Hello dear ones,

It's November 28, and we are in Hampi. We've found little cottages with thatch, looking out over rice paddies and will spend several days here. There are at least 40 sq. kilometers of old temples, ceremonial sites, and royal palaces. So over the next few days we will explore these old sites. They are all made of granite and stretch the mind as to how a culture could have done it all. Here we are some 800 years later and all these sites remain. What I wonder do we create that will still be standing 800 years from now? Next week we will head to the west coast and Goa. We will at least start out in a little town on the ocean called Benaulim.

It feels like the time is going too fast and I wish (partly that is) that we were here longer. India is so immense, there is so much to see, feel, hear, experience that one can only begin to scratch the surface. Still I am so grateful for the chance to be here.

When I last wrote we were in Omkareshwar. From there on Nov. 15 we travelled to Mandu. We would have liked to stay in Omkareshwar longer, but with 100,000 pilgrims coming the next day there was really nowhere for us to stay. So we changed our plans and headed for Mandu. Our driver heard of a shortcut and so we headed cross-country. The road was beautiful, relatively isolated, taking us through brush country surrounded by high plateaus and mesas. The last several miles took us up out of a valley over a very rough rock filled road and up onto the high plateau where Mandu is. We later heard that this was the "good road". The driver tore a hole in our manifold and we "roared" into Mandu.

At Mandu, Moslem rulers had established their kingdom. I went the next day and spent the day in the Royal Enclosure. It is most beautiful. They built 2 major lakes, and around them and between them created Royal Palaces. One palace, maybe 60 feet wide is about 300 feet long. It was the home for 15,000 women who lived in the harem. It contains pools on two levels in the shape of lotus and flowers. Everywhere the simple Muslim architecture, the curves of doorways, revealing curves of further away doorways, and roof arches, and views of the lakes and pools was most pleasing to the eye. There were Turkish bath houses made of stone. Hot and cold water was channeled into the baths under and beside stone benches. The roofs of the baths were covered by stone domes, in which were carved octagons and stars.

At one of the platforms there was a ramp to the second floor, made so that the emperor could ride his elephant to the second floor. One of the major palaces was built with inward sloping walls to give the effect of the palace being a ship at sea. In one of the lakes there was an island pavilion sitting in the middle of the pavilion. Two very large Mosques were part of the complex. It was another of those places that belies imagination, another place so much larger than my imagination could create and yet it came out of someone, or many persons imagination.

I walked out on a platform overlooking the lake. Three little boys followed me giggling and laughing, asking for rupees, chocolate, my name, my country. Their asking for something seemed secondary to their enjoyment and laughter. We wandered around the palace for a while and I stopped to smoke my small pipe, and give my gratitude. They were quite fascinated to watch me do this. I ended up, at their insistence blowing smoke on their heads, on their chests, in their mouths and finally between their toes all to great gales of laughter. As we walked back across the bridge way to the shore they pointed at the water and kept trying to get me to see something. When I couldn't see what they were looking at, they all stripped off their clothes and jumped in the water. Pretty soon they were throwing fresh-water crabs up on the path. As fast as they threw them up I threw them back in, not wanting them to die on my account. I left them still laughing and just enjoying being alive.

It was wonderful to be in such a place of beauty, coming from the Moslem culture. As beautiful as all the Hindu temples, yet different, simpler in some ways. The same day we went to a major Jain temple in Mandu. As in other places the cultures exist and did exist with each other, often right beside each other literally. In this case the Jain temple was near the Mughal Royal Enclosure, Hindu temples and one of the largest Mosques in India, which was several centuries old and not in active use. It is so much fun to be able to walk in all these places, not restricted by ropes or rules and to be able to feel what created such amazing structures, what created such beauty, what would have taken place there over hundreds of years.

While we were in the Jain temple, we could hear a band approaching. As the musicians entered the temple they were followed by a group of women. There was a marraige taking place and the bride and all her female friends and family came to the temple. The women were dancing for the bride one at a time. Carol went over, made friends with them and began dancing with them. As in most places, people were open to us, curious and friendly.

