In the Land of Buddha

The pilgrimage is over and, despite our coughs, sore throats, gurgling bellies, and watery eyes, we're still smiling, at the moment, from the banks of the Great Ganga here in Rishikesh. Let me revise that - the outer pilgrimage is over: Lumbini, the site of his birth; Bodh Gaya where he attained enlightenment; Sarnath, the place of his first sermon; and Kushinagar, the site of his death and cremation. The inner pilgrimmage, which began in the vast oceans of beginningless time continues until we know for ourselves that what needed to be done has been done.

But back to this so-called outer pilgrimage, the one that traverses space and time and involves personalities and things. Though I wouldn't change anything about it, I still can't help but wonder if it wouldn't have been just as good (or bad) if we hadn't joined a tour group of Thai or Sri Lankan matrons in whose devoted midsts we often involuntarily but nevertheless happily found ourselves. Why not?

It likely would have made the border crossing between India and Nepal a lot easier, gliding effortlessly high above the mud and choking fumes in one of those immaculate deluxe buses with "TOURIST" emblazoned on windshield, protected from the chaos of the Indian road. Actually going from India to Nepal was the easy part. Having rented a car in Kushinagar, we jerked and splashed our way through Indian and Nepali immigration with hardly a hitch. Our driver, skilled in the art of expedited border crossings, greased a few palms so adeptly that at times money changed hands without us even having to stop the car.

Once in Nepal, with its spacious unpopulated fields of the lushest green wheat, towering Himalayan foothills, and refreshing rain we felt ourselves to be the luckiest people in the world, just breathing fresh air in relative quiet. Both of us had looked forward to our visit to Lumbini and we weren't disappointed by the spectacular peacefulness of the place. An absolutely huge park has been laid out around the main pilgrimage site - many hundreds if not thousands of acres. The space is reserved for the construction of monasteries representing the many Buddhist traditions. Many temples have already been built - still more are under construction. We stayed in the dharamsala (pilgrim's rest house) of the Gautami Nun's Temple. The beds were dusty, there was no hot water, and the electricity was out, but it didn't matter at all. These apparent deficiencies were hardly noticeable as we were warmed by the glow of candles and the celestial chanting of the young novices in the adjacent temple lapping against our ears.

That was how it was for me at least. Perhaps this is only how it appears to me now, having weathered the rude reentry into India and arriving safely in Rishikesh. After all, where is the sore throat that was torturing me that very same night, the sore throat that caused me to "snore like a chainsaw" as Juliann observed irritably the next morning?

From the vantage point of the New Vardan Restaurant, a delicious joint in front of the Gorakpur railway station (separated only by a shallow river of mud and cow shit), the crossing back into India was no big deal. Panir (cheese) butter masala, when prepared and priced well, has a way of making everything seem manageable. At the time however we were unnerved when, after being asked once already to switch taxis at the border on the Nepali side, our new driver ( an Indian youth of maybe 18) was waved aside by a group of somewhat menacing looking men. An argument ensued between the boy and the other men. Finally the boy said "Car broken - change car." He looked scared to me.

"We've already paid - no more money," I said in a futile attempt to maintain control that I did not have.

"Yes yes," said the new driver merrily, "you are paying 100 rupees only."

"No way! Absolutely not!"

"Okay no problem, no problem."

Once in the new taxi, a second guy got into the front seat with the new driver which didn't put us at ease. Juliann, who normally has better intuition when it comes to this kind of situation, advocated that we bail out all together, eat our losses, and find another taxi unbesmirched by taxi mafia influence. I was nervous too, but the thought of conducting yet another negotiation seemed too wearisome. We made it to Gorakpur safely in the end, though I must admit I spent not a small portion of the two hour journey rehearsing different disaster plans. (Should Juliann wield the swiss army knife while I do the swinging and kicking? Or should I fight with the pocket knife while Juliann distracts them by feigning insanity? Perhaps making strange incantations followed by boasting of our generous offerings to Kali might be enough to make them hesitate before deciding to kill us.) We thought of many scenarios which could explain what happened at the border and then dropped it, realizing that truth was likely something entirely different.

I said, the Lumbini-Gorakpur leg of the journey ended with a nice cup of chai and good cheese butter masala. Of course, if we had switched taxis, we surely would have convinced ourselves that we had averted untimely deaths. Isn't this how we lead our lives? Imagining that we did the right thing or the wrong thing in this or that scenario and only then to make the fatal mistake of believing it? And yet these are just stories that we project onto the formless stream of our experience, stories that we pretend are true and then forget that we made them up in the first place. It could happen to you, you know. It's been my experience. I suppose these stories - these myths - are the floating currency of my life, anchored to nothing but themselves, buoyed by inattention and forgetfulness. A friend of mine once said that he thought we cannot escape our own mythology. Maybe. Maybe not. What would a mythology that leads to the unravelling of all mythologies of the self look like - from the inside? The same question could be asked in a slightly different way: if there are more or less skillful ways of relating to one's experience (more skillful = less anguish), what is the zenith of this kind of skill? What would it take to master it?

