Bibliography and Recommended Reading for Buddhist Pilgrimage

Aitken, Molly Emma. Meeting the Buddha: on Pilgrimage in Buddhist India. Riverhead Books, NY: 1995.

Easwaran, Eknath, trans. The Dhammapada. Nilgiri Press, Tomales, CA: 1985.

Gandhi, Mohandas K. My Autobiography. Dover Publications, Inc., NY: 1983.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. For a Future To Be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Mindfulness Trainings. Parallax Press, Berkeley, CA: 1998.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. Old Path White Clouds. Full Circle, New Delhi, India: 2006.

Khema, Ayya. Who is My Self?: a Guide to Buddhist Meditation. Wisdom Publications, Boston: 1997.

Kinsley, David R. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition. University of California Press, Berkeley: 1988.

Kunsang, Erik Pema, compiler and translator. A Tibetan Buddhist Companion. Editors, Marcia Binder Schmidt and Michael Tweed. Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, MA: 2003.

Red Pine. The Heart Sutra: the Womb of the Buddhas. Shoemaker & Hoard, Washington DC: 2004.

Shantideva. The Way of the Bodhisattva. Padmakara Translation Group. Shambhala Publications, Boston: 2006.

Singh, Rana P. B. Where the Buddha Walked: a Companion to the Buddhist Places of India. Indica Books, Varanasi, India: 2003.

Stein, Joseph. Fiddler on the Roof. Warner Brothers Publications, Miami, Florida: 1999.

Varsha Rani, Subhadra Sengupta, M. N. Rajesh, Lavanya Kondepudi, and Shantum Seth. Walking With the Buddha. Ajanta Offset & Packaging Ltd, on behalf of Eicher Goodearth Ltd., New Delhi: 2004.

Yu, Anthony C., translator and editor. The Journey to the West. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 1977.



Recommended Reading

Allen, Charles. The Search for the Buddha: the Men who Discovered India’s Lost Religion. Basic Books, NY: 2004.

Azar, Nafisi. Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir of Books. Random House, NY: 2003.

Batchelor, Stephen. Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture. Parallax Press, Berkeley, CA: 1994.

Bernstein, Richard. The Ultimate Journey: Retracing the Path of an Ancient Buddhist Monk Who Crossed Asia in Search of Enlightenment. Knopf Publishing Group, NY: 2002.

Bouldrey, Brian, Ed. Traveling Souls: Contemporary Pilgrimage Stories. Whereabouts Press, San Francisco: 1999.

Brooks, Geraldine. Nine Parts of Desire. Knopf Publishing Book, NY: 1995.

Chodron, Pema. No Time to Lose: a Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva. Shambhala Publications, Inc, Boston, MA: 2005.

Cortright, David. Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for an Age of Terrorism. Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, CO: 2006.

Eck, Diana L. Banaras: City of Light. Columbia University Press, NY: 1998.

Fields, Rick. When the Swans Came to the Lake: a Narrative History of Buddhism in America. Random House, NY: 1992. (He’s a friend of Shantum’s.)

Gutschow, Kim. Being a Buddhist Nun: the Struggle for Enlightenment in the Himalayas. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA: 2004.

Nhat Hahn, Thich. Blooming of a Lotus: Guided Meditation Exercises for Healing and Transformation. Beacon Press, Boston, MA: 1999.

Byron Katie has written numerous books and runs seminars, and her website is:
www.thework.org

Laird, Thomas. The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama. Grove/Atlantic Inc., NY: 2006.

Macdonald, Sarah. Holy Cow. Broadway Books, NY: 2004.

Pachen, Ani and Adelaide Donnelley. Sorrow Mountain: the Journey of a Tibetan Warrior Nun. Kodansha International: 2002.

Mishra, Pankaj. An End to Suffering: the Buddha in the World. Farrar, NY: 2004.

Salzberg, Sharon, and Joseph Goldstein. Insight Meditation. Sounds True, Boulder, CO: 2001.

Seth, Leila. On Balance: an Autobiography. Penguin Books, New Delhi: 2007. (Shantum’s mom and the first female Chief High Justice in India).

Seth, Vikram. From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet. Vintage Books, NY: 1987.

Ibid. A Suitable Boy. Penguin Books, New Delhi, India: 1993. (The character who’s into meditation and gardening is based on Shantum.)

Walshe, Maurice, translator. The Long Discourses of the Buddha: a Translation of the Digha Nikaya. Wisdom Publications, Somerville, MA: 1995.

Strong, John S. The Legend of King Asoka: A Study and Translation of the Asokavadana. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, New Delhi: 2002.

Wriggins, Sally Hovey. Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang. Westview Press, Boulder, CO: 2004.

Some books published by Dharma Publishing:
Gesture of Balance by Tarthang Tulku
Is Tibet Forgotten…We Hope Not Tibetan Aid Project
Time, Space, and Knowledge by Tarthang Tulku
Knowledge of Freedom by Tarthang Tulku
Crystal Mirror series



Organizations

Ahimsa Trust (the organization Gitu founded)
For donations, send check to:
Ahimsa Trust
309-B
Sector 15A
Noida 201 301, India

Asha for Education
http://ashanet.org

Care
www.care.org

Child Haven International (Tibet, Nepal, India)
www.childhaven.ca/

Dharma Publishing
www.dharmapublishing.com

Education for Change
www.education4change.org

Folkwear Patterns
www.folkwear.com
(This is not a charitable organization, but a company that was founded in the Hippie era and has patterns for clothing from various cultures and eras, including patterns for basic Indian and Tibetan clothing that’s still worn today.)

Global Fund for Women
www.globalfundforwomen.org

International Campaign for Tibet
www.savetibet.org

In the Footsteps of the Buddha (the annual pilgrimage directed by Shantum Seth)
www.buddhapath.org

Made by Survivors
(This is an international anti-slavery organization that rescues, for instance, women and girls who have been victims of sex trafficking. With this organization, the former slavers create and sell arts and crafts.)
www.MadeBySurvivors.com

Pragyavihar School (the school we visited in Bodh Gaya; you can make donations on this website)
www.insightmeditation.org

The Tibetan Nuns Project
www.tnp.org

Save the Children
www.savethechildren.org

Women for Women International
www.womenforwomen.org

The Lotuses of Kapilavastu

Our first stop today was the Kapilavastu archeology site that is probably the real Kapilavastu, unlike the one that’s in Nepal. Shantum said, “The beggars are particularly aggressive in this area,” shortly before we got off the bus.

The ruins we walked amid were the site of palatial buildings and the township of ancient Kapilavastu, capital of the Shakyas, the Buddha’s family. This is the kingdom where Siddhartha Gautama grew up. To my immediate right, after getting off the bus, stood the ruins of small rooms around a capacious central room or courtyard. Small rooms remind me of a dorm or monastery; perhaps that’s not the palace but rather a monastery. I recall that monasteries were built in Kapilavastu after the Buddha reached enlightenment: that explains the dorm-like set-up. These structures that we see now would not have been around during the Buddha’s youth, when the art of brick making was temporarily forgotten. But no doubt the people who built these brick buildings knew about the Buddha and admired him. They would not have built the brick monastic structures if this hadn’t been the Buddha’s home kingdom, and so these structures are connected to him.

I walked further to a tall red brick structure that other members of the sangha were climbing on, and I also climbed on it but with much caution. Beggar children hovered in the background in a pack, but I ignored them.

I rather suspect that India invented bricks. I’m ninety-nine percent sure of it, since they were using bricks a long time ago, before the Buddha’s time, and still make them from hand. Bricks are everywhere, in great numbers. I first noticed them in New Delhi, where we saw the piles of bricks, ruins of recent squatter’s homes. In ancient ruins, even bricks often have beautiful designs sculpted into them.

Our second stop was at some of the same kingdom of Kapilavastu, with more brick ruins. A huge stupa stands in the center. According to the archeological survey sign, we looked at the ruins of monasteries, stupas, shrines, votive stupas and a public hall. Sealings with the legend of Kapilavastu are in a monastery here, which perked up my curiosity; I wanted to see what these sealings looked like. “This complex represents the Buddhist establishment of ancient Kapilavastu,” according to a sign out front.

After I took a path and passed most of the ruins, I approached an excessively blue and sparkling pond sprinkled with bright pink blooming lotuses. My mouth formed a big O. This was the first time I saw lotuses in their natural environment, unless we saw some in the bamboo grove. In Bodh Gaya I had noticed some picked lotuses that wallahs walking on the street sold as offerings.

Most of the sangha had reached the pond before I did, and I wasn’t the only one who was struck by the beauty of the scenery and the great sense of peace. We were indeed close to the Buddha, and it isn’t difficult to picture him walking slowly around the pond and looking down at the flowers. People were already settled comfortably on the bank of the pond, seated or standing or wandering, even lying on mats, by the time I came within sight of the pond. Shantum said we’d sit in the Mango Grove, gesturing up a slight hill to a grouping of trees. Shantum preferred the grove because it’s shady, so I thought that was a good idea.

I followed the winding path up to the Mango Grove, took a picture of another ancient brick building’s foundations, and set foot into the mango grove. Indeed the grove was much shadier than the pond and consequently cooler. Although the lotus pond was certainly beautiful, the grove was also pleasing to the eye. It was a small forest, and I saw no mangoes whether or not they still grow in it, and the tall shady trees darkened it considerably.

The Mango Groove houses the most obnoxious, noisy, and greedy crows I’ve yet encountered. They fly around, squawk and caw away like they think they’re entitled to all the attention, and even walk fairly close to us. Natalie and I imitated their cawing. I’m better at turkey noises, and peacock sound effects are easy, since they sound so much like cats.

We all sat down on our straw mats, and Shantum began a talk in the Mango Groove at Kapilavastu. He told us about Nepal’s tourism relying on the other “Kapilavastu” there, and he spoke mostly about the archeology in the region before getting back to Buddha lore.

Under a tree to our right, a crow settled on our food and poked at the white plastic bags with its beak. The crow must be smarter than me, because I didn’t even know our food was there. The white plastic bags disguised it.

“Trying to beg is hard to do,” Shantum said at another point in the talk. He tried it in England at Victoria Station and was very uncomfortable with asking from strangers. Also he has begged with Thai monks: their method includes wearing robes and holding bowls, not saying anything. I think that would be much easier to do, and when I visited San Francisco as a tourist, I thought about what it would be like to be a panhandler on Powell Street. Who knows, I might resort to that someday, although I dread talking to strangers despite all my customer service experience.

Shantum told us about the Buddha’s return visit to his family in Kapilavastu. Ultimately he convinced many people here to become monastics, including his son Rahula. “He started out as a crow-chasing novice, in a place like this,” Shantum said.
“Caw, caw!” crows said in response.
“I think Mukesh is recruited as crow-chasing novice,” John said. Twice Mukesh chased crows off our lunch, before he and Jagdish resorted to taking the lunch packages away from the tree and keeping it next to them while they sat talking at the edge of the grove.