The next day we left for Ellora, the world famous site of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves. Back we went down the very steep, rock-filled road, our driver even a little more cautious after the misadventure going up. A few hours later we stopped for him to fix the muffler. His assurance that we would be one-half hour turned into a few hours, and we arrived at Ellora after a twelve-hour drive. We met Bill and Becky, motorcycle adventurers deluxe. They were on a four-year motorcycle tour around the world. He was 63 and she 25. They had come across Iran and Pakistan on motorcycles on their way to India, their testing ground. They told us of Bill crashing his bike near the Iran border and having to ride across the desert for three days without any real roads.

Over the next several days we explored the 34 caves at Ellora. First, Buddhists in the seventh century, then Hindu's in the eighth century and finally Jains in the ninth century came to this valley and carved caves into a hillside containing whole temples. It took us three days of exploration to see all the caves. One of the Hindu caves represents Mount Kailas, the home of Shiva. The whole structure, 100 feet deep and several hundred feet long was carved out of the rock from the top down. It is the largest monolithic structure in the world. In addition to many rooms full of carvings of Shiva, Ganesha, Nandi, Laxshmi, Durga, Kali and many others there are two life-sized carved elephants.

The Buddhist caves were filled with statues of Taras, Bodhisattvas and Buddhas. Two foot statues, life-sized statues and many statues 20 feet high or higher. Everywhere around there were rooms carved in the solid rock as cells for monks and pilgrims. In addition to the 34 numbered caves there are scores of other unnumbered caves in the immediate area. We had a young guide who took us up above the more famous caves and showed us many other caves. They were very beautiful, sitting on both sides of a gorge in which flowed a small river. There were sinkholes, very deep, everywhere in the river-bed which served as water sources for the local people.

Every morning our porch in our little cabin was filled with orange flowers, which fell in the night. We watched India beat South Africa in the first match of a five-match contest and I've come to enjoy watching cricket.

One evening I went up the hills behind the caves to watch the sunset. As I walked further and further back into the country I came across an area filled with quartz crystal. Everywhere beautiful crystals lying on the ground, or partly in the ground. There was a small village ahead, maybe 10 houses and as the sun set the people began to play drums and sing, doing what people have always done, saluting the sun.

Yesterday, here in Hampi, I sat on the porch of our little cottage watching, the ibis in the rice fields.

The Ibis

Sitting under the thatched roof
Watching the Ibis fighting to keep
sole possession
Of his one corner of the rice paddy
Against all newcomers
I wonder, what are the corners I am
fighting to keep control of

Talk to you soon. I hope you are well.
Love Jim

Hello from Hampi...Southern India

Hello dear friends,

It's Sunday November 20 and Terence, Carol and I just rode a local taxi 26 k's into Aurangabad to get access to money exchange and to internet. The little taxi, a compact-car size in Canada had 5 grown men in the front seat, up to 10 of us in the small rear compartment and cost about 50 cents to travel 26 kilometers.

We have been here for several days looking at the caves here. From here we will travel two days to Hampi, in the middle of India - in the southern half. After this we plan on going to the west coast of India somewhere.

On November 6 we left Jaipur and drove for about 7 hours to Udaipur. Along the way we passed whole towns devoted to the mining and carving of marble. It was hard to take in just how much marble was being processed here. Later, I read in a paper, that the desert is growing at an alarming rate, due to the deforestation caused by all the mining of marble.

Udaipur is a beautiful city set in dry highlands. There are 3 significant lakes in the City and we were able to get a room in the back, in a hotel fronting one of the lakes. It was great because there was a rooftop area where you could sit and look out over the lake. In the lake itself was a Palace, now a $500 US per night resort only accessible by water taxi. The palace covers the whole of the island so that the walls go right down into the water.

I watched the sunset for several nights from the rooftop, looking at the Palace, while across the lake, not far away women cleaned clothes, from 4 in the morning until 6 or 7 at night. Within view was such a wide experience of life all set off by the sun setting and turning deep orange-red.

The next day I went up to the City Palace, a different palace, added onto by each succeeding ruler over several centuries. The descendants of this ruling line, which is said to be the longest current ruling lineage in the world, still occupy part of the palace grounds. There are several palaces, harems, pools, grand halls, mosques contained in the Palace. There is a collection of crystal ordered by one of the rulers from Birmingham England in 1854. They made and sent the only crystal bed in the world, a crystal throne, crystal tables and chairs, couches, hookahs, lamps, chandeliers, sets of playing games, dishes, decanters, incense holders and almost anything you can imagine. The crystal filled, about 9 rooms on the second floor of the palace. Before the crystal was delivered from Britain the ruler died and it was never used.

