I packed my bags, parted with the monastery and headed to join a car for a tour of 5 peaks. I met up with Ai from Beijing and two women from Guang Dong at the Car For Hire Center in town. We all met each other for the first time and decided to form a group together. We each had to pay 250 yuan for visiting all five peaks. It turned out to be a 12 hour day tour. Ai is an aristocrat, in the family blood line of Emperor Chien Long. The other two women make regular visits to the peaks because they have had real response to their prayers here. It was a fun car trip, even the cab driver was great. He warned us about where not to go, you'd get sick and you'd have to go back to the monastery for a healing, etc...... terrible stuff.
I love the mountain ranges here, they are beautiful to me. I like North peak and East peak the best. I like the energy in north peak. It hailed softly when we arrived. That might have been the last time anyone can enter north peak for this season.
On this peak, Ai and I discussed the subject of immigration. He works for a network station in Beijing. He says he owns a car and because of his job, he has access to many places that people normally don’t. He said he has a friend who can line him up with a job in US to do culinary work in a restaurant and work on his immigration paper work. I think I spoke for an hour straight, questioning whether or not he had his head together to trade in his chilled lifestyle here in Beijing as an aristocrat to go wash dishes in a restaurant and never get to really learn English or move on in life because he was too busy making ends meet on minimum wage. It sounds good when you do the currency conversion. But I reminded him that he’s doing better here in Beijing and that the currency conversion isn’t an accurate standard to base things on. People forget to take off standard of living expenses and then do the ratio and compare.
During lunch, one of the woman asked me why I don't burn incense etc....... The other woman replied for me,” I get it, it’s bad for pollution right!” I told her, syin yi is good enough. They didn't quite compute and I didn’t know how to go about explaining it either.
I stayed with women that night at a hotel. The room was heated and there was hot water for shower. I was happy to and feeling much better. It was 20 yuan a bed, we got a deal somehow, the receptionist upgraded us as soon as I became an addition to their room. In the bedroom, for some reason both women asked me about cultivation and Dharma. I’m not sure why, because I certainly don’t look the part at all. Cheng asked me how to help her mother who has been sick for the past 6 months. I recommended the method of transference. They have never heard of it and could not believe in its simplicity and empowered effectiveness. They felt insecure of such a method and wanted to go to locate a special someone who can do a special something for them.
