Jed In India

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2007-07-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hello viewers

Thank you for looking at my India blog. I've been back from India for a year, so I'm not posting here anymore. Below you will find a LOT of pictures. However, I urge you to also scroll back through the archives to see the writing I actually did in India.

Also, check out the blog at www.pinkscopies.org
Best
Jed

Ready to go home

2006-05-30T06:21:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Delhi now, my flight out of delhi to bangkok is late on thursday night. I get home to Boulder on Saturday. Tapavan was the last destination, the big goal, it was giving me energy, and now I'm a bit deflated, disgusted with India, can't see past her dirt and her beggars anymore, like I used to. I know there's beautiful spirit here, but now I just need to get away from here in order to see it. I got a nice hotel room here, with a tv, and I'm just watching HBO and playing drums. Some unpleasentness with my ticket home, will be worked out tomorrow. Tomorrow I also want to see the modern art museum here, which should be enjoyable.

Homecoming is really central to this trip, this trip was in a sense entirely homecoming; the formation of a wider worldview, streinghth, tolerance, to take back to my 'real' life. I will not spend my entire life travelling; the idea of a home gives my life meaning. How can I know what I have experienced until it is viewed from afar? How will I know how I have changed until I am thrust back into my old environment, with old habits and old temptations? But that won't really happen until september, when I go back to Rhode Island. Which I am also highly looking forward to. That fact though highlights that my trip isn't really ending--almost as soon as I get back, I will be thrust into a brand new experience, a new life, which I hope will be thrilling and rewarding and a lot of hard work. The search is not yet complete, the vacation not yet over.

Home makes this trip a work of art in itself, an object to be viewed and digested by american souls, my own, and not only my own. Each blog entry a small homecoming, a removal from immediate reality, an encapsullation and representation. Immediate reality is only a small part of the game in India; meaning is everything, and meaning is given to art by the viewer, by the reader, and I have been the viewer and the reader of this trip, and you have been the reader of my interpretations. And this process will continue--I will post a detailed and comprehensive reccollection of my trip, complete with all the good photos I have taken, on my blog as soon as I get it done; give me time, it will take a lot of work.

So look out for that, final entry on the blog, with all my photos, to be posted a few weeks after I get home. I think I'll send out a mass email letting people know when I've posted that, but I can't promise you'll be on it, because I always forget about you.

After that, I think I'll start a new blog, a fresh start, not go back to the tired poetic terrorism, so I'll let you know about that.

So that's that. I'll see you in Boulder, or in California, or in Rhode Island, and I can't wait until that moment, I miss you muchly.
Om shanti
jed

Tapavan

2006-05-27T01:49:00.000-07:00

Ramram

Apologies for not updating the blog in a while. I'm sure you understand.

Yesterday I returned to Rishikesh from the most beautiful and meaningful part of my journey yet. Since I was in Varanasi, I have wanted to make a pilgramage to the head of the ganga, high in the himalaya, to understand how she is born and where she gets her personality from. My guru in Varanasi, Shukla-ji, had urged me to do it, and his spirit was with me in this journey where he has been absent from the rest of my independant travel.

So five days ago I took a miserable twelve hour bus ride from Rishikesh to Gangotri, through Uttarkashi. The roads were twisty, mountainous, and terribly repared, and typical of Indian busses, it was way overfull. I was fortiunate, though, to be at the front of the bus, so I was able to survive it. Crammed in the back of the bus was an isreali guy, who also somehow survived the busride, and we shared a hotel room in Gangotri that night. Early in the morning, after doing Pooja and Aarti (worship and river worship) at the temble of Ganga Mata, we set out on the road. It was he who first told me of Tapavan, the real destination, the real end of my road, high above Gaumuk glacier--he had heard it was beautiful but difficult to reach, and was determined to get there. I said that I was along for the ride, although I thought that my destination was Gaumuk, and would be satisfied with it. On the road, we met up with a Swiss guy, a Sweedish girl and a middle aged russian lady, and thus we formed a small herd of white people. This was to be the beginning of a much larger group. I had thought I was going to make the pilgramage alone and meditative, but it turned out well to have company, even if it did cheapen the experience in some ways. It made it feel a bit more like an organized school trip, but it was much safer and cheaper, and everyone was good people. We walked all morning to Bujbassa, and arrived at the ashram there at 12:00 noon, then just meditated the rest of the day away, I took my first freezing cold dip in the ganga there. At that point, the Ganga is a roaring mountain river, churning itself endlessly, and it can be dangerous. But this is part of her secret--as she churns herself, she purifies herself and mixes with the benevolent mountain herbs that grow along her banks. That night in Bujbassa we had a fantastic dinner, sitting on the floor with hundreds of hungry mountain Babas, chanting Jai Ram, Sri Ram, Jai Jai Ram from the bottom of our hearts, eating honest Dal Chowel--rice and lentils.

The five of us decided to all go in on a guide to Tapavan together, which was a great decision--after Gaumuk, the going gets rough and you need someone who knows the way and can save your life. But the Russian lady and the baba who runs the ashram in Boujbassa convinced us that our plan to sleep in Tapavan was folly, that it was impossible, and so I left all my stuff and my sleeping bag in Boujbassa. This was the mistake which was to define the rest of my experience. We walked out of Boujbassa emptyhanded, which felt pure and natural, like a baba man. We got to the head of Gaumouk Glacier in two hours, and it really is a beautiful sight. The ganga simply appears out from under a giant cliff of ice there, comes rushing full strength out of the ground. It certainly looks like the head of the river, but she had more secrets in store for me. We hiked up on top of Gaumuk glacier and over it to the foot of an increadibly steep slope, rockslides and scree, down which a stream of the ganga endlessly fell. This is Amar Ganga, the Eternal Ganga, which I have decided is the stream which lends the Ganga the loving and benevolent side of her personality, whereas Gaumuk glacier gives her her wrath. Even though Amar Ganga means immortal ganga, it sounds to me like love. Anyway, the only way up this steep cliff is pretty much the same way that the ganga takes down it, so we slowly made our way up, immensely hard work, constantly crossing over the waterfall, fearful of being swept away. It was a long steep ganga bath--it was a short climb, but one of the hardest ones I've done. I was glad I was empty handed. At that point.

We reached the top and were greeted with the most gorgeous sight I have ever seen: tapavan, the paradise, a simple green field wedged in at the foot of the monumental Shivling peak, hemmed in by glacial rock feilds. Tapavan means the place to do Tapas, meditation on the gods, and holy men have been living there for thousands of years, isolated from society meditating on Shiva. Shivling peak is the most spactacular mountain I have ever seen--it really looks like a Lingum, it stands completely strong and alone, erupting out of Tapavan just like the religous shiva lingums thrust out of their base, a phallus erupting from a womb. Amar ganga pours down the peak and through Tapavan, exactly mirroring the sacred offerings that are religously poured over the lingums in temples, flowing through tapavan exactly the same way. It's indiscribably beautiful, I'll post pictures when I go home, you'll see what I mean. Tapavan is at 4,700 Meters, about the same height as the peaks of the tallest mountains at home. This is where I took the most symbolically important ganga bath of my trip, in the ice cold Amar Ganga, enough to purify me for a homecoming. I collected ganga water in my last shampoo bottle, and found a rock that was shaped like a lingum to bring home. It was a gorgeous sunny day--the last week, all the peaks had been completely clouded in, but for the two days we were there, it was clear and beautiful--I couldn't help but pridefully think that the gods were actively helping me.

When we got there, we met the babas who lived there, one who runs a humble ashram and one who lives in a flimsy tent. They convinced us to stay there for the night, and it was truly the right decision--it seemed silly to work so hard to attain such a beautiful place, and then leave it in an hour. We had to stay the night. But I had only thin clothes and no sleeping bag. This was such a significant lesson to me; I have been carting around way way too much crap all around india for four months now, and the only night when i would have needed any of it, I fucked it up. This is exactly the story of my relationship with material objects--I'm just not good at managing them. But it was exactly as it should have been, because I felt more light and pure, I went to tapavan like I came into this world, naked. Not quite naked, but as close as is reasonable.

In the ashram, we met up with many more westerners who had been staying there a few days, including one American who had graduated from the University of Colorado. We spent the night all huddled around a small wood stove, with the baba who runs the ashram. I respect him for living in tapavan, but he wasn't exactly the most religous of babas. His meditation consisted of smoking a lot of Charras (hashish) and every twenty minutes he would belt out at the top of his voice "Jai Ram! Seeta Ram!" sometimes he would go outside and shout it off the cliff. Sometimes it would come out in belch form. The other baba, who was staying in a tent, was more spiritual, and spoke to us in good english about conciousness and god, inside and outside. But of course he directed most of his attention at the beautiful women in our group, it must get lonely up there in Tapavan. Ten years ago, Shukla-ji came up to Tapavan in search of a pure, divine Saddhu or Baba, a truly religous man. He spent a month searching the area with a german man who was writing his thesis on the topic. They couldn't find a single one that met their standards, after endless combing of that corner of the Himalaya. It's because we are now in the age of Kaliyug, the last age in the mythological history of man, when we are most impure and selfish and greedy. This is the beginning of the end, Hindus beleive, when we can't even rely on our holy men to be selfless and good. Not to say these babas weren't great people--they were--and they are certainly better than the ones that live off of tourists in Rishikesh.

So after the requisite hour of mediation, we all went to sleep in the same room. Those of us without sleeping bags huddled together under blankets, as close to each other as we could get. I spent the night spooning with a crazy Czech named Vladimir. It was a cold and uncomfortable night, I can't lie. But when I went outside to piss, I saw the most increadible night sky of my life--in the cold two minutes it took for my urine to unfreeze and leave my bladder, I counted five shooting stars. Incredible. I survived it happily, and in the morning there was a beautiful sunrise and delicious porridge, chai lovingly made slowly by one of the Isrealis, and a slow departure from Tapavan. Most of the people there left in one big group that day, and so the group I was travelling with swelled to maybe ten people. But they were all great people, and it was a good walk all the way back to Gangotri. On the way back, I bathed in the ganga at Gaumuk amongst the ice flows, and it was cold and I was reminded of my mortality. A swiss girl died two weeks ago when she got too close to the glacier. We slept in Gangotri, and in the morning, took shared jeeps back to rishikesh, much more comfortable and quicker than the bus, and not much more expensive.

So here I am now, in Rishikesh. That was the final and ultimate destination of my trip, now I'm just waiting to get home. My flight is June 2, and I think I'm not going to be able to move it sooner. So I'll slowly work my way back to delhi this week, maybe go to Haridwar on monday or tuesday, spend a night there, then go to Delhi and stay somewhere other than PharGanj, see the art museum there, try to get better feelings about delhi which I now hate, and then fly home. If by any maricle you are reading this from LA, and will be there on June 3, shoot me an email, yeah?

Ram Ram Seeta Ram, Jai Jai Ram, Jai Ganga Mai, Om Nama Shivaya, Hari Om, etc. These things have comprised half of my vocabulary over the last few days.

Hari Om
Jed

GangaJi

2006-05-20T03:25:00.000-07:00

What is it about this river? The universal love of her waters binds North India to itself, her followers eternally crowd her holy banks to caress her freezing, dirty flow, because it is she who represents eternal purity and truth. Some say that natrual minerals and herbs flow in her waters, which can be scientifically proven to be inherantly pure and purifying. That if you keep a vial of the dirtiest Banarsi ganga water, in fifteen years, it will be as clean as mineral water. She feeds 80 percent of Indian farms, the breadbasket of south asia, she feeds in immense population.

Her waters eternally flow down Shiva's locks, she is his eternal soulmate and parasite, he is her eternal prison, in which her immense power is contained, because only he can contain her. Alone, she would wash away our dirty society, leaving only pure, conciousless nature, pure being. But her trickle down Siva's matted locks keeps her confined to these banks, where all may come to be united wtih her. ANd while shiva contains her, she cools his firey wrath, the supreme power of his tapas which would otherwise destroy us all.

How does this river have such a strong personality, that all, even forgeiners, who spend time on her banks fall in love? Is it all cultural, if we worship an object does it gain importance, only and forever in our heads? Or is there something inherant in her beauty and her waters?

I'm going to go take a bath in her, before it gets too cold.

Arrival in Rishikesh

2006-05-19T02:00:00.000-07:00

I've come to rishikesh, which is a gorgeous town 25 km above haridwar. It's the home of a lot of new age spirituality and hippy westerners, but I expected to be more put off by it than I am. There are a lot of indian tourists here to, come to see the ganga and escape the heat.

I'm tired, but I'm in one of those moods which doesn't allow me to sleep through the day; it's cool and I feel like I should be out, and the momentum of travelling keeps flowing through me--I can only think of my next stop, Uttarkashi on the way to gangotri, and how and when I should get there. I feel like rushing into the hills as soon as I can, and then maybe having time to chill out in Rishikesh on the other end, before I go home. I still don't know how to get there, though, that was the goal of this afternoon. I'm going to go try to find out. Or maybe I'll just go back and take a nap.

Haridwar

2006-05-17T02:48:00.000-07:00

So here I am, Haridwar, maybe after Varanasi the second-most-holy city in India. It's great and crazy, a huge center for Hindu pilgrims, especially at this time of the year--it's in the hills a bit, so it's much cooler. It has the feel of a giant shiva/ganga themed waterpark--the ganga flows just fast enough to make it fun, without rapids or rocks, and the water is cool and benevolent. It's a party all day every day, jumping off bridges into the ganga, bodysurfing, excellent Indian food, and lots of fried food, lots of blasting Hindi pop, crazy saddhus (holy men) constantly smoking ganja (why do you think it's called ganja? seriously, this is where it comes from, origionally. But it's strictly for saddhus, followers of siva). There are very few western tourists here, because they all go to their separate home along the ganga, Rishikesh. Every night, crazy crazy herds of people crowd on to the main ghat for the evening pooja, river worship, to put the Ganga to bed for the night. There's lots of chanting and fire and splashing and cheering. I'm staying in Prem Nagar Ashram, maybe 2.5 km outside of the main city, in a beautiful facility right along the river. The wife of the leader of the ashram is the Prime Minister (or whatever) of the state of Utteranchal, where I am now, in the congress party, and the ashram is sort of a seat of political power and negotiations. I'm the only forgeiner there, and my hindi is still almost nonexistant, so I just sort of walk in with a goofy grin on my face and say my namastes and then hide shyly in my room.

Although this place is great, I've made the decision to go to Rishikesh on Friday. I had earlier said that I want to avoid rishikesh because it's too touristy, but my thinking changed, and it sort of represents yet another shift in thinking about myself, tourism, and this trip around India. The reason that is easy to give for this move is that it will be easier and hopefully cheaper to set up the trek to Gangotri, which is important to me, and it will be cheaper if I get some other tourists to go with me. But there's also another reason, which it took time to admit to myself. I like the company of other tourists, and although I'm fine being alone, it's kind of boring. Things are more fun when you don't do them alone. A lot of tourists who come to india (certainly not all of them, not even the majority) are pretty good people, and interesting. Making Indian friends is great, but it's not exactly the same--there are communication problems, and always the awareness of con artists hanging over my head. I like talking with people who understand the words that come out of my mouth, who share a somewhat common background and experience, especially now, when I've been in India so long (by my own standards) and I'm beginning the countdown to my flight home, ready to go home. Tourists have an experience of India that is more like my own that we can talk about, most Indians haven't travelled around their own country, and their experience of India is hard work and family, as everyone's experience is. But this was sort of difficult to admit to myself--I'm supposed to want to fully engage with the culture, that's why I am here. I feel like I've done a good job of that, could have done better, but I got much deeper into India than most tourists do. But I think it's a product of travelling alone--if I had someone great to share this experience with, I'd probably stay in Haridwar and have an amazing time.

But I'm supposed to hate tourism in india, and I do...it's really the effect that we tourists have on the Indian economy and mentality that I hate; certainly there should be positive ways where forgeiners can enjoy the beauty and vitality of India without creating this really negative dynamic of greed and mutual exploitation. It requres an awareness of the problem on both sides--if a place decides to market itself as free of touts and commission men, such as Orchha, we could maybe foster a more positive relationship between the two sides.

So Rishikesh on Friday, then to gangotri, however I can work it out.
Om Namah Shivaya

A moment to think in Paraganj

2006-05-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

So I've landed in a few hours in Paraganj, the hub of Indian backpacking, in Delhi. I'm going up to Haridwar this afternoon to meet up with the Ganga. Paraganj is, perhaps, the sole reason that India has a reputation as a dirty place. It's the dirtiest place I've ever been, and almost every westerner who comes to India goes through Paraganj, and gets sick on old food and repackaged tap water in the shitty resturants here. So I try to get in and out as quickly as possible.

Orchha was an absolutely gorgeous peaceful place, with breathtaking forts and palaces and temples. It was a small town, and wisely markets itself to tourists as a place free of touts and scams, and it was. There was a river with water in it, so I got to spend the hot part of the day sitting in it, like a water buffallo. This is where the Queen of Jhansi single handedly defeated the British in 1857. It was the capital of the Rajput state of Jhansi since the 1600's, and the Rajputs left behind lots of gorgeous forts and temples, which I could have spent weeks exploring. But I had already made plans to get up to Haridwar, and I don't regret only spending one day there.

