bodhisamaya Wrote:Since you will be staying in a monastery, learning the Tibetan alphabet is a must.
Great idea!
IceCream Wrote:(...) it looks like dharamsala is one of the places in india that has a less manic feel about it
Yeah, it seems to be a place popular for spiritual seekers, it's got meditation courses, yoga, "reiki", Buddhist philosophy.. Tibetan cooking!
Hmm I haven't applied for VISA yet, so many papers to sort out. Hopefully the 6 month tourist VISA will work out, after reflection I think I'll try to stay for the whole summer season, despite
the crazy rain (at 3:48, after it has a funny dog-chasing-monkey bit).
It works out great here, I leave my current appartment which has serious problems, very noisy neighbours, and after giving my note of leave at work they said the doors are wide open for me when I come back
So I'll just ask a MAC when I come back to have a better work 'puter
and I can renegotiate my salary hehe
Squintox Wrote:India is a pretty poor country, so be prepared for some (a lot) of culture shock.
And by poor I mean child beggars with no hands or feet. Plenty of 'em.
Dharamsala is in the very north west of India, I think it'll be less of a shock there. But that's an interesting topic. I feel better now passing by beggars here in Brussels since my 3rd meditation course. I always had some kind of guilt feeling before. Also reading more spirituality books.. there are interesting quotes about ego and charity and so on. For example, you don't go somewhere to help people, it's like taking the assumption that these poor people need your help. But you go there to help yourself, and help others at the same time. It would be lying to oneself to pretend you go to help others.
I have a Japanese friend who works in Africa for NGO's I believe, but it's like a job for her, she's paid, she had to pass exams and present projects like a research paper, what she would do there in villages in Africa, and it would have to be accepted before she can go so it's not volunteering. Anyway.. I'm more attracted to Asia than Africa but also for a long time I wondered what her motivations were. Sometimes I wondered if her job was more meaningful than mine, if I was wasting my time..
But from a spiritual point of view I think, unless your "charity" work helps you wake up from the mass unconsciousness.. it has a purpose otherwise, it's just another job, like a role that you play. It has a limited and temporary outcome.
You can go save children in Africa all day and the poverty remains because of mass unconsciousness. That's why the spiritual seeker who chooses to live the monk's life is changing the world too, by changing themselves. Besides while they're in their temple, they're not fighting a stupid war, or pretending to be "products of society" while slaving away at a job they don't care about to buy the latest fancy XBox...
So that's a very long winded way to say that I could be shocked by some poverty in India, but I don't think I'll feel the guilt I used to even just a year ago. EDIT: my point really being: without the need to "harden oneself" which I always thought is not the answer..
IceCream Wrote:if you haven't already been to the doctor, go and get your injections and stuff soon
Will do! Do you remember the vaccines you took? I tentatively marked down Hepathitis A and B, and Typhoid. Malaria seems very unlikely far up north and at altitude.
IceCream Wrote:It's definately the place that feels the most foreign out of all the places i've been
What.. you mean more than Japan ?! (O_O) hehe
IceCream Wrote:the colours, smells, sounds, everything is so intense there
You know when I went to Japan I thought the sky was the bluest sky EVAR!! And all the flowers were so beautiful and colourful and everything was so more lively and bright and saturated.
Since then I've reflected this is probably an effect that, as a result of being in a completely different environment, your mind does not label everything straight away, you in fact get a little inkling of the state of mind that some long meditators get, the state of mind of being simply present, and seeing things like for the first time, without the cloud of thoughts and habitual patterns. I really think that is it.
I think for the people who live there, the flowers, the scents, the sky.. it's all blurry and their day to day routine, they don't perceive it in the same way anymore. So there's an invitation to be present, and a good reminder that the grass is not greener on the other side.. but snaps, travelling is much easier than sitting on a cushion and doing Vipassana
IceCream Wrote:Luckily the light wasn't so bright in darjeeling, so i could half open one eye by that time to navigate the windy mountainous streets to find a chemist & a hote
Lol, sounds like you had a memorable trip to India! There's a "ayurvedic" hospital I think in Dharamsala, did you try any of those local/traditional medicines there?
IceCream Wrote:its going to be amazing, and you won't ever forget it!!! ^_^
Thanks!
Well I hope I won't catch some nasty thing, my main worry would be allergies. I've had some random allergies since a couple years which required strong anti histaminic :/ I guess I'll have to pack up some medicine to be on the safe side.
