Started the morning at 06:30 listening to U2’s ‘Walk On’ at near full volume on my iPod. I’m allowing myself music in between the formal sessions this morning. It’s sort of a reward for the last nine days of silence, I suppose. The Root Institute funds a health centre next door and we were given […]

(Day nine.) Yesterday, with earplugs in, I managed to stay absolutely silent right until the end of the day until the tai-chi man asked me a question. I didn’t want to be rude, so I answered him. Drat! I had failed in my twenty-four hour total silence attempt. Today presents another chance, in fact my […]

(Day eight.) No teachings for the next two days. Instead we will be increasing our daily quota of forty-five minute meditations from three to seven… By now, most of the class have moved from the classic cross-legged, straight-backed lotus position to one of support; be it sat on a chair, leant against the wall or […]

(This entry compresses days five, six and seven into one post, for brevity.) Last night the Venerable Tamir, our meditation leader, took us for a bit of out to a Festival of Light being held at the nearby Mahabodhi Mahavihara Buddhist Temple which was built right next to the Bodh tree — where the founder […]

(This entry condenses days three and four from my written journal into one entry for brevity.) “Where did all the Israelis come from?”, I pondered at 06:45 whilst meditating in a room of fourteen people, four of them Israeli — including the monk leading the trance. I’ve surprised myself. I wasn’t sure that I’d make […]

(Day two.) Three chimes of the gong at 6am meant that it was time to drag myself over to the gompa to meditate for forty-five minutes — the first of three meditations each day. Less tired than yesterday, I was able to remain mostly awake this time around, although had pretty much a calm, blank […]

(Day one.) I’m writing to you from the Root Institute in Bodhgaya, Bihar: a semi-monastic Buddhist Dharma center — for wisdom and culture. I’ll be spending the next ten days of my life learning about and practising Dalai Lama-style Tibetan Buddhism. Getting here was a big mission that began yesterday evening from a railway station […]

Agra, the site of India’s most famous monument–the Taj Mahal–is probably the dirtiest, smelliest town that I’ve ever visited. It is really, genuinely, disgustingly filthy even by the often appalling Indian standards. About a minute’s walk from the east gate of the Taj Mahal, the free public toilet was so utterly unclean that I had […]

We’re heading to Agra, the site of the Taj Mahal. The more we catch the train, the more delays we seem to suffer. Given that there’s currently three of us to share the cost, it’s only marginally more expensive to swap the train for a taxi in some places — especially after taking into account […]

One of the highlights of the Pushkar Camel Fair is the “Foreign Indian Bride Contest”, which essentially means that a bunch of foreign ladies are dressed-up in traditional Indian garb and paraded on stage before hundreds of hooting desert nomads and an equal number of crossed-legged Western tourists trying to make sense of things. Whilst […]