There was also a rug and a throne encrusted with precious stones, valued at over one million dollars in the 1970's and so several million today. After seeing all this I left the Palace to walk home. I had to find a wire to clean a pipe I use for ceremonies. I walked into a small bike shop. The proprietor took an old bicycle spoke, cut it to size, sharpened it by grinding it on a stone and refused any money when I offered to pay him.

In India, I find my orientation to time and place becomes very fluid. Sometimes, I have to stop and say "Oh, yes, I'm sitting in Udaipur, above Lake Pichola, looking down at the Lake Palace, in Western Rajasthan, in India, on the other side of the earth from Nelson, on the earth, a tiny ball sitting in the black night of the Universe, all the worlds growing and dying and being born again, all to be replaced to die again and all of this occurring outside time and place.

There are always claims for money from beggars, priests, sadhus (‘holy men’), children, old women or men, crippled people and there are always acts of simple pure generosity. I find I am living inside such a world of constant and immediate paradox that I am forced to evaluate and judge less and less and find a way to just remain present. This is a wonderful practice for me. I love the wildness, the unpredictability of it all, the immediacy of life, the presence of life, death, beauty, hardship and all of it so visible and close.

I returned to the hotel to watch the sun-setting once more, the light reflecting off different palace windows onto the water, silver and then gold, listening to the chanting, to the calls to prayer, to the sounds of birds, of women pounding clothes for washing, to the sights of elephants painted on their heads and trunks and I felt so grateful to be here.

Such paradox, within sight, 500 US$ rooms and people living under cardboard and plastic, ramshackle shelters, crows, pigeons hawks, parrots, my senses filled to overflowing, loving the smells, the sounds, the sights, watching everything, living, growing and dying. I love a world where people set off firecrackers for all reasons, where chanting is broadcast over loudspeakers, where people set offerings of flowers on statues, in waters and in every imaginable size and shape of temple, where people put a mark on their third eye and where all of this is visible.

The next night we did a ceremony with Duncan and Rosalyn in preparation for their leaving for Canada. Terence and I went out onto the street, heard bells and the sounds of chanting, and went down to a temple at lakeside. Through an open door we saw an old man ringing the bells, and another old man limp across the doorway, and the two of them bow to each other in simple, sincere acknowledgement: namaste

We stopped at a little family corner store and bought twenty chocolates, made sure we had some for the five of us, and then gave the rest to the family who operated the store, children, a man, a few women, an old women. Great fun to see their faces break into big smiles.

The next day we drove into the Rajasthan hills, through rolling hills, farms everywhere, fields being farmed, to a Jain temple site called Ranakpur. On the way we stopped to watch a man driving two oxen in a circle tied to a water wheel. The water wheel consisted of 25 cans tied to an old chain, revolving on a cog and wheel device which hauled water out of a pool and lifted it to a waiting irrigation channel. The man's daughter sat on the back of the harness as a ballast and so the fields were watered.


The temples at Ranakpur, like many of the places we go, belie description. Room after room after room of statues, carved animals, women dancing and singing, statues of the 24 Thitankars or way-showers in Jainism. We went and drank chai and watched tribal people weaving rugs.

The next day, in Udaipur, I went to the JagDish temple. JagDish is one of the 24 incarnations of Vishnu, the Hindu god, the Preserver. A group of beautiful, colorful, tribal women sat on the floor of the temple singing, praising.

On November 14 we drove to Omkareshwar. It is a town of several thousand with a centuries old temple to Shiva set on an island in the middle of a river. We three, Duncan and Rosalyn, now back in Canada, got on a boat to take us around the island. The water was strong-currented and the boatman and his helper had to struggle at times to get us where they wanted. As we came to the end of the island 1 by 2 kilometers, we could see thousands of people coming out of the hills down to the river bank. It was early morning about 6 am. and there were at least a few thousand more people at the river on the island, doing pujas or just washing up to start the day. Later, we learned that the next day on the full moon there was going to be about 100,000 pilgrims descend on this little place, all coming to make offerings and to go to the Shiva temple.

As the boatman rounded the island the current was so strong that we had to get out of the boat and Terence and I had to help them pull it up the part where the current was strongest. At the far end of the island we came upon the second largest dam project in the world. When completed many up-water tribal peoples will be displaced and have to leave their homes.

