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Merry Christmas: Karaoke Christmas song
Posted by daveb on December 25th, 2008
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a very special Christmas Karaoke feature. On this special day, Santa has momentarily magicked-us from India to Singapore to record this Christmas song for you. Don’t worry folks, he magicked-us straight back to India after the recording so you’ll continue to be amused by our Indian antics tomorrow.
This is what happens when you put two people, one of whom genuinely thought he could sing, into a Karaoke booth for the first time together. We later learnt that it is possible to adjust the key of the backing music, which might have made a big difference. Or maybe not, you decide…
We hope you enjoy the song–or at least are able to identify it–and consider giving a little donation to your favourite charity so that at least a little good comes out of us publicly and permanently humiliating ourselves on the global stage.
Merry Christmas everyone; thanks for your support, comments and readership — it means a lot to us and helps us to keep going when things get tough (ref: tomorrow’s post on India…)
With love, DaveB & Squiffy
STOP PRESS: At time of writing, it’s Christmas Eve and we just appeared live on GMTV in the UK. Not to spoil the adventure, or confuse our dear readers too much, let’s just say that we were on a beach somewhere in the southern hemisphere. My parents e-mailed some photos of the TV, here they are as proof of our fame! (Also please note that I am not the skinhead bloke stood behind The Squifter on her close-up picks… I am just a face in the crowd on the third picture.)
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Bodhgaya: Temple tour and India parcel post
Posted by daveb on December 24th, 2008
Yesterday, after leaving the Root Institute Buddhist centre, Claire and I went for a farewell drink with Andrej and Freddy from the course. Today I woke up with one of my most horrific hangover in living memory. In India, Kingfisher beer is king and they make two types: Premium and Strong. The restaurant served the bottles wrapped in newspaper, presumably so as not to alarm the local monks who try not participate in intoxication of any kind. Initially unbeknown to me, the beer was of the strong variety which I think contains about 8% alcohol, from very hazy memory. Beer bottles here are double the size of those we sip in the UK; over 600ml. Squiffy reckons that I drank about five and, not being able to remember too much from the experience, I have no grounds to appeal.
We spent the day exploring the streets of Bodhgaya, taking snaps of the many amazing temples and structures built here by admiring monks of various orders. Squiffy became a miniature celebrity with the visiting armed forces. She’s sure that the photos will be held-up as trophies back at base and we made our polite-but-firm escape as the arms and hands looked as though they might wander! This place really is amazing and a definite highlight of India for me. The begging at this time of year is relentless: according to one trustworthy source, beggars come from far and wide to be here as it’s pilgrimage time for the Buddhists, who increase their good karma by being generous to those in need. The street-vendors don’t get such a easy ride though — imagine trying to sell tat to someone was has taken a vow of silence!
Squiffy amassed a handful of Buddhist books which she wanted to post home. Cue a hilarious two hours getting the books shipped. In the West, we would buy a cardboard box and take it to the post office, who would electronically frank it before sending it off. The same process in India looks a little different: (please excuse the strange numbering…)
- Wander four stores to find a shopkeeper willing to relinquish control of an old cardboard box.
- Shopkeeper inspects and gives his measured opinions on the items to be posted.
- Shopkeeper attempts an up sell, offering chocolate.
- Take box to local tailor who inspects and gives his measured opinion on the items to be posted and then cuts box down to size.
- Over the next 30 minutes, tailor stitches together a white ‘pillowcase’ into with he slips the box and hand stitches the corners down for rigidity.
- Using biro, recipient’s address is written onto box-shaped pillowcase parcel.
- Parcel is taken to local post office counter, turn is waited and the merits of a queuing system is explained to several locals.
- Squiffy is invited behind the counter to discuss postage requirements.
- A further 30 minutes passes as five men check five lists in an attempt to calculate the postage price.
- Meanwhile, armed guard admires the handy work of the tailor in producing such a beautiful pillowcase.
- DaveB giggles at wall mounted poster offering philatelic collection, dated eight years ago.
