Varanasi...by Ma Ganges
Varanasi India Oct. 24
Yesterday, I spent an hour and a half writing a letter to share some of my experiences. I lost it with an absent minded click of a key. It is amazing how easily I could accept what had happened even though I did attempt recovery. Losing it gives me a chance to include Jim's latest letter as well as some of you may not be on his list. Terence has tried without success to download photos on our blog so he did put some of the text I had written earlier.
When I get a chance to write, to take some time out of the intensity of what is around me and go to an internet (that works), I figured out that one letter, cut and pasted into everyone who has emailed me, works best in terms of my time that writing too many individual responses - I tried that once!What can I say about India that makes any sense as my experience is that India laughs at any ideas or beliefs. India is full of contradictions and high level paradox. There don't seem to be many rules, much order and yet life here flows like a river...a river filled with garbage, dead bodies, noise and air pollution, beggars, cows, oxcarts, monkeys, goats, bicycles, rickashaws, cars, etc. etc. etc.. Jim captures some of that feeling in his letter.
For me I am looking at the human realities and cannot find an inner ground about it all. Jim didn't talk much about Bodhgaya, where the Buddha was enlightened, as we just got back to Varanasi from a 5 day trip there. I can see what motivated the Buddha and his world couldn't carry a microsecond of the suffering and poverty here and now. When we were leaving Bodhgaya, we were taken to the train station where the hotel had told us to go to Platform 2 for our train. On this platform, we were told to go to Platform 4. Train stations here are not clean, are not secure as hundreds of people seem to live in them. We walk through the lobby and there are families, old and young people camped out on the floor, on the platforms. There are so many beggars - old women and children, lepers being the most prevalent. Terence bought some bananas for one old woman and the light of joy that dawned in her eyes when we handed them to her...how can I describe that feeling. What gratitude such as this is possible in our world? It is hard to spend much time in the station without being overwhelmed by the outstretched hands of children begging.
Yet on our way to Platform 4, we wheeled our bags right next to a very old, very gaunt man laid flat out on the narrow concrete path who was obviously dying. I reacted with shock and horror as no one was with him and yet everyone was with him, just passing by, ignoring what was happening. Feelings of horror were mixed with an intense desire to stop and hold him in his final moments on Earth and then scream my pain and rage at the indignity of such a passing. We kept moving, all of us in some state about this event. When we stopped, all I could do was simply send a prayer that he would pass rapidly. Yet his form kept haunting us as the five of us agonized about what other responses we could have made. Terence had a dream where the phrase arose, "individual consequences of collective energy states". This is what we face daily in India - who is responsible for all this?
My experience of Spirit is a sense of interconnectedness with all my relations, that we are One Divine Being, living through each individual thing as a cell in that Divine being and that we are working together to create the reality of our existence. This place is suppose to be a mecca for Spirit - I don't experience this...yet....There is another story of a boy in Bodhgaya whose legs were mishappened and totally useless. He inhabited the path between our hotel and the Bodhi Tree Garden Temple grounds. Natually, he made his life from begging. One day, very early in the morning as Jim and I were leaving from our all night meditation in the Garden, we passed him. I was in such a state that I turned to him, not even attending to his crippled condition, but only seeing the divine in him; I bowed and clasped my hands, saying "Namaste" with a totally filled heart. I walked away and then heard him yell "Goodbye" and as I turned to look at him, he was smiling and waving to me joyfully! I was shocked and delighted. His spirit overwhelmed me with its strenght in that moment! How else could he endure his existence? What is real here?
