Nalanda

       

                It's Sunday so it must have been Nalanda today. The hotels look the same, almost, and there are similarities in the parks and the red bricks are, well, red, but there were a lot more red bricks today. So it cost more. Six hundred rupees for tourists, but only forty for Indians. Well, the differential is fair enough, and it's not about the red bricks. You have to focus on the past and all the amazing minds who came to Nalanda for the thousand years it was in it's pomp. I heard that it took three months to burn and maybe ten thousand monks studied and practised there at one point.

          But before we got there, we pilgrims all started earlier than usual and were down for breakfast at six. Then we went to this park ... can't remember if we walked there today, or was that yesterday. Yes, today we walked there. I missed being there with the Bhutanese yesterday since I was able to bail out of the lunchtime wait (for lunch) and walk back here.

           I had a great meditation there this morning. Usually, I try to keep my eyes open because that's what you are supposed to do, but the bliss is always stronger and better with the eyes shut, and I shut them today because there were thousands and thousands of Bhutanese monks there and loads of distractions.

           We were right at the back. Once, when I opened my eyes, this wee monk was sitting beside me. He said whenever I see (whoever the rinpoche was), tears run down my face. Devotion, I guess. Just before the end of whatever was going on, a rather fat lady crushed down beside me. I took a selfie with her. Of course, folk ask us for selfies all the time, but that was the first one I'd taken with someone else.

             After that, we went to Nalanda. The recitation under the tree was very good especially since Eric read out stuff in English, and it made you realise what an amount of spiritual talent came from that place. Naropa, Nagarjuna ..... on  and on. The first time I was there with Lama Rinchen she said lack of practise was what doomed it.

             I walked around the extensive ruins and then spent the last hour there under a tree. A guy with a very large bundle of what could have been kindling or branches of some kind came and sat down in the shade too. You're a mark. So I thought I'd give him a hundred rupees if he's sit there, or lie there, for the full hour. But he got up. When I got up, a similar guy approached me and offered me a see plant, root and all. He had a nice smile. I took the plant and gave him a hundred rupees.

             Back at the hotel this evening, we had a forty minute meditation in the lama's room, which was very good. I was going to go, but Alexandre read a sutra in French and I did a wee bit of vase breathing, but just a wee bit so as not to attract attention to myself. The heat is just waiting for me to find the right time and place. We're going to Bodh Gaya tomorrow and I promised myself if I ever arrived back at that stupa, I'd spend a whole day there. Well, looks like we've got several days, maybe four. Be something else if the heat really got hot there!! Of course, I can't do the visualisations yet, so it might be crash and burn time.But surely not. I'm going to love being in Bodh Gaya.

          Three pilgrims so far have had stomach issues. I'm trying to eat nothing but fruit and biscuits after breakfast, but today I had a delicious omelette with a bread slice inside. And two cups of coffee. Loved it. Last night I had a burny tattie scone and curd. Dearie me!