- Five men eventually agree on price and indicate the price to the man in charge of dishing-out the stamps.
- With a completely straight face, nearly two whole sheets are offered to Squiffy who must now wet each one and attach to cloth.
- DaveB falls about laughing as Squiffy attempts to find space on the cloth for all stamps.
Parcel is placed onto empty shelf in office and we are ushered out of the building, told that it has now been ‘posted’.
We’ll let you know if it ever arrives.
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Introduction to Buddhism Course: Claire’s take on it all
Posted by daveb on December 23rd, 2008
I was planning to let Dave do all the blog writing about our Buddhist course. However, having just read his posts, I feel compelled to write. You now know in great detail about the food we ate, his views on religion and how difficult he found the retreat. What you don’t know is that I, and many others, whilst finding it sometimes boring or challenging, did get some positive things from our time there.
I too am non-religious, but feel Buddhism, taken as a philosophy or way of life rather than as a religion, has many useful techniques to offer us busy capitalist people in the West. My first brush with Buddhism was on a weekend retreat in Surrey, where I learnt little about the teachings but instead learnt to meditate. The main mindfulness meditations, on that course and this one, were in no way religious and instead simply focused on our breathing, to help us be present in the moment, rather than worrying about the future or clinging to the past. This is especially useful for me, a person who likes to plan and wonders what we’ll be doing tomorrow – sometimes I miss out on the good stuff today. Western doctors and psychologists have also shown that mindfulness and being in the calm state of meditation can have significant positive effects on health, whether one believes in Buddhism/spirituality or not. It’s not all about sitting cross legged and chanting as you might suspect ;o)
Yes, Buddhism does encouarage you to be a ‘good person’, for reasons of compassion, enlightenment and re-birth in a good realm. But we don’t have to believe in any of these concepts, sometimes we just need a reminder to be a bit less angry with the Indian touts, and to have more compassion for the ubiquitous beggars. It’s also good to be reminded that getting frustrated in the train ticket queue and losing our temper with the fifth person trying to sell you something, is bad for your own mood and health more than anything. And I’m grateful for the opportunity to be reminded of these things that I already know but have little space to think about in everyday life, whether travelling or at home. For me, this was a unique opportunity to reflect on my life, even if I didn’t get answers to any of the big questions, to be grateful for the good things I have and have the space to work out what I need to live a more positive and healthy life. I intend to make meditation part of my daily routine, not for any religious reasons, but because it helps me to recognise my stresses, quieten my mind, and live more for each day. I don’t find it easy and my agitated mind often makes me frustrated, but as with everything, it takes practice.
So, although there were times I was so bored and frustrated, or when the teachings seemed far fetched, or when I desperately wanted a chat with someone, overall I appreciated my time at the Root Institute as time for me and my well-being. It’s interesting to take techniques and ideas from other cultures and integrate them into your own life in a useful way. Thanks guys.
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Root Institute, Bodhgaya: Leaving home
Posted by daveb on December 22nd, 2008
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 a tour of the practice to see the great work being done in the community. With silence now broken, the class sat down together and shared a pleasant farewell lunch — finally getting a chance to learn a bit more about each other and to wish each other well on our various paths in life. Certainly it seems that everyone is leaving the site with a number of new tools in their toolbox and in a positive state of mind. If any of my former classmates are reading this, I’d love to hear from you in the comment box below.
So am I going to become a Buddhist monk? Well, no. Really. Not at all. I don’t pretend to have the answers to the unanswerables. And I’m OK with that. We learnt in the classroom that there is a Jack and a Jill. But maybe there is also a Joe. I am he. One thing I am sure of, though, is that after leaving this place, if only for a while, every laugh, joke, conversation, taste, movement, sight, sound, smell and touch will seem a little more precious than it was before. I’m a weird way, I guess I’m grateful to the Root Institute for that.
And so I walk out into my world of suffering with a feeling of elation. For now at least, in my life of ignorance I look forward to the fleeting moments of impermanent joy, no matter how short-lived they may be. Full volume, take it away Bono:
And love is not the easy thing.
