broadcast 02.04.05--bodhgaya

bodhgaya...

after dharamsala, chiang mai and 'el balcon' this place feels like the wild west - dusty roads lined with temporary restaurants for the thousands of pilgrims; crowds of beggars - some of them obviously performance artists, creative, brisk and efficient - working the spaces around the main temples; and occasional murders. being a burglar - never an easy job at the best of times - is even riskier here. on the one hand you dont want the police to arrive too soon and catch you, but on the other hand, if it all goes wrong, you want them to arrive before the angry village mob lynches you. in a recent article in the 'Times of india' on the yearly crime statistics for the area, police arrests just outnumbered lynchings as the main means of crime prevention.

my friend matthew has arrived from canada, along with his friend meagan, and the three of us are having a beautiful time preparing for the forthcoming retreat, meandering between oceans of prayers and meditations and relaxed hours of daft and serious chat. we're staying at Root Institute, an idyllic retreat centre just on the edge of town. breakfast is always outdoors: under a tree or on the kitchen rooftop. after breakfast we head off across the flatlands surrounding Root, zigzagging around rice fields to visit an 80 ft statue of a seated buddha. then some study or reading, either side of lunch. late afternoon we go to the mahabodhi temple / stupa - the number one pilgrimage site for buddhists the world over - to do a cycle of of sweet oceanic prayers. it kind of reminds me of waterloo station - of any old, big city train station - except that no-one is hurrying to or from work. the hum of activity here is the glow coming off hundreds of people doing all kinds of devotional practices: prayers, prostrations, mandala offerings, flower offerings, circumambulations, light offerings... the fact that everyone in this place is feeling totally natural having conversations with beings that a western scientific-materialist worldview doesnt even recognise is what makes the place so amazing.

we have a little hindu shrine room all to ourselves each night. its beyond my ability to descibe, with an air of sacredness and squalor combined, obviously dirty but quietly clean, like somehing out of tarkovsky's "stalker". with no windows and a small ornate door only one metre high it allows us to recite together without the various recitations from outside drowning us out. just outside the door are a few tibetan monks doing mandala offerings, and the soft repetitive 'shush' of handfuls of little stones or grains of rice landing on the mandala bases has a calming and even cleansing effect. every night we come out of our little room electrified by the energy of the place, the craziness and deep naturalness of this site of multiple practice.

afterwards we go to mohammed's restaurant for an hour or so before the ride back to Root by cycle rickshaw - a journey which begins with a hair-raising roll downhill culminating in a ninety degree turn into a busy area, but then settles down into a slow steady ride beneath the stars and the various phases of the moon, past temples with tables of flickering butter lamps and the ramshackle chaos of indian pavement stalls.

a long walk across a wide dry river basin and through pristine villages still outside the electricity web, to visit some caves in a rocky outcrop about three hours walk from bodhgaya, sweet songs from those final weeks in england suddenly re-appearing ("her name is yoshimi - she's got a black belt in karate..."), and this time even football is appearing: we saw arsenal versus wolves - on a tv bought for his holiness the dalai lama.

tomorrow i go into retreat for one month - my first proper retreat as a monk. i know i'll be fine at a basic level (and right now i'm in a very happy blissful space after six weeks here), but say a prayer for me that there will be no obstacles during the retreat and that i will come out of it stronger (lighter) and wiser (kinder).

i'll write again in march, from varanasi.

best wishes to you all,

martin