TABLA

Yesterday we went to see a concert by my guru, Ashoka, and his sitar playing friend from Punjab. The concert was at Ashoka's house. It was amazing to see someone play like this up close, it was only a small room with about eleven of us. My skills are slowly improving, but now I am even more excited to continure studying in Varanasi. It's amazing how old this culture is. The sitar basically hasn't changed in 350 years and the tabla for even longer. People have been playing sitar for over a thousand years. The culture is just so much older than that of Western Europe...

Hiking

Today Galen (in the picture), Jordan and I went on a hike outside of Dharamsala. We went to a waterfall and then climbed up and up and up. We didn't end up where we thought we would, but we got a great view. We also discovered a sweet Shiva shrine and a temporarily abandoned village. All the houses were made completely out of slate, even the roofs. We had a great time finding our way down since it was to steap to go back down the way we came up. It was awesome to excersize again seeing as we weren't allowed to leave the premises of the retreat center.

Meditation Retreat

So we just finished our ten day meditation retreat yesterday. It was at a place called Tushita which is up in the woods above Dharamsala. A really peaceful and quiet place. Basically everyday went as follows:

• Morning Mindfulness Meditation
• Breakfast
• Teaching
• Yoga
• Lunch
• Discussion Group
• Tea
• Teaching
  
• Analytical Meditation
• Dinner
• Analytical Meditation

It was like that until the last two full days in which we meditated seven times of 45 minutes each. I got really good at sitting. It was a Tibetan Buddhist retreat which was cool because up until now I had really only studied Theravadin. It's very different and has a large emphasis of "saving all sentient beings." It's much more of a religion than a philosophy and is full of gods and Buddhas. The evening meditations included elaborate visualizations and cleansing rituals. Our teaher was an Australian monk named Namgyal and was awesome. He cracked jokes the whole time and kept the atmosphere light. It was nice, but now it's back to the noise of the city.

Happy Halloween!

Hello everyone. We had a great Halloween party last night that consisted of bobbing for apples and watching lord of the rings. It was fun, but I still missed trick or treating. Anyway, tabla has been going great. Ashok, my teacher, lives out in the middle of nowhere, about a half an hour walk. It's a very peaceful place and great for playing tabla. I'm learning slowly, but surely. It's a great feeling to be making music again. We've been talking to a lot of Tibetan refugees: monks, doctors, and revolutionaries. It's been great. I'm learning a lot about the Dalai Lama's middle way approach to peace with China and hearing a lot of people say that it will never work. Many people feel that compromise with the Chinese is not an option and that action needs to be taken now. Tomorrow I'm going into a ten day silent meditation retreat. I'm excited, a lot of time for reading and meditation. I hope all is well at home and I'll talk to you all in a week and a half. (And yes, that is a monkey eating a banana. I saw it on the way to tabla.)

Diwali

Diwali is an Indian Holiday that makes the 4th of July look like Chanukah. Huge firecrackers and fireworks going off left and right. We went to our Delhi coordinator's house to celebrate. The celebration involved a lot of eating a the blowing up of a huge squash. Awesome. After that, we hopped on the train for Amritsar to stay at the Golden Temple. The city was crazy, more crowded than Delhi. The Sikh faith has some amazing traditions, though. We stayed at the temple for free, and also ate meals there for free. We spent one evening helping out in the kitchen. Me and two other guys helped serve food to the masses. It was super busy and loads of fun. Than we hopped on another train and then a bus to make it to Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama. We will be spending about three weeks here. After one day I'm already in a homestay. The house is just three rooms so it's nice and cozy. We all start our ISPs (Independent Study Projects) tomorrow and I'm siked. I'm studying Tabla (Indian drums) and Tibetan language. Anyway, I've got to get back to my homestay family or they'll start to worry. Bye bye.

Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal really is the most amazing building I've ever been in. It just feels really crazy to be in it, no picture can come close to capturing its beauty, but I think this one comes close. We got to Agra (home of the Taj) by train. It was my first train in India and it was awesome. Really cheap and actually pretty comfortable. We rode in sleaper class which means there are three bunks on top of each other to lie on. Chai wallas come around and so do venders selling everything from sandwiches to small toys. I picked up a rubik's cube and so far it's offered hours of entertainment.

Pony

We had ponies with us on the trek and I figured Amelia'd kill me if I didn't ride them, so this one's for you.