Nomadic Educator

“If a man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.” – A Japanese proverb on tea and life. Despite everything, leaving Lava behind was difficult.   I had wanted so much to succeed in terms of my own personal journey and it really felt like I had failed miserably.   I was definitely proud of my time at the school and we made a good deal of progress over the nine days.   But all the lessons I thought I had been learning about myself, as a person, seemed to unravel in Lava and I wondered if I had really learned or improved anything about myself at all.   On my final day, I visited the monastery.   I took food donations.   I sat in the calm of the monastery during lunch time and began to think of the things that had gone wrong (those both, in my control and out of my control) and why they had affected me so badly.   As I was sitting there with my eyes closed, a young voice, very close to my ear, said, “Uncle, where are you from?”   As I opened my eyes, a