India confounds the mind. I can see why a spirituality arose that could only ask for escape from the mind and its assumptions, ambitions, expectations because it has become apparent to us all that the moment I think something, the opposite arises. Anything and everything goes here. All I can do is to let go and be in the moment by moment of existence. India is a huge meditation in this practice.The Bodhi Tree Garden Temple is one of the most energetically powerful places I have even been. Thousands and thousands of pilgrims from all over the world come to this garden every year to walk beneath the great tree, the spot that Buddha found Enlightment. It is a huge walled enclosure with a temple facing East, with a golden Buddha inside. The Tree behind, also fenced in a marble courtyard. There is also a small lake, many other shrines, stupas, trees, and meditation platforms where one can Tibetan monks doing prostrations for hours at a time. There are three tiers to the garden and each tier, lower than the next is walled from each other, the last being the temple and tree. The five of us made a practice of going into the garden every morning between 4 and 5 a.m. to meditate as there was daily chanting there between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. My practice was a walking practice. I would walk three times around each tier. In the upper tier, I would make prayers of gratitude and prayers of blessing for everyone in my life, past present and future, into a blue-green jade mala that Jim gifted me with. This was such a powerful and deep practice for me as I recognized and honored the presence of so many souls who have given me the grace, richness, depth and meaning of my life in so many small and large ways - family, friends, community, clients, teachers, students, living or not.
As the days have gone by...I don't think I forgot anyone's name! In the next tier, steps down and surrounding the inner garden, I chanted into three other malas I am carrying, and then the last tier, in silence was a walk around the Buddha temple and the Bodhi Tree, finally stopping to sit beneath the great expanse of this magnificent tree. We returned to the garden each evening around 5:00 p.m. for the evening chanting when went from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. One evening, Jim, Terence, Duncan and myself got permission to spend the night in the garden meditating and sleeping when we couldn't keep our eyes open. We were not alone, there were monks in tents, mosquito nets doing the same. What a profound blessing that was - the peace and beauty of that garden was filled with the energies of so much devotion and prayers that it was like being in an ocean of gratitude for me for whatever such an experience will nourish in my life. What I learned that also touched me was that after Enlightenment, the Buddha spent 7 weeks further in that garden and sat in meditation in 7 different places in that garden, each place yielding a ever deepening piece of what Buddha birthed as the Dharma teachings.
In one place he meditated on how he might share or teach what he had learned (how do we offer to others what inspires us in a good way?), in another he was further enlightened by understanding of the dependent co-arising of all things (Terence's dream of how the individual and collective are intertwined), in another meditation, he told a Brahmin who came by that one is not a Brahmin by birth but by actions. Each place yielded its own gifts of knowledge and understanding. While meditating at night, one guard came by and handed me a plastic bag full of Bodhi Tree seeds. I didn't know what they were at first but, if they survive the trip home, I am honored to offer them to whoever would be honored to hold one as a symbol of this world tree. I am reminded that the Mayans held that there was a World Tree that sent out the impulses of conscious evolution into the world of humans and a Universal Tree at the center of the universe that served the same function for all of Creation! How powerful are the seed of inspiration within each of us to be honored.
I could have stayed in Bodhgaya for many more days, maybe even weeks. It is a very holy place. I am blessed to have walked those grounds.Well, this is long enough for now. Jim's letter is below if you haven't already received it. Thank you for being in my life and offering me the opportunity to share my life with you as you share your life with me - may we awaken what is the best and deepest within us all and grow a reality that serves all life in the years to come. Love, Carol
From Jim.....Hi dear ones,It's Sunday the 23. I'm in Varanasi, reflecting on two weeks since I wrote and wondering how in the world I can put something into words to share a bit of my experience. Oh well, here goes. Since I wrote last we have completed the Dharma Yatra. This is a pilgramage to Lumbini, where the Buddha was born, to Kushinagar where he died, to Sarnath, where he returned after enlightenment to share the dharma with his 5 friends and to Bodh Gaya, where he became enlightened while sitting under the bodhi tree.We went first to Sarnath, where the Buddha returned to tell his 5 friends about his experience. I found myself touched by the kind of love that would return for others after having achieved freedom, enlighenment. At Sarnath, as at the other sites there are very old temples, stupas, monasteries, statues that were lost for centuries and have been recovered.
