City of The Good Life

There is a special spirit among people who call themselves Banarsis, whether they are rickshaw-pullers, merchants in the market, or the old aristocracy. It is an art of living, both passionate and carefree. They call it masti. It is the exhilaration and drunkenness of Holi, the extravagance and culture of Burhwa Mangal, and the glitter of Diwali. It is enjoyment of life without ostentation. Most of its pleasures are simple: a morning bath in the Ganga, clean and plain clothing, simple dal and rice, a boat ride to the far sandy bank of the river for a morning walk. A small parcel of delicate milk-sweets, layered with pistachio and covered with thin silver paper; a mouthful of pan, betel nuts and other condiments, wrapped in the tenderest and most succulent green pan leaves - these are the finest pleasures of the day. In the evening, there will be the clang of temple bells, and perhaps, later, some music. It is an ambience of urbanity, good living, and culture, all of which comes to be synonymous with the word "Banarsi"

Varanasi - 2 days after the bomb blast

Who are Naga Baba, who is a foreigner, who is the Indian woman, who was a police officer, who is the school girl....no one in Varansai could care less......

Happiness comes from realizing you are not "The One"

There is no beginning or end to our being "here". This makes our now of infinite significance. We are connected to an infinite past and an infinite future. Everything we do is infinitely ramified and interconnected with everything else. And everything else becomes infinitely connected and ramified with us. This realization is crucial to our positive development.

We tend to think that there is some ultimate state that we hope to achieve to get away from all this suffering, that there will be some place outside the world, some sort of vast infinity that will not have any differentiations. But we´ll be there and then nothing can harm us, and we´ll be secure and safe, and we can ignore every kind of minute thing because we will become vast and infinite. In our escapism, in our fear, we reify states such as that as being states of liberation and enlightenment.


But when we really realize the ultimate as the void, we gain the absolute freedom of the realization of the void. That freedom is also free from itself as a separated state. That freedom is free to be invested in the most minute infinities, the infinity in a grain of sand, the infinity in a petal of a flower, the infinity in the tip of a hair, the infinity of the tone and the timbre of the tiniest gentleness that can be extended to another, that can alleviate his tension, her suffering the tiniest bit, that can open another´s happiness the tiniest bit. Compassion infinity, not just wisdom infinity, invests in every being´s happiness.


Actually, everyone is the one

A bright light over Boudanath Stupa

It is amazing that the energy I feel here is visible in a photo I took last night.

108 kora in the Full Moon

To do the 108 you need to start the evening before, and walk through the night, through the dawn, into the new sunrise. It´s just too hot to attempt it during the daytime.

Those hours in the deep of the night, people silently walking round the glowing white stupa, each one deep  into prayers and several groups of monks came and began chanting.

I looked at this from the window in my bedroom last night. The room is on the fourth floor and Buddhas eyes on the Stupa is looking directly into the room. Many people come to do kora, prostrate, light candles, and say mantras and prayers, amplifying even more the intensity of energy here.

Was impossible to sleep. I sat and watched it from my window and felt gratitude.

Om Namah Shivay 

In the space

Enjoy to be between, after the old and before the new begins....

Om Namah Shivay!