This next portion of my journey, the last one, has been on my mind since early in my time in Banaras. It's really meaningful to me, and I hope it will bring resolution, purity, and clarity to my trip before I return home. Haridwar located right where the Ganga comes rushing out of the Himalayas, it is second only to Varanasi in it's holiness, and far surpasses it in natural beauty, or so I have heard. It's an hour away from Rishikesh, which is the local tourist city where the Beatles lived for a time while they wrote the White Album. I hope to avoid rishikesh completely. I will spend a week in an ashram there on the banks of the ganga, and then I hope to go up to the head of the Ganga, at Gangotri and Gomouk. Gangotri is where the temple at the head of the ganga is, where it comes leaping out of Gomouk glacier, but I hope to also hire a guide and trek up to the glacier itself.

I want to tell the story of the ganga here, because it's been really important to my trip so far, and it is really important to the citizens of Varanasi and Haridwar.

Ancient india was devided into thousands of princely states, who often warred with each other. There was no political unity. A powerful and just new king ascended to the throne in Ayodia (later, the kingdom of Ram himself). The ancient tradition is, when a new king ascends to the throne, they send a horse with his flag galloping through all of India. As the horse passes through the various kingdoms, the kings decide if they will be allys or enemies with the new king; if they will be ally, they let the horse pass through their territory, if they be enemy, they capture the horse and wait for the King's army to come. As the horse was galloping though the kingdom of the Kysrias (translated, of course, as "demons"), the king had his minions capture the horse. Immediatly they became afraid of the just king's wrathful army, and so they hid the horse, tying it to a tree next to the spot where an ancient and divine sage was deep in mediatation. This sage had made a solemn vow that if anyone was to disturb his meditation, he would immediatly burn them upon waking. This was not a malevolent vow, it was just to ensure peace. After being in India, I understand that this is the extreme you have to go to to get a little bit of peace, a bit of personal space. So the demons quietly tied the horse to the tree near the sage, and quietly left. In the mean time, the King of Ayodia realized the horse had not returned, so he sent out his hundred brothers (of course he had a hundred brothers, as any good king does), to find the horse. After much searching, the brothers finally found the horse under the tree near the sadhu. In their igorance, they assumed that the sadhu had stolen the horse, and roughly awakened him. As they awakened him, he opened his eyes and immediatly burnt them all into a hundred piles of ash with his karmic energy. After a time, the king realized his brothers had not returned, and went out himself to search for them. He came across the sadhu, and the piles of ashes. As he was wise, he did not blame or find anger with the sadhu, he instead repented for his brothers' ignorance and begged the sadhu to tell him how his brothers might find salvation in death and be released from the karmic cycle. The saddhu told him that only the river ganga could clease their sins and grant enlightenment. At this time, the ganga was not on earth, it was in the domain of Vishnu in heaven. For the rest of his life, the king did deep penance to Vishnu and begged him to bring the Ganga on to the earth. He was unsuccsessful. His son, the next king, did the same thing, tried despritly to get the ganga to come on earth and cleanse the sins of his forefathers. Again he failed. Only the third generation, the king's grandson, did penance severe enough for Vishnu to pay attention. Vishnu granted him his boon, and the river ganga came on earth, flowing from the feet of Vishnu. But the ganga had so much divine energy, it was so powerful, that it washed over all of creation. It could not be contained, it flooded everywhere. Seeing the dire situation, Siva immediatly lept to the rescue and caught up the entire ganga in his dreadlocks, keeping it firmly there. And so again, the king had to pray deeply to Siva, to get him to let the ganga out of his dreadlocks and on to the earth. After he prayed enough, siva said "I will let this ganga out of my hair, but how will we then control it?" the king said "I will control it" and siva began to slowly slowly let the ganga out of his dreadlocks, creating a divine, powerful, and very skinny waterfall (high water pressure, low diameter, you understand). The king lept in his chariot and began to ride, and the ganga followed behind him dutifully where he rode in his chariot. He rode all down the Himalayas, the ganga crashing behind him, over the ashes of his forefathers, granting them salvation, through all of current day Utteranchal and Uttar Pradesh, by Kashi (varanasi, land of salvation, ancient city of shiva) and eventually all the way out to the bay of Bengal.

So I am going ot go to the the place where Shiva let the ganga out of his dreadlocks, creating a waterfall which purifies the water right out of the himalayas, churning it with many natural herbs, and we'll see what is there.

From Khajuraho

2006-05-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

As I was rolling in to Khajuraho this afternoon, the heat broke and it rained! clearly the gods are smiling on this place. It's beautiful and some of the people here are good--I chose to trust this boy from the old village here, and he's been taking me around, I met his family, nice honest hardworking people--father's a farmer, uncle makes trinkets for tourists (which is why he took me there, obviously--nothing is pure). Tomorrow morning we take a bicycle ride to a waterfall, then see the temples.

I want to amend what I've been saying about tourism a little bit. I'm not pure, and I'm not above it--all of the places I go are tourist destinations. The gangotri plane is huge and hot and flat, and wherever there is something interesting, there is a tourist destination. Also, in places where they are expecting tourists, you are more likely to make local friends, like I did here. But the small ones, honest ones are best--like bundi and here. Pushkar was just bad because of the drug culture there, but otherwise, small towns with farmers, hard working people, these are the best places to visit.

OK I'm keeping my new buddy (who insists I call him India even though his name is Bharat) waiting.
shanti
jed

From Gwailor

2006-05-09T05:18:00.000-07:00

Hi all

I'm writing now from Gwailor, which is an interesting place. The city itself is a typical modernized Indian city--pretty affluent, from what I can tell. Towering over the town is a massive historical fort-the grounds inside the walls are probably two square KM. Inside it there are fifteen old temples and monuments you can visit on one ticket, and I had a very good day doing so. It was hot, so I went from one monument to another, napping or resting at each one for a half hour or so. The heat makes you slow. Right now it's hot even by Indian standards. It's 47 or 48 degrees every day, and I don't know what that is in farenheit, but it's hot as sin. Actually, I'm going to look it up right now. It's between 116 and 118 degrees F. I don't really mind it, usually I just do what I must and sleep through the hot part of the day, or just lay around and read. But today I was stuck in it--the fort is far away from the hotel. OK, while I'm bitching about the heat: I spend a hundred ruppees every day on water (one liter costs ten ruppees) and I still don't urinate. ever. I don't mind it as much as most of the tourists here now, and I don't even mind it as much as some of the Indian people; I think my body is built for heat more than cold, for some reason. These clothes really help--you have to wear giant baggy white clotes, as much cloth as possible, and a wet headcloth. It means that now my mind is stupid and I have nothing interesting to say on my blog.

I am also tired from zooming through jaipur and agra, which had sights to see but I didn't want to spend too much time in. Delhi, Jaipur and Agra form the "golden triangle" of Indian tourism, and most forgeiners who come here only go to those three places. And they are probably my least favorite places in Northern India. Delhi is what it is, it's got some nice culture and monuments, but it's dirty and polluted and huge and soulless. Jaipur might be considered nice, until you compare it with the rest of rajastan, which is breathtakingly beautiful, the people are hospitable and honest (some places) and it's charming. Jaipur is dusty, and the main palace is mostly closed because the maharaja still lives there. Agra is Agra--it's the taj, and nothing else, it's a huge dirty industrial city, with lots of communal tension/violence between hindus and muslims. There's a pretty good criminal sector there who prey on tourists, and many of the hotel rooms have faulty locks (I had to get the hotel guy to fix mine before I would go to sleep) so see the taj if you must, but get out. Basically, if you come to India, I would urge you to go a bit farther afield than the golden triangle--there are places which are closer or just the same distance from Delhi that are great.

Travel update

2006-05-06T23:51:00.000-07:00

So I'm in Jaipur right now, but I'm taking the evening train to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. I'm going to see the taj tomorrow morning at sunrise, and then go to Gwailor, a small city with a fort south of Agra, and then to Jhansi, which is the railhead for Kujaharo, which is supposed to have the best temples in India, with erotic designs on them, and then back through Orchha (perhaps) to catch a train to delhi from Jhansi. Orchha is just a charming small town, maybe worth a night.

So Jaipur, it's the place everybody comes when they come to India, on the golden tourist triangle of delhi-agra-jaipur, but it's sort of unimpressive to me. Maybe I would like it more if I had seen it before i saw the rest of Rajastan, which was fantastically beautiful. So I'm getting out a day earlier than I planned.

OK, more later, sometime. Sorry the blogging is getting more erratic.
peace
jed

more photos, ramblings

2006-05-04T05:12:00.000-07:00

Bundi Fort, From my guest house roof

View from my Hotel Room in Jodhpur:

Marrage processional in Bundi (Sometimes you just get the perfect photo)

The Maharaha of Koti Bedroom

On a bollywood set in Mumbai (note: It was illegal that I took this picture. Even more so that I'm posting it online. So don't misuse it in any way, I don't know how you would. I'm not worried, so much as excusing myself for the bad photo angle)

McLeod Ganj at Night (yeah, this is from a while ago)

Bhimlaht, Near Bundi

Bundi

So I get to write whilst the photos upload. I'm loving jodhpur, a great city, lots of beauty in the place and the people. It's maybe got the worst roads of anywhere I've been in India, because they are narrow and they don't use cycle-rickshaws, only motorized vehicles. I ripped my shirt irreperably yesterday when an auto rickshaw nipped me--such is the close quarters every pedestrian keeps with the vehicles. I was glad to lose that shirt, because today I went out and I bought a long Kurta (it's like a long cotton shirt that is long enough to be a dress) and a Lungi, (a man skirt, worn to resembe oversized daipur), so now I have traditional clothes. How to you spell dipur? I feel like I'm not even communicating the meaning of the word, my spelling is so bad. I'm talking about the garments that babies shit in.

Some thoughts and stories from fellow travellers I've met along the way:

An english man who is staying in my hotel has come to India to export antiques. ALthough he is coming to exploit and export India, he gave me a really interesting talk about how all of European culture from the middle ages on evolved from the Silk Route that ran from China and India. Europeans didn't know how to build large monuments out of stone, like the cathedrals that we now see. Indians who grew wealthy taxing the camel caravans that passed through their state on the silk route eventually became curious as to where the goods were going, so they travelled to Europe, taught them a lot of architecture and art, and in some senses, instigated the entire European Rennisance.

I met an english couple a few years younger than me (I have yet to meet any Americans, only English and Dutch and suchlike). They got to Delhi during the high tourist season, hoping to go to Agra or Rajastan or something. But the trains were all booked, and they were stuck in Delhi, staying in Paraganj, the shithole. They were despirate to get out of Delhi, so they went the one place they could, Kashmir. They flew to Srinagar, but the plane had technical difficulties, so it took two false starts and a day and a half to get there. Of course, when they were there, they were absolutely traumatized by the number of soldiers, the checkpoints, having guns pointed at them, etc. They had packed for hot india, and were high in Kashmir during the winter. The boy got deathly ill, and was put on a drip in a military hospital. They said that the place itself wasn't even beautiful anymore, the whole landscape is scortched earth, the military is everywhere, and there are always guns in your face. The situation there sounds really bad; just the other day, there was another massive massacre in Srinagar. Anyway, the whole experience traumatized them, and now three months later they are hardened badass travellers.

OK I think the photos are done. that was nice and fast.

Arrival in Jodhpur

2006-05-02T20:22:00.000-07:00

I arrived here in Jodhpur early this morning after a long busride from Bundi. Bundi was the first place in India I was sort of sad to depart from--all the other places, I've been glad I was there and then glad to leave. But it was time to leave Bundi--I ran out of things to do, and was getting malevolant vibes from the monkeys. The monkeys cornered me in one of the painting rooms in the fort in Bundi, in the part of the fort I had to pay to get in, and then they stole my nalgine bottle and sat trying to get it open right in the doorway of the only exit of the room/cortyard. I had to shout at them and threaten them, to which they hissed and showed their teeth, until the fort attendant guy came and rescued me.

Anyway, I'm glad to be here in Jodhpur--it seems like a great small city, very bustling and busy, a lot of character. My hotel is great, and in a quiet part of the city; my room looks directly onto the giant fort which towers over this city. I took the good advice of some other travellers I met in Bundi. I'm kind of waiting for the city to wake up, and then I'm going to sleep through the hot part of the day cause I'm tired from the busride.

I'm in a bad mood now, just groggy from the bus and tired of every single Indian man trying so hard to be my best friend, so I'm going to quit writing before I say anything bitchy.

Bundi

2006-05-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

What to say today, Bundi's a great place, perhaps the most inherantly good place I've been so far. It's a small town with amazingly friendly and honest people. The tourist ratio here is just right; it's enough of a tourist attraction that people are not surprised to see me, but there is not a separate economy in town for tourists. People are glad I'm here because they want their town to be more touristed, and also they are just nice. The town is one of the laziest places in the world--people are laid back and take it easy, and sleep all through the hot part of the day. It makes me feel like I'm on vacation, which in some sense I am. Am I? What are my real intentions here?

Tonight I'm going to dinner at the house of a friendly couple of guys--they run a corner store and an art buisness, one of them is a painter of traditional miniature paintings. I'm kind of interested in them because they might be a couple, in which case they would be the first openly gay Indians I have met, besides the transvestite beggars on the train. In the morning I'm going to have tea with a schoolteacher and his wife (also a teacher, not a housewife!); they invited me to the marrage of their brother tonight, but I had already committed to the other dinner and I don't have wedding clothes.

I just found out that the busses from here to Jodhpur (my next stop) leave at 6,7,and 8 in the morning, so I think I'm going to stay another full day and leave wednesday morning for a hot ten hour busride.

This morning I explored the old fort that dominates the town; it's sort of abandoned and decaying, but increadibly intricate architecturally and there are some well preserved frescoes on the wall that are very beautiful. It's got a gothic feel to it, and it holds so many secrets, so much history, so much death and love within it's walls. I don't think I've been in a building with so much personality in it. What kipling said is right (to remind you: a place men build in uneasy dreams, more the work of goblins than of men). There are many thousands of rooms I didn't go into--many of them were too dark and dirty and scary. Oh, I also visited Kipling's house here, and reminded myself that although he criticized british colonilism, he was very much a colonial, with a big British style house and he had lots of Indian servants and things. But he was a good writer. I started reading Kim, maybe his best book.

I think that's what I have to say today.
best
jed

From Bundi

2006-04-29T05:03:00.000-07:00

After a good night-and-day of travel, I find myself in Bundi, a magical, isolated city in Southern Rajastan. It's fantastically beautiful, and dominated by a huge fort on the hill above--but it is so intricate you think that the fort is the hill, and there is no hill underneath it. Kipling lived here for a while to write; it's certainly the place I would come to write a book. By Indian standards, this place is amazingly peaceful, and very friendly (the indian standard for peace is low and for friendship high). There is some tourist traffic through here, enough so that people are not surprised to see me, but not enough to create a real tourist economy here. I haven't seen any other forgeiners in my first gamble around the town. I got here via Kota, which is a small city in southern rajastan; I saw the old Maharaja palace, which was gorgeous and took way too many pictures. Then I made a 2.5 km trek through town with my big bag in the midday heat, and it made me feel like a badass. I appriciated that no one hassled me in Kota, nor here in Bundi, for that matter.

Thanks to my dad for this Kipling quote about the places I'm going:

"Jeypore Palace may be called the Versailles of India; Udaipur's House of State is dwarfed by the hills round it and the spread of the Pichola Lake; Jodhpur's House of strife, gray towers on red rock, is the work of giants, but the Palace of Bundi, even in broad daylight, is such a palace as men build for themselves in uneasy dreams-- the work of goblins rather than of men."--Kipling (By Jeypore he must have ment what we spell Jaipur)

So I'm hitting all of that besides Udaipur, which I hear is beautiful but I'm missing it anyway.

From here, I want to go to Jodhpur (on tuesday?) and then to Jaipur, then back to Delhi to begin my north India trip.

The internet is slow, so I will not try to post any pictures from here. If you haven't figured it out, you have to copy and paste the addresses I posted yesterday into the address bar. I put descriptions on photobucket, but I don't think they came through, so here they are: me and host family in McLeod Ganj, Madhav Shukla-ji and wife, R. Ramu Pandit on tabla, Goh Swami-Ji on sitar, and Pushkar lake. Not necessarily in that order.

The guy from the internet cafe is going to take me to see the lake soon.

Visuality

2006-04-27T21:37:00.000-07:00

Photos!

Click:
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e197/jedbickman/100_0351.jpg
(my tabla teacher and my favorite sitar player playing music in Banaras)
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e197/jedbickman/100_0354.jpg
(shuklaji and wife)
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e197/jedbickman/100_0483.jpg
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e197/jedbickman/100_0451.jpg

as I wait for more photos to upload, I have time to write. Trying so hard to get these uploaded makes me think about how important visuality has become to me over my time in India. It's a visually spactacular place, and meaning often lies right on the surface. You look at something, and you know it's as old as time, you know it's a deeply spiritual place, something people have been worshipping for as long as humans have built places to worship. My camera is my best travel buddy; whenever I see something and have the impulse to share it with someone, I photograph it. Really that means that you all are my best travel buddy because I'm photographing it to share with you when I get home. India has the most vivid colors, and they never clash in this part of the world.

The important thing about India, and probably the whole world, is that whatever is there is there, and nothing else. Each place is only what it is, and can offer only so much. This is what I mean by meaning lying on the surface; if you try to dig deeper, often you'll just end up making things up. Nowhere is this seen better than in the traditional narratives of this place; in each hindu myth, one can understand the meaning or the lesson of each sentance within the actual story. There's pleanty of room for interpretation, but not for analysis, it is only what it is. This teaches me to see the world as it is as a transcendantly beautiful place, to see the divine energy of reality in reality, and not in some far away fanciful place, not in heaven, earth is heaven.