“The Buddha’s family enlarged from a small family to the universal family,” Shantum said. Mine too. That’s an aspect of interconnectedness: I feel more bound to the human family, the world family, than to alienating and contemptuous relatives. Although the Buddha got along much better with his relatives than I do with mine, and although he grew up in a loving and supportive community rather than a prejudiced and unsupportive community, I can see that he was bullied and threatened on occasion, such as by his bratty cousin who eventually tried to kill him. The Brahmins who were jealous of him could be seen as a bunch of bullies. I wonder if the Buddha ever felt depressed by this hostility, even though he obviously had a great deal of mental discipline. Encounters with vicious people are a very significant part of the path, and they test us. Unlike the Buddha, I keep failing the test.

Shantum told us how the Buddha’s mother and other women insisted on becoming the first nuns. “In Plum Village, nuns are fully ordained,” Shantum said, referring to a meditation center that is Thich Nhat Hanh’s main residence and where he does most of his teaching. “Nuns are fully ordained in the West but not accepted in Thailand or Burma currently,” thanks to power-tripping misogynists in charge. It’s one of those situations in which old men in power don’t want to let go of their power.

Ann asked, “Who has the authority to change the precepts for nuns?”
Shantum said, “According to the Buddha you should change things, such as the precepts, to fit modern times. Unfortunately, there are traditionalists in the way.” Gail pressed him, asking if there was some central authority like the Pope, but there isn’t. She mentioned the Dalai Lama, and Shantum pointed out, “The Dalai Lama approves of nuns being fully ordained.”

Crazy crows are hovering around at lunch. Someone tossed a little food and a bunch of them swooped down disconcertingly close to my head. I ducked and could feel the wind from the wings and was unfortunately reminded of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I walked a few feet away before tossing food for the obnoxious black birds, and numerous crows swooped down in that part of the woods. All that for one little piece of bread.

Shantum had warned us that the child beggars are “more aggressive” around here. I had no problem at the first Kapilavastu stop and wondered what he could possibly mean, and until we returned to the bus I had no problem here. As I stepped up to the bus and ignored the kids, one of them tapped me on the arm, and after I got to my seat, I looked out the window and noticed down below one of the kids giving me a nasty look. I’m thinking that must be what Shantum meant by “more aggressive.” I had been inclined to believe he was referring to the crows, not the children.

2
After we rode the bus several hours, the sun was a giant crimson polka dot in the pale grey-blue sky. It was dark out shortly before seven in the evening, and now the long bus ride is complete. We have arrived at the Lotus Nikko Hotel in the village of Sravasti. Hurray! The lobby includes, in the center, a spiral staircase made of marble. Or maybe it’s not so much spiral as curving a little out of kilter. While we waited in the lobby, and just before staff members served us little glasses of a carbonated beverage rather than my much preferred choice of mango juice, Valerie and Dean sung Beatles songs, and by now I’m accustomed to members of our sangha acting a bit giddy when we arrive at our next hotel after a long drive. I’m invariably one of the giddy ones.

This is the third Lotus Nikko Hotel for us. The first was the early one with the totally tubular temple containing a big black Buddha, and the second was our home right before the Maharaja’s lodge. The Lotus Nikko Hotels are nice rather than obnoxiously posh like the Radisson. The most scenic thing about my current nondescript room is that the window is in the front façade of the hotel and therefore looks out on the roses and the road that passes through the village.

After we acquired our room keys, we had approximately half an hour in our rooms before the 7:30 dinner, located in an enormous dining room on the second floor, just down the hall from my room. After dinner Shantum talked about the rest of the pilgrimage. The sangha will be splitting up in about three days. The topic of the trip coming to an end is not a pleasant one for me, and I somewhat melodramatically said, “Oh no! I don’t want the pilgrimage to end! I want it to go on forever and ever!”

3
This morning, Sunday the fourth, as I descended the staircase to meet up for meditation, I saw six yellow-swathed Thai monks seated on the carved wood, velvet-upholstered sofas. Boxes and bags of supplies were piled next to the entrance doors, and one of the boxes contained strange nuts or seeds in it: they were like gigantic peanuts, two in the shell, three inches long; but they had a smooth medium brown shell instead of a bumpy dark yellow shell.

Members of our sangha started showing up in the lobby, and I went upstairs to get my shawl and tissues, since I had forgotten them. Not of course that I’m absent-minded. By the time I returned to the lobby downstairs, the Thai monks were no longer hanging out and instead members of our sangha were seated on the sofas. When I heard chanting coming from the downstairs restaurant, I crossed the lobby and stood by the glass door and the glass windows that flank it. Sure enough the Thai monks were chanting and filled a long table at one end of the restaurant, and Thai laypeople sat at another table.

I returned to the sofa at which the monks had sat recently, and an unusual conversation was in progress, one in which monks would probably not have participated. Someone explained to Mairgret that “booty” is an American slang word for “butt.”
“It’s too early in the morning to talk about booties,” Gail said.
“Boobies?” Mairgret said.
“’Booby’ means ‘breast,’” Gail said. “It’s way too early in the morning to talk about boobies.”
“How about bodhis?” Val said. “As in the Bodhi Tree.”
“This is when you should be writing in your journal,” Dean said to me. I laughed and pulled out my journal.

I’m currently waiting amid rose bushes and trees on the hotel grounds. Today we’re supposed to meet up again at about ten thirty in the morning and head for the Jetta Grove, which is within walking distance. I don’t remember reading about the Jetta Grove before, but I guess that’s not as dramatic as the Buddha’s footprints leaving lotuses behind him or as his encounter with Mara trying to distract him with demons and all. Besides, my poor memory for names extends to place names, not only people’s names.

On this road, it’s not unusual to see oxen pulling carts piled high with hay. At this very moment, in fact, a cart is going by, full of hay, topped by two guys in turbans, and led by oxen. This is a rather common sight in India, especially here. Yesterday we passed what I thought of as an Indian rodeo: a flat area at the side of the road, occupied by many oxen-drawn carts full of hay. Numerous men were there, perhaps in the process of loading the carts. And here comes another cart.

It has weirded me out how typical it is in India to see many men, at work or on the streets, and very few women. Members of our sangha have of course commented on this, and Liz said the women are behind the scenes, in the homes. They are hidden. We on the other hand are visible, gallivanting around on the other side of the world, boldly going where I suspect no Kansan or Hoosier has wandered before. Escaping Kansas and the mundane existence of everyday life gives me a sense of freedom, even if freedom is a rarity for women who live in the country to which I have escaped.

The Maharaja’s Lodge

We’re off on the road to Kapilavastu, the kingdom where the Buddha grew up and got married and had a kid. It was the beginning of sunset when, surrounded by fields and swampland, we saw big white birds with red heads, and Shantum explained over the microphone that they are sarus cranes, the largest bird in the world. At his request, the bus stopped before Shantum stood up to announce this. He said, “Susan?” I raised my eyebrows at him. He said, “Susan’s going to stalk them!”

People started getting off the bus with their cameras, and I had to get my shoes back on and get out my camera, so I slipped my sandals on while simultaneously moving down the aisle. I stepped outside into a swampland under the vivid orange sun in the pink-grey sky, and we walked slowly and carefully on bumpy wetland with patchy grass and hay while looking out at the huge birds in the distance. I took several pictures using my zoom.

I caught up with a few other members of our sangha, and Peter let me use his binoculars. The birds looked so much closer through them that I considered placing my camera up against the lenses. My eloquent reaction to the view of the cranes through Peter’s binoculars was, “Wow!” After we climbed back on the bus and started moving forward, I sat next to Gail again, and we drove further down the road before she pointed out to me two much closer cranes, only a few feet from the bus.

Shantum said the sarus cranes mate for life and have two eggs at a time. When one dies, the other is alone for the rest of its life. I hope the females don’t shave their heads, wear white saris, and eat only once a day, like many Hindu widows. Rumor has it there are two hundred couples of cranes in this area.

During one of our bathroom breaks, or at least some sort of break that involved the bus sitting still while we sat in our seats and I wrote in my journal, Gail and I witnessed very bad behavior on the part of a boy probably about ten years old. I looked out the window and noticed that he was giving us, or at least the bus, a horrible scowl, and I smirked and made a comment about it. Gail said not to look at him, that he was really nasty and had been acting downright obscene. This was shocking news, given the reception we usually get. Typically people, not always just children, smile and wave at the bus as it goes by, and lots of children are very friendly toward us. This was very different behavior indeed, which just goes to show how problematic it is to generalize.

I don’t believe I’ve stressed how common Indian dress is in India, even among young people. That’s pretty cool, I think, and unusual compared to other countries. I’m getting new ideas for my wardrobe. That may suggest that I’ll have an awful lot of clothes, but really, I’m leaving behind so much old clothing on this trip, and after I get back I’m likely to take other clothing to thrift stores, so that should even things out. Many salwar-kamiz and scarf color schemes have leaped out at me on the pilgrimage, and they include: orange and turquoise, dark red and either teal or turquoise, yellow and turquoise, orange and purple, purple and blue, really bright blue with really bright yellow, orange and pink, and finally a red kamiz with black salwar or trousers.

2

The tour bus, in the early evening or late afternoon, slowly made its way down an elegant and perfectly straight tree-lined lane. We came to a breathtaking view of a garden, or rather the Maharaja’s grounds, with many trees and flowering bushes and various marble benches and flowery metal archways. We had a fabulous view of the Maharaja’s hunting lodge, our home for the night. It looks like a small yellow art nouveau palace, though it is only small for a palace. The house is two stories tall and curvaceous and has a spacious wrap-around porch facing the grounds. I think I’ll like it here.

Out front Shantum stood next to a tall Indian guy and introduced us to him. I was the third in line. When Shantum introduced the stranger to Christine, she said, “Namaste!” and bowed with palms together. Natalie said and did the same. I held my bag in one hand and a meditation cushion in the other, and when Shantum got to, “This is Susan,” I grinned and said, “Hi!” The moment I said it, I realized that the guy standing in front of us was the Maharaja, or as Shantum had said on the bus, “the king.” But the king didn’t seem to mind my informality. After introducing all of us, Shantum held his hand out toward the stranger, gave us a big smile, and said, “Devendra.” That’s pretty informal, too.

