Tradition

 

Four days after Losar, I sat drinking coffee and filtered water at a charity-driven café in Dharamsala. One of the younger local Tibetans came in still drunk and reeking of the booze from the night prior. It part of the Losar tradition to be drunk for 15 days, he told me. A joyous bender. Pink-eyed and disheveled, he refused filtered water, insisting that his glass be filled from the tap—which surprised us.  His mood was rambling. He told us that he’d been awoken too early that morning in his house wedged in the hills. Three Sri Lankan Buddhist monks on his porch begging for food had awoken him. It is a tradition for monks to live off of handouts. He offered them his thoughts instead, saying, ‘why don’t you just be good men? You don’t need to be monks. You can have a wife and a house. You can just be good men’.