Haven't written for ages, but there are good reasons - Bodhgaya swallowed me with all my internal and external life! Phowa 12 hours per day, two Greek Sofias, Temple, Tree, dust, beggars, handicapped children, goats, "Indian spa", being detached, eating a lot, talking even more, monasteries, prayers, meditation... Ok, let's take it easy and start again (viva Goenka-ji!)

10 days in the Holy City... more than 10 months of Marseille-life. Well, I'd almost say more than 10 years, but you wouldn't believe me. You know Bodhgaya? Cmon, you know it - Buddha attained enlightenment there, under the Bodhi Tree, once in the history. The Real Tree is not there any more - it was cut by King Ashoka's crazy wife, but one of his daughters managed to safe a root and plant it in Shri Lanka, and they say that the present Tree, standing at THE place, comes from the saved root. I believe it. Close to the tree there's a temple. HUUUUGE Temple. 

Around the Temple there are PEOPLE - everywhere and at any moment of the day, the sea of monks in different colors of robes, Buddhist rainbow, mostly deep red - wine bottles! Pilgrims, Indians, Europeans, dogs, children, army... Praying, eating, taking pics, fighting, spinning the wheels, prostrating 100 000 times. Nice place for anthropological studies. 

Moreover, the Kalachakra has just finished, so picture a land after a tsunami - they say around 500 000 people came to Bodhgaya to see Dalai-Lama. And voila, Dalai-Lama is gone, but the dust has still not settled down. The dirt, the excitement and the prices as well. I went to the Kalachakra maidan 3 days after it was over. A sad sight - like when you take away the Christmas tree. Still smelling the party, but so much trash after... And you know it's not gonna be back for a year or so. With Dalai-Lama they say it was the last time he gave this teaching (well, they say it every year, man!)

I came to Bodhgaya to attend Phowa, the teaching of Lama Ayang Rinpoche on meditation in the moment of death, 10 days of impressive and intensive empowerment. Couldn't finish it, too strong for me, too Buddhist, too spacing out. Anyway, used to come to the tent every day to meditate, Lama Rinpoche is very powerful and you feel it once you enter the field. Well, and Tibetan bread they served with tea - this very special Tibetan bread, you know... 

Ok, instead of doing Phowa I managed to jump into a sea of other types of meditation. Too much to write here... I also met the very best people, thank you, David! THE family - two Sofias, Francoise, Dragos, Raz, Anni and many others. It's karma, pure karma. Inspiring, turning me upside down, tuning in, loving unconditionally and sharing their knowledge so freely and in such an unexpectedly easy manner - over a plate of momos or a ginger-apple cake. Oh, food is a separate topic - you know how much I love Tibetan food! What to say - here it was my momo and chowmein paradise! Thukpas, thentuks, fried or steamed momos, Tibetan bread... And all the other types of food - got some hummus, pizza, brownies, olalala!  Ok, stop this float of hedonistic fantasme!  

I am full of love and new horizons after Bodhgaya. The energy is AMAZING (yes, John, I understand you!) and I still have lots of things to digest...

Sorry for the disorder in the pics, Inet is slow and I am sooo tired... 

PHOWA FROM HERE...

TO HERE

LAST DAY OF PHOWA, THE OFFERING TO THE BUDDHA AMITHABA

WITH RAZ, LOVELY!

I don't have words to describe what is happening to me here in BodhGaya! I just don't have words...

Tchuf Tchuf

Sitting on the train to Gaya - my first Indian train trip. Sleeper class - it's like our Russian platskart but with 8 places per room and one million things happening. Families with small kids, old saddhus begging, chai-coffee, food and press sellers passing by starting from 6AM, everybody screaming and farting and listening to their own music on mobiles. If you are sensitive to sounds and smells you'd better NOT take Sleepers Class. But for me it's real India - people are kind and true. Oh, right now I'm being attacked by a cockroach and there's a battle in the toilet zone. That's life! Everybody says "Hallou" to me (that's basically the only English word people know...) and stares at my Yellow Hear again and again, one lady - and that starts to be normal - asked if she could take a pic on me later on. Again and again we pass by landscapes that make it REAL for me, with fields and clay houses, with women ALWAYS washing clothes - seems to be their main daily practice, with naked kids and piles of cow shit (this i the normal fuel in rural zones), with monkeys on the temple roofs and men peeing wherever their left foot stops them. Lots of tents and huts, many women on construction sites, there are no tractors, so if you need to transport a pile of bricks from a truck to the place, they use... womens' heads. You know the picture, right? Saree, head covered with a special supporting scarf and there you go - superwoman... The train will be late, it's ALREADY late - 3h at least, we'll see by night time. It's normal... David told me once their train was one and a half day late. Well, this is India :)

I am really slow in writing those days - both to my family, to my diary (dear diary...) and to the Universe. Let it be - there are small things happening and I am really enjoying, no Internet actually gives you so much time for... communicating  -"log off and go for a walk with the dog", right? (Loesje is always right, so...)