We climbed onto the porch, where white Victorian-looking patio chairs and tables were arranged along with potted plants, and we entered through the double doors. While servants handled our luggage and Shantum, Jagdish, and Mukesh sorted through the room keys, the pilgrims sat around the Victorian sitting room and chatted. I found a deep window seat and plopped down, hiding behind a lace curtain, peering out and saying, “Peek-a-boo!” to Feroza. She was seated in a chair next to the window seat. We commented on the two empty tigers on a wall of the living room. They looked like antique tiger skins, so on the bright side they hadn’t been killed recently but rather many decades ago. I said, “I recently read that in Nepal there’s a royal tradition of entertaining guests with tiger hunts, and that this tradition has continued even in recent times, resulting in the tiger being endangered. It’s thanks to idiotic machismo.” “Yes, indeed, it’s ridiculous,” Feroza agreed.

I noticed a certain irony to a group of mostly vegetarian Buddhists staying at a hunting lodge. Several people commented on this, especially because of the (ew) empty tigers and tiger heads on the walls. As we settled down in the living room, Shantum smilingly said, “The path is full of unBuddhist elements.” Otherwise, I like the décor. All the furniture consists of Victorian and Edwardian antiques and I expect the place to be haunted.

The living room has a formidable fireplace with an elaborately carved dark wooden mantel. Two large old bookcases, with glass doors, full of old British books, some of which are a bit on the crumbly side, flanked the fireplace. Throughout the center of the room are carved wooden sofas and chairs upholstered in yellow velvet, and amid them are little round end tables. Everywhere the furniture was accessorized with old paintings, old photos, and brightly painted glass vases. The white plaster walls reached high up to a white beamed ceiling.

John later mentioned that he should have grabbed his suitcase, because the guy who was supposedly bringing it to his room just stood staring down at it. He said that he had had trouble with getting his luggage at other hotels, and I remembered the incident in Patna. John said, “Apparently I’m the pilgrim whose luggage just gets stared at instead of taken to my room.” My bedroom was the first one on the left in a long and wide hallway. Oddly, the key was for a padlock on the outside of the big wooden double doors, which were painted white. I unlocked the doors, swung them open, and stepped inside with a gasp.

It looked like I got the princess’s bedroom. The window across the room from the door was big enough to be another door and had dark blue and white patterned curtains. To the left stood a white fireplace with a large framed photo of presumably a past maharaja hung on the chimneypiece. Nineteenth-century antiques furnished the entire room. A dressing table occupied the far corner by the fireplace and had a mirror old enough that it was losing its silver and looking grayish and fuzzy, but charming for all that. Straight across the room from the door was a tall double bed with a brass frame, covered in a bright blue and white cotton print bedspread with a rolled up yellow print bedspread at the foot, and next to the bed was a nightstand and lamp.

I set down my bags on an old dark brown table and walked across the dark blue industrial carpet, noticing that old black and white photos sprinkled the room and that as with the rest of the house, the ceiling was extremely tall and molded, with beams running the length of the room. In all, I have a very charming room that looks like something out of the late Victorian era. Out in the hallway, I could hear Jennifer visiting different people’s rooms to see what the décor looked like, and Shantum said, “Are you inspecting your castle?”

To the right of the door, near the bed, stood another door, and I stepped in to see the white-tiled bathroom, where the tub had feet, the toilet was modern and Western, and the sink was huge. I heard echoic voices and footsteps ascending stairs on the other side of a glazed French door next to the toilet.

I had glimpsed the dining room while we were still hanging out in the living room, and after I left my new room, I entered the dining room and sat at the largest table. In addition to the long main table, two small ones stood nearer the fireplace. Along one wall stood an antique glass sideboard, and along the back of the room stretched a long table covered with silver buffet dishes, with footmen, I mean servants, wearing black uniforms and standing by.

The table where I sat was not only very long, but also unusually wide, much like the dinner tables I picture while reading, say, a dinner party scene in an Oscar Wilde story or play. You’d almost have to have a wide table to accommodate so many plates and glasses. Rikki seated herself at the foot of the table, and to her right sat Christine, and I sat next to her. Shantum was one of the last people to enter the room, and as he sat down at the head of the table, Rikki called to him, “Hey, Shantum, could you pass me the salt?” Shantum picked up a saltshaker and comically raised his arm as if to throw it to her, like it was a baseball.

Erika looked around at us and said, “We’re looking more and more Indian.” Sure enough, lots of us wore shawls. I gasped and said, “I didn’t put on a shawl!” and scooted away from the table. “With all the shawls you have now?” Ann said with a smile. “I’ll be right back!” I said as I got up. Feroza said, “You have plenty of time; there will be seven courses at least.” Perhaps I wasn’t the only one who thought of Oscar Wilde.

When it was time to go out to the concert, we all headed for a set of French doors at the back of the dining room, and as I passed the fireplace, I noticed Valerie looking up at the three tiger heads displayed on the mantelpiece. I had been making a point of trying not to let my eyes rest on dead body parts. Valerie said, “How fast do you think those tigers were running, to get stuck in the wall like that?” The three male servants—I’m tempted to call them footmen, especially since it looked like we’d gone back to the Victorian era—smiled broadly at that comment.

We strolled across the back yard toward a grouping of chairs and three little log fires in three-legged metal pots that stood within the semi-circle formed by the chairs. Behind the chairs loomed several trees, the lawn was closely mowed. Overhead the sky was very dark and the moon was full. I gazed up at the moon while I stood near one of the trees and remembered that today is the Celtic springtime holiday Imbolc. I sat down in the center, by Elly and Feroza, and I gazed at the bonfire that was directly in front of me.

The chairs faced a small one-story building, on the front patio of which were a couple of musicians seated cross-legged on a long white-draped table. Both musicians were male, which didn’t surprise me, and the younger one tuned a harmonium, while the skinny old guy sat behind a set of traditional drums. I was excited at the prospect of listening to live classical Indian music and enjoying the bonfires under the full moon at the Maharaja’s lodge. Wow, what a treat!
Shantum introduced the Maharani; her name is Rashmir; she was also at the bonfire, wearing an elegant silk sari, and she settled down up front with the Raj. Shantum and Devendra told us about classical Indian music and musicians, before the musicians started performing.

“Royalty patronized musicians in the past,” Shantum said. “Now classical musicians are mainly teachers, such as at schools and colleges. Musicians follow a guru, and there are houses of music, such as the Banaras School of Music. A musician can have a different style of raga, if they have a different teacher. It takes thirty years to master music. They start out taking eight hours just to practice on a single note, and it takes six years to acquire a master’s degree.” Eight hours on a single note? That has got to take a plethora of patience.

Shantum and Devendra continued to explain things to us between ragas. The older guy might not sing tonight, Devendra said, because he had a cold. He sang anyway, though not as often as the younger guy.
“All music is a form of prayer,” Devendra said.
Shantum said, “The highest form of music is vocal: singing the notes instead of words. They write a few notes and create the mood.”

The music, drums and harmonium, an accordion-like instrument, is rhythmic and hypnotic. The younger guy was at least my age, and the other looked very old. They really grooved on the drums. Harmoniums are wooden boxes about one and a half feet long by less than a foot, and placed on the floor or on the ground, if played by street musicians such as the woman we saw playing one by the colorful box-like Muslim shrines in Kushinagar. Sure, the harmonium is a sort of keyboard instrument, but the sound reminds me of an accordion.

Devendra said of music teachers, “Of course they are very strict. They will give you a thrashing,” and that’s why lots of students don’t stick to it.
Shantum said, “Gurus are often related. The father or uncle passes it down to the son.” I would like to think that maybe, once in a blue moon, the father passes it down to the daughter; Ravi Shankar taught his daughter Anoushka Shankar to play the sitar, although she’s probably the exception rather than the rule, judging by how common it is to see men employed but not women. It’s no wonder so many beggars are women. Shantum also said, “Men usually sing women’s parts—beautifully, and they sound like young women but are usually fat, balding men! Love songs contain a double meaning: they are not only addressing the boyfriend but also a deity, such as Krishna.” Well, for a blue guy, he is pretty.

The bonfires consisted of three little cauldrons on stilts, inside our semicircle of chairs. A couple of the bonfires were quite ornery and pieces of fiery wood periodically fell on the grass, and each time this happened, a servant came and picked the wood up with bare hands.
We drank delicious masala chai, followed by hot lemon ginger water, while we listened mesmerized to the beautiful music. I felt the air getting chill, and I wasn’t the only one swathed in a woolen shawl.

During the concert, I heard barking, growling, and running right behind us. At first I thought the animals were jackals and I gasped, but looking behind me I saw they were a group of four stray dogs. They were having an argument and running. Even the grounds of a maharajah’s lodge aren’t exempt from stray dogs. I remembered when Feroza and I watched dogs playing on the lawn at the Thai temple in Bodh Gaya, and she said they’re dangerous in packs, so this situation made me a bit nervous. However, the servants easily ran off the dogs.

Listening to the music, I rocked from side to side slightly, like a charmed snake. The music reminded me of Gypsy music, which isn’t surprising since earlier I overheard Liz say that Gypsies originated in India. The Romani are one of those groups of people I would love to get around to researching someday; so far I’ve only read portions of a book on Gypsy fortune telling, to help me out with tarot cards. When the music stopped, I heard jackals howling from all directions. I joined in.

The concert is over, and I’m back in the princess’s suite. Even from my gorgeous room, I occasionally still heard the jackals. The lodge’s ceilings are about twenty feet tall; Feroza had said it’s because hot air rises, and this way the hot air would presumably be overhead on hot days, since the house of course predates air conditioning. After dark, the house seems more echoic than earlier; I could swear people must be able to hear all over the house when I merely put down a glass of water or a toothbrush. Yeah, tonight I met a Maharaja and I’m staying at his hunting lodge. This is living it up.

As I settled down to sleep in the big soft bed and turned out the light, to find myself in pitch darkness, I felt glad none of the tiger parts are in my bedroom; I’d have nightmares. I would not be a bit surprised if this house is haunted; it feels like it is, but not in a bad way.

Birthplace of the Buddha

On the road again Thursday morning, we are departing from Kushinagar and heading for Nepal. My view from the bus window sometimes includes cone-shaped smokestacks with dark grey smoke coming out: kilns for cooking bricks. In the countryside, we see them periodically, but there was this one hellish area containing multitudinous brick ovens with dark smoke coming out. I choked.

Yesterday, I saw the figure of Death in a dream; morning practice included reading about picturing yourself as a skeleton and images of decay; we visited the cremation stupa and listened to Shantum’s talk of Buddha’s death; and I remembered that the Death tarot card means Change. It all fit together, all that in one day. I remember previously seeing a dead puppy lying on the meridian while a cow walked down the middle of a busy street in Varanasi, after we had been wandering through the alleys and approached the bus.

From the bus, we saw a herd of camels going the other way. That was exciting. I just saw a crow sitting on the back of a little baby goat, and the kid was walking around like normal, as if nothing were there. The road, by the way, is incredibly bumpy.
When we stopped for a “pee break,” Shantum said, “Pees be with you.” How Chauceresque.