There are actually very few Buddhists in India although this is where the Buddha was born, lived and died. Even Lumbini which is now in Nepal was in India at the time of the Buddha's birth.We returned to Varanasi and the next day Rosalyn and Carol went to pick up some Indian clothes that had been made for them. On the way we were confronted by a massive river of people, rickshaws, motorbikes, beggars, cows. The tailor, who was from Bangladesh talked about the partition of India and Bangladesh and that when he left in 1947 he and his family left everything, came to India with nothing and had made their way as tailors.The next day we went to Kunshinigar where the Buddha died. On his death the Buddha encouraged his followers to do the Dharma Yatra and apparently the Dalai Lama has said that if you could only visit limited places in India he would suggest following the Dharma Yatra.
In the temple here there is a reclining, 18 foot wooden Buddha, from the 6th century which was buried but has been recovered. We had planned to stay in Kushinagar but decided to carry on to Lumbini, over the border in Nepal.Lumbini is quite amazing. There is a huge site there, several square miles, containing temples, monasteries and a beautiful Peace Pavilion. The grounds are also a sanctuary for Saurus cranes, about 5 feet tall, and Blue bulls, who look like a cross between a gazelle and a small elk. There are pilgrims from all over the world at these sites. Most seem to come from Sri Lanka, Mayanmar and Thailand.
We met a monk who was in charge of the Nepalese temple who was 77 years old. He had been at this temple for the last 35 years. At the age of 16 he left his home in Nepal not too far from Lumbini, walked to the Indian border, got on a train for 5 days to the southern tip of India, boarded a boat for Sri Lanka and entered a monastery there, where he stayed for 22 years. He had no funds and didn't speak the language. Now 61 years later he sat with us. He told us that he mostly now practises alone, there are no other monks at the temple, and there are no others who come to practice with him. He sat with us for a while then took us inside and gave us a dharma talk on a painting on the wall of the temple about the Wheel of Life. One evening before we left we went to watch the sunset at the Peace Pavilion. A huge white structure, containing statues of the Buddha at different points in his life. The sun set crimson red and the sunset ski was beautiful. There was a drum booming nearby and so we five went to a small Jappanese temple nearby and joined in the chanting playing small hand drums. There were 6 or 7 monks there, the youngest maybe 6 years old.
In Lumbini we stayed at a lovely older hotel and for our whole time there we were the only guests. The day we left they were full. The last two nights there we ate outside on a deck by candlelight watching the darkness rise and the moon shine on the fields stretching out in front of us.The next day we drove back to Varanasi. We left about 7 and got back earlier than we thought in the late afternoon. On the way we were stopped in a small town, where many soldiers were apparant. There had been a clash between Muslims and Hindus a short while before and we drove through the eerily quiet streets. On both sides of us were cars and buses whose windows had all been smashed and a few cars that had been burned. On the roads we see electioneering trucks blasting loudspeaker political messages, women walking carrying bundles of reeds 10 feet long balanced on their heads, a very tiny little boy and girl in the middle of nowhere walking along the road holding hands, a small pond with two boys jumping into it off a tree, while two other boys fish, towns teeming with people but about 15 men for every woman, coming to a stop while 20 men peered at us unflinching and unblinking, and then with our acknowledgment them all breaking into big smiles, people everywhere, the road a river of people, ebbing and rising but always there, men squatting on their heels, drinking chai and talking, signs for digital banking (go figure), tall pampas grasses moving in the wind reflecting the sun, Moslem women totally covered in black including their faces in the midday sun, thatched houses, people waving, yelling, urinating, riding in every type of wheeled vehilce, women squatting under parasols breaking soccer ball-sized rocks into egg sized rocks with small hammers, people sleeping on woven cots a few feet from the highway (why there?), people with no arms, legs, eyes, beautiful smiles from the most unexpected faces, end of monsoon luscious shades of green, a whole family of 6 riding on one motor scooter.
