy, so I went with him on a bus in the morning. One hour later I was at a monastery with 300 monks waiting in a big crowd of Tibetans and Western people to get a blessing by Karmapa. A few minutes later I was in his room. He was much younger than I expected, only 21. He looked at me and put a red string around my neck saying some mantras. A second later I was outside the monastary, wondering what just happened. It's something unsentimental and very down to earth about the whole Tibetan Buddhist approach that appeals to me very much. They don't make a big fuzz about things.

Tomorrow: Early tomorrow morning I'm going to hike to the top of a mountain behind McLeod Ganj with the monk - he asked me if I wanted to go with him, and of course I couldn't say no hiking a mountain in the Himalaya with a Tibetan monk...