The only thing that you can bring,
Is all that you can’t leave behind.
(cue guitars)
Walk On.
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Root Institute, Bodhgaya: The deafening silence
Posted by daveb on December 21st, 2008
(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 last chance before my time at this Buddhist retreat comes to a close.
It’s now 10:53am and we’re approaching the half-way point of our final full day. I can’t tell you how excited I am at the thought of getting out of this place — clearly my ability to meditate is poor by in-room standards; it’s pretty much all we did yesterday and will do today. My meditative state has gone from one of dullness (think: blankness) to one which ponders quite a lot, although little to do with anything on our teacher’s script.
Since wearing earplugs, I’ve noticed that I’ve started to grind my teeth in a rhythmic fashion, I guess to fill the sonic void. Over the last few days in class, I noticed that I wriggle about a lot — often rocking back and forth like a madman. Squiffy has long chastised me and my ‘IT leg’; the rapid bouncing of my right leg when sitting on a chair. Maybe I really do have the synovitis dance, like my mother used to say?
Lunch is only an hour away and this (and going to bed) are now my favourite times of the day. The anticipation of whether the cooks will infuse any flavour into today’s dishes looms large on my mind. Fingers are crossed for a repeat performance of yesterday’s [l]pepper sauce!
The opening lines to U2’s ‘Walk On’, have popped into my head more than a few times now and I’m dying to listen to the song on my iPod. Right now, I cannot. Doing so would break my last attempt at total silence.
Lunch was a reasonable pasta with tomato sauce. Nothing on yesterday’s test match, but still a marked improvement on prior offerings. Oh, the biscuits were a nice touch too. It was vegetable soup for dinner. Not their best, but not their worst either. Squiffy magically produced a bag of Walkers salt and vinegar flavoured crisps and–after teasing me with them for a wee while–kindly shared them with me. I made exaggerated arm movements as I brought each godlike sliver of fried potato to my mouth, ensuring that our friends on the next table could see our booty. (Don’t worry, I did offer them around afterwards.) I think that I’ll save my 600ml bottle of Pepsi for the farewell lunch tomorrow.
In the evening, Tamir replaced the final meditation with a ‘light offering’ instead. Tea light candles and incense sticks were placed on and around the various stupas, statues and monuments around the site, to wish our family and friends well. It all looked very pretty and created an opportunity for me to take a few final atmospheric photographs.
Writing this, I’m now safely back in my room for the rest of the evening. Unless I talk in my sleep, it looks like I’ll have been successful in spending a complete twenty-four hour day in total silence. Even in a mini-monastery, I am rather surprised at how difficult it is to stay totally, absolutely silent. Even the strictest of students–not to mention monks–routinely break into whispers and at times fully-blown conversation. I feel rather proud of my achievement. Further so, the fact that I have spent nine days in near-silence. Don’t ask me what I’ve got out of it, just yet though!
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Root Institute, Bodhgaya: Food wars
Posted by daveb on December 20th, 2008
(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 lying on the floor. Given there will not be any teaching nor discussion groups, I thought that it be the best opportunity for me to spend a whole day in total silence to see if I hear anything from within. My silence will be more than just not speaking — I’ll also be abstaining from hearing and reading. I’ll be wearing earplugs to deaden the external sounds and I’ll continue to ignore the one third of my backpack dedicated to my library of business books that are crying-out to be read.
Our teacher, Glen, made a passing comment the other day, “I don’t know about you, but when I go on a retreat I notice that the food seems to taste better the longer that I’ve been there”. This surely is due to the reduction of the external ‘noise’ we usually suffer and thus our ability to really appreciate each and every moment increases. Either that, or the cooks simply make better food towards the end of the course. Until now the food, whilst plentiful, has been almost utterly tasteless. The length of the queue for the condiments has equalled that of the food itself.
