Jundo's India Diary: A Month of Travels & Pilgrimage

[Gokai]

Hello Jundo

Thank you for the update. I wish you Safe travels.

It must be great to know a place so different from our reality.

Gassho, David

Sattoday

[Mp]

Lovely Jundo. =)

Gassho
Shingen

s@today

Sent from my LG-H812 using Tapatalk

[Doshin]

Thank you for sharing your journey.

Gassho
Doshin
Sattoday

[Onkai]

I just found this thread. Thank you Jundo, for sharing your trip with us. It's totally amazing and magnificent.

Gassho,
Onkai
SatToday

[Kotei]

Thank you for taking us with you.
Gassho,
Kotei just sat.

[Jundo]

Dear All,

Heading home today. The last week, I have been mostly in places with bumpy dirt roads, cows and monkeys wandering free in the streets, no running water, women with baskets of straw on their heads, farmers in the fields with water buffalo ...

The internet was surprisingly still available even then (what an age we live in, wifi in Buddhaland, auspicious for an online Sangha), but I decided to stay silent for much of the pilgrimage. I will post more later. All I can say is that India is very different from home (yet people just people). I have visited some places very sacred and important in Buddhist history, yet found nothing there that is not right where any of us find ourselves. Wherever we sit is sacred ... whether under the Bodhi Tree at Bodgaya or in the corner of our garage next to the washer ... each and all where the Buddha sits.

A few of the places I have visited the last few days have been really far out and far away, so sometimes requiring getting up at 4am to get in a van and bump along dirt roads for hours, crossing international borders (some of the places are in Nepal), all to see a little stone or broken pillar of King Asoka marking where the Buddha was born or some cherished place or where some other legendary event happened so long ago. Here are a couple (my thanks to a friend on the trip from Thailand, and a couple of reporters from French TV covering the trip, who liked to shoot my sitting) ...

In the Deer Park near Varanasi, where the Buddha offered his first Teaching, thus setting in motion the wheel of the Dharma ... sitting amid the ruins of two thousand years of monasteries and stupas ... Yes, there are still a few deer there.

deerpar.jpg

Thus have I heard:

On one occasion the Blessed One was living in the Deer Park at Isipatana (the Resort of Seers) near Varanasi (Benares). Then he addressed the group of five monks (bhikkhus):

"Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. (What are the two?) There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.

"Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (The Perfect One)[1] has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata...? It is the Noble Eightfold path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. This is the Middle Path realized by the Tathagata which gives vision, which gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment, and to Nibbana.

"The Noble Truth of Suffering (dukkha), monks, is this: Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, association with the unpleasant is suffering, dissociation from the pleasant is suffering, not to receive what one desires is suffering — in brief the five aggregates subject to grasping are suffering.

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth

Where the Buddha is said to have died (in a visible sense anyway), in Kushinagara ...

Kushinagara1.jpg

1. Then the Blessed One addressed the Venerable Ananda, saying: "Come, Ananda, let us cross to the farther bank of the Hiraññavati, and go to the Mallas' Sala Grove, in the vicinity of Kusinara."

"So be it, Lord."

2. And the Blessed One, together with a large company of bhikkhus, went to the further bank of the river Hiraññavati, to the Sala Grove of the Mallas, in the vicinity of Kusinara. And there he spoke to the Venerable Ananda, saying:

3. "Please, Ananda, prepare for me a couch between the twin sala trees, with the head to the north. I am weary, Ananda, and want to lie down."

...

Then the Blessed One spoke to the Venerable Ananda, saying: "Enough, Ananda! Do not grieve, do not lament! For have I not taught from the very beginning that with all that is dear and beloved there must be change, separation, and severance? Of that which is born, come into being, compounded, and subject to decay, how can one say: 'May it not come to dissolution!'? There can be no such state of things.

...

Now the Blessed One spoke to the Venerable Ananda, saying: "It may be, Ananda, that to some among you the thought will come: 'Ended is the word of the Master; we have a Master no longer.' But it should not, Ananda, be so considered. For that which I have proclaimed and made known as the Dhamma and the Discipline, that shall be your Master when I am gone.

Mahaparinirvana Sutta

The stone (and I met the archeologist who found it just a few years ago) marking the spot where Buddha was born (although, in fact, I learned that about 200 years after the Buddha, the great Emperor Asoka visited the spot with a psychic who "felt" where the spot was ... so can't be sure that it is the actual spot. Nonetheless, the place was about there, and the Buddha is born everyplace ... including right here there and everywhere.)

... and much more. Anyway, they are about to call my flight.

Gassho, J

SatToday here there and everywhere

[Byokan]

Safe travels, Jundo. Thank you so much for sharing the trip with us! There's nothing to find but here and now... and yet, wow! What an experience.

Gassho
Byōkan
sat today

[Getchi]

I grew up in a time when Guatama Buddha was considered mythological, these last few years have certainly disproved that notion. I really dont know how to express how amazing it is to learn all this!

I feel grateful to be shown these very real places, thankyou Jundo


Geoff

SatToday

[Myosha]

Dear Teacher,

Welcome home, from home, within home . . . .


Gassho
Myosha
sat today

[Kyonin]

Welcome home Jundo!

Thank you for sharing the voyage with us.

Gassho,

Kyonin
#SatToday

[Mp]

Safe travels and Welcome home Jundo to a home you never left! =)

Gassho
Shingen

s@today

[Kyotai]

Thank you Jundo, safe flight home.

Gassho, Kyotai
ST

[Tairin]

Fascinating. On top of the interest inherent in my practise in Zen and Buddhism I am also keen on history especially the "Old World". Thank you so much for posting during your trip.

Safe travels

Gassho
Warren
Sat today here but also with you there where ever there is

[Jyukatsu]

Welcome home Jundo, it was wonderful to read your posts and see the pictures : Thank you
Gassho,
Marina
sat today

[Toun]

Have a safe trip home Jundo and thank you for sharing your experiences with us.

Gassho
Mike
Sat2day