Lunch with a Lama

This week I had the unique experience of having lunch with a Lama, a Buddhism spiritual leader at the house I am staying at in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

The Lama has been known to my boyfriend’s family for many years and is currently visiting Ecuador to offer blessings, visit his followers and give speeches on spiritual healing. The family offered to host a small, intimate lunch for him here at the house, and it was something I was excited to experience.

When the Lama arrived I was greeted by an outwardly calm but charismatic man who I quickly discovered spoke five languages, including English. The Lama lives in Santiago, Chile but was born in India and travels frequently, so we soon realised our combined interest in travel and had an interesting discussion in a mixture of English and Spanish.

I found the Lama to be funny and generous with both his time, his blessings and his gifts. After giving his four close friends and followers here in the house gifts of incense and blessed charms made of string, he also offered one to me, first blessing it and delighting in the fact that I asked if I could take his photo whilst he did the blessing.

I then watched as he walked through the house and blessed each room with rose petals and rice. Chanting Buddhism blessings and dinging a bell it was a strangely peaceful experience for me listening whilst sitting in the backyard working on my computer.

The Lama was once again delighted when I asked if I could take his photo while did his blessings through the backyard. I have since learned that the rice and rose petals distributed across the ground need to stay there for the next week as part of the blessing ceremony. So four days later I am trying not to walk barefoot through the house as there are a lot of rice and petals beneath my footsteps.

Everyone in my boyfriend’s family is vegetarian, as is the Lama though not for the same reasons. So as we sat down to lunch we discussed my vegan diet and lifestyle, my being a diabetic and both the challenges and the rewards I have gained from changing to vegan eating.

I found the Lama to be a very interesting, well educated man who was very much at peace, seemingly bringing a calming effect to us all throughout the day. It came out in our discussion that I had referred to him earlier in the day in Spanish as ‘Señor Llama,’ which in English is Sir Llama or Sir Alpaca. I was highly embarrassed but the Lama took it all with laughter and no offence at all, prompting more discussion about the difficulties with learning languages and the hurdles everyone must overcome.

It struck me after he had left that whilst everyone had treated him with much respect, myself included, he ended up being very much a regular person who is happy to laugh at himself and with others, but is in touch with life and seems to operate in an even balance. And it seems, that is exactly what the religion of Buddhism is about.