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The border looks like just another lively, bustling Indian town. I’ve noticed stalls piled high with fruit or vegetables. One cart contained a pile of pomegranates, a bowl of the seeds, and a mound of the yellow and pink skins, and the merchant was grinding up the seeds in a metal contraption for pomegranate juice. The town teemed with people on bicycles and on foot and in their stalls or shops, and innumerable colorful trucks passed us. It’s all very Indian-looking, except for the men’s traditional Nepalese hats. They’re similar to Gandhi hats, except instead of having a flat top, they rise up to a point like a house’s roof. They also come in all kinds of colors and patterns. Festive.

The immigration office is located in a lively village called Belahiya. The office in question was a small pink building made of mud or covered with plaster, with a little porch reminiscent of a scene from the Old West. No cowboys or sheriff with a star-shaped badge stepped out, though. Street urchins peeked over a low wall and waved and threw kisses at our sangha. The boarder official chased them off.

While we stood around waiting in front of the pink building, John said that the authorities in Nepal are very much against begging and it’s not socially acceptable. If you’re a beggar, you get yelled at; if you give money to a beggar, you get yelled at. Also, word gets around, and someone might take you aside and give you a talking to. All told, it’s a bad idea to give money to beggars, but I wasn’t planning on it anyway. That’s been well drummed in, and I certainly wouldn’t want to repeat the craziness that happened when I gave out fruit.

Dean said he hasn’t been in Nepal in thirteen years; he was trekking that time. I mentioned that it’s my first visit and asked if he crossed the border into Tibet, but he didn’t. I mentioned that maybe my next trip will include Tibet and Dharamsala.

During our somewhat long wait, Shantum stapled photos to visas. He walked up to me and wrinkled his nose and braced his teeth in a comical grimace while he used the stapler on something below my ear. Hearing the “click, click” close to my ear before seeing what he was stapling, I smilingly said in a shrill dismayed voice, “What are you doing to me!” I looked down and saw staples on the luggage identity card tied to my mirrorwork bag’s strap.
Dean said, “You’ve been stapled!”

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Back on the bus, I could swear I saw two birds the size of ostriches slowly walking in a field. They were white with red heads and long skinny necks. I have seen a multitude of cranes, goats, and cows. This part of Nepal looks like India, though I’ve imagined Nepal more closely resembling Tibet, which it probably does further north. We passed a crowded country market with stalls made of sticks and thatched roofs. We also passed many fields, some of which are bright green, some bright and happy with the yellow flowers of mustard plants.

We’ve driven a short distance into Nepal, and in front of a shop I saw signs for “Buddha Airlines” and “Yeti Airlines.” I’m not sure I’d want a huge legendary ape piloting a plane. A few minutes later, a sign said, “Welcome to Lumbini.” Oddly, the sign looks like it’s in the middle of a village, because buildings and people and critters are on either side of it; I’m thinking that means no countryside separates two towns.

Later, surrounded by fields, periodically we passed shrines facing the road. The white mud structure of the shrine itself is often in ruins, crumbling away around the statue. But the statue in the center invariably looks fresh and new in bright and colorful paint. They are always Hindu and usually statues of Hanuman, the monkey god.

We drove further through the countryside, past woods where the trees are really skinny and look suspiciously as if people planted them, because they’re in such perfect rows. I don’t think it was someone’s orchard. We also passed farmland, and then a driveway with the sign “Lumbini Hokke Hotel” appeared on our right, and I quickly put away my notebook because it meant we’re home. Given how close Lumbini is to the Himalayas, I’m surprised that it’s as flat as Illinois or western Kansas. Fields and small woods surround the hotel, and a narrow, long road leads to our temporary home and to an assortment of temples. At the end of the road in the other direction stands the World Peace Pavilion, a huge white stupa. If it weren’t for the architecture, we may as well be in the center of the United States. It’s very green and very rural, and the sky is immense.

The hotel in general is pretty and peaceful and quiet; you can’t hear honking horns in this area. Honking geese would be a more likely sound than noisy traffic. We are seriously out in the boonies. The dramatic detail about the hotel’s décor is the enormous pair of Buddha eyes painted in red and black on the front gates, which consist of two white wooden doors that swing open, with an eye on each door. Big Buddha is watching you. I conversed with Gail about sanghas and about the San Francisco Bay area while we ate lunch on the patio before we went to our rooms; it was another boxed picnic lunch, with cucumber sandwiches, fruit, and boiled eggs, because Shantum thought we would stop for lunch on the way.

After lunch, while we lounged in white wooden patio chairs, Jagdish passed out the room keys, and Shantum made his announcements. He said we could have a Nepalese- or Japanese-style dinner, and that Nepalese food is a lot like Indian only with different spices. Since I know what Japanese food tastes like, I chose Nepalese. I like adventure. Shantum gave us a verbal questionnaire that involved asking a question and people raising their hands in response. The options he gave us were 1) vegetarian Japanese dinner, 2) nonvegetarian Japanese, 3) vegetarian Nepalese, and 4) nonvegetarian Nepalese. Shantum asked, and we raised hands, but the numbers didn’t come out right the first two times. “Apparently some people are fasting,” Shantum said smilingly. He started again, saying, “You have four choices. The Buddha is gone forever; the Buddha has gone on to another life….”

Eventually the numbers all added up correctly, and so Shantum moved on to the schedule. Tomorrow morning we will meditate and afterwards visit the garden where the Buddha was born, and then we hop on the bus and leave. For today, he said, we have the option of doing nothing, which appealed to a few people. However, several temples are in the area, so he said we also have the option of “temple hopping.” Or “a temple crawl,” he added, for the sake of the English members of our sangha. He mentioned a Chinese temple and a beautiful Tibetan temple funded by Germans.
“They must have liked the swastikas,” Erika said. Much groaning followed this. Um, since Erika is of German descent, she can say things like that.

I have a roommate for the first time, but that does not bother me; still, I am glad I haven’t had a roommate throughout the entire trip. I’m sharing with Erika a capacious Japanese-style room. “It’s like a little house,” I said, wandering around.

Can't Buy Me Buddhahood

After lunch, we first visited Ramabhar Stupa, the sacred ground of the Buddha’s cremation. It consists of crumbly brick ruins in the shape of cake made by someone who’d never made a cake before, sort of a lopsided and flat-topped hill, with a base around which many colorfully dressed Nepalese lay like reclining Buddhas while a lama, with Tibetan-style book open before him, chanted. From a short distance I saw him twirling a little two-sided drum and holding a gold vajra (dorje, in Tibetan, or thunderbolt, in English) while chanting. The Nepalese looked a bit like Tibetans, and the women wore sarongs and blouses in wonderful bright and colorful prints. Shantum talked with the lama and learned that the group was from Mustang, a small region of Nepal that practices Tibetan Buddhism.

Meanwhile, Thai monks in orange and yellow robes with that alluring off the shoulder look circled the stupa, chanting and creating a pleasant vibration around us. I mindfully circumambulated the Ramabhar Stupa three times, enjoying the chanting. The entire setting was calm and soothing and peaceful. On the backside of the stupa there was a pot of incense and some offerings. While I circumambulated, the Thais stopped chanting and gathered before the offerings. Meanwhile, most of our sangha joined the Nepalese pilgrims by lying on their straw mats in the reclining Buddha pose with heads toward the stupa.

At the ancient stupa ruins, a crowd of beggar children gathered around Val, who put little stickers on their hands; Yvette said it looked like she was feeding pigeons, because of the way the children gathered around Val, who reached out and put the stickers on their hands. As we started heading for the bus, Erika passed out pens to the beggar children: they grabbed at the colorful writing utensils, and she told them all to sit. They promptly sat in unison, like well-trained puppies. When she walked toward the bus, children surrounded her, and Ann commented on how kids are most inclined to approach Erika and Yvette, since they are close to the children’s size.

Due to my enthusiasm for using my camera, Mukesh started on ongoing joke. He says, “Susan, where’s your camera?” My answer is one of the following:
“It’s in my bag.”
“In my pocket!”
“My camera? Oh, no, I must have left it at the last hotel!”

We left the cremation stupa and walked up a path that the Buddha walked. We walked to a Hanuman shrine close to a group of colorful little mud Islamic shrines shaped like stacks of square boxes. In front of the shrines, at the edge of the path, sat Gypsy-like musicians with a drum and a rectangular box of an instrument that sounded much like an accordion and which I later learned is called a harmonium.

We came to a goddess shrine that included a square platform with a life-size blue Kali standing in front. Inside a little house-like structure at the back of the platform, a life-size Durga rode a lion. I tagged along behind, and by the time I caught up with the group, Shantum was explaining, “Women connect with the goddesses that are most like them.” That certainly explains my attraction to Durga, the single and independent woman, and Sarasvati, the geek.

Some of us, perhaps half of the sangha, walked down the road to the Thai temple. Bicyclists gawked at us as they glided past, and of course I had to stop and pet baby goats along the way. On our left, we soon arrived at the very elaborate and gorgeous Thai temple and monastery complex. It is made of white marble with gold trim and has the typical Thai look: a very steep pointy roof like a gingerbread house but ending in curly dragon faces at the corners.

We slipped off our shoes and climbed up the stairs of a temple that was the first building at the monastery, and we came to a white marble balcony where I paused to gaze at another temple nearby, that was a big square full of glass windows topped by a roof made of countless pointy gold domes. We went further up the white marble stairs and stepped into a breathtaking hall with deep blue walls and a shrine at the far end. On the shrine sat a big gold Buddha and many other gold, filigree-like statues and ornaments. We sat down on the carpet, and a monk turned on electric lights, or rather gold and crystal sconces. The abbot Govinda, whom we had met on Vulture Peak, entered the room, for Shantum had made an appointment with him. Govinda sat to our right, in what looked like a French Louis XIV chair.

The abbot gave us a talk and among other things said that his daily schedule includes three hours walking meditation, one and a half hours sitting meditation, and one hour praying. Most of Govinda’s talk focused on the unimportance of money, how it doesn’t buy you happiness.

“Next time, I’ll speak better English. Come back in five years,” Govinda concluded, before the sangha began asking him questions. Rikki asked him how he would teach us if we were his students, but he does not think his English is good enough; he could teach only in Thai. His English sounded impressive to us.

Shantum asked if Thai monks have bank accounts, and Govinda replied only for the sangha, not for themselves. Someone asked who cooks for the monks, and Govinda said they have “no food after noon, and nuns do most of the cooking.” Upon hearing this, I clenched my teeth and thought: big surprise. “The monks only go for alms in India on special days. In Thailand, they wake at five in the morning; in India later,” like eight or nine.

When it came time for us to leave the beautiful room, Govinda asked Shantum, “What country are you from?”
Shantum smiled and said, “I’m an Indian Buddhist.” This conjured a big smile out of Govinda, who is no doubt aware of how Buddhism died out in India. Who knows, maybe with a little help from Shantum, Indian Buddhism will make a comeback and in a hundred years, it could be perhaps even as popular in India as it was during the Buddha’s time.