Back in Varanasi the Ganges has reduced in size 40 % in the week we were away. I am able to walk along the Ghats now for perhaps a mile or so reflecting on the fact that this is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. That night I sat against a wall where I could see the whole sweep of the Ganges against the whole the Ghats, some 90 of them and felt very peaceful and grateful. Well, friends I hope you are well
Love, Jim
Yesterday, I spent an hour and a half writing a letter to share some of my experiences. I lost it with an absent minded click of a key. It is amazing how easily I could accept what had happened even though I did attempt recovery. Losing it gives me a chance to include Jim's latest letter as well as some of you may not be on his list. Terence has tried without success to download photos on our blog so he did put some of the text I had written earlier.
When I get a chance to write, to take some time out of the intensity of what is around me and go to an internet (that works), I figured out that one letter, cut and pasted into everyone who has emailed me, works best in terms of my time that writing too many individual responses - I tried that once!What can I say about India that makes any sense as my experience is that India laughs at any ideas or beliefs. India is full of contradictions and high level paradox. There don't seem to be many rules, much order and yet life here flows like a river...a river filled with garbage, dead bodies, noise and air pollution, beggars, cows, oxcarts, monkeys, goats, bicycles, rickashaws, cars, etc. etc. etc.. Jim captures some of that feeling in his letter.
For me I am looking at the human realities and cannot find an inner ground about it all. Jim didn't talk much about Bodhgaya, where the Buddha was enlightened, as we just got back to Varanasi from a 5 day trip there. I can see what motivated the Buddha and his world couldn't carry a microsecond of the suffering and poverty here and now. When we were leaving Bodhgaya, we were taken to the train station where the hotel had told us to go to Platform 2 for our train. On this platform, we were told to go to Platform 4. Train stations here are not clean, are not secure as hundreds of people seem to live in them. We walk through the lobby and there are families, old and young people camped out on the floor, on the platforms. There are so many beggars - old women and children, lepers being the most prevalent. Terence bought some bananas for one old woman and the light of joy that dawned in her eyes when we handed them to her...how can I describe that feeling. What gratitude such as this is possible in our world? It is hard to spend much time in the station without being overwhelmed by the outstretched hands of children begging.
Yet on our way to Platform 4, we wheeled our bags right next to a very old, very gaunt man laid flat out on the narrow concrete path who was obviously dying. I reacted with shock and horror as no one was with him and yet everyone was with him, just passing by, ignoring what was happening. Feelings of horror were mixed with an intense desire to stop and hold him in his final moments on Earth and then scream my pain and rage at the indignity of such a passing. We kept moving, all of us in some state about this event. When we stopped, all I could do was simply send a prayer that he would pass rapidly. Yet his form kept haunting us as the five of us agonized about what other responses we could have made. Terence had a dream where the phrase arose, "individual consequences of collective energy states". This is what we face daily in India - who is responsible for all this?
My experience of Spirit is a sense of interconnectedness with all my relations, that we are One Divine Being, living through each individual thing as a cell in that Divine being and that we are working together to create the reality of our existence. This place is suppose to be a mecca for Spirit - I don't experience this...yet....There is another story of a boy in Bodhgaya whose legs were mishappened and totally useless. He inhabited the path between our hotel and the Bodhi Tree Garden Temple grounds. Natually, he made his life from begging. One day, very early in the morning as Jim and I were leaving from our all night meditation in the Garden, we passed him. I was in such a state that I turned to him, not even attending to his crippled condition, but only seeing the divine in him; I bowed and clasped my hands, saying "Namaste" with a totally filled heart. I walked away and then heard him yell "Goodbye" and as I turned to look at him, he was smiling and waving to me joyfully! I was shocked and delighted. His spirit overwhelmed me with its strenght in that moment! How else could he endure his existence? What is real here?
