Dhamma Giri

In case anyone was wondering, I'm alive and well--since my last post, I went to Dhamma Giri, the principal meditation center in my tradition, and rather unexpectedly was asked to give service for the Teacher's Self Course, which ended two days ago. This was welcome since it's what I wanted 6 or 8 months ago, when I was told there were plenty of servers already and no space for me. After that disappointing info, I talked to several of my friends and teachers at the Vipassana Meditation Center in MA about that, and they urged me to go to Dhamma Giri anyway: it's a very special place, and I should see it even if I can't take part in the course. One teacher, Barry, recommended that I make it reaaaally clear that I'd like to serve, by emailing again from the US, calling when I get to India, calling again after my 30 day course to let them know I'm coming, and then showing up and offering to serve.

I did all this, and when I got to the last step and talked to the course manager Sudesh at Dhamma Giri about serving or sitting, he said (nicely) "Absolutely not. You see, the course is very full. You should have applied months ago." I reminded him that I had tried and been rebuffed, but that Barry had recommended the strategy outlined above. Sudesh responded, "I don't know why people like Barry keep giving that advice. It's really not the way things work here." Maybe not, but the next day Sudesh saw me and said, "Did they tell you? We lost all our Spanish interpreters--they're either sitting the course or have left. So we want you to serve." I ended up translating one sentence into Spanish for the entire course, and watering plants the rest of the time, but I was happy to be doing anything in that marvelous place...sometime I'll post a photo of the pagoda, an amazing structure housing over 300 individual meditation cells...

By the way, "Teacher's Self Course" was something of a misnomer this year. The teacher, S.N. Goenka, is 80 years old and suffers from a variety of ailments. Instead of meditating for his course, he took his doctors' advice and had back surgery. Fortunately, it went well and he was at his home in Bombay recuperating by halfway through the course, with his back pain much relieved. Though he didn't make it to Dhamma Giri at all, he did ask that a list of all students and servers be sent to him so that he could send each of us metta (loving kindness) from Bombay.

The upshot of my serving the course on very short notice was I couldn't get to a computer to let people know what was going on. So, I'm well and now starting on travels in north India to the sites of the Buddha's life. After that I'll be going to Burma (Myanmar, if you want the government to be happy with you) the day after Christmas. I doubt there will be any kind of computerised contact from Burma, since the government has an approved list of websites and neither yahoo.com nor blogspot.com are on it. I say this just so you know in January that I haven't disappeared into a dungeon where I'm being strenuously persuaded to divulge my connections with the political opposition. No, no, the trip will be about meditation and dhamma only.

My Diwali experience

I had the good fortune of being put in contact, by American meditator friends, with a meditator in Jaipur, Anil Mehta. He was kind enough to pick me up at the bus when I came for my course, give me a tasty lunch at his home, and bring me to the meditation center. After the course, I called him up and he invited me over for the following day, which happened to be the first and principal day of Diwali. I expected maybe another lunch, to meditate for an hour, visit a bit, then go back to my hotel. It turned out to be quite a bit more.

When I got there (having been picked up at my hotel by one of the workers from Anil and his brother's workplace), Anil's sister in law Vinu was putting the finishing touches on lunch, which was rice pulau, spicy dal, a cabbage dish, fresh chapatis, raita, and some really good Indian sweets. Indian sweets, by the way, are extremely sweet but have a subtle flavor from the careful use of spices. Afterwards, Anil, Vinu and I meditated together for an hour, then Anil and I chatted for a while, looked at books. Not feeling well, Anil went to lie down but urged me to make myself comfortable and stick around for the evening.

I did, and thus witnessed this Jain family's Diwali, including the preparation of their altar, under the charge of Anil's dad B.D. B.D. has sat one Vipassana course, but decided that he was happier with devotion and worship of gods and saintly people than this practice. Accordingly, he maintains an altar with various photos of saints like Sai Baba, statues of gods, sacred writings, etc. Diwali being a special occasion and a family occasion, the altar was set up with a thin mattress in front of it for the family to sit on during the puja (worship), and B.D. carefully selected a postcard with images of (if memory serves) Lakshmi (goddess of wealth), Parvathi (consort of Shiva), and Radha; a medallion with an image of Sai Baba; a statuette of Ganesha, the elephant god; along with setting up incense, dye/paint, and other necessaries.

