MY heart says I am a vagabond; there are foreign places to see. Maybe among them Marrakesh. Maybe Tibet.
Strangely, there are Yonzons in that upland. That is not a common family name and we could be relatives.
To seek blood relations is not the prime item in the agenda, though.
I wish to quiet a question that erupts like a boil from time to time - it gets painfully enflamed and it dries, sometimes traceless, sometimes festering beneath the skin.
What is our link with the universe? How do we make sense of man’s constant pursuit for the rationale of his existence?
Since Tibet kisses the sky, it may provide heavenly directions.
Among my notes of 6-7 years ago is that of a golden Buddhist shrine on a hillside on the outskirts of Kathmandu where dozens of nuns arrange themselves into lines and each, in deep concentration, slam a clenched fist into their opposite palm.
Motionless, they breathe deeply and wait.
The place is Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery where females – age 9 to 52 – gather not to just pray or to meditate, but for them to learn kung fu.
Like in the movies, the training is rigorous and punishing.
Every day after solo and group meditation, the nuns punctuate their spiritual studies with an intense 90-minute session of hand chops, punches, sword swishes, shrieks and soaring high kicks.
Agence France Presse reported that the women come from across Nepal, India, Tibet and Bhutan to learn the ancient and liberative Chinese martial art.
Some left their jobs as teachers or policewomen.
To the more than 800-year-old Drukpa -- or dragon – sect, kung fu came sometime in 2010 when its spiritual leader, His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa the 12th, visited Vietnam.
There he witnessed nuns undergoing combat training that was used by Viet Cong guerrillas.
AFP said that the leader was so impressed that he brought four of the Vietnamese, all women in their 20s, to Nepal to add kung fu lessons to the nuns' pursuit of enlightenment.
The nuns say the repetitive nature of Shaolin kung fu, which comes from the Buddhist temple of Shaolin in China's Henan province, helps them to learn control and focus.
The nunnery is now enjoying a surge in popularity since introducing kung fu in its regimen. It now has some 900 nuns seeking solace and skills.
"The main reason for practicing kung fu is for fitness and for health, but it also helps with meditation and self-defense," then 14-year-old Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo, who was sent to the nunnery from Bhutan when she was 10.
"Kung fu gives us not only strong bodies but also strong minds."
Jigme Konchok Lhamo, then 18, who came to the order from India, says kung fu has made the nuns more assured and has begun to address the power balance between sexes in Buddhism, where some sects consider women as tainted.
"His Holiness (Gyalwang Drukpa) wants the nuns to be like the men, with the same rights in the world," Lhamo said. "That is why we get the chance to do everything, not just kung fu.
An NPR story in 2020 says that the nuns now go around villages to train young girls how to defend themselves. They are teaching poor communities to reject the notion that women are non-entities and that rape is alright.
Jigme Migyur Palmo, a soft-spoken 21-year-old nun, who came to Kathmandu from her home in Ladakh, in northern India, said kung fu works in harmony with her spiritual life.
She was quoted by AFP as having watched Jackie Chan kung fu movies when she was younger and now wants to be as good as the Hong Kong film star.
I certainly do not associate funnyman Jackie Chan with meditative kung fu.
Not even the legendary Bruce Lee with his hybrid martial arts techniques.
Instead, I remember David Carradine in his role as Kwai Chang Caine in the early 70s television series “Kung Fu.”
No antics. No combat cries. Just plain, explosive, silent power.
“Kung Fu” was one of the guideposts in my youth. It imparted lessons in equanimity and steeliness under pressure.
They were lessons that seemed attuned to the restlessness of young men seeking rationales.
Carradine was perfect for the role of enigmatic Kwai, half American and half Chinese. For those too young to remember, it tells of an orphan who was taken in by Shaolin monks and was trained in meditation and kung fu.
After a run-in with the imperial authorities in China, Kwai Chang Caine travels through the American Old West in search of a lost brother.
I used to drop everything to be able to catch the show. It had a lot of lovely cinematic frames, thanks to the director Jerry Thorpe.
The wow moments for me was the child Kwai’s conversation with his masters, Masters Po and Kan in the temple, dealing with introspection and the discoveries of truth, whatever those mean.
Caine carried these lessons in his various encounters with strangers, mostly hostile.
I used to have a notebook in hand to write down nuggets of wisdom and, later, read them to myself like a mantra.
The notes have since been lost, but lo and behold, those exchanges from the show are all over the Internet, posted most probably by old fans like me. And there are too many of them.
One sample: “A man can be broken. By a strength outside, greater than himself. Or a weakness inside, which he cannot understand.”
Some of the scripts may now seem sophomoric, but never mind. They have put a lot of lost boys in good stead.
The women of Tibet, now called “The Kung Fu Nuns,” have received an award of recognition from the UN for empowering women.
But could kung fu put a soul in blissful harmony?
I had half expected that the ascetic Carradine, immersed as he was as Kwai Chang Caine for three years, would have imbibed the profound lessons of spiritual discovery throughout his life.
That he died violently, in an apparent throe of sexual kinkiness in Thailand, was unsettling. Did he miss a link, or did we?