This is also true of the people; they survive, work, and worship and that is their body and mind, and that is why they are beautiful. Work has been so deeply engraned in the entire structure of society for so long that it appears on people's faces, in their genetic make up. The caste system is as old as time, and it is going strong. Brahmins often have soft faces, doughy hands. Their teeth are stained bright red with pan. some of them are a little heavy, though few indians are actually fat. Workers are hard, dark, have high cheekbones, are hardened and beautiful, the men and the women. They are often in traditional dress, dhotis on the men and saris on the women. Those who make their living praying on tourists, mostly brahmins, actually look slimy. I make a million instintaneous judgements about people every day, which ones to stop and talk to, which ones to ignore. i don't mean to brag about it, but my intuition has become pretty good, if a little too suspicious. But the point is, people are what they are here.

I still beleive in the fundamental injustice of the caste system, and it makes me angry when brahmins use their status as holy men as a reason why I (and everyone else) am obligated to give them money. As a large generalization, i notice that lower caste people tend to be more genuinely spiritual. The bramhmins might sit in temples because it's their job, but the people who are really getting meaning out of worshipping are lower caste. This is obviously an unfair generalization, there are many genuine brahmins who are scholars, who spend their lives devoted to the holy texts of hinduism, and who condemn the commercialism that has taken over the religion. Most significant of these genuine brahmins to me is my guruji Shukla-ji, who although he was a brahmin, taught me to be suspicious of brahmins, and not assume they are spiritual just because of their caste. I'm going to try to post a picture of him.

I noticed this in Pushkar, when I walked up the four hundred steps to the Savatri temple. Pushkar is holy because it is the only temple to brahma in the world--the temple is large and gorgeous and right on the lake. It is teeming with tourists and brahmins who show you around the temple in exchange for twenty ruppees. It's a nice temple, and I liked it. Outside of town, on the top of a big hill rising out of the desert is the temple to his wife, Savitri. The place really fits her personality--she is lonely and sad because her husband Brahma has insulted her, and she sits on the mountain alone looking over him, and looking over all creation as her child. She is the primordial mother goddess. As one walks up the four hundred steps, you are supposed to meditate on your own mother, to think of all she has done for you and her tolerance and generousity. I did so, and by the top I was profoundly moved; if all of my water wasn't already leaving my body in the form of sweat, maybe I would have cried. The place has such genuine spiritual energy; no one is asking for money, everyone is making the journey as a way to worship their mother and the Cosmic Mother, it is devotion. I saw no one on the way up, but at the top just before the temple, there was a man sitting there. He was one of the nicest people I've met in India; he patiently and beautifully told me the story of Savitri and Brahma, and talked about his own mother who had died. Then he said, "I don't know the real story, I'm not brahmin, you understand" and so we talked about Pushkar, and how the brahmins treat the tourists. He revealed he was from the goldsmithing caste, and he makes the jewelry sold to tourists like me. He said "there's a lot of bullshit down there. (the first time I have heard a swearword in India). They do no work, they sit there and wait for the tourists to give them money." On the way down, I bent to touch his feet. He said no, and forcefully stopped me, I am worker only, you can't touch my feet, I am not pure. And I tried to tell him that he was the most pure of any man I had met in pushkar, and I wanted to touch his feet. he eventually sheepishly let me, and it was good.

Ok pictures are up.

Photos!

2006-04-27T05:46:00.000-07:00

So I got a reservation on a train from Mumbai to Kota tomorrow that leaves at 7:00, arrives at 8:40. I'm really glad to be going back to rajastan--I would have felt like I had done the state an injustice if I had only gone to Pushkar. Kota is a city with only one thing interesting in it: an old palace. But the real destination is 56 KM away, Bundi, which has an old decaying fort. and a lake. and probably lots of camels, and sand, and heat. But both places are completely untouristed (I mean, there are guest houses, but there's no separate market for tourists and locals). Kipling lived there for a time to write a book, I don't know which one. So if I'm going to be an Orientalist writer, I have to go there, right?

Some pictures. It was hard to choose which one I waited to upload, because it's really slow. I have many scenic pictures of beautiful India, the beautifulist place on the planet, but I'm just not going to post any of them, you'll have to see them when I get home.

This is my perfect picture of steriotypical India--it's exactly the image that people have in their mind when they think of Indians. Or maybe I just think that cuase I've been here a while. This was taken while I was still in Varanasi; I took a side trip to the other side of the river to see an ancient Durga temple. These people were outside.

OK for some reason it just stopped working. I think maybe the internet went down. shit. it did. now how am I going to publish this post? fuck. that was a waste of an hours internet time.

Bollywood

2006-04-26T01:07:00.000-07:00

So last night I was recruited off the street to be an extra in a bollywood movie. It was a really fun but also tedious and tiring experience, am highly glad I did it. Bollywood movies are absolutely rediculous, and I learned that the people who are involved in making them are also pretty rediculous. The studios here churn out mind-blowing numbers of movies in a short amount of time, like the lonely planet says, like gunfire.

So they collected twenty or so forgeiners off the streets of downtown bombay, got us all to their ramshackle studio, and stuck us in a room together for like three hours. It was good to get to know all the people who were with me, my first travel buddies! They gave us beer and chai, and there we were. They dressed some of the women up in these rediculous hooker costumes with neon wigs. I was still in my desert clothes, had not bathed all day, and had not really slept in like 36 hours, I had gotten off the train that morning. But no matter. So the scene they were shooting was a dance number that was supposed to take place in a strip club in Amsterdam. My job was to join the crowd around the couch as the main character did coke off the thighs of strippers, and then to participate in the dance number; I was part of the crowd around the stage in the "strip club" and I had to dance. But you'd only dance for 10 or 20 seconds at a time, have to start suddenly and then stop suddenly, it was hard to get in the groove of it. I couldn't tell from looking at the camera angles whether I was actually even in any shots. If i was, it will look wierd having a random unshaven guy dressed in all white, wearing an Indian corta in an amsterdam strip club. But not like the bollywood directors care about details like that. The whole thing lasted until like 2:30 in the morning, and everyone was shocked that the director packed it in early, usually it goes until 5:00 am. I couldn't have made it, I was dying of exhaustion by the end. They paid us 500 rupees and sent us on our way.

Anyway, the whole bollywood thing is highly entertaining. Unlike hollywood, bollywood has no pretentions of actually making good movies; every bollywood has exactly the same plot, the obligatory dance numbers, actors from the same pool of about 20 actors and dancers. The one I'm in was called Dil Diya Hai, and i don't know if it will be released and when.

I like hindi pop, bollywood music much more than American pop. Not saying that it's good, it's just less annyoing.

What can I say. It was a strange experience overall. I wasn't allowed to take pictures, unfortionatly.

I'm going to go back to Rajastan sometime at the end of the week.
peace
jed

Orientalism and Me

2006-04-24T23:41:00.000-07:00

In planning this segment of the trip, I have completley ignored my values, my sense of history and politics, and my own personal dharma. I have allowed my background, my cultural identity, and skin to control my actions in the world. But it's not too late, I just have to change my travel plans, and do what needs to be done. In proposing a whirlwind tour of all the best tourist destinations accross north and south india, I am perpetuating the idea that India is an object to be seen, consumed, and left. It comes from the history of my skin. India is fetishized by travellers who skip across it photographing it, buying it. It comes in the age after colonialism, in some ways the same thing that is happening all over the world, but in some ways very unique to India.

I took a fantastic class before I came to India called Orientalism and the Place of Literature, that explained how the idealization and fetishization of India was the cultural backdrop that enabled British colonialism here. By seeing India as a feminized storehouse of riches, we give ourselves the right to consume it. For me personally, I have seen it and presented it on this blog not as a storehouse of riches, but of spirituality and goodness. Same thing. I want to talk more about this blog in a second.

Tourism is good for the Indian economy, but it hinges upon the same social dynamics taht were built by the British. But now, it is the time for the economic and moral reveng of India--now, the tourists are powerless but rich, they become the victims of the very lessons of greed that the British taught here. In tourist destinations, the population (especially the Brahmins) make a highly lucrative life out of pulling as much money out of the pockets of white peopel as the can, and they are good at it. I'm not complaining about the money they took from me, I figured I only gave away 240 ruppees in Pushkar that I didn't use to buy something, about seven dollars. But that's the very point--by Indian standards, it's enough to eat for a family for a week. But that's probably not what the money went to. But anyway, the exchange rate makes me a rich man, and money means little to me in of itself. But every interaction is tinged with greed, and my every word is partly spoken from fear. And they know that the best way to do it is to assume the same subservient, sycophantic attitude that they had as the subject of a colonial power.

Some amount of this dynamic is inherant in my trip here, and I will not escape it while in India. But I can minimize it, and also get more out of my time here, for myself by taking my time more seriously, drastically slowing my pace and limiting the ground I cover. I fell in love with North India and it's people, even though they are all insane (because they are all insane?) when I was in Banaras; my teachers, my host family, the rich intellectual and spiritual life. And there's a lot more where that came from, and I can get it in North India. I'm sure that south India is beautiful, and it is a personal goal of mine to come back to India and do south India right, explore the hill stations in the western ghats, the abandoned beaches, Madurai and Trichy, Ramnapuram. But not this trip.
I reccomend the book "the god of small things" by arundhati roy, which I read before I came here. It takes place in Kerela, and discusses the rise of the tourist industry there, the resorts of the "backwaters" wthat have become so popular with Westerners. They grew up in the same cultural space, the same economic space, that was left vacant by the departure of the british. And if I spent my time flying past South India, I must occupy these tourist-places, albeit the budget end of them. Whatever.

Anyway, I am in Mumbai now, and although I previously [planned to spend little time in big cities, I realize now that my cultural and family background has taught me to love big beautiful cities with lots of art and culture, and Mumbai is certainly the center of all of it, past and present, in India. So I'll stay here a few days, maybe even a week, and I don't know what I'm doing yet, I'll post about that later.

But it's really important for me to talk about the Orientalist nature of this blog, right now. It's been in the back of my head this whole time, but I haven't been explicit about it. This is the first time in my life I have felt like people have been reading my words, even if it's just my parents, this is the first time I have had a regular audience. Why do you read this blog, when you did not read the other blog that John Paul and I maintained together, poetic terrorism? because you are interested in what I am doing now because I am in an exotic place, a place with all this cultural baggage and intrigue. And I've been feeding this, in fact, I've been the cause of this, by presenting India as a mystical storehouse of knowledge, a place where I have learned life changing lessons that I could not have learned at home. By idolizing hinduism and even buddhism. By talking about how beautiful the cows are. All of it feeds into this dynamic. I have been objectfying india with my experiences, and then packaging it up (commodifying it) and selling it to you in exchange for your attention, which I crave. How can I escape this orientalist point of view? I cannot. But being aware of it is the first step, and I would appriciate it if you, as my readers, could take that step with me.

I know this wasn't very articulate, but I'm tired and strung out from a lot of travel, a lot of train.
best
jed

Streets

2006-04-23T03:06:00.000-07:00

Because sometimes it's nice just to sit in an internet cafe and just write. if you want to know where I am and what I'm doing, scroll past this entry.

I think the biggest culture shock I will have when I go back to America is the streets. What they are used for, road etiquitte, the cowshit. All different. In America, we take it for granted that if you go in the street, you will be killed immediatly by blind unthinking machines zooming past at unsafe speeds. if you have to get across, you go when the machine-light tells you, to keep your body intact while the waiting iron beasts grumble behind the gate of the white line. In India, life is lived on the street, together, everyone always in each other's way, people, bicicles, rickshaws, thupthups, and all manner of animals. The street is the only center of commerce, the only malls. They are the home of all the cows, all the goats, pigs, camels, a lot of dogs, monkeys above the street, everything. And all jumbled together without laws or order; you walk in the middle of the street, and when a car or a bike wants to go around you, they honk at you and then drive around you. It leads for a lot of honking, and a different attitude towards it. In america it's considered rude, a gesture of aggression, to honk. Here it is the safe and polite thing to do; it's much be better to be honked at than mowed over, and if it's a motorcycle, it can be hair raising ot be zoomed around by a bike with no warning. Anyway, this way And this way the community sees itself, lives with itself, instead of separating itself into little private bubbles. If it's a small city like pushkar or even a medium sized (for india by western standars, is huge) you begin to recognize the faces of everyone who is living in your urban space--you won't know them all, it's too many, but people will begin to look familiar, unavoidably. Because when they are not in their rooms, they are on the street.

This is also why you get the opportunity to develop real connections with the environment around you, mostly the animals. All indians have only one best friend, who they keep completely secret and never talk about: the cows. Because when you're walking down the street, and you see a cow, a little part of you unavoidably is happy. They are beautiful beings with a beautiful spirit, and you can see it in their eyes, and in their mouths when they chew and slobber. And they are completely unaware of absolutely everything around them, they are always in a daze. the traffic steers around the cows, because they would never move for a car, it's just not in their nature. It's a state of complete being, just simply existing. they eat trash and give us milk and eat more trash. They have to do surgery on all the cows once a year to remove all the plastic they eat. That is why we have to stop using plastic right now. and that's why we love the cows, because they are here, on our streets, living with us, instead of sequestered into fenced-off pastures. It makes it difficult to eat beef, I don't know if I will be able to when I get back to america. The other animals here are just as good as the cows in their own way. The goats are great because they all look insane and eat everything. The monkeys are so much like little people, except they are little bastard theives and passive-aggressive as hell. They will steal your food and jsut sit there, just out of reach, on a branch, and just eat it right in front of you, just to make you more angry. The dogs are scary because they're all underfed and have mange and maybe rabies, but the ones that are healthy adn nice are awesome, as nice dogs always are.

But, getting back to the point, all of these animals are in the street, with all the rest of the humans and also tourists, who are part human and part borg.

Some of you may remember that about two years ago (really two years already? holy crap.) I was arrested for standing in the middle of the street in San Francisco. The assumed reason that we were standing in the middle of the street was that we were protesting the biotech convention taking place--that's what was going on that was worth protesting, so everyone figured that was what we were protesting, without asking us. But the protest against the biotech companies had taken place that morning, people had already been arrested for that. We were part of another movement, called Reclaiming the Streets, an idea which has the radical idea that the streets should be real public space, a place to build a community, a place to live. So they block traffic. Only to create a merely symbolic public space on the street. At the time, I wrote a small essay about how strongly I beleived in that idea, and I wanted people to know that that was why I had chosen to be a part of that mob dancing down market street in San Francisco. Maybe it's in the archives on my other blog, I think it is, I don't know if you can find it. Sure I don't have the balls to make a mob by myself and just stand in the middle of the street alone, I need to be enabled by social circumstances, I need to be part of the herd. But that doesn't mean I didn't believe in the idea that the streets are the only veins that run through our cities, and the only way to build a meaningful community and overcome the hate and fear that controls our lives is to go out on the street, to have a real physical public sphere, to always be in each other's faces.

more later.

Pushkar

2006-04-22T21:34:00.000-07:00

Second day in pushkar, I appriciate this place and the spirit here; it's small and there are tourists, but like Banaras, it has the genuine feel of a spiritual place, a holy place, and everyone except the Isrealis is respectful and humbled by it. The holy lake of pushkar is supposed to be the site where Brahma arose out of a lotus flower out of Vishnu's navel, or variously where Brahma dropped a flower to begin the process of creation. Once when Brahma perfomed a Yagaya (sacrafice) his wife I forget her name didn't show up. In retaliation for this slight, Brahma took another wife. In her anger over this, his wife cursed him that he should only be worshipped in Pushkar, no where else. I haven't actually worshipped at the brahma temple, even though it is fifty feet from my hotel, maybe I'll do that after I write this entry. I have done puja in the holy lake, and wished for the well being of all of you who I could think of, family and friends and family friends, you have all been well wished for, Indian style.

i didn't mean to insult isrealis above. But they have sort of a bad reputation in India, because there are such huge heards of them--all Isrealis come to India or maybe Thailand after they finish their mandatory military service. Because it's just sort of expected and cheap that they travel, they don't really do it for the right reasons, and just sort of stick together and smoke hash. But, in there defense, imagine if there was a similar cultural construct in America where we all went to India to party--it would be so much uglier than the isrealis, we would be drunken and violent. Sort of like what we've done to some places in Mexico, cancun etc.

Anyway, there's that, maybe sort of an unnecessary moment on the blog. Anyway, I got a ticket to ride a train from Ajmer (near here) to Mumbai tomorrow morning, will get to Mumbai tuesday morning.

From Pushkar

2006-04-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

hello all

so I'm in Pushkar, Rajastan, which is a good place and I'm glad I'm here. It took much travelling to get here--Indian busses are quite inefficient. But it was a good lesson in travelling alone in India, I will learn patienceand flexability. I spent last night in Ajmer, which is the nearist biggish city, and that was surprisingly cool. I saw a very pretty Jain temple and the lake there. Pushkar is a smallish tourist destination with a holy lake and the only brahma temple in India. I've become quite secure with the fact that I am a tourist and my destinations are mostly tourist destinations. It's not like I can escape being in India--everyone here is Indian still with a few travellers mixed in, and the travellers are good people in themselves. India is hard travelling. But in a very real sense, India is amazingly easy travelling because I don't have to figure it out. It's not like I have to learn the geography of any place where I find myself, I can just tell the rickshaw walla where I want to go. If I am confused, I can ask any Indian man around me, and they usually speak English. Their mentality is so helpful and open and happy; each one considers it his duty to help tourists. I'll get ripped off by ten or twenty ruppees here and there, and that's just how it is. They're poor people, it's OK.

