This is the memoir of a slipshod yogini. May it make you smile and book a flight to Nepal.

What the Buddha taught 2,500 years ago is “live” in Nepal, a crazy-quilted land of prayer, terraced rice fields, lazy hazy afternoons and cows that know they are sacred and sit in the middle of the road directing traffic. The country’s northern border shares Mt. Everest with Tibet and offers a sojourner jaw-dropping opportunity to experience just how dreamlike life is.

The statistics for recovery were stacked against me, but I had zero interest in meeting Death. Back in 1985, I knew nothing about Buddhism or its teachings on how to use suffering to access an inner reservoir of equanimity as a basis for clear seeing and intelligent action. I was looking at myself and the world through a huge lens of hope and fear.

I was allergic to cats but volunteered to sit for Petey Cat, the pet of a close friend’s new sweetheart. The two lovebirds were stunned when I offered to hole up in Jane’s place through the July 4th holiday weekend so they could enjoy a romantic getaway. Perhaps the selfless wish for them to be happy was the spark required for igniting my karmic link with Tibetan Buddhism in this lifetime and for meeting the wisdom mind of Chogyam Trungpa.

This was the first time I was practicing in a Tibetan Buddhist temple among Tibetans. How could I sit there and not be distracted by their authenticity and by their impoverishment? Prayer itself was major sustenance for this community. For my own dharma practice to be meaningful, I needed to open my heart more to all beings. It wouldn’t do to simply voice prayers in the manner of a well-trained…

“Your guru is Chatral Rinpoche?” I asked in disbelief. This was more than a stroke of good luck for us Western dharma girls. HH Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche enjoyed a reclusive, ascetic lifestyle and he was notoriously hard to meet. His monastery, Rigzin Drubpe Ghatsal, nestled in the mountains of Yangleshö, overlooks sacred pools of turquoise waters populated with exotic fish, and is just steps above the cave in which Padmasambhava…

Someone else more spiritually attuned or more open might have recognized the dreamlike nature of that moment and awakened from this life’s deep sleep of ignorance. But for me the sight of Khenpo’s nakedness simply exposed my own uptightness and undue concern as the host of my teacher’s teacher to “do the right thing.” I relaxed gratefully.

How does a ‘nice Jewish girl,’ raised in the sheltered suburbs of New York, convey to a Tibetan Buddhist master her culturally conditioned phobic reaction to the very sound of the word ‘nun,’ and its implied austerity? I can’t say why ‘monk’ doesn’t sound as forbidding, lackluster, or as humorless as nun, but I do know my discomfort with the word was an expression of fear that had no real basis.

That same year marked Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s arrival in America. Students in New England and elsewhere were gathering to hear Rinpoche’s dharma talks on work, sex, and money, teachings that would have helped me release a few inhibitions for sure. However, I had yet to even hear the word “dharma.” Instead, my ears were attuned to the Beatles’ Abbey Road album whose lyric Here Comes the Sun…

My 7:30 a.m. flight to Phaplu was on hold—its time for departure anyone’s guess—and all afternoon flights at Tribuvan were cancelled. My useless thoughts scurried across the deserted lobby and crashed into the stacked metal rows of empty baggage carts. I sat on my bags and prayed for a clerk to appear behind the Nepal Airlines check-in desk. Nepal is the ideal country for teaching Westerners patience.