PRACTICING DHARMA IN DAILY LIFE

By Moya Mendez

Photo by Julie V. (Flickr, juliejigsaw)

Five of us set off one night just after the final dedications to find a supermarket to buy tsog for the following evening. We went in Fernando’s car down a muddy track in the middle of nowhere that they had found the previous day and called El Camino de la Muerte, Death’s Way, because it is really steep, rocky, dark and kind of spooky. It was Halloween night so that made it even spookier. It had rained that day, so it was wet and muddy. Half way up the very steep slope, we got stuck in mud.

The car slipped and skidded as we tried to get out. Every time we made it a few feet uphill, we slid back even more, dangerously close to the precipice on one side, and totally out of control. We all got out of the car to lessen the weight, and the car skidded and scraped and stalled, again and again, and it became clear that we were marooned in the middle of nowhere in the pitch black Halloween night. Karla and I walked up ahead a little so as not to be run over by the car if it did finally manage to make it up the hill, but it was so dark that I stepped into a hole and twisted my ankle. Then one of the boys came running up to us and told us to call for help. A mysterious motorbike had arrived, turned off his lights, went away, then re-appeared, turned off his lights again, and then left. We assumed that it was some drug trafficker off to tell his buddies that there were tourists waiting to be robbed and killed. This idea freaked us out somewhat, and we realized that none of us had thought to bring our cell phones.

Karla and I decided to start reciting Tara mantras. We had sung literally about four mantras when a builder appeared out of nowhere with a bucket of sand on his head, and threw it under the tires to give us more tread. He went away and returned with more buckets. He made about five trips up and down the mountain until we were able to drive away.

The moral of this story can be summed up in the following quiz question: When stuck on a muddy dark mountain on Halloween night at the mercy of drug traffickers, one should take refuge in: a) a cell phone; b) Tara; or c) a builder with a bucket of sand on his head?

Moya Mendez is currently director of Centro Yeshe Gyaltsen and national coordinator for FPMT Mexico.