Today the cooks played a blinder: vegetable dumplings, salt and rosemary sprinkled roast potatoes, herbed vegetables and a quite fiery green pepper sauce. Bliss! Luckily, I was one of the first people to discover the sauce and so sat in a position from which I could observe others’ reactions as they made the discovery for themselves. (I gave Squiffy a non-verbal heads-up because she really doesn’t do spice). My favourite moment was the contemplative Ruski lad being momentarily broken out of his spell to urgently douse the flames in his mouth. I think I just witnessed someone being fully present and ‘in the moment’. He spent much time timidly spooning-off the remaining sauce, in which he had draped his entire meal, to the edge of his plate. Each subsequent mouthful was clearly a new battlefront as the little pepper troopers advanced along his tongue.
So does the food taste better as the course progresses because of our calming mind? Or do the cooks wait until the eighth day to unleash some flavour on our now tame taste buds — and, boy, what a flavour! I spent the next three meditations hearing my quietened mind ask the mind-reading cooks for something other than the usual flavoured water for tonight’s supper. Here’s hoping.
(Hours later.)
Cheese cobs! Cheese, tomato and cucumber cobs! Not a drop of watery soup in sight! This meditation stuff actually works! Right… next I’m asking for a case of beer to appear under my bed. “Om mani padme hum…”
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Root Institute, Bodhgaya: Trip to the Mahabodhi Mahavihara Temple
Posted by daveb on December 19th, 2008
(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 of the Buddhist movement achieved enlightenment. The temple is an awesome sight, brought alive by the chanting, drumming and meditating of the hundreds of monks brought together from their various orders to this one special place. I feel honoured to have witnessed this celebration.
I observed a delicious moment over the top of my milk tea this afternoon: A plain-clothes Westerner tried her hand at the turning the prayer wheel in the wrong direction. She managed to successfully rotate the huge drum two revolutions, backwards, before a nearby Tibetan monk could hastily saunter over (monks rarely run) and slow the wheel until stationary. Of course, in his silence he could hardly shout over to the ignorant tourist (ignorant, in the Buddhist sense of the word). I pondered whether, in those two short revolutions of the drum, two hundred million prayers had come undone*. No matter, two corrective revolutions later we were back to where we had started. The embarrased Westerner clasped prayer-hands and made a sheepish retreat. Don’t worry chick, your motivation was at least virtuous so no harm done I’m sure.
I had a useful one-to-one with Tamir about how to improve my meditation technique. At the start of the course, I falsely believed that I was a natural at it. Turns out that sleeping on-the-job is not the same as meditating and won’t bring me any closer to enlightenment. We also shared with each other our [very] differing views on Buddhism — don’t worry, he asked; not me! Tamir is truly, genuinely a stunning bloke whose careful wit relaxes and reopens everyone’s minds after our sometimes hard-to-accept afternoon teachings. Particularly memorable was tonight’s gem, just prior to our evening’s meditation, after the class was left grappling with the Buddhist concept that nobody/nothing exists in independence of everyone/everything else in existence, he said “So now you’ve discovered our plans to steal your identity and force you to shave your heads and become Buddhist monks… We had better do only a light meditation, in case the police are outside… ‘A monk told me I don’t exist’…” and then after several minutes of silence, expecting some life-changing, earth-shattering insight he continued, “…I can’t think of anything to say…”. The formerly straight-backed lotus-positioned room curled-up into heaps of giggles.
Next day, Tamir played a blinder with his cigarette lighter. “I think you’ll be quite shocked when you see what it can do”, he giggle-grinned. In the darkened gompa, a button-push on his lighter and a projection of Osama bin Laden was thrown onto the wall. (The subject of meditation was equanimity.) Claire couldn’t stop wondering where one buys a lighter that projects an image of Osama. Tamir is a living legend.
* The giant prayer wheel at the Root Institute has one hundred million “om mani padme hum” mantras embedded within it using microfiche technology. Thus one revolution is equivalent to saying one hundred millions prayers. Sounds like cheating to me!
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Root Institute, Bodhgaya: Where did all the Israelis come from?
