Bodhgaya is a small (usually) tranquil city in between Varanasi and Kolkata in the northeast of India. At the center of the city is the Mahabodi Temple and the bodhi tree under which Siddhartha became the Buddha, sparking a religion that helps make nirvana attainable to every person indistinguishable of class. The Buddha gained enlightenment here and now thousands more come every year to meditate, pray, gain merits and hope to break free from the cycle of rebirth themselves. As usual with our travels, we arrived at the city with only the slight knowledge that it was the “birthplace” of The Buddha (something we had learned two weeks prior) only to find that we had come to a very special place at a very special time when thousands of Buddhist monks make their pilgrimage to the temple, mostly from Tibet or Northern India where Tibetans are living in exile.
Our mystic path continued to lead us past the endless guesthouses (which were actually full of Tibetan monks) to a Tibetan Monastery on the edge of town which wasn’t in our guide book but strangely had a room. Here we meditated and basked in the tranquility while taking our meals with the 250 orphan children who also call the monastery home. We also took this time to learn more about Buddhism, Bodhgaya, and the importance of the temple in which we had wondered into. As it turns out the Karmapa Temple is home to Yongey Mingur Rinpoche, one of the most highly esteemed Buddhist masters in the Tibetan tradition and the author of a book on tape we had literally just started listening to The Joy of Living. Sadly he had left the week before but we did get to meet interesting characters like the woman from New York who is currently co-authoring a new book with Rinpoche, meeting over coffee as she hashed out the fine details of her manuscript. The Temple, which is part of the Tergar Monastery is the also the Bodhgaya home of His Holiness The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, the spiritual head of the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
Though the Karmapa Temple was wonderful and had enough history to keep us studying for years, we could not resist the charms of one Dwarko Sundrani, a man we had met on one of our days wandering around Bodhgaya, and the inspiration for us to switch locations. Dwarko runs the Samanvay Ashram, aka the Gandhi Ashram, and along with him our move would have us staying amongst the 25 or so children who live and learn there, plus a plethora of more Tibetan monks staying at the ashram while on pilgrimage. And so we packed up yet again and took off over the wheat and rice fields (not a bad walk into town!) to arrive at yet a new "home."
We knew Dwarko was special- he is 89 and losing his hearing and sometimes he would repeat the same stories (but good stories and you’d get just as much from listening to the way he told them as from their content). We would start each morning by meditating with him, the teachers and the students, then have a private sitdown with the great man as he would impart knowledge and challenge us to think about the ways of the world and how to develop the collective super-consciousness that is needed to make this world a better place.
We learned much from him while we were there, but only learned about him after we left and were trying to google his name for a correct spelling. Surprisingly, as it turns out he is the last active disciple of Gandhi, a personal friend of the Dali Lama, Martin Luther King Jr came to meet him while in India, and he has dedicated nearly all of his life to serving others. A part of us wishes we had known all this before- to be able to ask him what it was like crusading for Indian independence alongside Gandhi, or how the Dali Lama is in person. And the other part thinks it was really great to be sitting with him unknowing of his past but overwhelmed with his presence.
If you want to learn more about this great man, visit a wonderful blog we read about him:
http://www.ijourney.org/story.php?sid=5
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