Goodbye, Bodha

I love buildings. I don't know if this is something weird about me or if lots of people feel this way & just don't talk about it much. Maybe I should have been an architect, but I don't think I could handle all the math. Anyway, I don't actually want to design buildings, I just want to relate to the ones that are already here.

Sometimes when I'm riding in a taxi in New York, usually to or from some airport or other, I suddenly get a sense of seeing everything for the first time. I look at all the strange structures the inhabitants of this planet have built, especially in lower Manhattan, my favorite part of the city, architecturally, because it has so many different shapes & styles crowded into one small area. There's a new building going up now that looks kind of like someone picked it up & twisted it & then put it back down. A lot of people hate it but I think it's great because there's nothing else like it (except maybe in Dubai, which has the weirdest architecture on Earth). City Hall is another great shape, with its statue-encrusted towers & gold something-or-other on top.

I used to have a big relationship with the World Trade Center, which I could see from the roof garden of my late lamented apartment. I thought of the twin towers as Padmasambhava & Yeshé Tsogyel & it always seemed as though they were presiding over New York in some incomprehensibly benevolent way. That's all gone now.

But my favorite building in the whole world is the Great Chörten in Bodha.  When I first saw it, in 1995, I called it 'a big happy cake'. I like the way it just plopped down & a ring of smaller buildings grew up around it, & then other roads like spokes radiating out from it with more buildings. I know there are other chörtens but this is the only one I care about. I like the way it's so big & generous - it even lets you walk on it, on several different levels of its white layers. Wherever you go its eyes are watching - in a pleasant way, I feel, as if it really wants you to be happy.

It's certainly happy. You can tell that by the way it manifests strings of colored flags in a very festive manner. I think it does that for us, to cheer us up or celebrate something or just make the world a more colorful place. I like its little hat with the curtain on it that blows in the wind, & the red sunshade above its eyes.

This time I was finally able to get some pictures where the gilt on the steps above the eyes showed up. I took a lot of pictures because I knew it was the last time I'd see it. I'm not going back to Bodha. This was my last trip. There are things I will miss about it - the chaotic colorfulness of the shops, the food, the clothes, the people - everything. There are some amazing people there & I will be sorry not to see them again. The countryside is beautiful with the steep mountains & the terraces & the intense greens & yellows.

But most of all I will miss this, the big white happy cake that presides over Bodha. I'll miss its cheerful benevolence & kindly attitude. It always made me happy to see it & I won't be seeing it again.

I was walking around it with Ngak'chang Rinpoche on one of the last days of the pilgrimage. I'd been taking pictures & just happened to run into him. As we turned off the circle to take the road back to the guest house we both turned around & looked back at the chörten, which was radiating happiness as usual. I felt like we were both thinking the same thought: I will never see this again. It was a poignant moment.