Begin Within 1.0 — — Sorrel Glen, Oregon Coast, Pacific Northwest, USA
“Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously; the midday sun always excepted…” R. Kipling
It was, I believe, a great loss to science and the world in general. She was a renowned brain scientist, an interesting entertainer, and after I built her a house one time, she became a wonderful friend. She died young and I miss her. I think she would not mind my telling one of her stories and appreciate, I think, my addendum to it: A further story which I never got to tell her.
Dr. Helen J. Neville, neuroscientist, director of the Brain Development Lab at the University of Oregon, studied the plasticity of the human brain specifically in the realm of child development. Occasionally she would hand her students (and visiting carpenters a time or two) a human brain removed from its shell and explain how delicate and complex an organ it is. I don’t actually know what happened to her brain after she died, but I assume it is in a special jar somewhere probably looking over the shoulder of some young researcher beckoning her to dig ever deeper into the world’s mysteries.
At one point Dr. Neville’s breakthrough research became known world wide and, like many other brilliant scientists, she came to the attention of the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso . He invited her to visit him at his modest temple/palace near Dharamshala, India.
To get to Dharamshala you would most likely take a flight from New Delhi (Indira Gandhi International Airport) on Spirit Airlines. You would fly north and just as it seems like the airplane is going to crash into the granite wall of the Western Himalayas, you would land sharply on the short, mostly-paved, runway at Kangra Airport Gaggal. (Dharamshala). From there it is a 45 minute up hill taxi ride to the neighborhood of McLeod Ganj. If you have the driver drop you at the south end of the neighborhood you can walk right into the very modest palace/temple where the Dalai Lama lives.
Of course, Dr. Neville wouldn’t just walk right in like that. She and her tall Irish companion spent a couple of days staying in McLeod Ganj before their meeting with his holiness. I believe she said they stayed at a funky guesthouse owned by Richard Gere. It’s right in the center of the ganj. It looks out toward Happy Valley. The beds are hard, the hot water is pretty cold, the food in the restaurant is vegetarian. Perfect for pilgrims on their way to an audience.
At its very best India is an assault to Western senses. I don’t know if Dr. Neville had been there before, but there are many unsanitary features that to a brain scientist trying to establish a positive protocol for raising the brains of children..well it had to be a shock. The streets are filled with garbage. The sewers overflow, children go begging for food and shelter. India can be a tough place and Dharamshala was then a city of 50,000. Unsanitary would be a charitable way to describe it.
As the story goes, (at least the story that I heard) when Dr. Neville finally got her interview with the Dalai Lama, it went fine for awhile, they talked about her research and then she just couldn’t help herself.
“What the heck,” she told him, “You’ve got all these monks sitting around mediating all day long. Why aren’t they out there cleaning the streets? Taking care of the children? Feeding the poor? Why don’t they get off their damn asses and DO something…”
The Dalia Lama, which is his wont, just smiled at her. Then what I think he said was:
“Good idea.”
I can’t tell you exactly how many years later it was when I boarded my own flight to Dharamshala and went to visit McLeod Ganj. I had been traveling in India for a few months and now it was early December. I had followed the Ganges River from Rhishikesh to Varanasi (about 2,000 miles). I had seen many sides of the cities and the countryside. Walked the alleyways, hung out on the street corners, ate the street cart food, chatted with the shoeshine men. I was thoroughly acquainted with the funk. The aroma of decay. The smell of death being burned on the ghats. Marigolds in the temple of the rats. Erotic sculptures in the vedic ruins. Posters of Hindu gods glued to city walls just so men wouldn’t piss there (they still did).
Through happenstance I got a room at a guesthouse owned by the Dalia Lama’s grand niece. It was right below the palace and a path through the woods led up to the Kora that circles the temple. I got in late so it wasn’t until the next day (very early as I am a morning insomniac) that I walked up to the neighborhood of McLeod Ganj. As the sun came up over Moon Peak, I was amazed.
It was a beautiful little town. One of the cleanest places I had visited in all of India. Women were sweeping the streets, hosing down the sidewalks. There was the smell of fresh bread baking. Prayer flags flapping in the morning breeze. Clear eyed children in school uniforms walking to classes at the Buddhist nunnery. Monks in orange robes and leather gloves riding in back of garbage trolleys.
I don’t know if there is any moral to this story. Speak your mind and follow your convictions, I guess. Tell it like it is. Or maybe: Listen to the scientists.
And, of course, as his holiness likes to remind us: Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.