One more vipassana finished one week ago, new horizons, new stories, new people and as usual new me. This time my ever-restless part had hard times... but well done dear Yana! :) I've worked a lot on my heart center and now feeling REALLY good, like it was in one movie: "today I am better, not better than you, but better than myself yesterday". 

Now in Rishikesh, THE yoga capital, THE New Age Place of the... West - you can have everything here from flute lessons and ayurvedic super-doctors to astrological reading of your mamma's dog's past lives. So people stay here for months in ashrams, find their gurus, chat with sadhus over a cup of chai, bath in Ganga and pray for their nuuumerous gods. The town is as touristic as it could be, with German Bakeries and musli for breakfast, with street beggars speaking English (Hare Om full power!) and rikshaws charging you 10 times more than they would charge Indians - normal, right? Cows are as holy as everywhere in India, they eat posters from walls, beg for chapaties and poo everywhere they can, last days it was raining so to get from our place to the center we had to swim in the porridge of cow s..t, soooo natural and soooo eco, the biggest deal was not to slip and shmak down :)

Everybody is doing yoga here and me... I'm slightly apart. The idea before coming was to stay here for one month and do agama yoga first level, but now I am leaving for Bodhgaya toorrow and took only one class in Iyengar Yoga with a private teacher from... Israel, a guy who is writing a book on asanas and practicing 25 hours per week, pretty impressive how advanced he is and.. how humble he stays at the same time. We met over a momo soup (youpiii, momos here are the best!) and just chatted and I said I'd like to take his class, and it was actually the best (technically) yoga class in my life! We also talked a lot (again over momos:), he's not spiritual at all, yoga is 100% physical for him, but he talked about sensations and concentration the way we would do it in vipassana. Just a new angle of the same thing. Interesting! I also got updated on Israeli politics, sure...

So here are some pictures from Rishikesh, enjoy

The ShriVedaNiketan ashram where I stayed - 100 rupees per night and free yoga classes twice a day

Shiva on the Ganga

In The Office - best chai and banana samosas in the town!

RamJuhla, the first bridge

With Lina, Swe, so nice to speak Swedish after three years!

In a coffee house, fancy pro-European with toilet paper in the bathroom. Coffee for 50 rupees, but such a pleasure - my first cup since three months...

One of the Gats

Come on to On the other siiiide...

Lemon with Soda...

Next three pics are from an orphanage established by an American lady, with 60 kids living and studying there. You can volunteer and work in the kitchen (they have a cafe with the yammiest food in Rishikesh!)

Yatra on the Ganga 

Hanuman and Shiva

Simple living high thinking

I've been dreaming of downshifting for some few good years now: living outside on a sustainable farm, having goats and growing sunflowers, making my own bread and jams, being dependent on seasons, listening to the Moon and just connecting to the roots (our gramma was from a village in Southern Russia and I still remember the taste of fresh figues, smell of real tomatoes and the pain in my hands beating butter). Simple living - easy thinking, right? Total locavoring, not asking for more than you need, being grateful for every small thing coming from the Earth to your table, feeling the tastes and the smells right in their origins... And do you know what? I happened to spend one night in such a place here in India. A little paradise between Rerih's fields, a small settlement with ten clay houses with members of one clan-family living there (hm, though they were around fifty if you count all the aunties and all the kids!). Ananda, my friend from vipassana center in Dharamkot, invited me to his place after my vipassana-sitting in Dehradun and I managed to make my way through the mountains (3 hours on a jeep) to spend one eve in this beautiful, full of love house. 

During the monsoon they grow corn, potatoes and even their own dhal (lentils). They have 7 cows (read milk, curd, butter, lassi), no running water, one bed for 5 family members and they live totally with the sun. They also treat their guests like gods - hm, add to that the fact that I was the first foreigner to visit the house! The whole family followed me around the settlement and children would stare at me and laugh hiding behind their fathers if I'd look at them, oh, and one poor little boy cried of fear just because I wanted to talk to him! 

The food was the yammiest here in India, because it was ALL (except some potatoes) grown with their own hands and prepared in a very simple way on the open fire - no gaz!: rice, dhal, curd, veggies, lassi, corn chapaties... I left the house blissed and all melted, thinking of how peaceful and happy the whole family was - four generations living together (and special topic is children - I don't think that things like "terrible twos" or "sensitive child" or tantrums or any kind of disrespect towards parents or each other exist - seriously, this could be a separate discussion...). 

So now thinking of THE place for my dreams to come true...