In due time, I sat down with the family, from the two apartments on this floor of the building, to start the puja, with the women all dolled up in special saris and the older men dressed in pure white traditional kurta pijama (that's the long roomy shirt with matching pants). B.D. officiated, chanting from sacred texts, while me and Anil's brother Sunil took some photos (sorry, I'll have to get them put on a disc later to show you). While it was a serious worship service, at the same time, there was a light-hearted feeling, with all of us laughing and joking around, and people other than B.D. also taking turns doing some chanting or singing. Later, in the apartment next door where Anil's sister and family live, we did the same thing and the 16 year old daughter brought out some Christian hymns in English from her Jesuit school to sing with me and friends who had stopped by.

All of this activity included much food, some of it in the form of prasad, or the blessed food (Indian sweets in this case) that had been offered to the gods and now was to be consumed by their devotees. Not realizing at first that food would be an insistent theme for the entire remainder of the evening, I filled up on the delicious sweets the first time around. Next door, more prasad was passed around; then there were snacks, a light meal of yogurt and a deep-fried something plus poori (deep fried bread) and a bean/lentil dish, all pushed with relentless hospitality that I didn't want to refuse for fear of being impolite.

After playing with fireworks with the kids outside (some boys from the building had a box full of what seemed like quarter sticks of dynamite they kept setting off about 50 feet away from us, without any malice but even so, it was painful and I tried to plug my ears every time one was about to go off), we all piled into two cars and headed off to another part of town to visit Anil's uncle, an architect who had thoroughly redesigned the interior of his house after buying it. I was made to feel even more extravagantly welcome here, if that was possible, as though I were the guest of honor--photos were taken with me, and everyone followed me through the house when I asked for a tour, joking with me and listening to my comments with interest. Of course, I was practically forced to have more snacks. As Sunil was giving me a ride back to my hotel, I seriously feared that I'd have to retch out the window, but fortunately I was able to save self and hosts from such drastic embarassment, leaving only pleasant memories.

Diwali in Jaipur

Admittedly not great photos, but you get some idea of Jaipur and how things are gussied up for Diwali, the Festival of Lights. The photo on the right is of one of several gates into the old walled city of Jaipur. On the left, inside the walled city the various streets are called bazaars, lined with small, sometimes miniscule shops from which shopkeepers and their helpers aggressively push their wares, at asking prices about 5 or 6 times more than reasonable ones. The lights down the length of the bazaar give the impression of a ceiling, but it's actually open to the sky.

from left: bus with "Horn Please" on back; autorickshaws in traffic jam; bicycle rickshaw


No travelogue on India would be complete without commentary on traffic and driving. The roads in India teem with all manner of wheeled and bipedal transport, oh and also cows (sacred, of course), pigs snuffling through piles of garbage on the side of the road, sometimes goats. Bicycle rickshaws, which are three-wheeled single speed bicycles with long chains that drive (just barely) a seat with space for two or more if you cram people in, are abundant, at least in the touristy area where I've been in Jaipur. If they're lucky enough to get passengers, these contraptions share space on the road with auto-rickshaws (motorcycles converted into three-wheelers with enclosed passenger space), cars, trucks, lots of motorcycles, busses (tourist or ordinary city busses), and pedestrians threading their way through the traffic to cross or just walking in the street to avoid the slow, narrow spaces called sidewalks, where depending on the locale you may be aggressively lured into shops to "just have a look". On the main drags there are numerous beggars as well, children, adults, elderly, handicapped.

But I deviate from the subject. The most prominent feature of the Indian roads is the noise: horns blast continuously, making at times a tremendous racket. Usually, this is by no means due to ill-tempered drivers and aggression; rather it's an accepted and even encouraged aspect of driving behavior. Traffic is chaotic, to say the least, with lanes only nominal, suggested locales for travel. In practice, vehicles go every which way, crossing lanes and swerving wildly to avoid slow movers and pedestrians, who if they want to cross must often use the technique of slowly stepping out in front of traffic to make it stop bit by bit. So using horns is seen as a safety measure, so much so that busses and trucks and autorickshaws often have the words "Horn Please" delicately painted on the back of the vehicle. Perhaps needless to say, Indian traffic statistics are pretty grim in terms of accidents and fatalities (but don't worry, I only ride with the SAFE drivers...).