After we got off the boat I decided to join the pilgrimage walk around the island, 3 or 4 kilometers. For the whole distance I was never out of sight of a hundred or so other people as we all walked. Every 20 feet someone, often children or older women, had set out paintings, or statues, or altars, to Shiva, Ganesha, Lakshmi, Hannuman, Kali and many more. All the pilgrims carried bags containing popcorn, seeds, peanuts and would toss them on the blankets in front of the gods and goddesses. At one point, there was a whole line of monkeys, those that Hannuman is modeled after, sitting in a row. Pilgrims were handing them peanuts which they were cracking open and opening. There were several hundred sadhus, spread throughout the route, offering prayers, doing puja's, talking to people. On the top of the island were old ruins of temples, new large temples to Hannuman and Shiva, and ruins speaking of a much older origination of what is occurring there. I was told that about 1 lakh of peoples, 100,000, turn up on every full moon. Meanwhile in the town, on the mainland, there was a whole fair type atmosphere, people showing Bollywood films, vendors selling food, brightly colored piles of powdered dyes, and almost anything plastic you might want.

We wished to stay longer but couldn’t get a room for the next night. It felt like I experienced a huge world here and we were there less than 24 hours.

Well, my dear friends, I'll say goodbye for now. We are well, happy and grateful.

Love , Jim

And more from Udaipur...!

We are still in Udaipur. Duncan and Rosalyn will leave tomorrow and so they are off right now doing last minute chores. It is looking like we will next head south into more central India to Omkareshwar and then Ellora and Ajanta. We'll know more in a day or two.

On Oct. 31 we went to Jaipur. Jaipur is a large city and the capital of Rajasthan. It is a city of two and a half million. As I wrote last time we found a wonderful haveli (old house with a courtyard) to stay in. Like Lumbini we virtually had the place to ourselves. It had beautiful porches where we could sit and look out at the birds, trees, and Diwali fireworks.

The next day we walked into the Old City. There is a line of shops that would challenge the West Edmonton Mall. In fact looking down the mall I couldn’t 't see the end of the line of shops. Why is it I can walk around temples, or hills or palaces all day and not feel tired, but a short time shopping and I'm exhausted.

At one of the shops an old man wearing white clothes, a big black Om sign on the shirt, and a gigantic Gurdjieff-type moustache pulled me aside. He pointed to an Indian sweet and got the shopkeeper to give me one. He said this was the shop that made these sweets the best in all of Jaipur and that if you ate 15 of them a day then you wouldn't get sick in the cold season. His idea and mine of "cold season" are very different. I'm still just wearing a cotton t-shirt until late at night.

The sweets were great, sesame seed and sugar cane. Then he put on his motorcycle helmet and rode off. This was just another of the countless gratuitous interactions that happen. Many times of course, people want rupees or to have us come in their shops, or sell us something, but just as many times people are simply very interested in us, who we are, and what we think.

Sitting on the porch of the haveli that night I watched huge hawks, pigeons, ravens (black and grey), flying in the sky, sitting beside one another on roof tops. There were 20 little square kites flying at distances in the sky and as the sunset the whole sky was filled with fireworks for Diwali. The fireworks occurred not just in one place but over the whole city. Almost every house set some off and it was beautiful.

Our haveli, which was in this family for over a hundred years, was once totally in the forest and now the City had grown to surround it. It was truly a little haven for us.

November 2 we drove to Pushkar. It is a small town farther west into Rajasthan. 15,000 people and a small square shaped lake in the middle. The lake is maybe 2 or 3 city blocks square and is surrounded by 50 some ghats. In this town there are over 1000 temples. We arrived just at the beginning of the Pushkar fair. It is one of the largest cattle and camel trading fairs in the world. It is also the location of either the only, or according to some one of only a few Brahma temples in the world. Hindu mythology holds there are 3 major deities, Brahma, the creator, Shiva, the destroyer, and Vishnu, the preserver. On the full moon at the end of the fair on November 14 some 200'000 pilgrims come to Pushkar. If you bathe in the lake on that day then when you die your karma is greatly reduced and you will be born into a better life.

The next day, I walked up a large hill, to a temple to Savitri, one of Brahma's two wives. Temples to her are always on the tops of the hills and to his second wife, in the valleys. Sounds like wise planning, no? There was a warning about aggressive monkeys on the hill so I took along a big bamboo stick, just in case. I saw one monkey jump out of a tree and scare an Indian couple who had had not seen the monkey but they were no real problem.

