Dolpo Treats and Dangerous Icicles

Just now, since Lama Pema Dorje and his wife Kunsang had already eaten breakfast in my kitchen when I got up, I made myself some tsampa (roast barley four)--my style. Hot rice milk over tsampa, butter, dried cranberries, and walnuts. Flavored with stevia. Kunsang immediately decided she wanted to try it that way next time. They both thought it looked delicious.

I told them about Stevia, a sweet leafed plant that one can make a non-caloric sweetener out of. I try to explain in simple English, “Like sugar, but not make fat. Natural” Rinpoche got it, because where he came from in Dolpo, Nepal there was a thumbed-sized root--like a potato, but hard--that children loved because it was very sweet.

I also had a little beef this morning with breakfast, since I have haven’t had any protein to speak of for a few days. We talked about how they stored meat at his childhood home. This morphed into a discussion of the design of that house, which was built into the side of a mountain, ingeniously using a rock over hang as a roof. The coolest part what that in the summer there was a waterfall right next to the house. It almost sounded like it went over the house, it seemed that close. In the winter, it froze into a beautiful ice column the width of my house here in Oakland. In the spring you could hear the rushing sounds of the water as it melted. Beautiful Huge icicles did actually dangle from the rock slab above their house, and in the spring these would crash down dangerously and the kids needed to be warned to stay away from the patio, so they would not be hurt.

In became clear in the conversation that Rinpoche as the eldest son was given one of the nicest, if not the nicest, room in the house. Normally, he will avoid the slightest comment that would indicate that he ever, in the course of his life, had a status that was elevated one millimeter above anyone else.