I still feel good about my decision to travel alone, despite moments of self doubt that I will have to learn to deal with in the coming weeks. One thing that I like about being alone is that thought becomes action immediatly, without having to be debated, miscommunicated with another person. It also means that I have to trust myself completely, and once I make a decision, to go with it to the fullest and be happy about it. That will be good for me to learn.

So I haven't yet set up my transport out of here, maybe I will do that right now, but my plan is to travel to Mumbai on monday or tuesday, spend a few days there, and then hit Gokarna, perhaps by way of Goa, on the way to Kerela.

Email me, call me, do whatever you have to do.
much love and respect
jed

Parting Ways

2006-04-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

Since I was in Banaras, I have been thinking very hard about how I can make the best use of my time in India. This is extremely precious time for me, it took work and sacrifice to get here on the part of many people in my life, and this is the only time I will take off from college. In fact, it's the only large chunk of time I have had away from school since before I entered preschool. And I'm sure I will continue feeling the concequenses of this decision during my last semester at Brown after all my class has graduated and I'll be alone in my room writing a thesis.

So I have decided to part ways with the Dragons program after the end of our homestay here in Mcloed Ganj, which is this next wednesday, the 19th. I am missing two major components of the program: the meditation retriet and the Trek in the mountains of Manali. Both of these are going to be intense, beautiful experiences for the participants, which will probably be some of the highlights of the trip. However, I have thought hard about my intentions and goals in being in this place and taking this time off from school, and I realized that a major part of that was my desire to usher in some sense of adulthood through autonomous independant action in the world, to learn myself through going on a journey which has immense meaning to me and will challenge me in ways that I cannot presently imagine. Also, I just have the raw desire to see more of India, which I feel would not be fufilled by a meditation retreit and a trek.

I really want to emphasize that this decision did not arise out of dissatisfaction with the program as it has been so far. The experience that I had in Varanasi was valuable and profoundly life-changing, and there is no way that it would have been possible without the knowledge and structure of the Dragons program. I think it was vital for me to stay in one place in India for such a long time, enough to actually consider it a place to live. And the opportunities that were provided for me in Varanasi by the dragons program were amazing. The homestay experience was loving and beautiful and changed the way I think about family life in general, and gave me a fantastic introduction to the worldviews and culture that are prevalant in this part of the world. They also connected me with the best Tabla teacher in the world, which I probably did not deserve given my lack of musical talent. MOst importantly, they introduced me to Shukla-ji and provided a structure in which I could receive teachings and stories from him. He drastically changed the way I conceive of narrative, religion, morality, everything. None of this would have been possible without the dragons program, and I love them for it. Also, they have provided me with more amazing opportunities here in McLeod Ganj, including another amazing homestay who I love even more than the first.

I also really grew to like the people on the program and the leaders, and I will miss their companionship and guidance. I also deeply appriciative to the leaders for being so accomodating and supportive in me making this decision, and understanding that this decision came from a place of love and respect.

Although I made this decision in order to follow my own spirit and desires, I would be foolish and delusional to think that I was actually doing this under my own power. It's really important for me to express my gratitude to the people who are making this possible for me and supporting me through it. Primarily, this is my family. For those of you who know my parents, you know well that it is not easy for them to have their son travelling alone in India for a long time. Their decision to support me in this represents a profound trust in me, naive though I may be. I could never do this without their support, because I trust them with my life; if they did not think I could do this, I would certainly not be able to do it. Their love for me allows me to stand strong and secure in myself in the world, and I don't think I realized the full extent of this until I came here. So I will be keeping in close touch with them throughout the trip, hopefully. I will do my best.

Also, I think it's important to publicly awknoledge that I am one of the most blessed and priviliged people on the planet to be in a position where I have an opportunity to come to India, and then to do exactly what I want to do while i am here. Most people are much more confined by their economic and social position. I am in a place in my own life when I have probably the most freedom and capability to follow my own spirit. I am lucky to be a young man right now, in my body and position. I did not earn this privilige, I was born into it; in some very real ways I owe it to my parents and their parents, but I also just owe it to luck. So I will take advantage of this opportunity with mindfullness and gratitude for the privilige that it means.

So now I am facing one of the most awe-inspiring and indimidating opportunities of my life: six and a half weeks of solo travel through India. What can I say about it? I'm thrilled and excited. Here's a basic outline of what I am planning to do, but this will change. A lot. In unexpected ways. But there are some foundational concrete dates which I can give:

May 19: Take night bus to delhi
spend one night maximum (maybe not even that) in Delhi, and go to Jaipur. Spend a day or two there, probably only one, then go to Puskhar. Go from Pushkar to Mumbai, where I will spend as short a time as possible until I can get to Gokarna (perhaps via goa, but if I can avoid that maybe I will. Or maybe I'll go to Goa and have a good time for a day). From there to Cochin (Kochi) in Kerela. Maybe a trip on the backwaters of Kerela, but I didn't really plan on it; I think i'll just explore Cochin and surroundings. From there to Madurai, from Madurai to Trichy, from Trichy to Chennai, a side trip to Mamallapuram. I have a definate reservation on the Grand Trunk Express from Chennai to Delhi on April 17. Again, I will stop in Delhi for as little time as possible, and then go to Haridwar. From either Haridwar or Rishikesh I will set out for Gangotri, the head of the Ganga, which is an important goal/destination of my trip. Perhaps I will take a short guided trek to Gomouk, which is the glacier which is the headwaters of the ganga. Then back to Delhi with hopefully enough time for a daytrip to Agra, because there's some sort of obligation I have to see the Taj Mahal. I will fly back to LA on June 2, and then back to Colorado on June 3. So if anyone wants to put me up for a night in LA, you are certainly welcome. Anyway, get out a good map of India if you want, and figure out what I just said--I don't expect you actually to know all those places. I didn't know about them when I was in America.

Again, I will be carrying a cell phone the whole time, so keep in touch with me. 9816579414 Hopefully I will be able to continue blogging--I certainly will try and do it whenever I possibly can. But there will be longer stretches of emptyness than there has been in the past--I'll be on a lot of trains and busses. If you have a taste for a specific object from India, let me know--I'm willing to carry things back, and things are relatively cheap here.

Anyway, thank you all for your interest in this blog and my life, and I'm thrilled for this next stage of the adventure.
much love and respekt
jed

In Praise of Buddhism

2006-04-13T03:51:00.000-07:00

So I feel like it might be easy this blog as anti-buddhist because I've only written negative things about buddhism. This was a huge mistake on my part, because it's only one side of what I feel about the matter. I sort of took it for granted that everyone would just understand that I was aware of how beautiful and intelligent buddhist philosophy is, and that my criticisms really come from a place of respect for the fundamental ideals of buddhism. I just feel like many westerners need a reality check that the Buddhist religion comes with all the political and social problems that come with all organized religion, and to inform you specifically what those problems are. I really still loathe organized religion, and I have felt that buddhism becomes idealized in the west as the religion of the true spirit, as if westerners have finally found the pure cult that they have been looking for.

A moment of vocabulary distinctions. I want to make a differentiation between the ideas behind a religion and the material reality of a religion, that is, the philisophical teachings and the social reality that is a result not only of that philosophy but also the economic and political context in which the religion is practiced. I will call the ideas "idealogical" and the other the "material." Also, I am amongst Tibetan buddhists now, and now know much more about Tibetan buddhism than zen or any of the other sects, so let's just say that I'm talking about that. OK?

I probably don't have to describe to my readers why ideological buddhism is beautiful and accurate; if you don't know about it, start reading a book about it. All of the buddhist ideas can be found in much older Hindu texts; I would argue that the entire massive tradition of the two religions--even all religions of the world--have their foundation in the Vedas. However, the ideological beauty of these texts were highly corrupted by material hinduism, which has so many problems I can't even begin to talk about them all (maybe in another post soon). But all of these ideas which were in the Vedas and the Gita and the Upanishads, etc., were only available to a highly educated elite, and even to those it was difficult because they are spread out in such a vast ocean of text, it would take many many lifetimes to understand the ideas as a cohesive whole.

Buddhism's streingth is in how true it stays to its ideological roots, and makes it's ideological foundation accessible to the masses who practice buddhism. Earlier, I said that the four noble truths offend me because they are presented in list form which I felt was oversimplified. Now I realize the wisdom of such teachings which make it easy to understand the fundamental tenants of the religion in one sitting. The fact that the huge majority of buddhists understand the ideological foundation of their religion is pretty unique to buddhism. In my experience, this makes Tibetan people some of the kindest, strongest people I have ever known, and that's a huge generalization, but they are amazing. Buddhism really directly enlightens their personalities, and makes them very thoughtful and happy. You have to live with a Tibetan family in a single tiny room to fully understand this, maybe. My hostfather isn't even religious, or so he claims, but still every day he goes on an hour long walk around the Temple (which takes him through some spactacular mountain scenery), and during this walk he focuses soley on the well-being and happyness of all sentient beings. If his mind strays from this, he'll walk more until he is satisfied that he has adiquatly meditated on the happyness of life. That is the way to make yourself a good person.

But because buddhism seems to rest so transparantly on its idological foundation makes many westerners beleive that it is without material reality, and to overlook the material reality of buddhism. Just as Hinduism fostered an educated elite, the actual practice of buddhism creates a social structure in which only people who have the luxury to devote a large part of their daily lives to meditation and philisophical study can actually hope to reach enlightenment, and thus political and social power tends to do remain firmly at the top. And Tibetan society is a theocracy, which gives the people no space to question their leaders at all. Tibetan people have given their complete trust and faith to the Dalai Lama, and now in my opinion he has lead them down the wrong path. He rules with the same divine mandate that gave the mideaval european monarchs the right to rule. However, now this is changing. The Dalai Lama is conciously urging his people to practice democracy; he is pushing the Tibetan people to accept more and more the idea of self determination. there is now an elected parlaiment and prime minister-in-exile. There is a high possibility that when he dies, he will 'decide' not to reincarnate himself and force the Tibetan people to vote on a new leader. But the unwavering faith of the Tibetan people in him makes this a difficult battle.

So since I recognize these good things about buddhism, why do I personally turn my back on it? My mind likes the maze of symbolism and representation that Hinduism presents. I feel that I have reached much a much more complex understanding of the same truths of buddhism through untangeling the riddles of the Bhagavat-Gita, the great Indian Epics the Mahabarata and the Ramayana, and the Srimad Bhavata. When I finally get the courage to attack the Vedas, which I will do in my life, I am sure that I will find those much more confusing and then after study enlighetening. In short, my literary and academic mind gets off on Hinduism. What can I say. More mental masterbation.

BUt the material reality of Hinduism is pretty bad, especially compared with buddhism. Hindu temples are chaotic and greedy, you have to shove your way to the front where you have to part with money to get a momentary darshan and a tikka. This is in contrast with silent meditation in gorgeous natural settings of buddhism. But as I said earlier, I like that Hinduism gives people lattitude to form their own relationship with their own choice of the manifestation of the Supreme--it gives people more of a sense of identity and belonging to worship their personal or family gods and still understand that everyone in the world is worshipping the same god.

This is not an ending place, but I am tired of writing.
peace
jed

Some musings

2006-04-12T01:49:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've mentioned this on the blog, and I don't know why. At the end of my time in Varanasi, my guru, Modov Shukla-ji gave me a very ancient and sacred mantra. In exchange, I gave him my honest oath that I would meditate with it every day for the rest of my life. He had me hold ganga water and swear that I would do it. It was perhaps the best decision I've made up to this point in my life; there's no way I would have started a regular meditation practice without that kind of earnest committment. So every morning (or, when I'm travelling, whenever), I sit with my Rudrach (A garlnad of beads sacred to Siva) and I say my mantra over and over to myself. I started saying it 11 times every time, now I'm up to 21, next I will go up to 54, and the final goal is to do it 108 times every day.

I think that engaging in this meditation has already begun to change my personality and my worldview. Specifically, I feel myself distancing from the idea that I am a doer in the world. I don't quite mean this in the strictist Hindu sense, but it is an ideal of Yoga; to realize that you are not actually an actor in the world, that you are only an instrument of god or fate, that everything that will happen already has happened already. This is the central problem of the Bhagavat-Gita; Arjuna feel that it is a sin to slaughter his cousins and uncles on the battle field, but Krishna says "I have already killed them" (not a direct quote). Do the way to Karma-Yoga is to act morally in the world, to do your duty fully, while not actually personally feeling that you are the actor, and recognizing that you are only an instrument of the eternal supreme way. The modification I personally make to this is only to emphasize that I know that I am god and that is all I know--I do not know any external, paternalistic god, I only know myself. So, in this way, I know that I am not actually an actor, that I am only an instrument of dharma. But at the same time, I know that I have ultimate and supreme control over what happens in my world, and all things in my life are a consequence of my own actions. It's hard to express this in words--verbally, it seems like a fundamental contradiction that I am ultimatly in control of every small peice in my life and also that I am not the autonomous doer, that I am only an instrument of Myself. Think about it like this: sometimes my spirit speaks up and tells me what I want to do, and I know I must obey it. For example, my spirit has told me that I need to have the next six weeks travelling independantly in India in order to gain wisdom and knowledge of the world and myself. I cannot disobey that--I could, but I won't.

The interesting realization that has come from all of this: I have begun more conciously reading my own life as a text, using the tools I have to make meaning out of narratives to understand my past actions and events. Becuase I am not a doer in the world, everything happens exactly as it has to happen, as the karmic or even direct consequence of the action that preceeded it. Therefore, I can now justify making meaning out events just as I do of art. The events are whatever they are, just as the text on a page is just inkstains. But we feel justified in interpreting and giving meaning to those inkstains, and now I feel newly justified in making meaning out of what happens in my reality. I could give many examples, and I will later when I'm less lazy about it. Thanks for wading all the way through this.
peace
jed

ps. In response to anonymous comment: I can insult the Dalai Lama because I'm not buddhist, and because I have spent hours talking with Tibetan freedom-fighters and activists who feel totally betrayed by his political stance. He has taken away their reason for fighting, their reason for being alive, and most importantly, any hope of ever returning to their homeland. But they would never insult the Dalai Lama, because he has the same mandate from heaven that entitled the European monarchs total control over their population. He's good at talking the spiritual talk, and he was a great leader of the tibetan people in the past, and we should respect him for all that.

Free Tibet Pt 2

2006-04-09T05:24:00.000-07:00

So there's a tibetan guy reading this, so I'm kind of shy about hating on the HH tha' DL, which is the Dalai Lama's rapper name. MC to tha HH to tha DL on the mic.

I've continued thinking more about the tibet situation. We had a lecture from this man who runs a bookshop here, and i have also had a couple conversations with him in his bookshop. Losang Tsang-la. Basically, he is a broken, hopeless old man because he actually cares about Tibetan Independance. He wants to fight the revolution against China, but there's no revolution to fight, because it seems like everyone, especially Tibetans, are content to simply watch the cultural and political idea of Tibet die out. Even though the cause is somewhat trendy with white liberals in America, it will be impossible to start a movement for the independance of Tibet until the Tibetan people--lead by the Dalai Lama--take a stand against injustice and fight for their country.

Engaging with this issue has effected my personal worldview, or at least clarified it. I never realized how convinced I am of the duty of human beings to fight injustice, even where nonviolent tactics will be useless. It offends me on an almost personal level that there is only one man in this town who will oppose the Dalai Lama's position, and he is labeled an impossible radical, and made an outcast of the community. This is his analogy: if a mouse is about to be eaten by a lion, it is going to die. If it does nothing and cowers in front of the lion, he may buy a tenth of a second. But if he sucks up his courage, bites the lion in the toe and then runs away, he has a small chance of succseeding--his only chance at life. But more than that, it is the only way he can regain his dignity and humanity; to take strong autonomous action instead of allowing yourself to be manhandled and manipulated. However, the Dalai Lama has been put under pressure not only by the irrisistable force of China's might, but also the even stronger behind-the-scenes political pressure by Western leaders who are despirate to remain economically involved with China.

One aspect of the Tibetan situation that is not widely known about but should be: China has started a massive program of Uranium in Tibet; not only do they use slave labor to mine cheap uranium to sell to the rest of the world at a discount, included in the price of the uranium is the understanding that the forgein buyers of the uranium can give China the radioactive waste created by the nuclear processing. So China has become the custodian of vast amounts of highly toxic radioactive waste, which they have buried in the Tibetan plateau with very little consideration for international safety codes or security. The Tibetan plateau is still very seismically active, and it is also the source of all the major rivers of Asia. If any one of those rivers were to become contaminated due to an earthquake in Tibet, it would directly effect about a solid third or more of the world's population who rely on those rivers as their primary water supply. That sounds like the asian apocalypse to me.

