End of Program -- On to Varanasi

Hi everybody,

It's been a month since my last blog entry! My sense of time has changed dramatically since being here. Like a baby, I feel like I've spent so much time here when it's only been a semester. Yet, I feel like I was just writing my last blog entry. Lots of new experiences will do that I guess.

And more new experiences await. Today, the program officially ended. The majority of students left today to fly home from Delhi in time for Christmas. A handful of us, however, are staying for varying periods of time. Besides my friend Carrie, though, I'm staying the longest (until January 15).

Tomorrow, I head off to Varanasi with my friends Joanna and Aine. I visited there earlier this semester and look forward to returning. Now, I'll have more time to actually visit the Hindu temples, to find and practice with a yoga group, and (if I stay long enough) celebrate Christmas with good friends, visiting some of the few Varanasi churches and seeing how Hindus celebrate Christmas. After Varanasi, who knows? A lot of ideas have come up, but if I've realized anything from being in India, it's that nothing goes according to plan. So, I've made vague plans which I expect to get demolished and re-directed by a far more instructive twist of fate, than just my vague notions of what would be cool to do in India. One more likely plan is to return to Bodh Gaya from Jan 4-15 for the Kagyu Monlam, one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist gatherings each year.

So, what's happened the past month? I won't pretend like I can cover very much; this blog continually under-represents all that's happened, but I'll try.

First, my retreat was very special. Quite possibly one of my best, and most meaningful experiences, here. Retreats are especially difficult to talk about, I think, but maybe you might ask me about it when I get back. Nonetheless, it was very grounding when India has been very uprooting.

Dharamsala was either fun, weird, distracting, enriching, surprising, mind-blowing, miserable, or boring depending on whether I was eating at yummy restaurants, freaked about by the plethora of tourists/Westerners/Buddhist-consumer culture, buying crap myself, talking with rinpoches, monks, or other interesting friends like translator, Acarya Nyima La (who I spent multiple dinners with talking about Buddhism), meeting the Karmapa, or being bed-ridden with diarrhea :(. Probably the most interesting person I met, and spent a lot of time talking to, was a Scottish doctor who has trained in and practiced multiple healing traditions - Tibetan, Tradition Chinese/Accupuncture, Aryuveda, Indigenous Amazonian, and others. It was nice to eat really good food, although I did get sick, and to have access to more upscale capitalist amenities. In general though, I'm glad to have moved on. The presence of Tibetan Buddhism there is quite special, but the touristy area I stayed (McCleod Ganj) had an overly consumption-oriented atmosphere that excited me initially, but turned me off in the end.

Probably the most significant opportunity I had there was to meet His Holiness the Karmapa. A little background: the Karmapa is one of the highest institutional leadership roles in Tibetan Buddhism. The most important three are the Karmapa, the Panchen Lama, and the Dalai Lama, whom you might know better. Although the Karmapa is only 23, he's considered to be a re-incarnation of several high beings in addition to the 16 previous Karmapas before him. The Karmapa position is actually older than the Dalai Lama's, and when the Dalai Lama dies, many anticipate that the current Karmapa will take on primary leadership. The tradition considers him to be a fully enlightened being, and an audience with him is considered to be highly auspicious (though not extremely difficult to come by if you can make your way to India). He's only visited the U.S. once though, so Buddhists in the West have an especially hard time meeting him.

Anyway, through some friends' contacts, I and a friend got to sit with him for 10 minutes at his monastery in Dharamsala. Then, when we returned to Bodh Gaya, the Karmapa had actually come around the same time, and I got to meet him again! This time with the whole Buddhist Studies group. It's always difficult to see through the pomp and circumstance of Tibetan Buddhism, because there's a lot, especially around the Karmapa, and it's really beautiful and colorful. Aside from that though, I gained a lot out of my Q and A with him. He's a real character, though in a completely different way than the Dalai Lama though. At the least, the wisest, most spiritually intense 23-year-old I've ever met. Although his words haven't seemed profound at the time I hear them, they keep on re-occurring in my head at the most interesting and insightful moments after the fact.

Anyway, after Dharamsala, we returned to Bodh Gaya for another week to present our projects to the group and to wrap up the program. It was great to see everyone again, and I can't wait to reunite with many of them back in the states. My friend Matt and I strategically arranged for him to keep my Buddha statue in Chicago so one of us has to visit the other. The last week has been restful too, and I'm ready to step outside Buddhist study and to explore more of Indian culture, religion, life, and chaos. Wish me luck. Please forgive any grammatical errors, and I'll try to blog more frequently.