Taken in March of 2014 at Bylakuppe.
The large photo is of Pema Norbu Rinpoche, the 11th head of the Palyul Nyingma Buddhist tradition. He passed away (achieving Parinirvana in the lingo of Buddhism) in March of 2009. At the end of July of 2014, the new Rinpoche will be enthroned.
Taken March of 2014 in Bangalore.
This is located behind V.B. Bakery on Food Street in Visveswarapuram, Bangalore.
Taken March 29, 2014 at Namdroling Monastery in Bylakuppe.
Doors stir the curiosity. One wonders what’s on the other side–particularly when the door is as pimped out as this one. This isn’t even the main door. It’s a side door, hidden by vegetation and easily missed.
Taken March 29, 2014 at Namdroling Monastery in Bylakuppe.
Namdroling Monastery is the largest teaching center of the Nyingmapa sect of Tibetan Buddhism in the world. It is located in Bylakuppe in southern Karnataka. Bylakuppe is a series of settlements that constitute one of the largest collections of Tibetans in Southern India (about 20,000 Tibetans live here.) This monastery was established by the Penor Rinpoche in 1963, after the Tibetan diaspora of 1959. The original monastery was a small bamboo temple, from that it has grown to a large campus of buildings.
This, the “Golden Temple”, is a must stop visit for travelers in southern Karnataka. For those with interest in Tibetan Buddhism, one may want to arrange a longer stay. Be aware that there are certain permitting requirements for visits longer than day visits.
Taken in January 2014 in Patong.
Taken January 2014 in Patong.
From this little shrine one could view Patong Beach across Beach Road. It’s a small but very active shrine at the North end of Patong Beach. There was often someone burning incense or making an offering.
The Equanimous Mind by Manish Chopra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Imagine going to a meditation center and living by the following rules:
1. You may not have access to any reading materials.
2. You may not have access to any writing materials.
3. You must leave behind cell phones, tablets, laptops, watches, radios, and other portable electronic devices.
4. While there will be other people around, you are only allowed to talk to your instructor/mentor, and mustn’t acknowledge or interact with others. You will scarcely hear a voice unless you are in meeting with your teacher or listening to the taped lessons in the evening.
5. You will be segregated from the other sex. They will have separate living and meditation spaces.
6. You will eat only the vegetarian meals provided by the center.
7. You will spend your days mostly in meditation—meditation of a rigorously prescribed nature.
8. You have to live by these rules for ten straight days. You are strongly discouraged from attending if you don’t believe yourself capable completing of all ten days.
Could you do it? If your response is, “Sure I can, piece of cake,” you are either an exceptional person or a little deluded. And it’s probably more likely you are like the person who imagines they will be a hero in a bank robbery or mugging, but who ends up catatonically cowering in a puddle of their own piddle. Maybe it shouldn’t be a tough proposition, but it is.
The ten days described are the basic course offered at Vipassana meditation centers around the globe. Except your travel costs, there’s no cost to attend, and you aren’t even allowed to tip the staff–though you can make a donation at the end of the course to assist others. If you happen to be near a center, there’s nothing but will and 10 consecutive days of freedom to keep one from taking the course.
The Equanimous Mind charts Manish Chopra’s personal experience with the course. I bought the book because I intend to attend the course myself, and I craved insight into what the experience is like.
For those who are unfamiliar with Vipassana meditation, it’s nominally a Buddhist method, but practitioners are quick to point out that it’s actually areligious. One need not be Buddhist to attend. One could be a Hindu, a Methodist, or an atheist and get the same value from attendance. Adherents believe that this is the meditation method that Buddha himself taught. For those who thought this sounded awfully cult-like when I described it above, in many ways it’s the antithesis of a cult. There is no central guru to worship. The closest thing to the overarching guru, S.N. Goenka, passed away last year. You don’t have to join a group or swear allegiance. And not only don’t you surrender your life-savings, you don’t have to surrender one, thin dime to have the experience.
Chopra doesn’t write at all about the background of Vipassana, nor much about its philosophy or method. Instead, this book is a retelling of Chopra’s personal experience with the camp. There are many books that deal with those aforementioned topics, and so it’s no loss that this book doesn’t. It does give the reader a first-hand look at what it’s like to live in the camp and what prolonged meditation is like, and thus meets a valuable niche in lending comfort to those who are considering the course–but who are leery of what they will go through.
It’s remarkable that the author had the detailed recollections necessary to construct an entire book. The organization of the book chapters is by day, and so there are ten core chapters. (This is a good way to arrange it as there is apparently some universality to experience day-by-day. Not only are people being taught the same methods, but it seems most people who quit do so on days two or six—indicating many people hit “walls” at the same point.) One will remember that notebooks and writing utensils are prohibited. The last chapter informs the reader that Chopra began frantically outlining the book on his way home. It’s surprising that an entire book sprang from memory. The author does claim that the clarity gained through the course improved his memory.