Posted by daveb on December 18th, 2008
(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 it this far. I agree with many of the Buddhist teachings, in terms of the behaviours of individuals, the masses and the way the mind works. For me, I just wish it wasn’t wrapped-up in all the religious fanfare. We learnt that all the answers are within us and we–alone–can achieve our our individual enlightenment. So why the fifteen-foot prayer wheel? And why does our meditation leader perform an awkward-looking stand, kneel, touch-forehead-against-floor genuflect three times each time he enters the gompa?*
Having said that, today I’ve decided to take a more relaxed view on Buddhism. Whilst I don’t agree with much of the content, from external appearances I’d guess that many of the folks in my daily discussion group are happy to pick and choose the bits that they want — instead of, like me, getting hung-up on the snippets that they don’t like. On a simplistic level, I’d say that Buddhism attempts to guide the individual to lead a better life; to help them to do the right thing and not the wrong. For my own understanding of right and wrong, I blame good parenting — but I acknowledge that not everyone has been fortunate to get this for various reasons. If Buddhism provides a construct in which people feel better about themselves and lead a more positive life, then who am I to rain on their parade?
Lunch was almost better today. A sort-of vegetable chilli con carne with rice. Unfortunately, from the taste I’d say that the chef sneezed as he was timidly sprinkling salt from the two kilo bag over the pan and accidently emptied the lot into mix.
The afternoon teaching session provided a bit of light relief. The class was shouting out the opposites of the “ten non-virtuous acts” to create a list of “ten virtuous acts” that as budding Buddhists we must perform. So “killing” becomes “preserving life”. “Stealing” becomes “giving”. My joke: The opposite of “sexual misconduct” is surely “sexual conduct”. For a beautiful moment the room fell about laughing, before the words “respect one another” were committed to the whiteboard. Well, it was worth a try wasn’t it?
The evening soup was much better tonight. Bits of potato had been added to give the broth some much-needed bulk and I only had to empty half the pepper mill to induce some flavour. The dessert took a turn for the worse, though. Tonight’s offering was “a bowl of warm milk”. In class today, our teacher commented that as Buddhists walk along the path of enlightenment, they become able to see into people’s minds. When he looked at mine, I apologised for the mess up there and explained that I hadn’t tidied-up for a while. The joke was completely lost on him, but it’s worth opening up my thoughts to the cooks I suppose:
Dear Chef,
If you can mind-read, please may I request the pasta in warm, sweet milk that you did the other night. It was the best dessert thus far and I would welcome it again. Oh, and Claire doesn’t much like papaya so maybe you could offer a different fruit for breakfast to make her happy? Also, I don’t want to come across rude, but the soup really needs some attention. Perhaps you could offer something other than soup for dinner one day? Even a cheese cob would do.
Yours sincerely,
DaveB’s mind.
The final meditation tonight was on death. I find myself either fidgeting or snoozing during my attempts. Either way, not really focusing on the matter in hand. I gather from her demeanour afterwards, Squiffy had a hard time with the meditation. I offered to break silence if she wanted to talk, but she ushered me away. I hope she’s OK. (She later told me that it found it useful.)
Also, I’m happy to report some improvement to my sleeping environment. Sick of waking-up with an aching back and shoulders, I’ve taken matters into my own hands and raided two further ultra-slim futons from other (unused) beds. I now have a triple decker atop the lousy wooden frame and I reckon the upgrade puts my bed on par with a broken sofa provided by a skinflint landlord in student digs. Right now, it’s bliss!
* Sometime later in the course, these question came up. Our teacher indicated that the prayer wheel and genuflecting (my word, not his) were used by some as “triggers”, i.e. tools to aid one’s internal journey along the path to enlightenment, and could not replace the journey itself. (Claire adds: To clarify, Buddhism does not have a God. As I understand it, “prayers” are about wishing others well and taking time to reflect.)