The sun was rapidly setting by the time we went outdoors. From the balcony we paused to look out on the long white monastery and the temple. Yvette mentioned that both monks and nuns live at this monastery, and I said, “Yeah, but guess who does the cooking.”

We followed Govinda to the domed temple that I had noticed earlier. It’s a shrine that “looks like a big jewel box,” as Erika put it. We went inside, and an enormous glass case in the center contains a relic of the Buddha in one little box and some of his hair in a slightly lower box, both of which looked like standard-sized jewel boxes. We sat on the floor and practiced some chanting and meditation in front of the glass case. Everyone rose from the floor, and I circled the big glass box, reminiscent of Willy Wonka’s glass elevator, and I noticed that at each corner stood delicate-looking dainty gold tables covered with pretty gold things that were like filigree.

The temple and monastery are beautiful, but I was rather unimpressed about the comment concerning nuns and cooking. That jarringly woke me up, though I have read quite a bit about Asian women and Buddhism, enough that I once considered ditching Buddhism altogether. I must remind myself that bell hooks and Alice Walker are Buddhists, and that sanghas are more egalitarian in North American Buddhist communities, where I’m much more likely to participate in a sangha. But this distaste is about women in general, not me; we all are sisters.

The Thai monks can afford elaborate gold temples; this one in Kushinagar had a wealthy donor, despite Govinda’s stress on the unimportance of money. Yet they “can’t afford” to fully ordain nuns and not use them as servants, which really cuts in on the time the nuns should be practicing. The concept of treating nuns like monks is still alien to Thai culture, although from what I have read it is slowly changing. Tibetan culture has the same problem, with nuns working as servants and in many cases only starting to read when they’re in their thirties, whereas monks down the road are very literate and do all kinds of ceremonies and get plenty of donations, since it’s considered better merit to donate to monks than to donate to nuns.

Govinda talks against money and extravagance and emphasizes charity, yet Thai Theravada nuns are subservient to monks even right here at his Kushinagar monastery, while the temples are so elaborate and expensive. Jennifer spoke up about this conspicuous consumption to Shantum as we walked away from the temple, and Shantum reminded her that this monastery has a major donor.

I have read in the Buddhist magazines Tricycle and The Turning Wheel that boys who live in poverty in Thailand go to monasteries and get an education, while their sisters often end up as prostitutes and donate some of their money from prostitution to the monasteries. If Govinda would have thought of it, maybe he could have politely asked the donor to use the money to help improve life for girls from poor families in Thailand, those who would otherwise end up in brothels or on the streets. Compassion is important even, or rather especially, when it challenges the oppressive status quo. Compassion should help open your heart and open your eyes and inspire you to be awake when something is unjust and to do something about it, whatever you can.

Such thoughts don’t come to my mind because I’m under some smug delusion that I’m better than everyone else, as vicious relatives would sneeringly imply not for the first time if they read this, but rather because I genuinely believe in compassion, loving-kindness, and justice, regardless of my imperfect actions. I am at this particular point on the path, and no matter how incompetent I may seem at this point, I really want to change myself and the world. The more open-minded you are and the less in denial you are, the more able you are to embrace truth. Even if I don’t do a perfect job of expressing compassion, I have the sense to know that it is a top priority.

I admit I found the Thai temples and monastery breathtakingly beautiful and enjoyed wandering around the complex. For a long time I’ve had internal conflict between aesthetics and ethics. I like elaborate art and architecture, even castles and palaces, despite my anti-hierarchy beliefs, and yet part of my mind says this elaborate architecture used up money that should have gone into, for instance, saving Thai girls from sex trafficking. When I read about goofy pseudo-Neoclassical palaces in Kathmandu, I thought such buildings should be torn down and the materials sold to save Nepalese girls from being dragged into such a life. And in Thailand especially, sex trafficking is a huge problem, yet the male-dominated religious institutions get flashy gold and marble architecture.

It was dark outside by the time we left the big jewel box. The monastery, from what I could see, consisted largely of very long one-story white marble buildings. A short flight of steps led up to a little store that sold such things as postcards, where Yvette and Liz browsed.

I heard countless frogs croaking gently, like peepers in the early spring, and I noticed a sort of moat and a white footbridge leading to the short flight of steps to the gift shop. Much plant life that I couldn’t identify covered the bank of this little brook, and inside floated lily pads. I stood on the bridge and watched, and sure enough I saw movement in the water, a frog that created circles on the glistening black surface.

Besides Yvette, Liz, and me, the only other two members of the sangha who didn’t disperse were Jennifer and Rikki, who lingered in order to place a candle offering at a shrine that consisted of a simple square metal structure with a row of burning candles, in front of the short flight of steps leading up to the monastery shop. However, Rikki didn’t have a candle or a match and asked for them at the shop. We all ultimately stood in front of the shrine, and I gazed at the flickering candles, watching them dance and float in the dark night air.

Unfortunately, none of us was really sure which way to go in order to leave the monastery. We backtracked toward the temple where we had started out, and we made our way, in the dark, to the front gates. It was a beautiful evening and not too cold to be out and about, even though the darkness made it seem late. A tour bus was parked out front, but it didn’t take us long to notice that the people stepping off it were not from our sangha. We turned to the left and in the distance could see a few people walking away in the dark, down the narrow road.

“There’s Shantum!” Liz said. Sure enough, he was in the center of this group of people, walking at a leisurely pace. “I recognize his walk.”
“And his hat,” I said.
“Yeah, he has a distinctive walk,” Yvette said. It suggests that he walks mindfully every time he’s walking. We headed in the direction of Shantum and his walking companions, and surprisingly in a few minutes we were actually at the Lotus Nikko Hotel. None of us had had any idea that our hotel was so close to the Thai temple.

All Conditions of Reality Are Subject to Decay

I had a dream that ended with a scene in which I sat on the left side of the tour bus, gawking out the window as usual and seeing many people at the side of the road and litter on the ground. Standing still among these people was the tall and skinny figure of Death, wrapped in black rags. Even the face was covered with black rags.

My throat is full of phlegm and my nose is full of snot. Nonetheless, I crawled out of bed and headed down for our morning meditation. After we practiced our sitting meditation in the same hotel room as last night, the reading was about death and decay, rather appropriately given that we are in Kushinagar, where the Buddha died. The reading included gruesome stuff, reminiscent of Tibetan visualization practice. Hey, let’s take a field trip to a charnel ground! How peculiar it is that I dreamed about the Grim Reaper after arriving in the village where the Buddha died. It seems to me like more than mere coincidence.

I had time after breakfast to wander around the hotel courtyard, and on the path I met up with John and Yvette. We admired the trees around the lawn, such as clusters of thin bamboo tied together to form a mushroom shape, and a strange little fig tree with branches sticking out like the branches at the top of a stupa, above the dome. We stood near a small orange tree growing tiny oranges. Yvette said her mother had had a tiny orange bush like that, but much smaller, on her treadle sewing machine. “This tree shows what that little orange bush had the potential to become,” Yvette said. “We all have the potential to bloom into something greater.”

Shantum took us to the Paranirvana Stupa, during the monks’ lunch break. It was before noon, and Shantum explained it would likely be the monks’ last meal of the day. I have read that this practice of eating early in the day and fasting later prevents food from distracting monks and nuns from their practice. After I return to the States, I intend to only have breakfast and lunch, no dinner, but my lunches will certainly be after noon, not before it. I am sure that eating with others, such as houseguests, will prevent my sticking to this schedule all the time, but except for the exceptions I truly resolve to have only breakfast and lunch.

We walked along a path amid red brick monastic ruins, similar to the ruins at Deer Park and Nalanda. In the distance, amid the crumbly brick structures and trees, stood a small white building, the Paranirvana temple, which marks where the Buddha died. The roof curved like a barrel over the one story, and centered at each side of the roof was a large circular window. Below the front window was a veranda with big, bright red columns contrasting against the otherwise perfectly white façade. Flanking the central door were circular niches that may have once contained Buddha statues.

Behind the temple loomed a large stupa in good shape considering its obviously advanced age. The temple in front did not look especially old, because it was completely intact, sporting glass windows, and covered with a fresh lick of white paint. We walked on the path past small trees and a hedge and up a few steps leading straight to the front doors of the Paranirvana temple, which is built on top of a big square brick ruin with a metal railing all around the temple and stupa.

We entered through the front door. Centered inside is a gigantic reclining gold Buddha made in the fifth century CE. The statue is beautiful and on a larger than life scale; the Buddha lies on an ornate rectangular platform and looks so peaceful, as if he were napping. In front of him are various offerings, particularly of incense and oranges.

In a far corner, a row of five Tibetan nuns chanted soothingly in soprano voices while we circumambulated three times. I finally noticed that the walls were plain grey cement blocks; they did not draw attention away from the marvelous gold Buddha that dominates the small room and predates it by several centuries.

We sat down on the floor facing the Buddha statue’s front. The nuns departed and were soon replaced by three maroon-clad monks who sat in the same back corner. While we sat looking around or meditating, a young monk in a red robe approached the Buddha statue, got down on his knees, placed offerings in front of the Buddha, and pressed his palms together. Shantum continued telling us the story of the Buddha’s life, or in this instance his death here in Kushinagar.

The Buddha, at the age of eighty, was out walking with Ananda and ate something that disagreed with him and came here to lie down between two sal trees, tell his last teaching, and die. In the Buddha’s last talk, according to Shantum, he said, “Live simply,” and Shantum added, “No more silk scarves.” Ann and I exchanged an amused look, and I lifted a corner of my beaded and sequined paisley shawl.

Finally, as the tale neared its end, Shantum said, “’All conditions of reality are subject to decay. Strive diligently,’ the Buddha said. Those were his last words. In simple terms it means, ‘Change happens, and keep practicing.’”

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An Indian or more likely Sri Lankan monk, standing in the doorway in orange robes, spoke with Shantum, who afterwards explained to us that the Paranirvana Stupa is both a temple and an archeological survey. The archeological people are responsible for the signs saying, “No offerings,” and a Burmese temple is responsible for the donation box that sits close to the Buddha’s head. It is funny seeing a sign that commands, “OFFERING NOT ALLOWED,” below the Buddha statue’s head and inches away from a plate covered in marigolds, a bowl of fruit, and a donation box.