It is really good for me to be reminded of the passion and emotion that lies within me about political injustices like this at this point in the trip. It reminds me to think about my own political struggles in America, and raises the dilemma that I feel about my political life in America. I feel a moral obligation to spend my life fighting injustice, specifically the unspoken injustice of the American system of Incarceration in america. But to dedicate my life to such a cause would be a serious compromise of my personal aspirations and also my happiness and well being--to fight an unwinnable fight takes so much out of a man. I am scared that I would end up like Losang-la in my old age, bitter and broken. Also, it's just not the background I have given myself up to this point--I have really dedicated myself to literature and the ideological systems that lie behind it, and I feel that I have a lot to offer in that area, that my life's work lies in narratives. So I have to find a way to integrate the two, because I cannot turn my back on my moral obligation to fight the growing injustice of oppression in America. I could become a writer who talks about incarceration and it's impacts, to raise awareness either in the academic community or in pop culture about the problem and it's implications. But to do so, I will have to sort of focus my writings on the negative aspects of life in a human body, but my philisophical and aesthetic worldview relies on the beauty of life and narrative, how we can make meaning out of a meaningless world through language and beyond. This is increasingly true while I am here in India--life is too good to overlook. So, at some point I will have to reconcile all these competing emotions, duties and aspirations. I don't want to compartimentalize my life--I don't want to have to say, "this is my day job. It is _______. This is my passion, it is writing/it is fighting against prison." Such things are not hobbies. Playing tabla drums is a hobby. Maybe writing poetry is a hobby. But neither fighting the prison system nor changing the intellectual climate of america is a hobby.
But, I know that it will work out as it works out, and I know that I will look back on my life's work as an old man with pride.

Anyway, Tibet is a hopeless situation in the most profound sense--the HHDL will never take a stronger stand on this issue, and China will never conduct meaningful negotiations because there's nothing in it for them either politically or economically. So, Tibetans are waiting to die silently and slowly, both in the country and in exile.

Phone Number

2006-04-07T04:36:00.000-07:00

If you're just checking the blog to see my most recent post, read the one below because I wrote it this morning. So it may seem rediculous to some of you readers, but I got a cell phone which will work in India. Although I was so releived to leave my cell phone in America, it became clear that in order for me to travel independantly in India I need the flexability/freedom of a cell phone to still keep in touch with my family and anyone else who desires. So give me a call anytime if you want, except during the middle of the day your time which is the middle of the night my time. It'll be expensive for you and sort of cheap for me, but that's just because I bit the bullet and paid for a cell phone. And now you can hear my voice for the low low price of three dollars a minute or something.

Here is my number, and you can call it:

9816579414

Free Tibet

2006-04-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been remiss in my blogging. I got to Daramshala (actually, it's Mcloed Ganj--Don't know why everyone says that they are going to Daramshala when no one goes there) on Tuesday. The train ride was long but enjoyable. Breif background on this place: this is the home of the Tibetan government in exile (the Dalai Lama and his cohort), and most of the people who live here are Tibetans in exile, who escaped from China's oppressive rule in Tibet. Most of them walked on foot across the himalayas with minimal supplies to get here. And then when they got here, they found the biggest tourist hotspot in India; the street is full of tourists and whote people. This is because Buddhism has become (tragically) trendy in the west, and this is the only place in India where people are actually buddhist. I feel that many western tourists come to India to find buddhist-style spiritual enlightenment, and are sort of surprised that no Indians are buddhist, and so they all flock to this place, where the buddhists make a good buisness out of selling themselves and their sacred traditions to them.

Spent the first night here in a mountain retreit place, slept under the stars and had a campfire. Last night was the second night in my brand new homestay. My host family here is really amazing--it's a young couple of Tibetan refugees, who have been in India living in exile since around '95. They have a five year old son who is a huge spaz--I've never seen a kid with such unstoppable energy. They live in a room that's about the size of a conservative dorm room single, with a tiny kitchenette attached. they really don't have enough room for me, much less all my crap. We all live and eat and sleep together--there are two small cots at right angles to each other which convert to couches during the day, and I get one of them and the man and son get the other one, with our heads almost touching. The wife gets the floor. I tried to sleep on the floor last night but they wouldn't let me. I'm lucky I'm short or else I wouldn't fit at all. But they are amazingly nice, open people. I also like that some of the customs of India which make me uncomfortable aren't present in this family; we all eat together, including the wife (she's not stuck in the kitchen providing the men with hot roti). I really like tibetan people in general.

This is the first time I have bothered to educate myself about the Tibet situation, and I am seriously disturbed by what I have learned. China's blatantly imperialistic colonization of Tibet is one of the biggest crimes against human dignity and the right to soveriegnty and self rule of our time. The international community is completely silent about it because China is in such a position of economic and political power. But to me, the truly tragic part of it is the response of the Dalai Lama and his government. They have adopted a "middle way" policy which is basically a policy of giving China as many consessions as possible until they feel inclined to negotiate. However, there is no reason for China to negotate with them; there is almost no international pressure on China, no accountability. They have stopped asking for Tibetan independance ten years ago. These are the Dalai Lama's demands of China:
"Without seeking independance for Tibet, the Central Tibetan Administration strives for the creation of a political entity comprising the three traditional procinces of tibet....Until the time Tibet is transormed into a zone of peace and non-violence, the Chineese governmetn can keep armed forces in Tibet for it's protection" etc, etc.

This weakness of the Dalai Lama is seriously ill conceived. China has no imputus to negotiate. They have no compassion, no ideology of individual freedom to uphold, and no international pressure to improve their human rights. Non violence does not mean submission and cooperation, it means an aggressive fight against injustice. However, any civil disobediance by Tibetans will simply result in their swift execution. Meanwhile, China is flooding tibet with an influx of China's populaition. In a matter of years, the issue will be a moot point because there will be so few tibetans in tibet compared to the number of chinesse. The entire noble tradition and culture of Tibet will move into exile, where it will simply wither and die out. And then that is the end of that. Time is running out in a really serious way. However, the Dalai Lama commands the absolute and unquestioning respect of most Tibetans--he really has the power in his hands to either challenge the Chinesse or continue to be submissive and let his people die out either at the brutal hands of the Chinese or to be assimilated into western culture in exile. Although there is a growing youth movement which is demanding independance, in order to actually launch the movement, the Dalai Lama must grow a spine. He is using non-violence as a mask for cowardace and weakness. I know that sounds strong, but it is the real situation, and it is so obvious that even after 48 hours here, it becomes blatantly clear. Everyone can see it, and the Tibetan people are just waiting to die.
peace
jed

to Daramshala

2006-04-01T23:50:00.000-08:00

So at 2:30 in the morning I will be leaving Varanasai to go to Daramshala, Himachel Pradesh. I'm really glad to be moving on--it's getting really hot and intense here. I have gotten an amazing amount out of my time here, a lot of knowledge and wisdom both, good perspective and spirituality. This place is the most insane place in the world, with it's own completely unique energy and spirit. That spirit will never leave me, and it will probably draw me back here in my life. But I am glad to be leaving it for the time being.

So the train ride will be between 20-30 hours. I should arrive Daramshala sometime Tuesday morning. So that's that. moving on with the experience, happily on my merry way, wasting time until the train.
peace
jed

2006-03-29T20:54:00.000-08:00

My eyes guided by my mind
neither are the responsibility
of anyone else.
Human beings are hard to adjust to.
i would share myself
If they would listen.
Children.
This is all a lie.

"the subject should understand himself to pervade the whole universe, which is the object of his perception"

--Sri Ananta speaking in the Srimad Bagavata
How to kill the self
and attain true unity of humanity
Even self realized humans reside inside
cannot merge minds
I want to be universal
to perceive from your eyes
to both write and read these words
and not need these words
to see through them uinto the Real
live in the Signified
and lose this shell
so heavy to carry around
that stops people from seeing me.

How strange it is that anyone random
can read this play-by-play account of my mind
know my thoughts
and the people around me have no idea at all.
Blessed are the readers
who know me better
than the livers.

Time

2006-03-29T02:14:00.000-08:00

I want to elaborate a bit on what I said about Indian time yesterday. Ironically, I feel like Western intellectual and cultural history works in more of a cyclical way than the Indian; in the West, we are constantly having revolutions and reactions. Each generation defines itself in opposition to the last one. Dissent comes in waves and break in revolutions. Institutions tend to be conservative, and then are destroyed or altered by liberal movements which seek to break down something about that revolution., In indian intellectual history, I feel that both sides of the coin are usually represented in the same general epoch, and both the conservative and reactionary viewpoints can be seen within the very institution itself. I'll give examples from the chunk of India I know best: ancient hindu mythology and scripture. In the Gita, Krishna explicitly says that Caste is part of the natural rythem of life, and that out of His body came four Castes. However, in the Srimad Bagavata, Narada says that Caste is just a part of our material existance, that it is like our bodies, and thus the enlightened man seeks to transcend caste values. Actually, that is sort of a secondary example; this pattern of dogma and rebellion within the instituion itself can best be seen in the figure of Siva, who is one of the three most important Hindu gods and is revered by all Hindus. You see him worshipped much more than you see the other two; I don't think I've ever really seen Brahma worshipped. Siva is the rebel. He blatantly defies the idea of ritual purity that lies at the base of the caste system. He covers himself with ashes of dead bodies, has dreadlocks and takes a lot of mind altering drugs. All of that is in the scripture (he is allowed to take mind altering drugs because he has injested and digested Divine Poison. So don't do it at home, kids). The holy men of India, the Saddhus, look like the rasta or the hippy of the west, because they follow Shiva's path of shedding material purity in favor of inner purity. They all have dreadlocks and huge beards and cover themselves in ash. they beg for their food, they sleep on the ground, and before they eat, they have to dunk their food seven times in the Ganga. One of the most famous moments in the mythology of Shiv is when he rode an ass through the streets. Donkeys are the most low class animal, and are usually used only by Dalits, or untouchables. Yet Shiv is worshipped by all upstanding hindus, because they recognize that rules exist to be defied, and a thing does not exist without it's opposite. That's not right at all; they recognize that both the thing itself and it's negative are part of the same cohesive whole, and that neither of them truly exist, they are just part of the Lord's illusion. I think that this is why hindu theology and mythology has proved so timeless; it is flexable and allows expression of dualities and exceptions, and does not really depend on materialistic moral imperatives like western religions do.

Plans, God, and Time

2006-03-27T00:16:00.000-08:00

I have a few hours to kill now before my tabla lesson, so I thought I'd write more on the blog.
A check up on my trip, my plans for the rest of my time:
So we're leaving Banares this saturday to head to Daramshala in Himachel Pradesh. I think the timing is just perfect--if I had much more time here, it wouldn't be productive at all, but I don't feel like we are leaving too early either. I am excited for the natural beauty of Himachel Pradesh; I have only ever seen one mountain range in my life, and this one will be good too. I am going to be less busy with acedemics, and I might not get a new tabla teacher there, in favor of just practicing and making music on my own. I will be doing a homestay with a tibetan buddhist family, and I am really interested in that part of it; it'll be great to get to know those people. I hope they speak english, because I don't know tibetan and my hindi is "tuti-fruti" (broken). So I sort of see my two and a half weeks in Daramsala as my own private meditation retreit involving walking in the mountains and playing music and hopefully writing. Of course, I don't know how it will actually be, that's just what I want. It will be whatever it is.
After that homestay, the group will go on a ten day long meditation retreat. I have told my program leaders that I don't want to do it, so hopefully they will let me off on my own for that period of time. My preliminary desire (having still done no research) is to go to Gangotri, which is the head of the ganga river and one of the most beautiful and sacred spots in India.
After that, the group will go on a trek in the himalayas. I hope to rejoin the group, and check back in to the program. If they say that I need to just leave the program in order to be free of the mediation retreit, I will do so. But the trek is what they call a 'cultural trek' where we hike from mountain village to mountain village meeting people. I think I like that idea, but the colorado boy in me says "let's go climb mountains!"
After that, the group goes back to Delhi, and then home. I think I will go with them to delhi, and try to stash my drums in a locker or something in Delhi, but spend as little time there as possible. Then, I want to go to Jaipur in Rajastan for a few days, see some temples, pick up some miniature paintings, then go to Mumbai for as little time as possible, then go to Goa for a day or two, maybe more if I like it, to rest, chill on the beach, and make fun of American people to myself. Then I want to go to Tamil Nadu where there are many huge famous temples and things that I want to see. Then I want to go to Kerela, spend a day or two in Cochin (which has a really interesting and ancient Jewish quarter), and spend a few days boating around the backwaters of Kerela. Then back through mumbai to agra (I guess I have to go to agra.) and then back to delhi and then back home.
So that's that. Timewise, I'm a bit less than halfway though my trip, but travelwise, I haven't even begun. As I begin to travel more, the blog entries will certainly drop off. sorry.

About Sarah's and my dialogue; I think that what I am trying to say is that we should call whatever is there, whatever is in front of our noses, devine. Both in the everyday sense--life is divine--and in the structure-of-matter way. It's not a matter of a 'hidden variable' it is just that whatever is there is there and that simple fact is absolutely amazing and awe inspiring. That fact alone allows us to be athiests because we don't have to beleive in anything that is not whatever it is, while understanding that there may well be things we cannot comprehend or understand. It would be arrogant of us to think that we can know everything. But what we can know is so beautiful and complex, it can be seen as a conciousness, and our own human conciousness is only a part of it. It's just wordgames that I am playing, choosing to define things as divine which my sister would define in much more precise terms. It's all just linguistic constructions.

Oh, I wanted to post a blog entry about the Indian idea of time. So if you've read all I've written so far, good work, and there's more. Indians beleive in a cyclical vision of time. Westerners tend to beleive in linear time, which is usually tied with an idea of progress, moving forward and building better things out of the past. For example, the idea of evolution has become fundamental to many liberal-minded westerners. Indians beleive the opposite--that the best, most pure time was the first age of humanity, a sort of golden age of wisdom and innosence. If you look at Indian ancient history, you may be convinced that they are right. The vedas, the oldest books of humanity, the first written words, are increadibly sophisticated and wise; the first written words of humanity weren't about how to farm or make fire, but about the nature and power of conciousness. The books I have been reading, which come much later but still way, way predate Homer, astound me in their sophistication, even their similarity to many very recent poststructuralist thinking. So the first humans may have been the smartest, most righteous. According to the Indian worldview , the four evils were not introduced until later on, when the population began to test the bounds of the available resources and people slowly became greedy and selfish. In every age since, we have been getting progressively worse. The current age, Kali Yug, is the last age, the shortest age, and the most immoral age. They beleive that we are in the process of driving ourselves to distruction so that creation can begin anew. Kali Yug began at the death of Krishna, which I roughly roughly estimate to be a really long time ago. Someone look it up and let me know.

This shift in worldview is really a fundamental difference. First of all, it makes Indians sort of dissociate from their lives a little bit--makes them think that the world actually is going down the shitter and there's nothing you can do about it, so they sort of hold themselves aloof. It affects their political views--as India has just gotten permission from the United States to have a nuclear arsenal, people just take it nonchalantly as another step towards the inevitable. It also makes them really proud of their ancestors, and the old stories are held in such high regard because they are proof that these people are descended from the first people, the greatist sages.

The word for yesterday is the same as the word for tomorrow. Kal. And when Indians use the word in a sentance, they actually don't bother to specify which one they are talking about. This is annoying, but interesting. They completely disregard the idea of a schedule, and are usually late. My teachers expect me to be on time, but then hold me much later than the time I was supposed to leave, thus making me late for my next lesson, saying something like "time is an illusion" or "indians don't care, your teacher won't mind."

Anyways, that's what I have to say today. Please leave a comment or shoot me an email or something if you want to.
peace

2006-03-26T00:55:00.000-08:00

Mosquito Hunting:
In the small dark hours
After the power has died
Headlamp strapped on tight
Ripping small lives out of existance
The battle for a peaceful night's sleep
Their bites make me bloodthirsty
(Thirsty for my own blood stolen from me)
And so I rampage
The boundaries of my hole-infested mosquito net
becomes a battle cage
Clapping hands swipe
and the litle bastard escapes
again and again
and again, and now my hands
are schmeared with human blood
and I can regain
Blissful unconciousness.

That happens about three times a night.

Want to address the last post, and Sarah's great comment about it, which I appriciated a lot. What I said was not actually what I beleive; I think I am too quick to say that I beleive something. It's a theory--I'm looking for a way to incorporate spirituality into my worldview. What Sarah said actually convinced me a little more of the idea instead of less--It's not really a human conciousness at the base of matter, it would be more of a divine, eternal conciousness. In that context, it makes sense that no matter how hard we try, we can never actually see it or understand it. All religions consider God as unknowable by the human mind, even though it is within us. All we can do are see its effects. But by looking closely and scientifically at it's effects, we may understand a little more. At this point, the difference between my worldview and Sarah's is simply a matter of vocabulary--she is more highly and scientifically educated in the matter, so she can describe what she is seeing in her experiments with her vocabulary, and I can describe it as conciousness. One thing is sure--at that minute level of matter, it does not work according to Newton's hard-and-fast rules of objects, it works in a much more variable, unpredictable way, much like the way our minds work. Who knows.

By the way, I highly reccomend this book, the Srimad Bagavata. It's got a lot of philosophy along the same lines as the Bhagavat-Gita, but it's much more extensively explained, and less cryptic, and is also the repository of some of the best mythological stories in hinduism. This quote is from the Bagavata, when Bhrata says:

"Again, this earth is constituted of tiny particles of atoms, which are nothing but the beginningless creative energy (Maya) of the Lord, which makes all things to which we give names: gross and subtle elements, qualities, attributes, time, destiny, predispositions, nature, etc. All these things are produced by His power of Illusion. Conciousness alone is real, perfect, changeless, know as Vasudeva or Bhagavan."

