Monkey Pain

A couple days ago in Buddhist Philosophy class we learned that there were three kinds of suffering. Of these, “suffering of change” is the hardest to understand, because it doesn’t involve any sensation of pain. Rather, it’s quite the opposite of pain. "Suffering of change" is actually those pleasurable acts that we engage in everyday. A delicious piece of cake,a dark chocolate truffle, a new pair of jeans, fitting into an old pair of jeans; all of these little joys of life are supposedly not pleasurable, but rather, forms of suffering. The argument goes that though we feel pleasure after engaging in each of these acts, this pleasure is limited because it is not a lasting pleasure. If eating chocolate was truly pleasurable, the more you engage in the act the more pleasure you would derive. This is not the case, because eventually, you’d become sick and start to experience pain from eating too much chocolate -or so the argument, goes; personally, I think I could eat chocolate for the rest of my life and continue to derive pleasure from each bite. Nevertheless, I was happy to begin today's philosophy class with a little suffering of change in the form of German chocolate.

That chocolate definitely was the highlight of my day. As a result of the permanent cold and the foreign food, members of the group have taken turns feeling like crap, and today my turn has come. Symptoms include no energy, nausea, and an overlying desire to be home, lying underneath the covers, watching cheesy movies while family members brings me soup. The good news: since I am the second-last to contract welcome-to-India illness, I know for a fact that two or three days from now I will feel bright as sunshine. Right now, I am looking forward to finishing this so I can crash in the lounge and sleep while pretending to practice my Tibetan pronunciation.

Before I go collapse, I will finish this post with a monkey update. Yesterday, my friends were sitting in the lounge outside the campus canteen, and a monkey crawled down a tree and straight out stole my friend Michelle’s popcorn. Meanwhile, another monkey peed on her newly washed shirt that was lying next to the popcorn. This morning, I was calling home from the roof of one of the buildings on campus -reception is terrible inside the classrooms- and, all of a sudden, a monkey crawls down in front of me and starts eating both of the bananas I was planning to have before lunch. Because I am a coward and have the excuse that I didn’t get the rabies shot before coming here, I ran the other direction, screamed a little bit, and mourned the loss of my two bananas. So far, the general conclusion is that the monkeys are vicious and far from cute. They’re also everywhere, and have taken to raiding people’s rooms looking for food.

We have, however, scored one victory against the monkeys. Just this morning, a monkey was crawling into Kylie’s room. In a very primal fashion, she screamed at it and stomped her feet and the monkey turned around and left.

Until next time, the score remains: monkeys 4 (bananas, popcorn, peed-on shirt, eaten underwear) study-abroad-students: 1 (go Kylie!)