After Shantum’s talk, several people in our sangha asked to see the vast gold reclining Buddha without the orange and red cloth draped over it. Shantum spoke to the Indian attendant, and he carefully pulled the offering cloths off. We gathered around and took more pictures. The Buddha is plated gold from head to toe, with graceful curving lines indicating clinging draperies.
I was among those who circumambulated again. I gazed at the gold body all the way around, and as I approached the Buddha’s huge feet, several people ahead of me stepped forward, leaned, and touched the feet. I thought that looked like a good idea, but then I became slightly nauseous, thanks to this virus, and decided against it. I did not want to fall on or barf on the Buddha. That just would not do. So I slowly kept moving, reached the temple’s threshold, turned back for one last look at the enormous gold Buddha, then turned and slowly stepped out and took a deep breath in the relatively fresh air. When you meet the Buddha, vomit on the Buddha. No, no, take refuge in the Buddha; don’t barf on the Buddha. After we had had time with the Buddha uncovered, not to be confused with a Buddha unplugged concert, the attendants tucked him back in, so he could sleep peacefully.

I circumambulated around the two stupas, the one housing the statue and the one behind it, which we can’t enter, and that Emperor Ashoka built to mark where he believed the Buddha actually died. By the time I returned to the Paranirvana temple’s front facade, five or six orange-clad monks sat in a row to the right of the stupa entrance.

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I need to be more aware of death. Once in a while it has occurred to me that I should reject the Western attitude of avoiding death and pretending it will not happen, but I am not entirely sure how to go about doing this. Maybe I just need to think about it a little; I did once visualize myself as a skeleton while I was meditating. That’s simultaneously gothic and Buddhist. It would probably help if I get around to reading the entirety of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and if I read up more on Chod, a Tibetan practice that involves sitting in a charnel ground and visualizing a particular goddess tearing your body apart. Pleasant. Of course, Buddhism is not about blocking out things that aren’t pleasant but rather experiencing everything mindfully and seeking truth. I should also read the Mahaparinibbana Sutta; the original unwritten version of it dates to the Buddha’s death.

I know that I want my corpse cremated, and I thought I wanted the ashes scattered in earth, air, fire, and water, but now I wonder if maybe I’d prefer the ashes were poured into the Gangaji. On the auspicious side, that is, not the Ha ha, you’re gonna come back as a donkey if you die here side. True, there are plenty of people who live in India and would like their ashes to enter the Ganga, so it would be better if my ashes were scattered in North America or wherever I die.

This virus certainly won’t result in my death, but it is a reminder of impermanence and the fickleness of health. Impermanence is like death, which is a metaphor for impermanence, which is in turn a kind of death. That reminds me that the tarot card illustrating a skeletal Death actually represents significant change in general, not just literal death, despite the tarot scene in the opera Carmen in which the card predicts the title character’s demise.

A shift in attitude can be a death of a part of yourself, such as the transition from being in denial about something to having a better grasp of truth and feeling glad for the greater awareness. Likewise, such a change is not only death but also rebirth, because you have gained wisdom and knowledge. I know firsthand that shedding denial, such as my denial about relatives, can help an artist become more artistically creative, since naturally the artist has become more expressive and more observant; being in denial means putting up a wall between yourself and truth. Even that sort of impermanence, a shift in attitude, ultimately reflects the circular cycle of life, which goes from birth, to living, to old age, to death, and over and over again in the same cycle through countless lifetimes.

The Buddhist concept of being devoid of inherent existence is tied in with impermanence. Over the years, in this lifetime alone, I have undergone change in how I think, and that old part of me dissolves; so what is Me, anyway? We are constantly changing, constantly experiencing impermanence, and so we do not exist in the sense of being an individual entity, separate from the rest of the world. Gee, that connects impermanence with interdependence, too. I’m hardly surprised, since everything is connected; everything is interdependent.

I picture the Buddha lying in his golden robes between two tall, slender trees, with a large crowd of people gathered around. On his deathbed, and at the advanced age of eighty, his voice, I imagine, would not have been loud enough for everyone to hear. Perhaps when he answered questions, a younger monk announced the answers to the crowd in a booming voice. Meanwhile, the weary Buddha lay still and propped his head up with his arm and remained equanimous, fully accepting his death as inevitable.

On the Road to Kushinagar

Jagdish has a fitting metaphor comparing Indians and Westerners: Indians are sociable and outgoing like dogs; Westerners are solitary and introverted like cats. I am the most catlike of cats in the cat world. Meow.

Last night I had a dream in which I leaned over a grey stone or concrete railing and watched a filthy polluted river flow past with algae floating in it. I don’t recall seeing any part of the Ganga that looked like that, so perhaps my dream river was based on how I expected the Ganga to look after reading that dead babies and dead cows, among other things, are dumped into it. That is hardly an appropriate way to treat a sacred river.

Piles of trash with animals such as cows, dogs, pigs, and goats rooting through them are a common sight in India, whether in a city or village. They were particularly noticeable in Varanasi. That city had its share of filth and squalor, with piles of cow shit in the alleys and piles of trash with dogs rooting through it, but we had scarcely any encounters with beggars. The exception was while we passed grotesquely crippled beggars and headed toward Gangaji and it was still dark out.

We climbed on the bus this morning to leave Varanasi, the big filthy city full of phallic symbols. Today, while some people took a potty break, I took pictures of the view, particularly lentil fields and a white Hindu temple in the distance. Meanwhile, Erika, Shantum, and others walked down the road and saw many people at work, doing their sundry jobs.

After the small group of pilgrims returned, and everyone had climbed aboard the bus, Shantum took the microphone and announced that Erika would give us a report on the various industries that they just encountered. He handed Erika the microphone, and she said that they saw: people pressing oil from linseed, a shoemaker, an iron maker, a guy with a dancing bear, a carpenter teaching an apprentice how to make something, and a mosque. If I’d been paying attention, I would have taken that walk with them. But I’m glad I didn’t see the dancing bear. Shantum said, “Bears come from hills and forests. India domesticated bears and elephants, more often the latter.”

An industry I’ve noticed in India that I find particularly interesting is the tailor shops that don’t have electricity. They are typically what look like one-room shops such as the buildings I just described, and in the center of the room stands a black treadle sewing machine. Wooden shelves covered with bolts of fabric lined the walls. In one village, I saw a couple of tailor shops crowded with at least eight treadle sewing machines and with guys sewing at each of them.

I wonder if the sewing machines were all well-preserved antiques, or whether India still manufactures treadle sewing machines, which to me look Victorian. In the States, I’ve seen them often enough in flea markets and antique malls, and sometimes they’re rusty. I once sat down to a treadle sewing machine that had belonged to my grandmother; sewing with it requires constantly rocking a large pedal with the feet and continually turning the wheel with the right hand.

Today is another festival, a Muslim one, and during our long bus ride Shantum said, “There are always festivals in India.” The Shiite sect is central to the festival, a day of atonement. It is the day their leader, a son-in-law of Mohammad, was killed. The holiday involves intense self-punishment and lots of marriages (that alone sounds like intense self-punishment); it is an auspicious time and involves lots of processions. We drove through a village and saw throngs of Muslim guys walking around on the street and wearing simple cylindrical white cotton hats, or fez. Meanwhile, Shantum said, “You can make out what village someone came from by the type of hat or turban they wear and how they wear the turban.”

Members of our sangha asked Shantum various questions on the bus. He said that doorways to hotels have hats because it’s imposing. At the doorways of houses the paintings are a sign of welcome; I’ve certainly noticed quite a few wonderful and colorful murals on facades, especially while we were traversing down the lanes of Varanasi. Ganesh over or near door is also auspicious and welcoming.

“India has two legal systems,” Shantum explained. “The local caste system, with elders in charge of disputes about such things as land and children. And a legal system based on the British legal system. A case goes to court and there’s a precedent, and it goes to that precedent. Police stations are the location, and people file first an information report and say there’s a problem. The courts include: a local court, district court, high court, supreme court, and a national court in New Delhi.”

“Ashoka set up a traditional legal system,” Shantum said, “but the British system is based on power tripping. A small number of people have lots of power.” That sounds to me like America, despite claims that it represents freedom and democracy.

“The Indian president is Christian,” Shantum explained, “and she is very healing and good at solving disputes, but she’s not good at keeping down corruption; she just lets it go. Her husband is involved in some of the corruption. India has a movement to educate and elect women, but it’s more talk than action currently. Women are getting more training and empowerment.” Gee, that sounds like America too, but I’m sure we’re farther along.

While traveling, I usually look out the bus windows. I have observed stacks of dried cow paddies forming something like stupas. Also shaped vaguely like stupas are piles of tires with small ones on top. India has many scarecrows made of sticks and rags. I didn’t have success with sleeping on the bus but did something I called pseudo-dozing, not really quite dozing. That sounds like it should be a Sanskrit name or word: Suddhadosa.

“India has too many problems, too many issues,” Shantum said. It is overwhelming: the horror of things, such as sex slave trade, selling girls to be prostitutes. Some organizations work to save them, groups that are against child prostitution, such as the organization Care. “Media and education need to do research and expose the sex trade,” Shantum pointed out. Globalization involves selling girls to other countries, and even sex tourism. AIDS is another big problem. Child labor is a huge issue, but Shantum said, “The problem with ending child labor is that it would destroy the apprentice system.” Well, I figure that’s if you end all child labor across the board; the apprenticeship system could be an exception, as long as the hours are limited. After all, kids work on their family farms and do chores around the house.

“No hurry, no worry,” Shantum said as we were about to leave the restaurant after lunch on a restaurant patio, where we had a typical delicious buffet and followed it up with masala chai.
Natalie said, “Moving at the speed of guidance,” would make a great poster.

Right after we got on the bus, Jagdish passed out Cadbury chocolates and said, “Today is my cow’s birthday.” And he added, “I have a cow back home.”

During the all-day bus ride, we stopped at a village market. We wandered around and saw merchants with their paraphernalia spread out on sheets on the ground: countless colorful vegetables, herbs, spices, terra cotta pottery, and clothing. The spice guy took a newspaper and spooned a variety of spices together and wrapped them up in the paper, and Dornora bought spices from him. I thought the spices looked pretty, with the different colors and textures together on the white paper.

A woman, the only female merchant, stood in a corner of the market and sold stacks of terra cotta pottery, and Shantum bought a couple of little bowls, because Nandini broke the ones she had found in Deer Park. I’ll be lucky if I don’t break the chai cup I picked up, but then again it’s wrapped up in my fake silk scarf. Meanwhile, Erika took pictures of the many people, all male, something we were accustomed to by now, who followed us around, fascinated by this strange group of foreigners. They might see tour buses now and then, but I doubt many tour buses actually stop to visit their village market. I don’t think I’ll ever understand people whose idea of a vacation in a foreign country revolves around lying on a beach; you can do that on Lake Michigan in Indiana.