At the top of the hill I could see out over a vast plain, ringed by sharp hills on two sides. A long flat valley stretching into the distance. The plain was filled with sand-dunes, some trees, small fields, small homes and many camels. In readiness for the Pushkar fair there were 300 camels on the fair grounds. I could see 9 or 10 encampments of 50 to 150 army tents, each one capable of sleeping 20 people. I found a place to sit on a ridge away from the temple and imagined what life was like there both now and in the past. The Rajputs are fierce warriors who the British never conquered.

In the past, when one of the Ranis, whose beauty had brought an enemy to try to capture her, was about to be taken by the enemy, she and 13,000 women committed ritual suicide. Later 50,000 died in the ensuing battle. The history of places, the things humans do and create and destroy it always intriguing to me.

The next day I walked up to another temple on the other side of the valley. I could hear drums playing and chanting and so followed the sound. At the bottom of the hill, there was a path up. It was built out of large stones, some cement, and some cement filling in some of the spaces between boulders so it looked like a river flowing. The whole thing was painted blue. The sound pulled me up the hill and I came to a temple to Hanuman, the monkey god. The statue was a painted face on a huge piece of marble. In the temple were three old men, one ringing bells, one drumming and all three chanting. I sat down in the back, behind them. Pretty soon 6 or 7 women, a few children and one other man joined me. I loved the chanting. As I left and walked home I came on a group of wild peacocks and so sat on the hillside watching them as the sun set.

love, Jim

Update from Udaipur...

I'm writing from Udaipur in Western Rajasthan, a land of desert, camels, palaces, warrior kingdoms, and colorful desert tribal people. As I sit here and write to you there is an elephant going by the window. Last night we went to a great dance performance of different local dances, capped off by an older woman dancing with 10 pots balanced one on the other on her head, the pots taller than her, remembering women going to the wells to get water. When I wrote last we had just left Bodhgaya where the Buddha became enlightened and I spoke about out experiences at the train station.

Mughal Surai and the Bodhi Tree

Yesterday I sat on the train platform at Mughal Surai
Fruit rotting, flies swarming,
People living under cardboard and plastic

Young men standing three feet away staring unblinkingly
Straight at me,
Crippled old people,
Beggar children touching my arms and kissing my feet

A woman with pus streaming from one eye points to her eye
And grabs me
An erratic behaving, unpredictable, cut-covered young man sits
down and grabs my shoe

An emaciated old man, wild-eyed, wide open-eyed,
Lies on the platform
Shaking, dying

A river of people flows around him unresponding

Today I sat under the Bodhi Tree
Pilgrims chanting, birds singing
Monks and nuns prostrating, praying
Incense and bells
Purple and white orchids everywhere
Just brought by hand from Thailand

Where, I wonder, would the Buddha suggest I sit
to become enlightened ?

The next day, after Bodh Gaya, we returned again to Varanasi. The Ganges has receded again, several more feet and now I can walk along almost all the ghats. There are men catching small 6 inch fish, a dead cow floating down the river Once more I went to one of the burning ghats. A priest there took me through the ghat explaining how they worked. There were several cremations going on. He explained his family takes care of that ghat and has for hundreds of years. The sacred fire has a lineage of 4500 years, the fire from which the cremation pyres are lit.

He said that the wealthy people are cremated with sandalwood. It will burn when wet, and there is no scent of burning bodies with this wood. It takes 360 kgs of sandalwood for a cremation, at 3000 rupees a kg, about 25000US$. The wealthy are buried with gold jewelry on. The ashes are later gone through and the melted jewelry taken to buy other types of wood for the poor to be cremated with. The government has built a crematorium for the poor but he explained that no one will use it and so it sits, a great monument to bureaucratic folly.

I walked farther down the ghats and a man grabbed my hand and started to massage it, saying "head, neck and shoulders, only 20 rupees". Why not, I thought. Twenty minutes later, face down on a mat on a platform on the ghat in the midst of hundreds of people, me moaning in appreciation he said " full body massage OK, you decide how much". Another 40 minutes later, fully massaged, pounded, and in need of a little reorientation as to place and time, I wandered, wondered on.

I watched 4 women and 2 men washing clothes in the river, joking and laughing. I wondered about their lives and sat enjoying watching them enjoying.