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Root Institute, Bodhgaya: Yoga with Arnie & stupa cleaning answered
Posted by daveb on December 17th, 2008
(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 mind throughout. Tamir, our meditation leader, kept whispering words to the effect of “don’t try to quiet your busy mind, it cannot be forced” down his necessary microphone. It seems that I might have been born to meditate as, whilst my mind is usually buzzing with thoughts, opinions and riffs, when I ask for calm, it seems that I get it.
After an acceptable breakfast (muesli, bananas, bread, the most sickly red-flavoured jam), I once again found myself cross-legged in the gompa — this time listening to Glen explain the fundamentals of Buddhism. A note of caution to readers here: Don’t expect to learn anything about Buddhism itself in the scriptures of this blog; I’ll only be writing about my personal experiences of my ten days inside a mini-monastery — both good and bad. If you want to read about Buddhism, grab a copy of Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up: A Practical Approach for Modern Life
At 11am, it was time for yoga with Thomas, a beany-thin pony-tailed, gentle man from Munich who–quite brilliantly–shared the same vocal chords and accent as Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was only the second time that I had tried yoga*. “Dat’s id… Breed deeply… Veel di abdumin rise and vall… Az you condinue do breed…”. I was quite quite pleased with my second attempt at yoga. Bendy Thomas notwithstanding, I was the only male in a room full of reasonably fit chicks, managing to hold my own right up until the balance-on-you-shoulders-and-point-your-legs-vertically-in-the-air position. Which didn’t go at all well, even with Thomas holding my trembling ankles.
Lunch was to be the finest meal of the day (dry falafels, dry rice, bread, hummus), after which I squeezed in thirty minutes to perform my ill-chosen ‘karma yoga’ (read: chores). Each of us had to pick a couple of daily duties from a list, e.g. sweeping, fetching drinks for the teacher, banging the gong. By the time the list got to me, there were only a couple of unallocated tasks left, one of which was “stupa cleaning”; so I put my name down. Turns out that a stupa is a memorial sculpture displayed in memory of Buddhists who have demonstrated their own impermanence. It also turns out that stupas attract more than their fair share of bird poo. So yes, “stupa cleaning” amounts to little more than cleaning bird poo off memorial stones. Great choice, Dave!
The class was split into two groups and sent out to discuss the morning’s teachings; for an hour we were allowed to speak, so long as we kept our words on-topic. I don’t know whether it’s got anything to do with my vow of silence, but every time I opened my mouth something controversial popped-out. More controversial than my friend Vivian Street giving his talk on charity to the proverbial Great Ormond Street hospital (sorry, private joke, couldn’t resist). Brilliantly, before those most offended were able to formulate a cohesive response, the gong rang and we had to return to silence until the next day. If I’m lucky, next time I’ll be in a discussion group with Squiffy: I’m going to point out all her annoying little habits (like leaving the toilet seat down) just a few seconds before the gong rings, leaving her smouldering away in her silence for the next twenty-four hours!
The next two meditations caused me physical discomfort. Sitting cross-legged, perfectly still for three-quarts of an hour is hard to do anyway, but really difficult with ravenous mosquitoes on the hunt for blood. One of the house rules is no killing, so all we can do is slowly brush them away in a zen-like manner.
Dinner was–again–a very dreary flavoured water (“soup”). During a brilliant break of the contemplative silence, one of the monk’s mobile phones beeped to alert him to an incoming SMS text message, which got me thinking: which airtime package does a monk sign-up to? Presumably a contract with many texts, but minimal talk-time minutes. Is the handset pre-configured to silent mode too?
* The first time I attempted yoga was at home in London with Squiffy and her MTV yoga video. I’m ashamed to admit that I gave-up right away as I snapped the video’s accompanying ‘yoga band’. Picture an elasticated skipping rope: Lying down, I was to tuck the rubber strip under my feet and pull the ends towards my waist. As the band tensioned, I warned Squiffy that it would snap if I pulled it any further. “Nonsense man”, she said and demanded that I fully straighten, else I wouldn’t get the benefit of the stretch. Needless to say, the band snapped, recoiled and whipped me on the forehead. And Squiffy fell about laughing. The court case against MTV continues.