Pretty sophisticated for a book written much much before the Odyssey or the Illaid was written, yes? Take it as whatever it is. I'm running out of internet time.
much love
jed

By the way, my email address is jed.bickman@gmail.com Feel free to email me any thoughts or ideas or questions instead of posting a comment on the board if you want.

2006-03-22T00:24:00.000-08:00

My mind has been really active in persuit of philosophy and mythology recently, but I have not done a good job writing it all down, so I have not been putting it on the blog. Instead, I have been appeasing the blog gods with inane shit about pomegranites. But the task is so overwhelming. The only way to do it is to write a bit now, think about it, and write more and more entries. I was hoping to be able to write one big one that was just my personal dogma and get it out of the way so I could talk about india and things that people want to hear about. But this is what I am doing in India--just thinking a lot.

My Western education has done a very good job of teaching me to think critically about everything, and in some respects this is getting in my way. Also, my relationship to religion throughout my life has made it impossible for me to be anything but athiest. These two facts mean that I almost never just take the wisdom of my Guru and beleive it and love it--instead, I mangle it in my own head. I have none of the true faith or devotion that people here value so highly. I am, and probably will always be an athiest.

But I have been awakened to a spiritual feeling which was always lurking inside me, and I have been trying to form a view of reality that allows it. So, I beleive that everyone has a spark of the devine in them, an atman which is an infinite part of an infinite whole, as I wrote in an earlier entry. This spirit is not unique to humans or even to living beings, it is inherant and probably the foundation of matter. My sister can probably correct me on this point, but my impression is that physicists are still mystified about the fundamental nature of matter, they can continue dividing it into smaller parts, but have not reached the answer yet. The answer that I propose is that conciousness--awareness--is the fundamental foundation of matter. This sounds like god but it is not--clearly, it is not the type of god who could enforce any type of morality, and although it is unseen, it is also seen in every moment of every body's life. Also, I beleive that it is possible for physicists to discover this, to express it in their own scientific language, whether it be string theory or whatever better vocabulary my sister comes up with. This would be impossible in the traditional view of what God is.

So the larger god, the Brahm, is only what is the conglomeration of all the Atman in the universe--it is nothing outside of what simply is. But humans are in a unique position in all the world because we are self aware and have the capacity to engage with our own atman, to worship and be moved by it, and to allow it to guide us to our own dharma. Most people choose not to be, but through introspection, renunciation, and doing selfless noble deeds, we can become enlightened.

Although matter decays, this sould which is at the foundation of matter does not have to decay--it will always exist in some form, until it doesn't anymore (which could happen but is beyond the sphere of my knowing). In that way, I do beleive in transmigration as a possibility, but it is also possibility that the atman of our bodies simply goes on to be the atman of the earth or the ganga or wherever our bodies are deposited when we die.

My thoughts are in constant flux, and I will probably not stick to this. Look for more entries later on. Now, I have to go bang on drums.
peace
jed

Pomegranites are delicious!

2006-03-19T22:53:00.000-08:00

Pomegranites are delicious! i eat like five a day (small ones) or two big ones, and because they are so intricatly designed, that takes up much of my free time and I love it. Mango season is soon!

I went for an Indian shave by the ghat today, where you squat on a rock and a guy with a straight razor shaves yer face for ten ruppees. It felt very good and I was happy and now I'm shaved. I also got new pants which I am really excited about. And I did my laundry. So pretty much, I'm clean and well dressed. Life is good.

Later
peace
jed

My privilige

2006-03-18T21:41:00.000-08:00

I am a member of the most priviliged group of humans on the planet. This is what I wrote about it in my notebook:

I am blessed. The amount of good fortuen and priviledge in my life is astounding.. To be able to travel here to this holy place is a privilege unimaginable to the masses who must spend their entire lives toiling in only one place, usually within kilometers of their birthplace. The people here dream of America--a trip to america for them would amount to many times their life savings. And I begin to understand why they dream of america. There is good reason for me to hate my country, particularly it's government, but my streets and water are immaculatly clean, I will be free to choose my own wife, my life's work will be done out of devotion, love and interest and not to make money to survive. I am blessed to be in a position where I can understand the unimportance of material objects--that I brought nothing with me into this world, and will take nothing with me when I leave. If I was daily struggling to survive, this attitude would be ludicrous, impossible.

A good Hindu would say that all this privilige that came from the circumstances of my birth and my parents came from the good Karma of a past life. However, this concept doesn't sit right with me, because it seems to release me from the responsibilities that I beleive come with privilige--if I actually earned the life I am living, then I am entitled just to enjoy it, and not feel duty bound to use my privilige to help other humans. But if I just am lucky, then I do beleive I have a duty to act morally. It's why Sartre provides the most firm basis for morality and responsiblility--if we are just flung into this life without rhyme or reason, then we have a responsibility to ourselves to live it.

I have been finding myself objecting more and more to the idea of Karma in general. Not because I don't beleive in reincarnation, because (and this came as a surprise to me) there's room in my worldview for reincarnation. But Karma is double edged--it does give us the responsiblility to act morally, but it also entitles us to take injustice as it is and leave it be. The caste system is built on Karma--if you are born in a low caste, it is because you had bad karma, and the only way to be released from that caste is to die and be reborn. Also, Karma depends on the type of authoritative external god which I will never beleive in--it depends on a God that much resembles the Christian or Jewish god that sits around and tallies up your good and bad actions. I will never beleive in absolute morality, I will only beleive in the spirit of things as they are.

I have posted already about hinduism. Expect some post soon about what my spiritual conciousness has lead me personally to beleive--I want to write it up and share it soon. But not now. I have to go bang on drums.

love
jed

another post

2006-03-17T03:45:00.000-08:00

So I can't type much because my finger hurts from playing tabla. so it goes.

One thing that gave me pause this week: one of the boys on our group got sent home back to America. He didn't really break the rules, as such, he just didn't really want to integrate with the group. the program leaders made him sign a contract that said that he would try to integrate with the group or go home, and he felt like they were asking him to submit to their absolute authority (which they were) or go home. So he went home. This makes me stop and consider my place in this group and my reason for being in this group. Like him, it is unavoidable to consider that I am part of this group because I wanted to go to India and it was impractical for me to do it just alone--I don't have the travel experience or the common sense or the language or anything. But that makes it difficult to find value in the group as it is, for itself. I have not really had difficulty integrating into the group, but neither have I found intense close friendships. I think I am in a very different mental and emotional place from many people in the group--many of them are just finishing high school, and most of them haven't found acedemics to be a valuable focus of their lives, haven't been really turned on by learning. This is not a euphimism to mean that they are stupid or uneducated, they are pleanty smart, they just have a different life focus. But I have also not really given them a chance--my solution has been to make myself very busy with acedemics and music, and spend my free time immersing myself in India. So I will try to spend more time with them and connect with them on deeper levels. I am highly looking forward to my three weeks of independant travel in India after the program, however. I am also looking forward in the more short term to leaving Banaras and heading for the hills--I want mountains in my life, and it's getting hot and dirty here.
I left my notebook in my bag at program house, I had written a much more positive blog entry for today, so look forward to it tomorrow or later on.
Peace
jed

Holi

2006-03-15T20:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Holi, the Hindu new year. I heard that it's the root of the word holiday, but maybe not. It's a pretty insane holiday, in the morning, all the indians through colored water on each other. If you go out side, they will also gladly throw cowshit and drainwater at you. It can get pretty violent, too--there was a fight in the street outside my house and one guy ended up in the hospital. I stayed home from last night all day, and I "played holi" (IE through colors on eachother) with my homestay family--one of the brothers who lives in Delhi came in to play holi with us. THe thing is, these colors don't wash of your skin--I spent all afternoon scrubbing, and I'm still highly colored. It's a good holiday, but it was randomly raining and cold yesterday, which is really strange for India around Holitime, so it made the waterfight aspect less enjoyable. In the evening, everyone calms down and everyone dresses up in new clothes ( I got a new Corta for the occasion) and goes to visit their friends and family. I visited both of my gurus, mythology and tabla, and ate too many sweets. Everyone loving and friendly on Holi in the evening and devilish in the morning. I'm glad I was here on Holi, but it wasn't that exciting because I had to stay at home all day. Glad it's over.

more later. not too much to tell.
best
jed

Few things

2006-03-13T00:15:00.003-08:00

Just a few random things

Tomorrow begins the festival of Holi, the hindu new year, which is insane and crazy, so much so that I'm not even supposed to leave the house for the next two days. I don't want to miss out on the fun, but my program leaders and host family insist that it is too dangerous. Whatever. Hopefully I'll have a fun experience despite being under house arrest.

I want to change what I said in each of the last two blog entries a little bit. SOmething my dad said in response to yesterday's entry that I really appriciated. Skip if you're not interested in these spiritual philosophical issues:

"I want to respond first to your blog on Shiva and how Hindu
mythology relates to its cosmology--you can put any of my response on your blog if you wish as a "comment." First, you explain this stuff very clearly, especially given its complexitity and its distance from western ways of thought. I did have one question about Hindus who pray for immortality--isn't the idea to get off the wheel of rebirth and become part of Brahman without even having an Atman--or is that too much a Buddhist spin on the thing? I really like what you said about finding salvation in the immediate, everyday--you sound very much like Walt Whitman here, or D. H. Lawrence trying to explain Walt Whitman.

The western psychologist who helps the most in explaining mythologies is Carl Jung, although he was not that helpful in actually helping people, including himself. He posits that the psyche at the beginning is in a state of undifferentiated, unconsious unity, out of which all the opposites the conscious mind later creates as the ego grows--male/female, light/darkness, inner/outer, good/evil--split themselves off. We ourselves split ourselves off from the entire psychic whole by constructing an "ego"--a male or female identity that leaves behind in the unconscious its opposite--or "contrasexual"--aspects, and a "shadow" that contains its negative [or unacknowledged] aspects. The task of the second half of life--or in deep spiritual experiences in the first part of life--is to reunity with this psychological ground of our being, to recognize as our own and understand those previously unconscious parts of ourselves--it's like that moment in The Tempest, when Prospero says of Caliban--"This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine." So there's a basic unity-division-reintegration pattern, that in some ways is cyclical in smaller movements in our lives as well. It's present in the Hero Myth, when the hero leaves home, encounters figures like his shadow self, the anima [the princess to be rescued and married] the wise old man [like Tiresias he/she is often hermaphroditic] suggest the original unity of the psyche. I realize this is to psychologize and introject myths and cosmologies--like the alternate kalpa cycles of unmanifest-manifest, unmanifest, etc., or the garden of eden, expulsion and dispersion, and then the heavenly paradise. But that's also what you're doing when you identify your inner rage with Shiva. Can you say more about what you're discovering about yourself and how you might be dealing with it? "

That was good and I'll type a full response maybe tomorrow, or maybe after Holi. But one ammendment I wanted to make now:after thinking about it muchly, I've decided that I beleive something different than hindus: I beleive we all have an Atman, and the aggrigate of all those individual spirits constitutes the big Brahm, but there's no external god outside of life. This is how I can remain an athiest while awknoleging our spiritual nature. I see no need to actually beleive in an external Brahm. This is also one of the main ways I differ with Buddhist mythology. Buddhists beleive that there is only the brahm and the atman (self) is illusion. Although I can see myself beleiving that the self is an illusion, there is no brahm outside of it. At this point, it really becomes only a scemantic difference, but it comes up in almost every conversation about it.

Then, about music: there's no way that indian music could replace jazz in my life because it's a little too structured, they are too loyal to the tin/tal beat, and don't change the beat to the extent that jazz drummers do--they improvise, but they never actually turn the song into a different song, never turn the music on its head. I'm going to bring back CD's, but if you are impatient and want to spend too much money, I think there's a cd available online called something like "Sitar Masters of Banaras" that has my guru--Ramuji on tabla, and Swamiji on sitar. I'll bring back music, though.

More later.
best
jed

Few things

2006-03-13T00:15:00.002-08:00

Few things

2006-03-13T00:15:00.001-08:00

Few things

2006-03-13T00:15:00.000-08:00

Shiva

2006-03-12T00:55:00.000-08:00

Shiva (Rudra, Shakti) is the third god of the Hindu trinity: Brahma is the creator, the grandfather, Vishnu is the presever, and Shiva occupies the place of the destroyer, and thus completes the cycle of existance. This city is devoted to Shiva, and Shiv is quickly becoming the hindu god that has the most meaning to me.

Remember that for Hindus, all gods represent aspects of the singular divine concept, the Brahm, which is indescribable and infinate. The Atman is the peice of the brahm that is inside all of us. The Atman is not smaller than the Brahm, because they are both infinite. The Vedas say:
Om Parnamadah Purnamidam
Purnat Purnamudacchyatee
Purnasaya Purnamadaya
Purnameva Vashityate
Om Shanti, Shanti, Shantini
--From Isopanishad
"That" (Purnamadah) is Infinite and Complete (the Microcosm, the Big God, the Brahm.)
"This" (Purmamidam) is also Infinite and Complete (Ourselves, humans, the Atman)
From Infinity comes Infinity. If you Subtract Infinity from Infinity, it is still Infinite. OM peace peace peace.
So, although our Atman is a peice of the larger divinity, it is infinite and complete. That means that all the 3500 gods of the Hindu pantheon, which each represent a different aspect of the Divine presence, are inside each of us. Thus, it is up to each of us to decide which god or gods to focus on in ourselves, to find within ourselves and meditate upon.

I respond to shiva because I have been confronting an aspect of myself which only a short time ago seemed like an alien being, a parasite inhabiting my personality: that randomly I am consumed with intense rage which clouds my sight and my ability to operate in the world. In my life I have valued peace and nonviolence as central tenants of my worldview, so I trained myself to suppress this violence because it did not fit in with my view of myself.

When I meditate upon this presence inside me, I realize how linked it is with my view of my own masculinity, and that in relation to sexuality in general. It is tied in with aloneness and solitude, manhood and violence. It is a disturbing reality that the masculine sex drive is inherantly tied to some innate sense of violence and power, that the two drives are inherantly linked.

These are aspects of Shiva. He is often depicted as half man and half woman because he literally is his wife, Parvati (Shakti was his first wife, she was reincarnated as Parvati). In this city, Shiva is worshipped in the form of a linga, which is a phallus set in a base which represents a vagina. It is not overly sexualized, but it is impossible to ignore the fundamental sexuality that lies at the base of the worship of Shiva. It is shiva's destructive capability that continues the cycle of death and birth, and it is through meditation of shiva that we realize that life comes from death--the destruction of material objects (including our bodies) is not in itself an end, but a continuation of the cycle. Therefore, shiva's rage is not negative, but is a manifestation of an integral part of the universe--just like everything else, it is neither good nor bad, but it just is. It is the beginning and ending of the cycle. Mediating on this aspect of shiva allows me to put into words the indescribable passion which I feel in myself, which I assume everyone feels in themselves.

Hindus worship Shiva because it is said that only he can grant immortality. Hindus always have a selfish reason to worship, and I have trouble coming to terms with that.

This is what I wrote about shiva in my notebook. I wouldn't have written all that except as an introduction. This would probably deeply offend many hindus, because I do not worship shiva, I use him as a method of talking, and probably in ways that are disrespectful.

Shiv, the beginning and the end, complete cycle, why would you spare me? Me who is and will be you? I feel your dance in my veins, my cells breaking dow, my blood becomes fire. I feel your dance at the meeting of my legs, the drive which overpowers my mind. Shiv who is also shakti, man who is woman, why would you complete me? Will you leave me forever in half? All selves within me,crying for unity, dying for to complete [a little bit of Indian-english] striving for humanity. Will you ever bring me into myself, will you ever let me exist? Oh, destroyer of Maya (illusion), may you lead me to death of truth and teach me to deal with the appearances of things? Shiv, will you lie in my bed, will you teach me to meditate, will you show me eternal rythems? Cover the sun, let my lungs drink your darnkess and fall in love with light.
Shiv who is whole and complete in yourself, in distruction and love and death, are you in me? I feel you sometimes bubbling forward, but you hide your face. You hide the big peace that you are. Because in this continuous cycle of death and love, of passion and desire and humanity, ther is peace and there is much beauty. Peace is not to be found in the cessation of reality, the end of samsara, in nirvana or salvation. Peace is within our daily lives, within the dust and shit and food, and peace is at the place where you reside, Rudra, the place at the beginning and the end, and in the journey inbetween. Shif, can you show me life? Can you teach me to find solace in humanity?

Not to get too intense on you guys. This experience sort of brings out the intensity in me, what can I say.
much love
jed

In praise of Indian classical music

2006-03-10T23:01:00.000-08:00

Firstly, I want to mention that people who are so inclined can leave comments on this blog, and that way it can be more of a dialogue.

Music has blissfully enveloped my life here. I am learning tabla slowly by my standards, but my Guruji doesn't seem worried. I've been getting a bit frustrated by it, but that's the wrong response.

Indian classical music is the ideal form of music--it is pure, ideal, precise, and purely improvizational. The best American jazz only begins to touch the communication of the spirit that happens in Indian music. It is the origin of all music, in its primordial form, passed down to us from the golden age of truth, the Tretayog.