India confounds the mind. I can see why a spirituality arose that could only ask for escape from the mind and its assumptions, ambitions, expectations because it has become apparent to us all that the moment I think something, the opposite arises. Anything and everything goes here. All I can do is to let go and be in the moment by moment of existence. India is a huge meditation in this practice.The Bodhi Tree Garden Temple is one of the most energetically powerful places I have even been. Thousands and thousands of pilgrims from all over the world come to this garden every year to walk beneath the great tree, the spot that Buddha found Enlightment. It is a huge walled enclosure with a temple facing East, with a golden Buddha inside. The Tree behind, also fenced in a marble courtyard. There is also a small lake, many other shrines, stupas, trees, and meditation platforms where one can Tibetan monks doing prostrations for hours at a time. There are three tiers to the garden and each tier, lower than the next is walled from each other, the last being the temple and tree. The five of us made a practice of going into the garden every morning between 4 and 5 a.m. to meditate as there was daily chanting there between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. My practice was a walking practice. I would walk three times around each tier. In the upper tier, I would make prayers of gratitude and prayers of blessing for everyone in my life, past present and future, into a blue-green jade mala that Jim gifted me with. This was such a powerful and deep practice for me as I recognized and honored the presence of so many souls who have given me the grace, richness, depth and meaning of my life in so many small and large ways - family, friends, community, clients, teachers, students, living or not.
As the days have gone by...I don't think I forgot anyone's name! In the next tier, steps down and surrounding the inner garden, I chanted into three other malas I am carrying, and then the last tier, in silence was a walk around the Buddha temple and the Bodhi Tree, finally stopping to sit beneath the great expanse of this magnificent tree. We returned to the garden each evening around 5:00 p.m. for the evening chanting when went from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. One evening, Jim, Terence, Duncan and myself got permission to spend the night in the garden meditating and sleeping when we couldn't keep our eyes open. We were not alone, there were monks in tents, mosquito nets doing the same. What a profound blessing that was - the peace and beauty of that garden was filled with the energies of so much devotion and prayers that it was like being in an ocean of gratitude for me for whatever such an experience will nourish in my life. What I learned that also touched me was that after Enlightenment, the Buddha spent 7 weeks further in that garden and sat in meditation in 7 different places in that garden, each place yielding a ever deepening piece of what Buddha birthed as the Dharma teachings.
In one place he meditated on how he might share or teach what he had learned (how do we offer to others what inspires us in a good way?), in another he was further enlightened by understanding of the dependent co-arising of all things (Terence's dream of how the individual and collective are intertwined), in another meditation, he told a Brahmin who came by that one is not a Brahmin by birth but by actions. Each place yielded its own gifts of knowledge and understanding. While meditating at night, one guard came by and handed me a plastic bag full of Bodhi Tree seeds. I didn't know what they were at first but, if they survive the trip home, I am honored to offer them to whoever would be honored to hold one as a symbol of this world tree. I am reminded that the Mayans held that there was a World Tree that sent out the impulses of conscious evolution into the world of humans and a Universal Tree at the center of the universe that served the same function for all of Creation! How powerful are the seed of inspiration within each of us to be honored.
I could have stayed in Bodhgaya for many more days, maybe even weeks. It is a very holy place. I am blessed to have walked those grounds.Well, this is long enough for now. Jim's letter is below if you haven't already received it. Thank you for being in my life and offering me the opportunity to share my life with you as you share your life with me - may we awaken what is the best and deepest within us all and grow a reality that serves all life in the years to come. Love, Carol
From Jim.....Hi dear ones,It's Sunday the 23. I'm in Varanasi, reflecting on two weeks since I wrote and wondering how in the world I can put something into words to share a bit of my experience. Oh well, here goes. Since I wrote last we have completed the Dharma Yatra. This is a pilgramage to Lumbini, where the Buddha was born, to Kushinagar where he died, to Sarnath, where he returned after enlightenment to share the dharma with his 5 friends and to Bodh Gaya, where he became enlightened while sitting under the bodhi tree.We went first to Sarnath, where the Buddha returned to tell his 5 friends about his experience. I found myself touched by the kind of love that would return for others after having achieved freedom, enlighenment. At Sarnath, as at the other sites there are very old temples, stupas, monasteries, statues that were lost for centuries and have been recovered.
