Yatra

The 3 Cabinmates

From Sarnath I took the Vinishawatha Express back to Delhi, an overnight journey of 12 hours.  Luckily I had some interesting cabinmates to pass the time.  Jacques was Frenchman from outside Grenoble who had moved to Himalayan India to become a Buddhist monk. 

Jacques had just come from Sarnath to see the Dalai Lama.  He had some great stories about Dharamsala  where the teenagers join the monasteries in hopes of moving to the US or Europe.  Apparently there's a real drug problem with the next wave of Tibetan and Nepalese monks, and they're more concerned with learning English than Buddhism.  "But what will they teach when they move the to the US?" asks Jacques rhetorically in his think French accent.  "English?" 

To deal with problem, the monasteries are just accepting more monks - communities are expected to double from the hundreds into the thousands this year.  "If there are 3 or 4 very good monks in a monastery of 3 or 400, then it is very good."  Yikes -- talk about quality control.  Also, a lot of the inductees are from the West like Jacques.  So Westerners and the Tibetan/Nepalese are using the religion to switch places, hmm....

My other cabinmate was Mareka, a thirty-something lady from Finland who was disenchanted with her life as a corporate marketer and traveling the world.  She's going to Holland after travels to visit a friend, a florist, she met on the road.  I laid down a good plug for the Cass School and the profession, odds are now like 20 to 1 she restarts work arranging Leather Leaf and Baby's Breath bouquets.  Also, and this was so eery, she had been in Ithaca last year and is cousins with the lady who runs Pangaea, a restaurant in town I've been trying to get to.  Now I've traveled to India for the perfect excuse.

My last cabinmate, and probably the most interesting to me anyway, was an Indian girl, unfortunately I didn't catch her name, who was pursuing an MBA in India.  She was a first year and it was great to hear about the industries and fields she had to choose from.  There's some overlap with the US, but she decided not to pursue a degree in the US because it was too expensive.  Interestingly, her family was top of mind in the job search.  She wants to move near Delhi so her mother can come stay with her before she gets married. 

When Mareka asked about the (now outlawed) Caste system's impact on current marriage arrangements, our Indian cabinmate believed it was still very prevalent.  Parents call the shots, even if it's not an arranged deal, literally a deal given the dowry and wedding expenses. Yahoo! personals appeal to women in search of husbands, not dates.  "What if you want to marry someone else?  Or get a job on your own?"  Mareka asked.  "Why disobey?  She cared for me, she brought me up."

Religious Trees

Peepal, Bo, Bodhi, Banyan, Coconut

They're all mentioned in the history of Buddhism.  How do you keep track?

Sarnath is the site of the Supreme Siddarhatha Gautama Buddha's first sermon, after he achieved Enlightenment under a Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya not too far to the East.  I drop in on the same day as the Dalai Lama's arrival and the place is brimming with excitement.  There are busloads of Japanese tourists and ricksaw streams of backpackers. 

I duck into a small Nepalese art shop where a few artisans painstakingly paint miniature Mandelas and scenes from the Sutras.  There's a small permanent pilgrimage community here that represents every major country where the religion is active.  Each country has a temple supporting a small community of monks. 

In the early 20th C. a prominent Follower took a sapling from the Tree of Enlightenment and planted it in Sarnath.  Today the sapling has grown into a magnificent gnarly trunk and lush canopy, with the Buddha's first sermon in various languages embossed in bronze plaques under the tree. 

The actual site is a complex of ruins from the 4 - 6th C. AD.  It reminds me of archaeological sites of Ancient Yerevan and the Babylonian ruins in North coastal Syria --- the remains of lots of walls and strange mounds, Stupas, that range from the knee-high Votive high to the towering 180-foot high Dharma Stupa.

Apparently H.G. Lovecraft wrote a horror story about the place called, "The Doom that Came to Sarnath." 

The temple hands are all running around setting up for the Dalai Lama's visit.  Here they're using the same floral product my mother uses in her shop to hold birds of paradise and other flowers next to a golden buddha... Never thought I'd see a box of Oasis in India!

Train of Enlightenment

"Life is all about trade-offs." -Me

"That's a very American saying." -David, a fellow traveler

I've got a 2nd class ticket to Varanasi aboard the 16-hour overnight Kashi Vaniswatha Express. We're riding about 1,000 km across Uttar Pradesh. My sleeper car companion is a Japanese guy who's on his way to Sarnath, the nearby site of the Buddha's first teaching after he attained Enlightenment.  He has been to India 7 or 8 times on religious pilgrimages. I learn the Dalai Lama will be teaching in Sarnath next week.

Mahsou tells me of his visit to the US. He has been to more cities in my home country than I have, but never my home city. He has studied and meditated in Sante Fe, Boulder.  We talk about Buddhism, specifically about good and bad teachers, Karma, and, of course, the DL.

"Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries tries to communicate always sounds foolish." -Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

My new friend shows me his beautiful Japanese copy of The Celestine Prophecy.. We discuss how Shirley McClaine, in her spiritually-themed autobiography, is probably a bad teacher.

Mahsou is clever, perhaps Zen.  He applies a few more high level paradoxes to the situation at hand.

Also, Mahsou is legit.  He worked at Apple Japan for several years in the late 90s, as a market researcher and then in corp dev.  I suspect he is a stats wiz.  Then he moved to the bubblicious Valley for General Magic (the forerunner of Palm Pilot), Dreamworks SKG and Oracle.  Oracle was not in sync with his mission to make the world better through products.. there's something famaliar to his story, even though it hasn't happened to me yet.

We arrive at the Varanasi train station the next morning.  Mahsou invites me to join him.  I consider a trip to hear His Holiness, but alas my old high school friend Chris leaves Hyderabad, the Silicon Valley of India, on the 22nd.  My choice is made.