India
I recently got to visit India for 18 days. I was supposed to be there for 19 days, but delays in Atlanta, Paris and Dubai added almost a full day to my journey to get there.
I got to see a couple of old (~1000 yr) Hindu temples, and a Jain temple (with the worlds tallest monolith -- a very tall naked guy). I also got to visit a Buddhist monastery in a Tibetan refugee settlement in the hills in Southwest Karnataka; that was the most relaxing part of the trip. I wanted to visit a Benedictine monastery on the outskirts of Bangalore, but I never could figure out how to get there (I emailed the monastery and heard back from them more than a month later that I was welcome to stay with them. I emailed again to find out how to get there and still have not heard back). In India, places don't have addresses like 230 W. Broadway. The address for the monastery was "about 10 km from Bangalore on the road to Mysore." I drove on that road, all the way from Bangalore to Mysore and saw no evidence of a Benedictine monastery. Mysore was nice, though.
Anyway, I'll put some pictures below. The first is with some Tibetan monks. It was only their third day at Namdroling monastery when I met them. They had just moved down from a major monastery in Himalaya (can't remember which one). They are past their first stage of training (in the Tibetan music and other preliminary things) and are now beginning ten years of studying Tibetan philosophy at Namdroling.
Other pictures:
birds fighting over grains used in a Bhuddist ritual
inside Golden Temple
"country" women carrying firewood
friendly soldiers
typical Bangalore residential area
cute kids I met
Belur
posted by Allan Friesen at 1:16 AM
4 Comments:
10 years of studying Tibetan philosophy! They must be pretty good at Tibetan by then.
I think so. They are not, however, very good at English.
Hi Al:
Saw your Blog for the first time today. very cool
I think you'd fit right in at the Namdroling Monastery. 10 years is quite a commitment though.
Looks like you had a lovely trip. (I'm catching up on your blog today :o) When I was in Thailand I saw lots of Buddhist monks but not so much up close because it defiles them if they touch a woman, and they have to go through some kind of cleansing ritual...so they kind of avoid the female-kind. I was really tempted to go try to chase a few of them down and tag them. Just because. ;o)
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