There are actually very few Buddhists in India although this is where the Buddha was born, lived and died. Even Lumbini which is now in Nepal was in India at the time of the Buddha's birth.We returned to Varanasi and the next day Rosalyn and Carol went to pick up some Indian clothes that had been made for them. On the way we were confronted by a massive river of people, rickshaws, motorbikes, beggars, cows. The tailor, who was from Bangladesh talked about the partition of India and Bangladesh and that when he left in 1947 he and his family left everything, came to India with nothing and had made their way as tailors.The next day we went to Kunshinigar where the Buddha died. On his death the Buddha encouraged his followers to do the Dharma Yatra and apparently the Dalai Lama has said that if you could only visit limited places in India he would suggest following the Dharma Yatra.
In the temple here there is a reclining, 18 foot wooden Buddha, from the 6th century which was buried but has been recovered. We had planned to stay in Kushinagar but decided to carry on to Lumbini, over the border in Nepal.Lumbini is quite amazing. There is a huge site there, several square miles, containing temples, monasteries and a beautiful Peace Pavilion. The grounds are also a sanctuary for Saurus cranes, about 5 feet tall, and Blue bulls, who look like a cross between a gazelle and a small elk. There are pilgrims from all over the world at these sites. Most seem to come from Sri Lanka, Mayanmar and Thailand.
We met a monk who was in charge of the Nepalese temple who was 77 years old. He had been at this temple for the last 35 years. At the age of 16 he left his home in Nepal not too far from Lumbini, walked to the Indian border, got on a train for 5 days to the southern tip of India, boarded a boat for Sri Lanka and entered a monastery there, where he stayed for 22 years. He had no funds and didn't speak the language. Now 61 years later he sat with us. He told us that he mostly now practises alone, there are no other monks at the temple, and there are no others who come to practice with him. He sat with us for a while then took us inside and gave us a dharma talk on a painting on the wall of the temple about the Wheel of Life. One evening before we left we went to watch the sunset at the Peace Pavilion. A huge white structure, containing statues of the Buddha at different points in his life. The sun set crimson red and the sunset ski was beautiful. There was a drum booming nearby and so we five went to a small Jappanese temple nearby and joined in the chanting playing small hand drums. There were 6 or 7 monks there, the youngest maybe 6 years old.
In Lumbini we stayed at a lovely older hotel and for our whole time there we were the only guests. The day we left they were full. The last two nights there we ate outside on a deck by candlelight watching the darkness rise and the moon shine on the fields stretching out in front of us.The next day we drove back to Varanasi. We left about 7 and got back earlier than we thought in the late afternoon. On the way we were stopped in a small town, where many soldiers were apparant. There had been a clash between Muslims and Hindus a short while before and we drove through the eerily quiet streets. On both sides of us were cars and buses whose windows had all been smashed and a few cars that had been burned. On the roads we see electioneering trucks blasting loudspeaker political messages, women walking carrying bundles of reeds 10 feet long balanced on their heads, a very tiny little boy and girl in the middle of nowhere walking along the road holding hands, a small pond with two boys jumping into it off a tree, while two other boys fish, towns teeming with people but about 15 men for every woman, coming to a stop while 20 men peered at us unflinching and unblinking, and then with our acknowledgment them all breaking into big smiles, people everywhere, the road a river of people, ebbing and rising but always there, men squatting on their heels, drinking chai and talking, signs for digital banking (go figure), tall pampas grasses moving in the wind reflecting the sun, Moslem women totally covered in black including their faces in the midday sun, thatched houses, people waving, yelling, urinating, riding in every type of wheeled vehilce, women squatting under parasols breaking soccer ball-sized rocks into egg sized rocks with small hammers, people sleeping on woven cots a few feet from the highway (why there?), people with no arms, legs, eyes, beautiful smiles from the most unexpected faces, end of monsoon luscious shades of green, a whole family of 6 riding on one motor scooter.
Back in Varanasi the Ganges has reduced in size 40 % in the week we were away. I am able to walk along the Ghats now for perhaps a mile or so reflecting on the fact that this is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. That night I sat against a wall where I could see the whole sweep of the Ganges against the whole the Ghats, some 90 of them and felt very peaceful and grateful. Well, friends I hope you are well
Love, Jim
posted by HeartoftheWorld | 3:51 AM
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