The next day we drove south and west to Khajuraho. We were told the drive would be about 6 or 7 hours. 11 hours later with almost no stops we arrived. Along the way the country changed greatly, looking dryer, a few more hills, looking at times like I imagined Africa might look. By the time we reached Khajuraho we were in jungle country. Jungle but not thick jungle.

The Chandal Kings had built Khajuraho over a few centuries. There were 85 temples, 22 of which are surviving. The temples are covered with statues, 2 or 3 feet high, 3 tiers of statues around each of the temples. The temples are famous for the statues, statues of Gods and Goddesses, statues of men and women, erotic sculptures, hunting scenes, women dancing, writing on slates, looking in the mirror. The statues are beautiful, sensuous, scenes celebrating life and all the things that life is made up of. The temples were lost in the jungle for hundreds of years and then found by a British officer in 1834.

The next day Terence, Carol and I went into the old village nearby. People who live here are amongst the poorest castes. They were preparing for the festival of Diwali, celebrating the return of Ram and Sita after 14 years in the forest. To prepare for the celebration they were cleaning their homes, applying a new coat of cowshit to walls and floors. This makes the floor clean and hard and also acts as a mosquito deterrent. The homes were clean, thick adobe walls that would be needed in the 125 F summer. We were taken to the local school, 150 kids, 2 shifts of 75 each so everyone can fit in the 4 small classrooms. The kids were thrilled to count for us and recite the alphabet.

After 3 nights in Khajuraho we drove to Agra. Again we were told the drive was about 6 or 7 hours and again it took about 11 hours. The next morning early we got up and went to the Taj Mahal. Because of environmental damage to the marble, cars are not allowed near the Taj Mahal. So we were able to approach by walking towards it in the early morning light. I sat for a few hours just looking at it and the beauty of it seemed to expand while I watched.

That night we took a taxi to a restaurant that advertised great views of the Taj Mahal. The guidebook described the food as uninspiring but we thought it would be worth it for the view. We took the car as far as we could and then walked through the foggy, dark narrow streets until we found the restaurant. The Taj Mahal was right in front of us. Only trouble was, it is never lit by artificial light and so at night you can't see it. We had a great laugh as we sat for our romantic dinner, by night with the Taj Mahal. Oh yes, the food, uninspiring is a gross overstatement. We couldn't eat it, left and went to Pizza Hut.

We were due to head next back to Delhi to pick up some things we left there plus visit an old friend. The night before there had been 3 major terrorist explosions in Delhi and so we headed instead for Jaipur, our first stop in Rajasthan. On the way our driver made an error entering a one-way the wrong way. He ended up in an altercation with a man dressed in ordinary clothes who was a policeman. He was belligerent beyond belief, assaulted our driver by hitting him on the side of the head and in the ribs. The driver paid a fine and we were all greatly relieved to get out of there and be on our way again. We arrived in Jaipur after dark and went to our hotel, the Blue Bird. A disco blaring above us, a seedy bar below us, we left and headed out into the dark. We found a small hotel, a haveli, the owners drove out to meet us and bring us back. It was great because this was the middle of Diwali, many people, fireworks, lights everywhere, like Christmas eve.

Well, having lost this whole email 2 hours ago ( a lesson in creating a word copy) and having re-written it, I am now smugly off to have a cold coke and watch the sunset over the lake.

Love Jim

Some of our impressions of India....

India is...

a gift ... a slum ... abominable ... beautiful ... crowded ... chaotic ... challenging ... colourful ... confusing ... cows on the freeway ... deceptive ... dishonest ... exhausting ... exotic ... fluid ... god-forsaken ... god-given ... hard ... hot .. in your face ... irrational ... intuitive ... intense ... intriguing ... kind ... magical ... male-dominant ... Ma Ganges ... mysterious ... oppressive ... polluted ... reflective ... religious ... revealing ... rich ... seductive ... secretive ... schizophrenic ... soft ... thought-provoking ... ... heart-ripping ... unpredictable ... vast .... a mirror

A message from Jaipur...in Rajasthan...

It's a hot day and I'm sitting in a sweltering internet place, one computer, no fan in Jaipur in Rasjasthan. We were headed for Dehli yesterday but there were major terrorist bombings there and so to avoid hassle with searches, roadblocks and more trouble, we switched courses and drove here to Jaipur.