What I really wanted to talk about was toast. In India, if it's on the menu, it doesn't mean that it's available. And even if the waiter says they have it, it doesn't mean that it can be ordered at that particular moment. And even if the person next to you has ordered it, it doesn't mean that there will still be toast when you order it. Even if you ask if it's available and the waiter says it is, that doesn't mean that you can expect it to come on the same day. All it means, as far as I can gather is that if toast is on the menu, it only means that there is a potential for toast. I can hear my dad's voice as I write this: "you went all the way to India to have a plate of toast?!" Be it toast, nan, rotis, chipatis, parathas, papadams, or puris: nothing is certain. Even if you may get exactly what you asked for, it may no longer be what you want.

Juliann and I laughed all afternoon after overhearing a conversation between a German woman and a waiter after her set her breakfast down on the table.

Lady: "I ordered zee American breakfast. Where is zee rest?"

Waiter: "That's all."

"Ont zee menu it is says coffee, mango juice, eggs, toast, butter and lamb. Where is zee lamb?"

"That's a mistake - jam."

We laughed, not only because we think we're so great, but because it seems as reasonable to assume that a lamb chop will materialize with a plate of eggs as a ramekin full of jam. It could happen. No matter how skinny an alley is in Varanasi you just never know what can come around the corner: a herd of water buffalo, an auto rickshaw packed with people, a kid throwing dye on your new white kurta, two preternaturally white stallions, a river of sewage, a funeral procession. It's in places like Varanasi that suggest an ordered chaos at the heart of all things that, were we able to comprehend it fully, either liberate us or destroy us - or possibly both and almost certainly neither.

The journey to Bodh Gaya in mid February: through the open windows of a spectacularly decrepit public bus to the Howrah Railway Station in Kolkata...how to describe this...Imagine a corridor four lanes thick with 20 foot walls on either side, absolutely choked with every kind of man-powered and motor vehicle belching dark plumes of exhaust, everyone trying to move at the same time into nonexistent space. Bicyclists and pedestrians, pedalled and hand drawn rickshaws struggling at the margins, often millimeters from the great hulking masses jerking and pushing all around them. Everyone is on their horns continuously which, combined with the knocking roar of the unmuffled engines, raises a cacophony of truly hellish proportions. Between the roadway and the walls, countless families of five, ten, or more - men, women and many children - eking out the most miserable kind of existence in collapsing hovels of plastic and cardboard built atop piles of garbage, huddling together around fires, filthy, half naked, and starving judging by their gaunt stares.

After an hour of fighting for our very breaths (poor us!), the walls disappeared and we found ourselves crossing the Hooghly River on the Howrah Bridge, a gleaming steel suspension bridge, with countless people streaming over the walkways in two great rivers carrying everything in huge bags, tied loads, doors, or pieces of machinery on their heads, in their hands, on the backs of bicycles.

Safely in the train station, we were followed by shoeshine boy for more than an hour as we waited for our train to Gaya. I was seized in the grips of an immense stinginess which prevented me from seeing obvious solution to the problem - just get my boots shined. But I just wanted to get away from it. This boy - probably 16 or so - had a unnervingly vacant stare that he trained on us with a relentlessness and eeriness of Bartleby-esque proportions. Wherever we went he followed. A group of Indian men at one point detected our irritation and, in an attempt to help, surrounded him threateningly and started yelling. "This is getting ugly I thought." Fortunately, the boy looked at them with the empty gaze and simply stood his ground, saying something I couldn't understand but which must have been something like "I prefer not to move." The men with their indignation just melted away and the three of us stood there. Eventually another fellow agreed to a shine and the episode ended just as quickly as it began.

The arrival in Gaya: mobbed by auto rickshaw drivers all accusing each other of cheating us. ("Cheating man! Cheating man!)

The auto rickshaw from Gaya to Bodh Gaya: certain that death was imminent, I found myself strangely relaxed as we careened through dark potholed streets at improbable speeds, slamming over speed bumps and swerving to avoid collisions with goats, cows, children, and women carrying huge bundles on their heads. As the sun rose, we could see countless villagers relieving themselves along the sandy banks of the Nairanjana River. I really wanted to look on the bright side but I had to admit I was disgusted. It wasn't how I thought it would be.

Thus I relate some impressions of our time in India. I feel that I've said very little here. Trying to put it into words reminds me of a passage from Herman Hesse's "Journey To the East" when he's talking about the difficulty of handling the past:

Where is the center of events, the common standpoint around which they revolve and which gives them cohesion? In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning
might ensue and that it can in some way be narrated, the historian must
invent units, a hero, a nation, an idea, and he must allow to happen to this invented unit what has in reality happened to the nameless.

Here are a few more photos and notes.

We had planned to spend three days in Bodh Gaya. We ended up staying over two weeks. Why? In short, great atmosphere, great people, great talks, and we were too sick to leave.

Each night under the tree there were wonderful Dhamma talks from illustrious monks (Venerable Dhammasami from Oxford Buddhist Vihara, Ajahn Sujato from Australia) followed by informal discussions. The Burmese monk on my left Venerable Khemasara, a gentle soul. On Juliann's right is Subhata, who happened to be sitting next to her during our retreat at Panditarama Forest Center in Burma.

A Thai pilgrim taking a break during the Pali chanting festival in Bodh Gaya.

Uncertainty is the rule. Who could have predicted that when we went out one morning for breakfast in Bodh Gaya, the temple where we were staying would have been transformed into the set of a Bollywood-style Bihari movie? The director graciously offered us chai and seemed quite happy to give us a summary of the plot: country boy meets country girl, but during marriage ceremony a crucial ritual is not performed because the boy must go to work in the city where he has an affair but ultimately realizes he must return to his betrothed.