When I first came to India, I went on a day-long tour of Delhi and at that time was shocked into full awareness of the liberal use of the horn. Later, I asked my hosts in Gurgaon if that happens everywhere you drive in India, and Rahul said, "No, like on your bus to Jaipur, it won't be like that. That's a good road, a divided highway, so they won't be honking all the time." When I boarded the bus for the 4 1/2 hour trip to Jaipur, it quickly became apparent that at least in this case, Rahul was incorrect: the bus had a loud, healthy horn which the driver used, and I'm not exaggerating, at least once a minute for the entire trip. Let's just say I didn't catch up with my sleep, even using my earplugs.

Speaking of sleep, I think I'm gaining the useful skill of sleeping through noise. At my current hotel, all kinds of noise wafts through my window at all hours of the day and night. The first night, there was construction going on not far away until 3 or 4 in the morning; then, at about 5 AM, a couple of temples or mosques (I'm guessing the latter) started emitting LOUD amplified calls to prayer or some other devotional sound, and do so every morning. Then there's been Diwali, the 3 day (or is it 5 day?) Festival of Lights, during which it's customary not just to string bright lights all over buildings and streets, but also to light off fireworks. Everybody does this--it's not so much an official big fireworks display (I didn't see that at all in Jaipur) but rather a surround-sound experience of firecrackers, bottle rockets, and what sound like quarter-sticks of dynamite, from sundown until very late, 2 AM maybe. I could even sort of sleep through that.

More later...

Dhamma thali

On October 30 I finished the 30 day meditation course in Jaipur. It was an inspiring experience in a beautiful place. I'll forego the opportunity to harangue you all about how great my meditation technique is. Let's just say it's a technique that works as a science of mind and matter to purify the mind of negative habit patterns that cause problems for us and those around us. It's free from sectarianism and dogma and anyone is free to reject any part of the theory until they prove it to themselves through their own meditation experience. If that's attractive to you, check out more info at www.dhamma.org.

What I remember best about the course, aside from the meditation, is the peacocks, which live in large number in the dry forestland around the meditation center. They are big, goofy, beautiful birds, which I only saw a few times due to the meditation discipline of keeping one's eyes downcast, not due to their shyness. On the contrary, they hung out right next to the meditation hall or near the residences, making their loud and outlandish noises. As a meditator, one disadvantage I have is that I'm easily distracted by sounds, so having a whole new set of birdsongs took some time to put aside. I tend to analyze birdsong musically, being a musician with some understanding of music theory. Peacocks, when they get in a tizzy about something, often make a kvetching sound like very large kitty cats meowing to come inside. When more contented (at least, this is how I'm interpreting it), they make a sound like a low pitched blast on a truck horn or a trombone or saxophone, followed immediately by a second tone more than an octave higher (for you musicians, it's usually a 9th or a minor 3rd above the octave). I had no idea what this was when I first heard it.

The meditation center hosts a bunch of other wild or semi-wild things including many other, less flashy birds and numerous insects. Black ants lived in my toilet bowl while the meditators calmly shared the outside drinking water taps with bees busily sucking up water. Occasionally this last thing gave me the willies. I also saw salamanders and a 6 inch lizard in my room a few times. Then there were the monkeys, which I didn't even realize were there until halfway through the course when I glanced up and saw some (William is feeding one next door at the Hindu temple after the course). Later I walked past some families on the stone path and they barely moved aside.

The Center is a beautiful place, with stone pathways and low trencadis walls made with ceramic pieces (like Parc Guell in Barcelona), and a lovely pagoda building with Burmese bell (see photo below). It's in a little bowl-shaped valley formed by the dry hills surrounding it.
After the course I came to the city of Jaipur, an absolute contrast. But more on that later, if and when I have time.

Meditation course

The meditation pagoda at dhamma thali, the center in Jaipur where I sat a 30 day course, ending October 30.