(In contrast to our western sense of evolution, Indians beleive that the best time was the first age of humanity, when there was no sin and everyone was a sage. Things have been going downhill since. This is a major difference in the Indian and Western worldview, and it changes everything)

Here is the set up of Indian music. In the background is a constant drone which serves as a metronome, but sounds like OM chanting, but done by strings. Either they use an electronic box that produces the drone, or they have someone playing the Tambora. The tambora has four strings, and is usually played by a woman or a white guy sitting in back, dragging his or her fingers across the open strings, in order, to create the drone. They are not really creating the music, they are providing the structure for the music to take place. This allows all the other instruments to play lead--even the percussion instruments can play and improvise with the beat, they are not responsible for maintaining the rythem the way western drummers are.

The sitar is the star of the show. It is the most intricate and demanding stringed instrument available to humanity. I'm sure the readers of this blog know what is sounds like, even if you have not had the privilige of seeing it in concert. It has five main strings which are played, and underneath them are thirteen supporting strings, which are tuned to resonate when certain notes are played. This gives the sitar immense depth of sound.

The music is created by a dailogue with (usually) two musicians, the sitar and tabla players. They literally talk to each other with their instruments, and they feed off of each other's energy. They tell musical jokes, play with the rythem, push eachother to play at insane speeds, etc. This is a true dialogue of the spirit, communication unencumbered by language. You can hear the fingers driven by their own gods. It's really indescribable. Because there are so few musicians, they can really focus on the simple dialogue, rather than having to coordinate a whole band.

The tabla is it's own thing, which I posted about earlier. It is the most amazing percussion instrument, and I love it to death. To see a great tabla player in action is dazzling--they can create a mountain of sound with only their fingertips.

If there is a third instrument, it is usually the Serengay, which is a traditional string instrument that sounds sort of like the violin, and is played with a bow. My tabla teacher founded an institute to save the Serangay, because fewer and fewer people are playing it in Banaras. When played well, it sounds like the true OM, not just the human chant over and over again, but with variety and peace and the universe in it.

Music here is a form of worship, but it is almost never dedicated to an external god--to Ganesha or Siva or anything. It is worship of the god-within-man, the Atman of the musicians and the audience. I often close my eyes and meditate on the music when I am listening to an Indian concert, and it is during these times when I feel the most spiritually fufilled. Not to get too cheesy on you.

peace
jed

Arranged marrages and other stuff

2006-03-10T02:28:00.000-08:00

It's raining here. Indian people are baffled by this--rain in the middle of the dry season? Unheard of. It's a little chilly too. A nice break from the heat, which is about to come and kick my ass. But it is increasingly clear to me that human activities on this earth are messing with the weather patterns in a much more dramatic, noticable way than is comfortable to think about. Since I know people read this blog, let me just say that I think in another 20 years, a huge chunk of the earth (the part near the middle) will be uninhabitable, due to extreme heat and wild, intense hurricanes. Instead of a major bird flu epidemic, the earth itself is going to put our population back in check.

There are three students my age living in the room next to me in my home stay--they are tenants of my host family. However, I am forbidden from going in their room and hanging out because of the overly-strict rules governing discourse between the sexes here (two of them are girls). My auntie (host mom) hates the girls, apparantly because they were friends with her son, who was then living in the room I am living in, and has since gone to Delhi. It is quite uncouth and unseemly for unmarried youth of opposite sexes to spend much time together. On May 11, this girl who lives next to me will have an arranged marrage to a policeman from Delhi. She is terrified of it, and I am sad about it because I know the extraordinary prevalance of domestic violence in this society. I don't know that he will beat her, but he's a cop in delhi. He will be rich, because policemen make a lot of money on bribes, but she hates that idea. Of course she has never met him, and will not until she marries him. It's her dream to be financially independant (actually, to get rich) and to move to America, and I've never felt so strongly that someone's dream to get rich was increadibly noble.

I think that this system which governs sexual conduct here inherantly encourages violence against women, for many reasons. Women are quite literally property, especially in light of the dowry, which is supposed to give the man financial incentive for taking on a wife as a dependant--of course she will not make any money. If the dowry isn't big enough, she will not find a husband, no matter how wonderful she is as a human. Also, because of these social moreys that forbid men from being friends with women, women are completely alien to them; the only vocabulary for social interaction is masculine, and steeped in testosterone and violence. They have no means of communicating with each other. Because divorce is not an option, Indian women continue to bear immense amounts of violence every day in silence.

I came here full of reasons to dislike my own culture, and there are many many ways in which our culture could and should learn from traditional Indian culture. Everyone should study hindu philosophy, for example. And clearly, instead of using paper and styrofoam cups for our Starbucks coffee, we should use those little clay cups that you can just throw on the ground. They get re-fired every day. amazing. And Neem sticks are amazing to clean your teeth. But I could never ever imagine having an arranged marrage looming in my future. It would suck the life out of life. I don't even understand why my host brother tries to look handsome all the time and lift weights--he's not allowed to have a girlfriend, and he'll have his wife chosen for him, so why bother being attractive?

Mary and Fred asked me how India smells, which is absolutely the right question to ask and I haven't posted about it. I thought maybe everyone would like to know how India smells. It actually smells good, which is bizzarre becuase it smells like burning trash and cowdung. (that's how they deal with trash here. Throw it in the street and set it on fire). BUt all the smells converge and smell good in an indescribable way, it smells like India--sort of an acrid, baking smell. ALso, street cooking. It's like if you took all the sound in the universe and put it in the same place, it wouldn't be a cacophany, it would be OM. If you took all the smells and stuck them together, it would smell like India. But I've never smelt anything in the States that could compare to it.

Peace
Jed

Still safe

2006-03-09T03:46:00.001-08:00

Hi all

I got a lot of concerned response about the bombings, and I feel well looked-after and taken care of. Thank you all for your concern. The city is back to normal today, and feels just as safe as it usually does, crazy, but normal. The experience really wasn't that traumatic for me--I was safely at home when it happened, and the reaction of the indians around me was so nonchalant I couldn't find myself more upset than they were, who were more directly affected. THe response here is not like it would be in America for something like this--either you don't really show much emotion, or you go out and kill some muslims. I'm glad that there was no killing of muslims, and people were very calm and accepting about it. No retaliation or riots or anything. I feel very safe walking around the city.

More later. I have a long post in me about arranged marrages, but I have no time to write it now.
Best
jed

Still safe

2006-03-09T03:46:00.000-08:00

Bombings

2006-03-07T21:34:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone

I just wanted to post that I am safe and healthy here. Last night, two bombs went off in the temple of Hanumaun (the monkey temple, indians call it), and two bombs went off in the railway station, and two were disarmed in Godolia, which is the downtown shopping district here. What to say about something like this...Although the bombs hit the religious center of the community that I am living in, all the Indians are being really laid-back about it. the monkey temple is the temple that my host family goes to regularly, and where the wedding was. Although they were disturbed by it, by the time I went to bed, their reactions were "koibatne. It is a part of the life." All the indian people around us are being very protective of us, in a sweet kind of way--although our program leaders assured us it was safe to be out, my mythology guruji, who is an old, old, man almost insisted on escorting me back to the program house when I visited him this morning. It makes me sad and angry, though--these people do not diserve this violence in their lives. Although this is the first time this has happened here, their reactions are those of people who have lived through much violence and are hardened to it--throughout india, there is daily violence between hindus and muslims, and this is something of an extension of it.

THere was some fear of communal violence, or retaliation, but the city is calm and peaceful today. Many shops are closed, but some are open even though the goverment said that they should not be. The political talk is reconciliatory.

I think that my program leaders have been handling it well--they are concerned but not hysterical. Unless something bad happens, we will stay here in Banares until we planned to leave on April 3rd or whatever.
peace
jed

update

2006-03-06T04:26:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

what to say, what to say...

My tabla teacher just told me to get rest and come back in the morning because I was playing so poorly. It will be difficult for me to learn in instrument that requires me to be relaxed to play it, especially when just biking to my guruji's house I have approximatly ten near death experiences, from being hit by rickshaws to having rabid dogs chase me to stampeding cows. Until today, I've never seen Indian cows stampede, and now I have seen a whole gaggle of them tearing down a busy ally (narrow ally) at full tilt, and I thought that was the end. what a way to go. Better than shitting yourself to death, which I also am in danger of doing. That's an exaggeration, don't worry about my health, I will definatly survive this trip.

OK. I'm done bitching. Physically, this is a pretty intense experience, and I try to mentally rise above it, but sometimes it just catches up to me.

I've gotten a lot of very thoughtful responses to the post I made about buddhism a while back. To clairify, I really do find a lot of value in buddhism, especially their methods of worship, which are peaceful and beautiful and nonviolent and do not involve sacrifice. I also find the philosophy (the four noble truths) absolutely dead-on and beautiful. But it is also true that you could never enumerate the infinite universe of hindu philosophy and mythology, and so naturally my mind is more drawn to the more complex system, with more narrative elements. ALso, almost all spiritual persons hate and dismiss the dogmas of organized religion, for many good reasons, and it's important to realize how many of those reasons are present in buddhism--the tibetan buddhist church is a seat of wealth and power that does make its followers feel that they cannot reach enlightenment unless they have the luxury to give up their day jobs. THere are degrees, and many working people do find solace in buddhism. Hinduism escapes all this, because, in characteristic Indian style, it is a highly disorganized relgiion. It's crazy and chaotic and all over the place. Until you've engaged with hinduism on the practical level in India, and seen how absolutely infinite it is in it's random-ass practices and beleifs, it's absolute lack of central authority, you cannot argue that Buddhism is as variagated and diverse as hinduism. As soon as you have a hierarchy like and you're saying things like "his holiness the dalai lama" I have a problem. Much better to worship a noble monkey because he has super powers--it's so cool. Hanumaun can grow to a billion times his size and then shrink again to mosquito instintaneously, he can fly, and he's immortal, and he's a monkey. it's like worshipping the X-Men, (which I've often wanted to do), except cooler. It also gets points for being the oldest religion of man. Not all hindus are truly spiritual, most aren't--most worship so they can gain health or happiness or wealth--but I've met so many here who are so wise and truly spiritual that it's impossible to dismiss.

I cut my hair. I still have hair, but it's pretty short. I'd say three inches on the top. Indian-style hair cut. I did it because I thoght it was the culturally sensitive thing to do--it makes me less of a freak when I'm seen on the street. Plus, my host brother bothered me incessantly about it every night. It doesn't look as good, by my standards, but there's no point to looking good here.
peace
jed

Siva and Kaamdeo

2006-03-03T22:36:00.000-08:00

This is a good story.
After losing his first wife, Shakti (I'm not sure how she died), the god Shiva sat deep in sorrowful meditation for many days. The king of Gods Indra, who was given to jealosy, thought that he was meditating to earn the Brahm's favor to take Indra's kingdom away from him. So he became jealous and sent Kaamdeo, the God of Sex, to distract Shiv from his mediation. Kaamdeo was afraid because he knew of Shiva's strength, but went anyway. He failed to distract shiva with all his beautiful women and pleasures. So he used his ultimate weapon: an arrow of flowers. When Kaamdeo hit Shiva with his arrow of flowers, Shiva was distracted--his semen flowed throughout the heavens and began to rain upon the earth. Vishnu was afraid, because he knew that the semen of Shiva would burn the earth and destroy all creation, so he sent his servant to collect the semen in a bannana leaf. He (I forgot who actually did this part) did so, and saw that Andati was doing penance in the river Ganga, and so he blew the semen from the leaf into her ear, where it travelled into her stomach and became the monkey god Hanumaun. This is how Hanumaun was born. Meanwhile, transport yourself back to the instant when Shiva was distracted from his meditation. As soon as he opened his third eye, he burt Kaamdeo with his anger. The result of this defeat of Kaamdeo was that all the sages stopped having sex and the human race stopped being able to procreate itself. So, again, Vishnu was afraid that creation was in danger. So he asked Kaamdeo's wife, Rati, to go in front of Shiva and beg that he rescutate Kaamdeo. She did so, throwing herself upon Shiva's feet and begging him to bring her husband back to life. As soon as he saw her distress, his anger dissapeard, and he said "I will bring your husband back to life, but he will be reborn in each human individually, so all humanity will carry a part of him." and this is why we all have sex drives.

And then later the sage Narood thouht he also defeated Kaamdeo, but that's a whole nother story.

Tabla

2006-03-03T02:58:00.000-08:00

Hi

So, I'm still here and alive and everything. My digestive system is a great devotee of siva, and it destroys itself, liquifies itself, prostrates itself, and is reborn every week. Probiotics are good, they saved me this time.

I've started intensive lessons on the Tabla drums. The tabla is perhaps the most beautiful and intricate percussion instrument ever invented. It consists of two drums, which you play with your fingertips. the left hand drum is the bass, and you can play a scale of seven bass notes, as well as that whump sound (the bass note bending) that everyone associates with Indian music, and the right hand drum is the treble, and can play sixty different notes (not that I can play all those notes). The left hand drum is Shakti, the right hand is Siva; the left is feminine and the right masculine, and the music cannot exist without either one. In indian music, the tabla serves the role of both the drum and the bass in western music. It is played in a 16 beat cycle, four parts of four beats each, which symbolizes the four parts of time: Shanti Yoga, Treta, Duapur, and KaliYoga. My teacher is one of the best musicians in India, also a scholar of philosophy (as everyone here is). He frequently goes on tours of the US playing tabla, and he is very familiar to the western mindset and way of learning. He tells me that tabla is yoga, because in order to play it, you have to relax your entire arm between every beat, that the important part is between the beat, when the hand's job is done and the muscle releases. THis produces a much louder, crisper sound. This takes much practice--usually when I am trying to do something well, I get real tense about it. So it's a good learning process as well as a beautiful result (I hope. It's a hard instrument.)

Anyway, I love india. This place is crazy and amazing, every day it blows my mind anew.

wedding

2006-02-27T04:09:00.000-08:00

Hi

I was looking at some of my friend's study abroad blogs, and realized that I update and write way too much. I think it's become something of a guilty pleasure to come to the internet cafe and use computers--it's the bit of home and familiarity. And, I feel like I have an audience for my ramblings, even if it's just my parents. Hi, parents.

I went to a wedding--the cousin of my host brothers was the bride. It was crazy and fun--very colorful and lots of food. It was beautiful and sonically pleasing. There was a band at the wedding with tabla player and heavy synth and sounded like disco music over tabla with cellphone ringing. When the groom's party came, they brought a marching band, and many men firing guns into the air. So you could hear the two parties converging, for a good twenty minutes, much beating of drums and shooting (which scared me. I told my host brother I was scared, and he assured me they were experts and I was being a wimp. I shut up, then my other host brother comes over to me and says in a jolly tone, "this is very dangerous, yes?"). Anyway, creatied intresting sonic effect. I sat with the bride most of the time, who is not really allowed to participate in the festivities after the ceremony and before the fire-ceremony at the end. She was beautifully done up- you can see. the worst part was, they hired two girls to dance on stage for like three hours while the men got horny--clearly, they were not hired for their good dancing. Many members of my host family quietly told me that they also found this distasteful, too, so at least it wasn't just a liberal American reaction.

It must have been very expensive, it was very showy. The tradition is that the bride's family has to pay for the wedding. THis has big implications for women in india, becuase it means that daughters are financially undesirable, and is one of the reasons that infanticide and forced abortions of female babies are so common in India, and the proportion of women to men in the population is falling so much (is that the right way to say it? I mean there are fewer women). I wrote a bit about women in my notebook:

The battle against Kamdeo
must never be against her face
the beauty of women is
the beauty of all of us
and is under attack,
has always been.
Violence and subservience
the eternal producers of CHapati
while the men eat
the arrows of silence shot into her heart
and she beleives them
and has always.
So she is alone,
convinced she is a burden
constantly trying to make up for herself.

In my host family, I am constantly impressed by my host mom--she is cheerful and loving and always singing, one of the best spirits I have ever come across. She is lucky to have a good family--although she is the only woman in the house, her sons are devoted and helpful to her. There are two men in the house, her husband and his younger brother. Her husband is very crabby with her, and mostly ignores her and takes her for granted. This is how most marrages here are, I feel. But she is lucky that his brother lives with them, because he is sweet to her and they are very close. Most indian women don't have that, they are just alone under the burden of their husband's assumption that they exist only to serve his needs.

Maybe I'm unfairly steriotyping here--I have not traveled widely enough or met enough people to actually claim to know what I'm talking about. But I do know, almost all marrages here are arranged, and divorce is rare. This morning, a woman came to speak to us--she was being abused by her husband, and so she ran away into the city and found work herself. After she began to make money, her husband and sons followed her into the city and moved in with her, so now not only is she the mother, but also the only earner in the family. She cleans other people's houses.

More later
love
jed

To unfairly compare religions

2006-02-24T23:27:00.000-08:00

Hello
Have not been keeping up with morning writing puja. Whenever I sit down at home, my host family comes in to try to make me drink chai or something. This is the hardest part about being here. Indians have no sense of personal space, so it is impossible for me to do any work of my own, or even have thoughts to myself. I appriciate their loving kindness and concern for me, it's just a cultural difference that it is my job to transcend, not theirs.