When I wrote last we were in Varanasi and on our way to Bodh Gaya. On Oct 17 we went to the train station in Mughal Sarai outside Varanasi. The train station was a wild chaotic place. We arrived early and were directed from one platform to another. As we came down a ramp to our platform the people in front of me parted and flowed around both sides of an old man lying on the platform. As we went by I could see he was totally emaciated, shaking and his eyes were wide open but unfocused on what was around him. As we passed I found I wanted to look away but looked at him to see what was there in front of me. He was dying. No-one seemed to pay any mind to him or to even alter their behavior at all. We were carried past him and onto the platform. Later all 5 of us agreed it was quite clear he was dying. This is something I am not used to seeing. And so I felt deeply affected by him.

There is a part that wants to say this is unacceptable or wrong. There is another part that feels it is also part of what it means to live in India. Many people were living on the station, clothes hanging under stairways, clothes tucked in corners, a few pots here and there, a few belongings. A man who appeared to have either mental damage or mental illness came to sit beside Terence. His feet were caloused and filled with cuts, his hands cut and his behavior erratic. I felt my own fear arise as to how to deal with him. In the end, he sat by us for an hour. At one point Carol said "Namaste" and put her hands together in salute to him and he returned the gesture. Many young children were begging. Three little ones especially staked us out and kept after us for money. Several people had said not to give beggars money as it may go into alcohol or drugs but I find no rule works well. What a surprise in India!! And so I find myself of necessity saying no to many and sometimes saying yes without there being more reason than I just respond differently at different times and in different situations.

Again it is hard to have young girls touching your hands and feet and asking over and over and over again for money. Sometimes nothing will stop them except just walking away. We took the second class train to Gaya near Bodhgaya. The train was full of people on longer journeys, sleeping, eating, visiting, laughing, playing with children. People constantly coming by with chocolate, tomato soup, and chai for sale. At Bodh Gaya we found a wonderful place to stay in a Hotel run by Tibetans. It was the full moon, and so we created our own ceremony, offerings and reflections. We were in Bodh Gaya five or six days and each morning we would go to the grounds where the main temple and the Bodhi Tree are to meditate and offer prayers. The site is wonderful, filled with Buddhist pilgrims, monks and nuns from all over the world.

One night Duncan, Terence, Carol and I received permission to stay on site all night. There were several others who also chose to stay on site, mostly monks and nuns. It was wonderful to be there, to contemplate the teachings of the Buddha and to see the devotion and sincereity from people from all over the world. One day, on the grounds, I watched an elderly, asian woman, doing a very slow walking meditation, while at the same time a small white stork-like bird imitated her steps on the grass.

Slow Walk
In the shadow of the Bodhi tree
Where the Buddha walked
aged Asian pilgrim-woman
Dressed all in white
Slowly places one foot, and then the other
Ever so slowly
A long-beaked, long-legged bird
Also all in white
Slowly places one foot, and then the other
Ever so slowly
In perfect synchronicity these two
Share their slow walk
And for a moment, death and old age
Pause, smile and bow

As I mentioned before I was touched at Sarnath by the Buddha's willingness to come back his five friends to share what he had learned. I am also touched by one of the Dalai Lama's favorite mantra's, a teaching of Padmasambhava the great Buddhist teacher of Tibet. It is the Bodhisattva's vow:

For as long as space endures
And for as long as sentient beings remain
May I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world

Bodhgaya, just as is Lumbini, where the Buddha was born, there are many different Buddhist temples. I visited temples from Bhutan, Japan, China and two from Tibetan. In the old Tibetan temple were paintings 2700 years old, older than Christ or the Buddha. On our last day and night in Bodhgaya a group of monks and pilgrims arrived from Thailand, and put purple and white orchids all around the temple and the tree. A group of shaven-headed nuns, dressed in gray sang their chants to the sound of wooden gongs. A delightful Tibetan monk came by gesturing to people, smiling, making contact and exhibiting great playfulness. While many were more inside, his pure delight at everything around him captured me. The last day he came and sat by Carol and I and we had a nice contact. Oct 23 we left back for Varanasi. The time in Bodhgaya was wonderful.

We are all well, plan to stay in Jaipur for a few more days and then head farther west into Rhajastan. We are definitely in different country, hillier, dryer, more desert, many camels. The next two nights are Diwahli, the festival of lights, celebrating Ram and Sita's return after 14 years in the forest and so it is a major celebratory time here.

Love, Jim