I've been asked by several people in the past few days, what are you going to do in Thailand? Well, my friends, I'm not sure yet.
I'm still digesting India, living in the past and staring at pictures. To my defense, I haven't had my lap top with me for the past month and this is the first time I've downloaded my pictures. I left my lap top along with a suitcase at Pammy's cousin's house in Delhi. He was nice enough to play the movie Slumdog Millionaire which he already had on DVD for me before I had to go back to the airport for my flight. Just one more impression of India to take with me.
It's clear now that I'm "just another white person who went to India to look for themselves." (I'm quoting a friend here who was talking about someone else, but I'm applying the phrase to myself.)
Ben had been travelling around India with a 60-year old Jewish woman from Atlanta, Georgia before coming to the ashram. He said, "She just retired, had never left the US in her life. What's the logical thing to do next? Get a 10 year visa to India." CLEARLY.
I'm not sure what it is. India is just a place that you go in order to figure things out. You know, things as in what it's all about. Maybe it's the way that people hang out of the trains while feeling the cool air of the country side rush by.
Maybe it's seeing grown men weep after getting a hug from their guru Amma who was abused as a child in south India and since then achieved enlightenment by hugging everyone. Something like that is possible only in a country where spirituality dominates the psyche, where cows roam the streets and people are careful not to step in the holy shit. It sounds corny, but it's in a place like that when it finally made sense to me that we are all connected, that the divine resides in each and every one of us instead of being far up in the sky.
Alright, I might as well come out and say that I am a Hinju. I've been waiting to make this declaration since the day before my trip when I was in Pamela's room looking at her altar and felt something click as it made sense why I was moving again and giving up the job and apartment (well it was a room at least =) again to travel to Asia. It's because something was missing.
Many times at the ashram when we were chanting in Sanskrit I almost lapsed into the tune of "Yedid Nefish", "Shalom Alechem" or another one of my favorite Hebrew tunes. One Shabbat I brought my siddur with me to the puja and was showing people the Jewish prayers. No, I didn't think that God would mind the images around me.
Eating the vegetarian food with my hands never got old, although the day I left the ashram I have to admit that I binged on brownies and chocolate bars for breakfast and ate meat twice by nightfall. For me, asceticism isn't something to live by, but something to learn from through limited exposure =).
The highlight of my last days at the ashram was going to the wedding of another man who had rescued me by picking me up at the gas station my first night in Madurai with the sketchy rickshaw driver. The wedding was great because the food was delicious and spicy, I got to get decked out in Indian clothes, the music rocked, and the people who I went with were awesome. There was a Lebonese man who referred to me as his sister, a beautiful English girl who says that she may become a woman monk, my friend "Hanuman" who took the spiritual name of the monkey god and hopes to live in the US soon.
So even though "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" by U2 is still one of the only songs I have posted on my Facebook page, I feel like I came a little closer to finding it in India.
OK, soo this post was not about Bangkok at all even though I'm here now. I'm staying with another one of my dad's cousins who lives here and is a head of the small Jewish community. The day I arrived she was already preparing the filling of humantaschen that she's making for the holiday purim. It was cool to be let off by a taxi driver in an exotic home with gates around it, but to be reassured I was in the right place by the pictures of my extended family all around the living room. To go out to see Buddhist temples around the city and come home to a kitchen of Jewish cookbooks. Pretty random. I just went outside in my cousin's swimming pool and swam at night under the half moon. I came in because I felt a little dizzy, so maybe that induced the tripped out state of this writing. OK, I'll tell you more about Thailand another time and please forgive the poor choice of a title for this blog entry.
I'm still digesting India, living in the past and staring at pictures. To my defense, I haven't had my lap top with me for the past month and this is the first time I've downloaded my pictures. I left my lap top along with a suitcase at Pammy's cousin's house in Delhi. He was nice enough to play the movie Slumdog Millionaire which he already had on DVD for me before I had to go back to the airport for my flight. Just one more impression of India to take with me.
It's clear now that I'm "just another white person who went to India to look for themselves." (I'm quoting a friend here who was talking about someone else, but I'm applying the phrase to myself.)
Ben had been travelling around India with a 60-year old Jewish woman from Atlanta, Georgia before coming to the ashram. He said, "She just retired, had never left the US in her life. What's the logical thing to do next? Get a 10 year visa to India." CLEARLY.
I'm not sure what it is. India is just a place that you go in order to figure things out. You know, things as in what it's all about. Maybe it's the way that people hang out of the trains while feeling the cool air of the country side rush by.
Maybe it's seeing grown men weep after getting a hug from their guru Amma who was abused as a child in south India and since then achieved enlightenment by hugging everyone. Something like that is possible only in a country where spirituality dominates the psyche, where cows roam the streets and people are careful not to step in the holy shit. It sounds corny, but it's in a place like that when it finally made sense to me that we are all connected, that the divine resides in each and every one of us instead of being far up in the sky.Alright, I might as well come out and say that I am a Hinju. I've been waiting to make this declaration since the day before my trip when I was in Pamela's room looking at her altar and felt something click as it made sense why I was moving again and giving up the job and apartment (well it was a room at least =) again to travel to Asia. It's because something was missing.
Many times at the ashram when we were chanting in Sanskrit I almost lapsed into the tune of "Yedid Nefish", "Shalom Alechem" or another one of my favorite Hebrew tunes. One Shabbat I brought my siddur with me to the puja and was showing people the Jewish prayers. No, I didn't think that God would mind the images around me.
Eating the vegetarian food with my hands never got old, although the day I left the ashram I have to admit that I binged on brownies and chocolate bars for breakfast and ate meat twice by nightfall. For me, asceticism isn't something to live by, but something to learn from through limited exposure =).
The highlight of my last days at the ashram was going to the wedding of another man who had rescued me by picking me up at the gas station my first night in Madurai with the sketchy rickshaw driver. The wedding was great because the food was delicious and spicy, I got to get decked out in Indian clothes, the music rocked, and the people who I went with were awesome. There was a Lebonese man who referred to me as his sister, a beautiful English girl who says that she may become a woman monk, my friend "Hanuman" who took the spiritual name of the monkey god and hopes to live in the US soon.
So even though "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" by U2 is still one of the only songs I have posted on my Facebook page, I feel like I came a little closer to finding it in India.
OK, soo this post was not about Bangkok at all even though I'm here now. I'm staying with another one of my dad's cousins who lives here and is a head of the small Jewish community. The day I arrived she was already preparing the filling of humantaschen that she's making for the holiday purim. It was cool to be let off by a taxi driver in an exotic home with gates around it, but to be reassured I was in the right place by the pictures of my extended family all around the living room. To go out to see Buddhist temples around the city and come home to a kitchen of Jewish cookbooks. Pretty random. I just went outside in my cousin's swimming pool and swam at night under the half moon. I came in because I felt a little dizzy, so maybe that induced the tripped out state of this writing. OK, I'll tell you more about Thailand another time and please forgive the poor choice of a title for this blog entry.
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