One can’t help but wonder what the book would have read like if it had been compiled day-by-day as a journal. In other words, how much was the book was framed by the euphoria of just having completed the course? Chopra does mention some low points of the course, but, overall, the picture he paints is rosy. It may be that his experience was just overwhelmingly positive, or he could have been on a high from completing something quite difficult.
Chopra suggests that by the end he had greater mental clarity, decreased vice, increased mental capacity, and was living an idyllic life. I don’t want to sound like I’m treating the account as suspect, and I certainly wouldn’t suggest that Chopra is being blatantly dishonest. However, I worry that Chopra might have oversold the course. It almost reads like he’s been imbued with superpowers (mental, not physical–think Professor Xavier, not superman) at the end of the book. (He doesn’t suggest anything magical, but the claims are pretty impressive.) Maybe this is genuinely his experience, but it sounds a little too good to be true.
I’d definitely recommend this book for people who are considering taking the course. I’m not sure it would be of much interest to a more general reader. As I indicated, one isn’t going to learn a lot about the philosophy or history of Vipassana. One does learn a little about the methods from Chopra’s description, but it is fairly cursory. There is a fair amount of mundane information that people interested in the course will love to know (e.g. what kind of food was served and what it’s like to have to sit through one’s body aches), but which will be less than thrilling for someone who has no interest in taking the course.
Taken November 23, 2013 at Belur
In Cambodia, one can buy these paintings that are monochromatic with the exception of the vibrant saffron of monks’ robes. These artworks are commonly found around Siem Reap and have backgrounds such as the Bayon, Ta Prohm, or Angkor Wat. While this photo was taken in Belur, India at the Chennakeshava temple, it reminds me of an impromptu version of such paintings. All dull earth-tones, except the Hindu adherents moving about in their bright colors.
Apparently, the significance of the color orange is shared by Hindus and Buddhists. Krishna is usually portrayed in orange or yellow, and in Buddhism orange is considered the color of illumination.
Taken on November 29, 2013 in Mysore.
This neo-Gothic cathedral sits in downtown Mysore. It was built in 1936 and its design was influenced by the cathedral in Cologne.
The saint for which it was named was a martyred Greek princess.
Taken on November 23, 2013 on Shravanabelagola Hill
[As I was on the road yesterday and missed my Daily Photo post, I’ll double up today—if I can. I’m iffy because Bangalore got 2” of rain in an hour last night (which we arrived home in; I saw a city bus literally—no hyperbole here whatsoever—half underwater in an underpass.) Anyway, my internet connection is spotty at the moment, and could go out permanently at any moment.]
The Gomateshwara (a.k.a. Bahubali) sculpture at Shravanabelagola is the world’s largest monolithic stone sculpture. Gomateshwara was a Jain Arihant, and was said to be the second of 100 sons of the first Tirthankara.
An Arihant–literally a “vanquisher of enemies” (a rather bellicose title for a sect that won’t eat onions because the plant must be killed to harvest them), is one who has defeated anger, ego, deception, and greed. (Oh, THOSE enemies. you say.) A Tirthankara is a special kind of Arihant that appears every so often to revitalize the Jain community.
Shravanabelagola is not a well-known site. Being in rural Karnataka, and not on the regular tourist loops, it’s easy to miss. However it can be grouped nicely with trips to the temples at Halebidu and Belur.
Tip 1: You’ll have to walk to the top of a rather large hill in bare feet, so be prepared. On the bright side, the steps are quite clean and devoid of the usual multi-species feces common to footpaths in India.
Tip 2: Jains, like Hindus and some Buddhist sects, utilize the swastik emblem heavily. Despite the ubiquity of what some call the “twisted cross” or “swastika,” you are not in a den of neo-Nazis. That emblem, and its mirror-image, was used for thousands of years in South Asia before Hitler co-opted the symbol—presumably misinterpreting its meaning (as he misinterpreted so many things.) Ironically, it means a wish for good fortune.
Taken November 2, 2013 at Hampi.
Among the many devotees of this Hindu deity are wrestlers, who admire the monkey-god for his reputed strength. In Rama’s war against Ravana, he was said to have picked up a mountain and carried it a great distance, which is pretty strong.
He’s not whimsical and mischievous like Sun Wukong, the Taoist monkey-king (who also has god-like powers), but some believe that Sun Wukong’s myth was partially influenced by Hanuman’s myth. (Of course, the more irreverent and anti-authoritarian Taoists had a different take than the caste-conscious Hindus. (Whimsicality and mischievousness are considered more virtuous among the former than the latter.)
This Hanuman temple is a small, stone-block affair abutting a giant boulder on the trail from Hampi Bazaar to Achyutaraya temple. As you can see, it still has local devotees.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 