Near the seller of pottery, a guy sold clothing, much of which was still wrapped in plastic and therefore apparently had never been worn previously. I think all of it was cotton. There were lightweight cotton shawls, and Valerie purchased one that was a pale off-white, almost orange, and trimmed with a pattern in metallic gold. Jennifer bought a small pink sleeveless blouse, and later, after she realized it was too small, she gave it to a little girl who was begging while we took a walk. The clothing merchant also had a bright blue cotton skirt with a three-inch ruffle along the hem, and Shantum explained that this is a petticoat worn under the sari. As Jennifer observed, Indian women wear underwear that looks a lot like Western outerwear, such as the sleeveless blouse and the petticoat.

After dark we arrived at the Lotus Nikko Hotel in Kushinagar, which has a gigantic lobby with a long row of large arched windows, and centered in front of these windows is a Buddha statue, a replica of the one at Sarnath that we imitated in our performance art with Rikki. In front of the hotel’s statue is a plate of offerings, particularly marigolds. While Shantum, Jagdish and Mukesh organized the room keys, the sangha sipped cups of masala chai and sat at yellow carved wooden Victorian-looking sofas or wandered around the lobby and observed.

Liz and Yvette stepped out of a doorway, which I soon noticed led to the hotel’s shop, where a merchant was selling wooden beads and sculptures. Erika said to Liz and Yvette, “I can always rely on you to show me where the shops are,” and to me she said, “And I can always rely on you to show me where the animals are. I can always rely on Jennifer to show me where the bathrooms are.”

My hotel room in Kushinagar is amazing. The décor is simple, but I think it would be very easy to live in such a room, because it’s bigger than my last apartment. It doesn’t have a kitchen or a walk-in closet, but it has more floor space than my apartment had, and it has a low partition rather than a full wall with a door, which sort of creates another bedroom at the back. On the far side of the partition, the room contains a third bed, a coffee table, and upholstered chairs. The carpet is a drab brown and the color scheme is bland brown and white, but I could see myself living in a place with this set-up for months on end.

Unfortunately, I feel like Tigger without his bounce, because my nose is badly congested. Last night I caught the virus that has been going around in our sangha. I am low on cough drops, and yet a cough drop in my mouth will likely get me through the night.

Since shortly after the pilgrimage began, the virus has been making the rounds among us, and a couple days ago Jennifer said I must be really hearty, because I have not gotten sick yet. I said that it might be because I had a flu shot, since normally I get sick relatively easily, but on the other hand this is no flu. On the second night of our pilgrimage, Rikki had warned during “Strucks” that when people get sick while traveling with a group like this, the germs spread; someone had suggested covering your mouth with your elbow when you cough, rather than using your hands and potentially touching someone, and I’ve been using my elbow to cover my mouth ever since. During dinner at the Radisson in Varanasi, Dean the retired doctor said that we’ll all catch it but after that will be immune to this virus, at least for five years.

Our journey to Kushinagar was surely much easier than the Buddha’s journey there. He had been about eighty years old and in less than perfect health, walking by foot with his buddy Ananda. During this walk, he stopped for lunch and was accidentally poisoned, so he must have felt even worse than I do with this virus, and he died after arriving in the village. We, on the other hand, travel using modern transportation and have nothing worse than a virus going around, from which we know we’ll recover. Impermanence doesn’t only apply to pleasant things, of course; we can look forward to recovering from most illnesses.

Hindu Day in Varanasi

It is eerie to walk through a dark and misty but busy street before dawn in Varanasi, as we did on our way to the Ganga River. Many people were already up and bustling about despite the early hour. We walked from the bus past already-open fruit stalls and vegetable stalls and pastry stalls and among dogs and beggars and bicycles and the occasional rickshaw. It makes me wonder if Indians ever stop working and go to sleep. They probably take a break in the middle of the day to nap, at least in summertime.


Out of the mist appeared a small wooden wagon, scarcely larger than the little red wagon I had as a child, pulled by a skeletal figure in rags, and inside the wagon lay a small, emaciated creature that scarcely seemed human, with twisted, thin, useless legs. A leprous woman in rags begged on my right; she had bloody bandaged stumps for hands. I felt a scream rising towards my throat, but I didn’t let it out. Instead I took several deep breaths and continued walking as if I hadn’t seen her. Another wagon containing a mangled human form rattled past on my left. Mostly I saw people in rags who were not incapacitated, though they were obviously very poor. Moving past them in the darkness and mist was like stepping into a nightmare or some sick and twisted idea for a Halloween celebration. It would be a fitting scene in a horror movie. But it was real, all too real.

We came to a flight of grey stone steps descending to the bank; by then the light was dark grey, and I’m not even sure by what light we saw, perhaps lanterns and candles, unless there are street lamps. Jagdish said not to take pictures of the naked saddhus, and as soon as he mentioned this, at a glance I saw to my left a crouching, longhaired and bearded naked man smeared with white ashes. A few others squatted or stood near him, just on the left of the top of the steps, or rather ghats. They seemed to have grayish blue skin, and I thought they were silently watching us, like alert and still cats, but I only briefly glanced at them.


We moved down the long steps and off to the right. Ubiquitous wallahs tagged along, with beads and incense and pink floral cardboard boxes. On the stone pavement a few feet from the ghats, while I waited for my turn to climb aboard the wooden boat, I spotted an intact bright yellow marigold, picked it up and sniffed at it, but it had no smell.
After each pilgrim climbed aboard the boat, Jagdish handed us each a saucer-size leaf plate on which marigolds circled a lighted tea candle. Following the example of others, I took my plate to the far end and leaned over the side of the boat. I slowly, delicately placed the plate on the surface of the river. I let go of it, and it floated like the other plates. The Gangaji offerings followed the current, slowly drifting together away from our boat, and I watched them till the candlelight was a group of tiny dots. I continued watching them gently floating away till they were no longer in sight. That’s a tradition I like; it was sweet and silent.

“Ghats are steps leading down to the Gangaji,” Shantum said. “Where we climbed on the boat was the original site of huge sacrifices. Hindus bathe in the sacred Ganga to get rid of generations of bad karma. This applies to Hinduism but not Buddhism. Ganges water has never been tested, but specific incidents indicate that it really has healing powers.”

Two skinny little guys rowed our boat, and throughout the boat ride we remained within sight of ghats and old buildings, many of which had domes and murals and were painted colors such as pink, yellow, and baby blue. One large structure was decorated with many colorful sculptures of Hindu deities, and my mouth hung open as we passed it. Groups of people bathed down on the bottom steps of some of the ghats.

I’ve read about saddhus, naked Hindu holy men. Shantum said, “Leaving society to them means abandoning clothes, haircuts, and money.” Naked saddhus did exercises higher up on the ghats; they reminded me of the ascetics with whom Siddhartha Gautama hung out before he sat under the Bodhi Tree.

“It is auspicious to die on the Ganga because Shiva whispers in your ear,” Shantum said. “Dying on the other side, however, means coming back as a donkey!” It seems to me like a deity whispering in your ear while you’re dying on the edge of a river would be a little creepy. Meanwhile, around us the atmosphere was surreal and somewhat misty even as the sun gradually came out and Shantum told us some local Hindu legends.

We passed a smoky piece of land that Jagdish described as cremation grounds, where men tended piles of burning dark wood. I did not, however, see anything that looked like a human corpse. Shantum said, “There are forty Sanskaras: these are the stages of life in Hinduism, starting before conception. The son is the only one to perform rites at death. Twice born means wearing the sacred thread; it goes diagonally across the naked chest and around back. Death is celebration: sometimes people dance and sing at cremation grounds.” I think that probably has to do with hope for a better incarnation next time.

During the boat ride, we glided past moored boats and floating boats, and once a guy swimming in the water. Our boat came close to a couple of guys in a boat with a television turned on, presumably running on batteries, and a travel video played on the TV. They were selling videos and giving this demo right there on the Gangaji. That was really weird. It was almost as weird as seeing a purple cow on a boat, but that didn’t happen. We didn’t even see a white or black cow on a boat.

Although we were not on land, we weren’t free from pushy salespeople. Some wallahs have boats, and their boats slowly glided toward ours till they gently knocked against the side. Shantum said, “The boat has a sensor that persuades other boats to stop or move away rather than wreck our boat.” However, it doesn’t prevent wallahs on boats from drifting right next to our boat. Eventually three boats at once surrounded ours, which made me laugh. John said that he had been glad to get in the boat, because we’d finally be somewhere free of wallahs. Oh, not so much.

We got off the boat at a different location and played follow-the-leader, climbing to the top of a ghat, and stepping around old stone domed shrines. I finally noticed, in the early morning sunlight, that Dean and Valerie wore white matching cotton kurtas with white cotton pants. I had to stop long enough to take pictures of what may have been goddess figures carved into the stone sides of a pale hexagonal structure, probably a centuries-old shrine.




We wandered through alleys: dingy, dirty alleys in which we avoided piles of cow shit. Every foot or two we came to a Hindu shrine or temple. These aesthetic manifestations of spirituality were so awe-inspiring and beautiful, even amid all the dirt, cow shit, dinginess and squalor, that I felt blissful and awed and smiled widely. I took a picture of at least one marigold-draped Shiva temple, a fine pair of dark wood double doors, and a shrine room with peacocks painted on bright green porcelain wall tiles. I raised my camera to take a picture of a Kali shrine, but then a woman in a green and red sari appeared, walking inside the little space behind the gate, so I shyly lowered my camera.

I found it painful passing rows of old women with begging bowls and trying not to look at them; maybe I should look at them when passing, even briefly, although I’m often too timid to look at people in general.

We passed people in faded, ragged clothing, buildings with cracked and chipped walls painted bright colors that hadn’t been repainted in a long time, and colorful Hindu murals. Painted good luck swastikas flanked a few wooden doors, and they didn’t remind me of Nazis; Nazi swastikas are at an angle, anyway. Finally we came to a section of the lane lined with little shops where people sold grains, spices, posters, beads, or statues. I saw on the stone pavement to my left a pile of discarded terra cotta bowls mixed with rubbish. I saw dogs and puppies with or without a skin disease.
My rubber-soled canvas sneakers slid occasionally on the slick stone pavement; so I walked carefully and watched my step, especially going up the few stone stairs, and somehow I managed to gawk the whole time, despite frequent glances at my feet. In the alley, scents that bombarded my nose included incense, spices, manure, burning trash, and sewage. Honking bikers and bell-ringing bicyclists came by as we neared a road big enough for vehicles, so in addition to cow turds we had to dodge bikes.

We made our egress out of an alley onto a bustling street crowded with rickshaws and bicycles and pedestrians and animals. A beautiful brown cow strolled through the center of the street, and I attempted to take a picture of the cow, but pedestrians and vehicles, especially rickshaws, kept blocking my view of the cow. I am cow. Hear me moo. Yes, the sacred cows wander around even in a metropolis like Varanasi. Since they’re sacred, they don’t have to worry too much about getting hit by a vehicle. The cow stands or wanders in traffic, perhaps thinking: “I am the It cow. I can block traffic all I want, because I am a Goddess.”