Firstly, saw the drupaud mela last night, a beautiful all night concert of the oldest type of Indian music. The concert goes for 72 hours straight, just constant music for 72 hours. Most of it was serengay, which sounds like a violin sort of, the drum (they don't use a tabla, because it's even older than Tabla music--I forget what the drum is called, but they lay it on it's side and the left end is the bass end), and increadible, indescribable vocals, not singing so much as making music with the vocal chords. Never seen anything like it. Most of the crowd were western hippies, much dreadlocks. Festival-type crowd. I liked them, the westerners who make it over here to India are mostly cool people, even though they can get a little freaky. A few thoughts:

What west presents itself here
dreadlocked, humble (?)
beautiful to my western eyes,
what west sits at your feet, India
and what west seets to regulate
the eternal beats uncontrollable?
how will you know us?
and how will we know you, through beauty, or music alone?
poverty and suffering and dust?
Or will we bother to learn?

The serengay breaths
as the pulse throbs
and spins out of control
1234 234 234 34 44444444
chacka thraab chaacka thrab ha
and the serangay breaths
through stringed nostrils
om ooohmmmmm ahoooooom

Because vocal chords strain to be unified, to become whole with the audience, to be reunited with the brahm, strain to be heard, to make noise not words, vocal chords reach out and become themselves, because music is ourselves and wea re a drop int he eternal ocean and these waves are controlled by a blind beareded saddhu beating a drum and pundit serangay watches and guides through tides of in and out, self and other, self an out and self and out and through an out and into brahm untouched.d

Ok. taken care of.
I want to share some thoughts about buddhism and hinduism. Mostly because I have no time outside of my internet cafe time to write, and it's important for me to crystallize my thoughts about it now. Because there will be a lot, lot more buddhism on this trip, and I want to be able to trace how my opinions changed. However, if you're just cheking the blog to see how I'm doing, feel free to skip this. We went to sarnoth a few days ago, birthplace of buddhism, and learned about noble truths and suffering and the middle path, saw beautiful high ornate gilded temples set amongst poverty and dust, village life, more rural than before.
Buddhist philosophy is beautiful, and true, and it leads to a stillness that is a real experience of the eternal. I deeply respect the silence, the practice of meditation, and I will get much out of practicing meditation myself both here and in Dharamshala. My problem arises not from the philosophy itself, but from the fact that it has such a discrete, discernable philosophy that can not only be taught, but enumerated (the four noble truths, the five aversions, etc.) It's a dogma that must be swallowed whole by it's followers, just the same as all the organized religions which I have such a profound problem with. These are the four noble truths: one, two, three, four. Sure, these truths are true, but surely there are more truths than that. And the only reason they are noble, is because you say they are.
The other peice of the puzzle is this: both buddhism and hinduism recognize that we are each a small part of one eternal, unchanging whole, that in this sense we are ourselves god and there is no god outside of ourselves. I like that. But hinduism allows for the Atman, which is the descrete tiny sliver of god that we carry in ourselves, and, as such, it allows for the (albeit temporary) existance of a self. Buddhism does not--it insists that the self is merely an illusion, just like the rest of reality, which is all illusion and delusion. . But this is not our daily lived experience, this is not our life, and you only have to open your eyes to see that. We inhabit descrete bodies with personalities that have to interact with eachother and the world around us. In this way, I feel that hinduism gives its followers more tools to deal with their actual lived lives, and to find meaning in their lives. Buddhism demands that its followers transcend their daily experiences, which is something that takes full devotion and practice. TO actually be a buddhist, you have to be a monk, you have to spend every waking moment trying to see beyond the illusion. But this is a luxury that comes from privilige. People who have to work to survive simply cannot do that. This begins to answer the question that has been bothering me so much about buddhism: they build these increadilbe, ornate temples which the philosophy does not seem to justify at all. How do they justify this increadible expendature of wealth for materials that are pleasing to the eye? The buddhist would say "because it's all illusion, so why not?' But now I realize, that buddhism really is the religion of privilige, and that's why the buddhists will always be increadibly rich. The tibetan buddhist organization thing, whatever the call it, is amazingly wealthy. Because there's no room in their philosophy for the hard daily toil of the people. And that's also why it has been so easy for the american bourgeousie to accept buddhism--because they have the luxury and the privilige to do it. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing to do with luxury and privilige if you have it, like I said, it's a beautiful philosophy and the daily practice of meditation can save the world.

This is in contrast to hinduism, which is so various and manifold. Although there are central beleifs of Hinduism, they are innumerable, and it is up to the follower of the religion to form their own personal brand of hinduism. This increadibly complex ideological structure is mirrored and symbolized by the richest mythological and narrative tradition in the world, which allows the followers to personally relate to the philisophical ideas, to form personal relationships with their own god, and to really make it their own god. I've been going around the city interviewing hindus, and they each worship their own favorite god, Siva, Hanumaun, Ganesha, Vishnu (and any one of the millions of incarnations of Vishnu, esp. krishna), and they each have their own personal reasons for worshipping that god. This makes them increadibley proud and independant in their worship, and it allows them to make meaning of every day. It is very important to note that the buddha is the ninth incarnation of vishnu in the Hindu pantheon, so they do worship Buddha and follow buddha's teachings, but as only one peice of a much larger puzzle. You'll see images of the buddha in almost any north Indian hindu temple.

Not to say that hinduism is perfet, or even that it is good. some of the social practices around it are inexcusable, especially the caste system and the treatment of women. Also, the environment in which hindus worship is very difficult for me, the temples are often more loud and chaotic than the street. It's the mosh pit approach to religion. I far prefer the silence of a buddhist temple.

sorry to give you so much to read.
love
jed

Reality update

2006-02-24T06:22:00.000-08:00

Hello
I have much I want to write to you, about spirit and buddhism and hinduism and mythology, which I have to say, but I have no time at all to do so, so it will wait, because there is always more time in the future. But now, I just want to say what I have been doing and what I will do, because it's interesting and if there are avid readers of this blog, then I guess yuou want to know what I'm up to.

Yesterday, trip to Sarnoth, the place of Buddha's first teaching, sacred site to buddhists. Have much to say about buddhism, will save it for later. today, I had class and program-stuff, and just went shopping for wedding clothes with my host brother, which was an intense and trying affair. I needed western clothes, cotton pants and button down shirt. Indian pants are tight in crotch area. Family very approving with my snappy looks. The first night of the wedding is tonight, which I will miss unfortionatly, and the second night of the wedding is tomorrow night. It is my host-cousin (a girl) getting married, a very big deal, long wedding, very auspicious day. TOnight i will go to the Drupaud Mela, an all night concert of Indian classical music, until six in the morning. Then tomorrow, I will conduct my first two interviews about hindi mythology to two grandmothers, who I hope will tell me good stories of the gods. I have a translator. Then tomorrow night, the wedding, then on Sunday I go to the Ashram/orphanage to volunteer, then a meeting with Shukaji, then sunday night is Shivratri, Night of Shiva, which is a huge hindu holiday, especially in this city which is sacred to Shiva, and will be quite insane and crazy.

Will post more later.
love
jed

dusty

2006-02-22T03:52:00.000-08:00

a few corrections: the origional, mythological name of this place is Kashi, not whatever I said below. And the myth is partly wrong and highly oversimplified, but each myth is drastically different depending on who is telling it. My mentor, Shuklaji, seems to invent his own myths which vary wildly from the origional tellings--and I know he's read and translated the origionals many, many times. This is because mythology is only what we want it to be as humans, it has no truth.

Also, that picture 2 is not of the main ghat at all. It's just another ghat.

In hindi, the word for the runs is "dust," which is amazingly fitting for this place. I have been exceedingly dusty, and have had some mind-expanding adventures in the toilet. So, this one word describes nearly all the unpleasentness of being here. Am on the mend.

Best
jed

Picture 2

2006-02-21T02:44:00.000-08:00

OK. this is a picture of main ghat. India is impossible to photograph, especially the daily lived experience of it, so I am sorry if you cannot visualize my surroundings from this.

Trial picture post

2006-02-21T02:36:00.000-08:00

Photobucket is too slow, but I don't know how much space this blog gives me. This is just one picture to try. It was taken at Assi Ghat, just a few moments from my house

OK. That took way too long. Photobucket won't work at all, and we'll have to make due with a very few pictures on the blog. The origional plan of just uploading them all isn't going to fly, even a little bit.

Settling in Banaras

2006-02-20T03:28:00.000-08:00

The founding of banaras:
siva was very sad. his wife, pavrati, asked him why he was so sad. he said, 'it is all this coming and going, all this rebirth and redeath. so much suffering in this world my brothers have created.' And so Pavarati (sp?) said 'we should create a land where everyone can escape, can reach salvation, after one go'. and so, they joined together (siva is often depcited as half man and half woman) they joined together in one, thrust their spear down on the ground in the land between the Assi river and the Ganga, and created Kathka in this spot. The truth is, hindu scholars agree, that truly the city of Kathka is an etherial place, not really on this earth, and to come to Banaras hoping for an easy way out of Samsara is silly. But, this is where it is supposed to be, if you die here, you are free. ANd that's where I am now. isn't that sweet? how fucking cool is that?

Another short descriptive:
Wandering in kilometer after kiloeter of narrow feudal allyway, dodging cows and their dung, children gleefully calling "haillo! Haillo!" this place itself an earthly god with humans in her veins (many humans. there are so many indian people, it's crazy. New York doesn't know from population density).this place itself an earthly god with humans in her veins, excreting filth to be returned to Mother Ganga, which is the mother of all life, which is basically a big open sewer. It is septic.

A thought:

Arjuna, warrior hero of the pandavas, needed to kill Karna to win the war of the mahabrata. Karna, hero of the Kurus, could not be killed while he carried a magical shield of protection. So Krishna, the cowherd, incarnation of Vishnu, talked to Kunti, who was mother to both Karna and arjuna (but only raised Karna), and asked her to tell her son Karna to leave his shield behind. She did, and obedient to his mother, he did not carry his shield into battle. Thus, Arjuna slew him with his gandava bow. Allright. So who was heroic, who was honerable here? Arjuna was supposed to be the hero, supposed to be fighting for justice, but who said so? Karna was brave and honorable and loyal. Arjuna is the hero, just because Krishna said so. SO just because he's a god, he gets to decide what's right and wrong? We're just supposed to take his word for it that Karna's a bad guy? Thats not morality. This was a point raised by Shuktaji, who is an old man with hair growing from his ears who sits for hours a day and talks to me about hinduism and life and whateveris on his mind. He is very wise, and laughs at everything, especailly the great evils, the great suffering. I'm supposed to be learning mythology from him, but I'll have toget that from books.

Visit last night to host Aunt's house, easy to be polite when you can't speak the language--just sit there. Wedding soon.

More later. I am now living in one place until april 20, so will have no crazy travelling stories, just ramblings about what I'm learning.
Hope you all are well.
best
jed

Banaras day two

2006-02-17T05:28:00.000-08:00

This was written this morning, much has happened since then.

What an increadible, vibrant city, city of siva, city of light, city of the roaming cow--all Indian cities are the city of the roaming cow--city of insane westerners seeking enlightenment, city of the ganga, the dirtiest holy body of water in the world. (today, I was walking along the ghats, and disturbingly saw a baby floating in the ganga, mouth frozen in perpetual cry. They don't burn the dead babies before giving the mover to Gagaji, because they are not polluted.)Yesterday got first intro to Banaras, you can feel a rush of life in the streets and on the river here. Hat chai on Assi Ghat (where the program house is near) saw the nightly fire puja, and had dinner at a pizzerria. Pizza not good after Indian food, completely bland even overloaded with garlic, but i'm glad we ate there because the owner (Govin-ji) invited the four men of our program (we've since grown to five with the late addition of George) me, Nate, ben and our leader Adrian, back to his home above the pizzeria for a very informal jam-jam session of tabla and serengy. Govin was a masterful tabla player--the man is muchly mafia connected and has nothing to do all day besides own AssiGhat and practice the tabla. Two drums sing like athousand drumcircles under hummingbird fingers. I will begin to learn to play tabla on Monday. The serengy is a tradiitonal Indian instrument, but it's poorly made, so prof. serengy players just use a violin, held upside down sitting on floor, balanced on the arch of the foot, and played very impolitely. Much more emotion conveyed. Best music I have heard ever. Indain approach much better--much less repetition and more freedom and more emotion.

Chai is delicious and westerners who think they can make it at starbucks are highly delusional.

Eating with your right hand makes food better and soul happier than a fork ever will.

Washing yer ass with water much more sanitary than just shmearing it with toilet paper. Sorry to offend the polite company that this blog keeps, but I thought it was important information that needed to be shared.

Bucket showers good, too.

Everything is better here. Especailly the cowdung, which is holy, and smells much better than peopledung.

Had a crazy ride from the trainstation yesteray. One skinny indian working the gearshift and breaks and gas, another skinny indian sitting on top of him steerinmg. Missed everything by inches. Much use of horn. Every inch of streetspace given over to life or its waste, every moment filled with horns and bells and shouts, life is chaos and always watching reveal the laid back quality of Banaras, selves getting entertained by crazy citybrothers. This chaos knows no boundaries, and never dies, just flows, into temples and holy places, into houses and hovels, into the ganga itself.

Too much words
love
jed

First night at homestay family, completely open and glad to have me. I feel shy and awkward, but happy. need to learn Hindi quickly. Two broters speak English, two fathers don't and mostly ignore me, mother sits and tries to teach me hindi amongst much charming giggling and happyness.

Journal entries

2006-02-15T01:30:00.000-08:00

SOme thoughts.

From Bangkok Temples:

Metallic godsized buddha
Serene on top of
a thousand reproductions of himself.
Each image a god himself--
does size matter?
Godsized golden buddha
your face is the same
Face of Power
that rules the rest of the world.

From Kolkota:
Rivers of bodies thirsty
for endless things
lives controlled by
physical needsm, an endless population
just trying
to survive
to get enough to eat
to get enough energy
to pray.
for the hundred rupees to pay
for that breif moment to stare
into the eyes of God of Time
and re-use an offered offering of flowers.

I didn't look at her,
the eternal destroyer,
could have met my eyes in an instant
in temple mosh pit
seething with violence
and, yes, greed
for life, need
to maintain
as has been maintained.
The Empty truth of
the material existance
which funs religion
and destroys the eternal spirit.

rhythem of the street skyroketed to breakneck heights of rushing bodies & wheels & selling & spitting red &begging & crying & emptytoothed men who should have been emporers in their eternal form trying to scam themselves into existance & everyone vibrating with the energy of the present. the absolute surrender of life as it is, and thirst to continue in the eternal present, to never stop the past, never let go of the future.

Stay safe and dry. If you want something from India, shoot me an email and tell me. Everything's cheap and lovely.
love
jed

Kolkota

2006-02-14T01:47:00.000-08:00

After two beautiful days in Bangkok, I find myself in India, Calcutta, for the first time. What a crazy place. Saw the Buddhist temple in monsoon level rains in Bangkok. Now, in Kolkota. My first indian experience, fifteen minutes in the Mother Teresa House, cut short by sullen nuns, and then into the Kali Ghat, which is a famous temple to the goddess of time in death worshipped here in Bengali. My first impression of India, this is what happened. Was handed a basket of flowers, and lined up behind barefoot hindus, barefoot myself, shoes entrsted to someone else. A kindly old woman cut in frot of me, and we bowed to eachother. A pushy man decided it was his job to make sure I got into the temple and made eye contact with the godess. The temple was a mosh pit in front of an unimpressive altar. My self appointed guide brutally pushed the old woman aside, forced me ahead of a girl from our group--marrissa--who I think wasn't as important to him because she was a she. I thought a fight was going to break out at first, then realized that this is how it worked. Found myself in front of the goddess kali herself, who I didn't notice at all, and a man demanding 100 rupees, who I did. Hadn't changed money yet, handed him a dollar. Consternation! blasphemy! Sacrifice him to the goats! So I handed another. OK, OK, was given a sandalwood dot on my forhead, and pushed out of the way. A man demanded another dollar, did not give. was the only one to see the goddess from the group. Much determined begging, while I stood in front of the sacrafice altar, three kids devoted half an hour to pestering me after I gave in and gave one of them a pencil. Watched men kill three goats in a row, a sacrafice to the goddess, heads lopped of brisquely at an unadorned altar, blood flowing into he street. Serisouly, though, am very impressed by Indians in general, I love their energy and each one of them is caught up in the present moment, thrilled to be alive, mindful and energetic.I have much to learn from them. I am thrilled to be here, the promised land, and thrilled to be alive. Tonight, a twelve plus hour train ride to Banaras. sorry about the spelling.

1st blog post

2006-01-31T09:53:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone

This is the blog I will use to post news and pictures of India. I'm fantastically excited to go. I leave in ten days--Febuary 10th. Can't come quickly enough. I've got all my gear and I've got my blog set up, and I'm ready to go.

I'll be flying from LA to Bangkok to Calcutta, and travelling there to Varanasai (previously Benares or Benaras), a holy city along the banks of the Ganges river. I'll be staying with a homestay there for ten weeks. Then we will travel to Dharamsala, where the Tibetan Government in Exile lives (the Dalai Lama). I'll have another homestay there, with a buddhist family. From there, we'll hike up to the source of the Ganges, in the Himalayas. After my program ends, I've given myself three weeks to travel around--I plan on going to Southern India (especially Kerela) and Bombay and wherever else I decide to go.

As I said in the blog description, my program will have an online board which will be updated more regularly. It can be found on the Where There Be Dragons webpage at www.WhereThereBeDragons.com Click on "Yak Yak" at the bottom.

Feel free to email me while I'm in India, at my normal address: jed.bickman@gmail.com or leave a comment on this blog to get in touch with me.

Peace
Jed