Being back in Bodh Gaya is great! The last week with the rest of the students flew by and I finally said goodbye to them on Wednesday. The last meditation session at the Mahabodhi followed by a butter lamp offering concluded the program. They have safely arrived in Delhi and fly London today at one. The Vihar is extremely quiet now, only the faculty, four students, Yogi Mike, the Burmese and two newcomers are currently here.
The city itself is the opposite. The Hindustan Times believes that the quantity of tourists this year is double that of last year. The restaurants are full of westerns and the temple is very congested. Currently: there is a small monlam going on at the temple, the city is building a massive structure to house the 50,000 people arriving for the Dalai Lama's teachings, and Tergar Monastery (the Karmapa's seat in Bodh Gaya) is preparing for teachings on Nagarjuna's "Letter to a Friend," which start on Sunday. As the title implies I have been taking it very easy although last night a few friends and I met with a woman who needs volunteers for her campaign to clean up Bodh Gaya. I'm not sure how involved I will be, but it sounds exciting.
The schedule for the next few weeks is going to be something like this:
Dec. 20-22 Karmapa's teachings at Tergar
Dec. 24-30 Kaygu Monlam (hopefully we will get permission to camp at the Temple for some of these days)
Jan 1st (tentatively) The Karmapa's opera on the life of Milarepa will debut.
Jan 5-10 Dalai Lama's teachings at Kalachakra field
Also, the remaining falculty and students have a Christmas breakfast and gift exchange so I wont be missing the festivities entirely.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Heading home to the Vihar
So, the traveling as been smooth the paper is printed (I can email a copy to anyone interested) and tomorrow we begin to go back to Bodh Gaya, via Kolcata which is extremely out of the way. Since I lasted posted Alex, Chimi and I have stayed four days in Ralang Sikkim, one day in Tashiding Sikkim, six nights in Gangtok (the capital of Sikkim), and one night in Darjeeling (in the West Bengal hills).
Ralang is extremely remote and absolutely gorgeous. On a clear day we could see the entire eastern range of the Himalayas centered by Kanchenjunga. Palchen Choeling is the resident monastery of Gyaltsap Rinpoche, one of the four regents(teachers, kinda) of the 17th Karmapa. The interview with him was pretty powerful. No one spoke English except a monk that traveled with us from Rumtek named Lekthong. We are very fortunate to become friends with him for many reasons. For instance, he broke down my ideolized stereotypes of the buddhist monk with his macbook pro, his knowledge of American pop culture (from which he taught himself english), and his attitude towards buddhist philosophy and retreat. Other then a few interviews we hacky sached with the young monks, enjoyed the views, took a day trip to Tashiding (perhaps the most sacred place in Sikkim as it was blessed by Padmasambhava in the 7th or 8th century), and worked. We had all meals in the monastic dining hall, which provided us with a lot to look at. After cabin fever became intolerable we traveled back to the capital to finalize our papers.
Gangtok is, from what I have seen, the nicest city in India. It is very clean and has, by far, the largest police force. Money is poured into Sikkim by the Indian government to keep its residents happy and keep the security high because it borders China. The outfits of the officers are quite funny: french berets, thick white belts, high boots, and green woolen sweaters. There is a nice wide walking mall called MG Marg where you could get into a lot of trouble for spitting or smoking. During the day I wrote, either in a cyber cafe or on the top floor of Yeshe Dorje's house, where we stayed. The Dorje's have the most beautiful shine room for meditation. If anyone is interested in traveling to Sikkim or Bhutan tell me so you can join a travel group led by his son Pema. The family is extremely kind and extremely influential in the Tibetan Buddhist community. They technically hold the lineage to the teachings of an esoteric form of yoga and are considered royality amongst Tibetans. We were extermely fortunate to stay with them. Also staying at the Dorjes' was a student pursuing a doctorate degree in Indo-Tibetan 'treasure texts' who graduated from Naropa and got married at the Shamabala center in Boulder, small world. While I wasn't writing we went to many bars throughout Gangtok, the funniest was a karioke bar. Five days later we were off to Darjeeling.
Darjeeling is totally anticlimatic. Both yesterday and today have been extremely gloomy and overcast. The remains of the once luxerious colonial summer retreat have not been upkept. There are many Tibetan curio shops, which are fun to look through, I finally bought a singing bowl. The forest surrounding these hills is dense and the only crops cultivated in this part of the world are some of the finest teas in the world. I'm looking forward to getting back to the Vihar. Robert, hopefully, has set up a private audience with the HH the 17th Karmapa.
Ralang is extremely remote and absolutely gorgeous. On a clear day we could see the entire eastern range of the Himalayas centered by Kanchenjunga. Palchen Choeling is the resident monastery of Gyaltsap Rinpoche, one of the four regents(teachers, kinda) of the 17th Karmapa. The interview with him was pretty powerful. No one spoke English except a monk that traveled with us from Rumtek named Lekthong. We are very fortunate to become friends with him for many reasons. For instance, he broke down my ideolized stereotypes of the buddhist monk with his macbook pro, his knowledge of American pop culture (from which he taught himself english), and his attitude towards buddhist philosophy and retreat. Other then a few interviews we hacky sached with the young monks, enjoyed the views, took a day trip to Tashiding (perhaps the most sacred place in Sikkim as it was blessed by Padmasambhava in the 7th or 8th century), and worked. We had all meals in the monastic dining hall, which provided us with a lot to look at. After cabin fever became intolerable we traveled back to the capital to finalize our papers.
Gangtok is, from what I have seen, the nicest city in India. It is very clean and has, by far, the largest police force. Money is poured into Sikkim by the Indian government to keep its residents happy and keep the security high because it borders China. The outfits of the officers are quite funny: french berets, thick white belts, high boots, and green woolen sweaters. There is a nice wide walking mall called MG Marg where you could get into a lot of trouble for spitting or smoking. During the day I wrote, either in a cyber cafe or on the top floor of Yeshe Dorje's house, where we stayed. The Dorje's have the most beautiful shine room for meditation. If anyone is interested in traveling to Sikkim or Bhutan tell me so you can join a travel group led by his son Pema. The family is extremely kind and extremely influential in the Tibetan Buddhist community. They technically hold the lineage to the teachings of an esoteric form of yoga and are considered royality amongst Tibetans. We were extermely fortunate to stay with them. Also staying at the Dorjes' was a student pursuing a doctorate degree in Indo-Tibetan 'treasure texts' who graduated from Naropa and got married at the Shamabala center in Boulder, small world. While I wasn't writing we went to many bars throughout Gangtok, the funniest was a karioke bar. Five days later we were off to Darjeeling.
Darjeeling is totally anticlimatic. Both yesterday and today have been extremely gloomy and overcast. The remains of the once luxerious colonial summer retreat have not been upkept. There are many Tibetan curio shops, which are fun to look through, I finally bought a singing bowl. The forest surrounding these hills is dense and the only crops cultivated in this part of the world are some of the finest teas in the world. I'm looking forward to getting back to the Vihar. Robert, hopefully, has set up a private audience with the HH the 17th Karmapa.
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