Olaf van Kooten

Now we are back in the Netherlands for a month already. After the Pilgrimage (see previous blogs) I returned to Bodhgaya to meet my wife. And to follow teachings of Tai Situpa. He was explaining the intricacies of the Ngöndro practice mainly for the monks and nuns of the Rumtek monastry from Sikkim. There were 2600 monks and nuns from all ages (I would guess in the range between 5 and 90 years old). And there were at least 3000 lay followers from many parts of the world. In the morning Mingyur Rinpoche would give meditation instructions, based on the […]

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Well all things will come to an end. Some quicker than others. I must confess that my perception of time has completely disappeared on this pilgrimage. But a few days ago I said goodbye to all my friends at the railway station of Varanasi. After we had had a wounderful meal at the house of Raj, our driver. We had taken a group foto in the morning at the stupa in the monestary of Trangu Rinpoche. It was weird to say good bye as well as if it was very normal. Suddenly I was alone in the car with Raj, […]

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Yesterday we left the monastery at 5 am and drove to Varanasi. A city more than 2700 years old. It is considered to be one of the oldest cities in the world that still exists. The Hindu’s consider it the holy city as it was here that Shiva bathed in the Ganges. They believe that bathing in the Ganges, especially at sunrise, washes away all your sins. So we left early, with a guide, to see the sun rise on a boat. It was magical. We let float some candles with flowers as an offering to the Ganga and Shiva. […]

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Today we arrived in a Tibetan monastery with its own austere guesthouse. It is in Sarnath, the place where the Buddha gave his first teaching to his 5 former comrades on the path. It is known as the first turning of the wheel of the Dharma. The monastery we are staying is of Trangu Rinpoche a high ranking lama also known as the official teacher of the Karmapa (who is considered to be a reincarnation of the bodhisattva compassion Avalokitesvara). It is only 10 minutes walking from the park known as Deer Park. They still have deer there. The Buddha […]

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On our road to Varanasi, a holy city where people take sacred baths in the Ganges, we stopped at the caves where the Buddha is supposed to have trained his asceticism. It was a long walk up and quite busy. Young boys with motocycles where driving up and down, hoping they could make some rupees by carrying tourists. In the typical Indian way they honked their horns continuously for us to get out of the way. That gets on your nerves before you know it. The caves were very small and there were a lot of people wanting to see […]

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On one morning we left our hotel to walk to the other side of the river near Bodhgaya. There in a place that used to be called Uruvela, in the days of the Buddha, our forest monk called Gotama nearly died. He had taken up asceticism together with 5 companions to such an extent that one could see his spine protrude through the skin of his belly. He was fainting regularly and a little village found him at the bank of the river. Her name was Sujata and she carried ricemilk as an offering to the forest deities. When she […]

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Yesterday evening we arrived dead tired at our hotel in Bodh Gaya. We were set on seeing the Bodhi Tree (Ficus religiosa). Therefore we walked to the Maha Bodhi Temple and found a large mass of people pressing foreward to enter. Sorry, but I couldn’t take pictures for it is forbidden to take a cell phone inside, nor an iPad. These are my only possibilities to take photographs. So we have to do with pics from the net. The stupa is huge and in the center of it is a Buddha statue which is considered very important, but of course everybody […]

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Nalanda is a place about 10 km from Rajgir. The Buddha used to come here quite often to meditate and teach. When you are at these places you can really feel that the atmosphere is  conducive for those practices. It is calming and soothing just to sit and be. It was King Asoka, about 300 years after the demise of the Buddha, who started building a stupa here refeering Shariputra. Shariputra was one of the most advanced desciples of the Buddha, he mastered all meditation states with ease and could tell about the mind and about consciousness. His teachings later […]

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Today we went to the World Peace Stupa on top of the mountain where also Vulture Peak is, but much higher. It was quite a climb, but a stunning view. The stupa was similar to the one we saw in Vaishali and appears to be initiated by a Japanese Nichiren monk who went for world peace after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The whole terrain bathed in the constant sound of the Japanese big drum. When we entered the Japanese temple there was a monk drumming away while reciting the mantra Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take […]

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The day before yesterday (sorry, but the internet in Vaishali was so bad that I could only post on FB) on the way to Vaishali we passed the largest stupa in the world. It was in ruins, but its magnificence could still be seen. The place was already seen in ruins when a Chinese monk visited the place around 500 AD. But it still is extremely impressive and fortunately for us it was almost tourist free. The place was guarded by three men, two in uniform, that made sure we weren’t bothered and the showed us the place for the […]

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