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Root Institute, Bodhgaya: Enter the monastery
Posted by daveb on December 16th, 2008
(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 near Agra. We got to the station a good two hours before the scheduled arrival of our train and spent the time despairing over how dirty the place was. At our first bench–before we moved to another–I counted five rats within a twenty metre radius. The train was an hour late (as always), but once inside we settled into our top bunk in our air-conditioned sleeper carriage without too much fuss. About ten hours later, onboard food vendors woke us with their vocal offers of chai (spiced tea), crisps and–curiously–children’s comic books. More curious, however, were the four Hari Krishnas who boarded our carriage, drummed and chanted their way down the aisle to the opposite end and then simply disembarked without further ado.
Arrival at Gaya was not as easy as I had hoped. Our guidebook describes this region as “seriously troubled by poverty, [with] a lack of infrastructure, inter-caste violence, corruption and general lawlessness… [with] frequent kidnappings, murders and acts of banditry”. Needless to say, we were very keen to get to the Buddhist retreat in Bodhgaya with the minimum of fanfare; the route between the two towns is “dangerous bandit territory”. The rickshaw touting began even before we left the train platform and was extremely persistent. For the first time since Africa, I physically moved a tout aside. Another followed our tourist office-arranged car for over a mile, pulling up aside us on the road and shouting at me that he’d get us there cheaper!
As we entered the Root Institute entrance gate–which was under armed guard–we stepped into a tranquil world a million miles away from the India to which had become accustomed. The sign on the door indicated that the Root Institute is a “semi-monastic Dharma centre”, leading Squiffy and I to ponder whether we would need to to undertake a day or two’s silence as part of the course… It soon became clear to us that during our ten days here, we were to be silent for nine of them…
The silence started that evening just after dinner (watery vegetable soup, two bread rolls and a sugared ring doughnut) which was a bit of a shame because we didn’t get a good chance to learn much about the other people on the course and those we did meet were so interesting that it felt strange to know that we couldn’t ask too many more questions. First there was Tom (Israeli) a Camden Town market trader and reforming door-to-door oil painting “artist” — he passes-off Chinese factory-made paintings as his own work and sells them to anyone that’ll open their door to him. Andrej (Slovakian) a former London derivatives trader and his partner Freddy (British), a budding entrepreneur. Both have recently completed a two year MBA and are squirelling themselves away in Buddhism for couple of weeks to delay their inevitable return to the real world*. Christine and Deborah (Austrian), Netta (Israeli), Kara (Canadian), Tracy (American), Tina (German) and finally Iris (Israeli), who insisted on being called by her Hindi name, Riya. Riya is the group’s self-elected union representative. Whilst sharing out the daily chores, she refused to perform any sweeping unless a full-size broomstick was provided. The half-size grass brushes hurt her back and she implored everyone else to boycott all sweeping until management provided more suitable equipment. Go lady, that’s the spirit!
(Gong rings.)
Inside the gompa we met our Dharma teacher, Glen (Australian), and our meditation/spiritual guide, Tamir (Israeli). We attempted our first meditation: one in which I didn’t try to hard to do anything other than rest — I was so tired from the journey to get here that I knew trying to concentrate would be futile. After forty-five minutes in a state of awake-sleep, I was rather pleased to be given the opportunity to enjoy a proper night’s sleep on a bed; albeit a thin futon sat atop a rickety wooden frame. It’s better than being sat bolt-upright. If it weren’t for the two hours I’ve spent writing this diary, I’d have been asleep by half-eight.
We’ve been asked to refrain from reading non-Dharma material, listening to music and using computers throughout the course, so I’m keeping this handwritten diary instead. Darn that imitation Parker pen refill that I bought in Abu Dhabi; it’s running out of ink already and we’re not allowed to leave the site until until after the course ends. Let’s hope they sell pens in the onsite shop, else this diary is going to be a very short one.
* The real world; at least as we in the West would know it. Buddhism holds a different view on the nature of our ‘true reality’.
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