The end of our pilgrimage, back to Bodhgaya

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, who had promised me to take me back to the guest house in Bodhgaya, where Annick was staying to follow the teachings of the 12th Kentin Tai Situ Rinpoche.

It was a nerve recking drive through the dark. Many vehicles had hardly any or no lights at all. Many parts of the road were missing and we were driving at about 80 km per hour. That is very fast under such circumstances. But I reached the Guest house in one piece and was happy to see Annick again.

We have a nice room with bath and overlooking the other rooftops around us. Our restaurant is one stairs up on the roof. It is beautiful. We can see the Tergar monastery where Tai Situpa is teaching. But also a beautiful Vietnamese monastery nearby.

My first encounter with the teachings of Tai Situpa was a little disappointing. Because he is a very high lama I had expected some very high teachings, but he is explaining the preliminaries to the Nogndro, which is quite simple and straight forward. But now that we got a little further I start to really appreciate whet he is trying to create among the 2600 monks and nuns present. I’ll talk more about this later.