Yunnan Trip: Day 1, Kunming

I left Shanghai feeling less than thrilled. Although I was excited about my journey, I was distracted by some slight fright and nervousness at the beginning of my first solo trip.

When I arrived in Kunming, I was first frustrated by the man who worked at the taxi line. He pushed a few Chinese people to cut in front of me in the line by signaling them to the next incoming taxis. It’s unfortunate that to me it feels like blatant racism, but I cannot be sure if perhaps instead, it is merely that he feels embarrassed that I won’t be able to understand what he says (as he likely assumes my mandarin skills are nonexistent) A quick hiccup in an otherwise smooth trip to the hostel, however, as I phoned the reception and they gave my confused taxi driver directions for where to drop me off. Despite arriving past midnight, the The Hump Hostel’s doors were still wide-open and I checked into my 4-bed dorm room and quietly got ready to go to sleep while my new roommates slumbered.

In the morning, with my Lonely Planet guidebook at hand, I grabbed a cab and took off to the North side of town to visit Yuantong temple. Although Kunming is still a large Chinese city, the first observation that I made is that it is much quieter than Shanghai. Even the blaring horns from busses and haywire taxi drivers seemed to take a muted backseat to their East coast counterparts. Upon arrival at the temple, this distinction was even more apparent. Any given sightseeing area in Shanghai is constantly plagued with tourists, Chinese and Western alike. I sat in the entrance to this temple, and despite (or maybe because of) the less than visually appealing cardboard and wooden façade flanked by scaffolding and other construction equipment, I sat down and enjoyed my other senses. The smelled the light, warm air and allowed it to fill my lungs. I listened to birdsong warbling down from the trees. And I ran my hand over the rough stone wall on which I sat, getting ready to intensely observe, feel, and analyze every part of my trip that was to come.

This temple, on the first real day of my travels, is where I made a first significant revelation. The question of religion and how it ties into my belief system was an enormous point of confusion at the beginning of this last month. I felt the need to define my spirituality and whether it is aligned with the Catholic beliefs with which I identified myself for the first 18 years of my life, and had been steering away from over the last 4. I’ve never strongly doubted the existence of some higher power. I’m lucky enough to have received an unquestionable sign from this higher power at a time when I needed it the most, so have always steadfastly held faith. However, Catholic (or any other single religion) I now know I am not.

I perused the temple shops and admired a strand of prayer beads that I imagined myself using. In this fantasy, I knew just how to use the beads to connect me to this new god, and humbly sat praying to Buddha. My own familiar Catholic Lord watched over and became jealous and angry that I dared to worship any other but him, in the way I was taught. The beautiful rosary that I bought outside of the Vatican came to mind, and I saw myself instead sitting on my bed at home, repeating Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s. But that’s just it: what’s the difference between the Buddhist praying to his god at a temple in Kunming and the Catholic praying to his at church in Southern California? It’s negligible at best. And moreover, I can’t imagine the higher power wasting time picking at details of how us lower beings worship him. Why should it make a difference, if the earnestness is present?

So these thoughts went on and developed, and I started thinking about how spirituality manifests itself in the way we actually live our lives. In my opinion, religion is most helpful in developing two things about life: (1)a comfort in knowing that there is a purpose of life and that we are not merely meaningless creatures who exist for approximately 75 years and then perish entirely, and (2)a code of ethics and a striving for morality that guide our behavior and give us a sense of obligation towards treatment of other beings. Given these two thoughts, I began to toy with the idea that perhaps the higher power isn’t quite as external as I always imagined it to be. Perhaps it is not an entity that exists in some distinct form and subsequently permeates through the world; perhaps the permeation is of significantly more hierarchical importance.

Thus, I internally coined the word Superconscious (which I subsequently discovered has already been used to explain more or less the theory that was being constructed in my mind). The permeation is a connection between all things in the world. That which is subconscious is unattainable for us to examine in consciousness because it is too internal, too biological, and underneath that which we can call upon in life. That which exists superconsciously is similarly elusive, but differs in the sense that it is too external; it is a bridge between beings. One that exists in a realm we cannot develop awareness of because of the limitations of our own consciousness, but still manifests itself in everyday life through the obligations that we feel towards other human beings, towards other living beings, and towards non-living forces and objects. The amalgamation of these bridges, perhaps, is the higher power.

In the interest of keeping my blog readable and being able to ever get through my month-long trip (I just covered the first 10 hrs, during 8 of which I was asleep), I’ll stop here for today. I felt it important to focus my first entry on introspection rather than sight-seeing and adventures, because although I experienced a fair amount of the latter on my journey, the significance of the trip really lied with the internal changes that occurred. And in regards to my first sentence of this entry—the nerves and fright were completely unnecessary. Traveling alone beats out traveling any other way, and I truly wish for everyone to experience it at some point in their lives.