We returned to the hotel at about nine and had breakfast. It was bizarre to sit down at the table and realize how much we had already experienced. Like the White Queen of the Looking-Glass World, I could believe six impossible things before breakfast.

Next we headed for a contemporary art gallery called the Kiriti Gallery and dodged traffic across the busy street to arrive safely in front of the building. If it weren’t for Jagdish blocking traffic, I’m sure several of us, including me, would have gotten hit by now. Outdoors, looking at the art gallery, I had at first mistaken the white-washed building for a car dealer, but that’s because, like so many buildings in India, it has several doors that westerners only use as garage doors; by now I should be accustomed to that. A Ganesh plaque hung between two such doors.

Inside, we saw the exhibit called “Go Away Closer.” The artwork was all large black and white framed art photos by a young artist named Dayanita Singh. At least, I got the impression she was young, from something the art dealer said. She would have been there to meet us, but unfortunately she was sick with a cold.

After lunch at a south Indian restaurant, we returned to the gallery and had to wait for hired cars, because we would enter an area where large vehicles are not permitted. We waited for probably at least an hour in the gallery’s garden. I heard the constant swishing and rumbling and beeping of traffic and stared up at the weird nut tree and watched the mynah birds playing. In the garden I gazed up at the tree and the birds. I also closed my eyes to meditate, but Nandini interrupted to show me pictures; she was taking pictures of sangha members and showing them to us. Even her photos are good for a five-year-old. Ultimately I took out a book, Where the Buddha Walked.

Four cars finally appeared on the other side of the trees, and there was much cheering. They had been stuck in traffic all that time; that’s hardly surprising, given how much whizzing by and honking we witnessed during the wait. We had a choice among four cars that can each hold about seven people or more: two in front, three in the middle, and at least two in the very back, if you don’t mind sitting facing sideways. The wait had been so long that four people wanted to go back to the hotel and relax, so they all climbed into one car. The rest of us piled in to head for the ghats. I can’t pass up an adventure.
The cars stopped in a wide dirt path that might be construed as a parking lot, and we piled out to gawk at the big black cows next to our car; they were the kind of cows that have curled horns and big pretty black eyes. I didn’t think cows were beautiful until I came to India. We walked toward the beach and admired the Ganga, the boats, the animals, and the Hindu temples.

Three light-skinned young guys headed toward the water and glanced at us; they wore bright orange robes and sandals and had thick and curly shoulder-length hair. They reminded me of a Hippie guy I knew in college, who grew a beard and wore sarongs, but I could say he was trying to be what they really were. Perhaps they were a type of saddhu or Brahmin.

People gawked at us as much as we gawked at them, as usual. We heard music coming from a loudspeaker, and I said, “That sounds like Bollywood music.”

“It’s watered down Bollywood music,” Natalie explained.

Behind us, Shantum appeared in the parking lot, waving his arms at us: we had gone in the wrong direction! So we returned to the cars and cows. We followed Shantum down a road, past a shop selling colorful goodies like paper lanterns, embroidered bags, and metal statues of Buddhas and Hindu deities.

We came to a ghat, above which a beautiful and elaborate old building loomed, and down the steps came a pleasantly smiling and stout older man. We met up with him at the bottom of the steps. Shantum introduced us with, “This is my friend Rana Singh.” He may have said more, but I was distracted because the name sounded very familiar to me. I reached into my bag and pulled out Where the Buddha Walked: a Companion to the Buddhist Places of India by Rana P. B. Singh. Ann and I had talked about the book in the hotel lobby that morning, and she had looked through it, seen the many maps, and said, “What a wonderful book! It’s all the places we’ve been going to, and a few more.” On the ghat, she was standing next to me, so I gently nudged her and pointed to the author’s name on the book cover. She whispered an exclamation, and Rana and Shantum noticed. Rana said, “Ah, you have my book!” Ann suggested I get his autograph.

The sun was quickly getting lower as, led by Rana Singh, we took a walk through narrow alleys and past ancient buildings and shrines. It was truly dark out when we came to a strange old well with square walls and steps leading down to it on three sides. In the brick wall without steps, straight ahead of us, there was an extremely tall (and I might add phallic-shaped) alcove ending with an arch at the top. Far below, at the bottom of the well, was a square aperture with water in it, connected to the Ganges but cleaner than the river.

Rana Singh gave us a history and mythology lesson on Varanasi, concerning lingas and such. He explained that every linga has two purposes: power, and after the ninth century they became decorative, and that Ishvalla is another name for Shiva, dancing and controlling cosmos. I’ve seen numerous versions of this image, with Shiva dancing in a flaming ring; a small one sits in my front hall. Rana said, “Demons came here because of powers of gods. People come to this city to get their souls cleansed.”

“Ganga touches everyone on a spiritual level, as a Mother Goddess; it’s your mother you’re dealing with. Some people dismiss it because it’s polluted,” Shantum said.
“The well represents the sun god and the earth goddess coming together,” Rana said. That reminds me of Newgrange, the Neolithic temple in Ireland, where sunlight enters through the door on the morning of winter solstice each year. “The water and earth are goddess symbols. Traditionally, women took off old clothes and put on new to descend into the well and bathe in hope of fertility.”

From the well, we went to a nearby lively little Hindu temple that I had observed from a distance and where people kept coming in, ringing bells that hang overhead, and praying. A priest with a big grey beard, shaggy hair and Coke-bottle glasses, wearing a bright red robe, occupied a little room with windows and a centered linga. The walls and floor were white porcelain tile; the floor was dirty, but I slipped off my sandals and walked around barefoot inside the temple. My feet are washable. As for getting cold, that certainly wasn’t a problem, because Varanasi is the warmest place we’ve visited; it felt like it was in the eighties during the day, in January.

I didn’t ring any bells, but I did stand before the central shrine, press my palms together and bow. The most interesting thing in that shrine was on its floor: the yoni and linga symbols but with a snake (a fertility/ goddess symbol), specifically a cobra, wrapped around the linga, rearing its head and sticking out five tongues. Rana said, “Each tongue represents one of the ancient elements: earth, air, fire, water, and space.” Also, in the tubular part of the yoni was a baby cobra, looking something like sperm. This was all made from a dark metal.

Snakes and dragons are goddess symbols, according to various books I’ve read on goddesses and mythology. When you come across a myth in which some Mr. Butch invades and murders or chases away a dragon or serpents, that’s about rejecting the goddess and embracing misogyny, patriarchy, and patriarchal practices such as war. Examples are Patrick, St. George and the Dragon, and Apollo. Of course, such myths are smugly written from the goddess-rejecting, cootie-infested jerk perspective.

At the little Hindu temple, we also saw small shrines on the walls, representing death and a few deities. The Death figure was a black mother goddess with huge round eyes and crazy hair. Maybe Death has a thyroid problem. We stepped out of the little temple, thus getting out of worshipers’ way, and Rana showed us a shrine facing the outside of this temple and containing numerous yoni and linga sculptures draped with marigold leis and presented with marigold offerings on little leaf plates.

We walked away and could see people praying at other small temples or shrines close by, with their palms pressed together, and Ann delightedly commented, “They’re always praying!” A small stone ox, Nandi, the ox that Shiva rides, sat facing another temple; it is a common enough sculpture facing the front doors of Hindu temples. A few feet away we stopped to look at a shrine with steps down to a linga circled with marigolds and shiny porcelain tile.

Rana said the fertility stuff is from a pre-Aryan religion that “got confused with Shiva and Parvati.” The goddess Aditi is the Hindu variation on Mother Earth or Gaia, and I am certain that she predates Hinduism by a lot, simply because the original religion, across cultures, is centered on a mother goddess who represents the earth itself. Another aspect of Hinduism that I suspect predates the religion is how cows are sacred because they are goddess symbols; at least two Hindu goddesses are sometimes represented as cows.

We wandered out on a paved platform above a ghat Two goats were seated close together in a corner by a short flight of steps; one goat was black and the other white, and the smaller one was probably a baby. Near the patio was a small one-story building and also tall old buildings with elaborate facades and monkeys climbing around on them. I thought it would be odd to be aware of monkeys climbing around on the walls and balcony just outside your apartment.

We could hear chanting and drums and looked out in the direction of the Ganga. A long boat moved slowly in the water straight ahead of us, and since it was after dark, it looked as though the boat was floating in the sky. I had to look carefully to figure out where the black sky stopped and where the black water started; the main difference was the texture of the waves. To the right of the boat, down on the beach, stood a structure of some sort, I think a hut made of sticks and a thatched roof. We saw in front of it lights, a bonfire, and movement: this was where the celebration was taking place, and Rana explained that this ceremony is a tribute to the goddess Ganga and puts her to bed. It’s done every night. Sometimes even goddesses need someone nurturing to tuck them in.

To our left, I heard a horrible, squawking and shrieking noise, and I turned to see several monkeys running around on the white façade of a stone building with embroidery-like decoration. “It’s a monkey fight,” someone said. We watched as two of these monkeys came closer and got down on a roof to the one-story structure close to us, and Jennifer, who sat under the roof, moved away saying, “I’ve never had to move out of a monkey’s way before.”

We drifted on and descended steps till we stood straight in front of the festivities and could see the ceremony much better. When we showed up and sat down on the ghat, kids with baskets of flower offerings approached us to peddle their wares, and I told a girl we already did it from a boat. The offerings were just like the ones we’d had that morning: leaf bowls containing marigolds and candles.

I settled my attention on the shack and the group of chanters in front of it. Down below, in the ceremony, a row of people on the beach stood with their backs to us, and they clanged cymbals. There were other participants, but I couldn’t see them as clearly. The important thing was I could hear the repetitive music, which, although not gentle like the Tibetan chanting in Bodh Gaya, was nonetheless hypnotic. I gazed out at the water that melded in with the dark sky, while I listened.

The ceremony ended, and we headed back toward the cars. We took a short ride to a Mediterranean restaurant, where we sat down on cushions in front of low tables on a veranda. The roof was made of sticks, and wooden poles held up the front open end of the veranda. A guy from Palestine owned the restaurant, and Shantum introduced him to us. As he stood in front of our table, smiled and bowed, I smiled and bowed back while wondering if he felt homeless. Shantum ordered for us, a tasty meal consisting of rice, vegetables, baba ganoush, hummus, and pita bread. I asked for a banana-flavored laasi, a cool beverage made of yogurt; it turned out to be really yummy, tasting rather like a banana milk shake. While we waited for dinner, Rana continued giving us lessons.

Shantum, when he contrasted the British enthusiasm for history and archeology with the Indian enthusiasm for mythology, said that Indians take mythology quite seriously, even literally. They really think there’s a boy with an elephant’s head, and that some goddesses have six arms.