I've been in Kyoto for nearly a week, enjoying the beauty of this ancient city and time with my brother P and my sister-in-law C. Because P has been helping me use Picasa to organize my trip photos, I decided to do some photoblogging today.

The following photos show you what you'd see if you decided to take a trip to Mt. Kurama, as I did a few days ago. It's a magical place! Some believe that it is the home of Mao-Sen, a powerful spirit who came to Earth millions of years ago to help all living things. Deep within the peaceful forests of the mountain, that thought doesn't seem so impossible.

To get to Mt. Kurama, you need to take a train to Kurama Station, up in the mountains north of Kyoto. The trip takes about half an hour. Once you take a few steps uphill from the station, you meet one of the mountain's guardians, shown below.


Above that guardian, a stone stairway leads up the mountain.


You follow the stairway up the mountain, passing many small shrines where you can pay your respects to the resident deities of the mountain.

Here and there, a dragon spits spring water into a bowl, so you can rinse your hands and drink.


You pass the Chu-Mon Gate, guarded by giant cedars. This spot makes me think of how the set for the Lord of the Rings movie might have looked, had it been constructed by nature-loving Buddhists.

Here and there, as you climb, lamps light your way, because it's dark under the tall trees.

You keep climbing up the stone stairway through the thick forest.

Finally, you reach the main temple, not far from the top of the mountain (this view is from above the temple).

If you arrive on a certain June day, as I did, then you can see the annual Takekiri Ceremony. According to legend, about a thousand years ago, a monk was attacked by two enormous serpents, but managed to subdue them. Each year, groups of monks reenact this legend by competing in cutting up big bamboo poles, which represent the serpents. Here, priests arrive at the temple to open the ceremony.

Here, the two four-monk teams face off in the temple.

Monks from the two teams take turns trying to sever each bamboo pole with the fewest cuts. Their swords are sharp--I was glad not to be one of the team members holding up the pole.

I was impressed by the swordsmanship, but wasn't sure who won in the end. Never mind, though, the ceremonies finished with enough daylight remaining to walk to the mountaintop, first passing along this part of the trail that runs across thickly interwoven tree roots.


A bit further along is a shrine to Mao-Sen, which I think marks the mountaintop. It's possible to continue down the other side of the mountain to make a loop trip back to Kurama Station, but darkness was beginning to fall, so I returned the way I came.

I`m sitting on a tatami mat in my brother`s house in Kyoto, after arriving here late yesterday. And what a feeling I`m having of having gone, like Alice, through a looking glass.

I left Mcleodganj on Wednesday evening by autorickshaw, though that hadn`t been my plan. Nearly a month before, I`d reserved a seat on the state government`s Volvo bus that runs from Mcleodganj to New Delhi every night. A variety of other public and private buses go to Delhi every night, but the Volvo bus is widely seen as the most comfortable, and I`d decided to splurge on it. Wednesday evening, my friend A, with whom I`d been staying after my meditation retreat, insisted on accompanying me to the bus stand. Not only that, but she insisted on telephoning her young Tibetan friend, T, to ask her to help with my luggage. No need to trouble yourself or T, I protested; I`ve carried my pack by myself for more than 5 months. But A was hearing none of it, and now I`m glad that she resisted my pleas.

An interesting aspect of travel in India is that while things usually work quite smoothly, once in a while something breaks down completely. At such times, as A knows better than I--she`s English but has been living in Macleodganj for years--non-native speakers are at a big disadvantage. A, T, and I arrived early at the bus stand. There, we found no buses, and no one to tell us why they weren`t there or where to find them. The bus stand had been gated off, perhaps because Wednesday was the anniversary of the Buddha`s enlightenment, and there had been ceremonies earlier that day in the Main Temple. Someone thought that the buses might be picking up passengers at the Church of St John in the Wilderness, not far outside of town. So A, T, and I trekked down to the church, asking other people along the way whether they knew anything about where to find them. People had various ideas but no firm facts. No one had seen the Volvo bus, but a few people assured us that it would come soon. At the church, there was no sign of my bus, and I began to feel a bit worried.

Before long, growing bands of confused Westerners and other travelers, including us, were wandering along the road out of town, still trying to find the vanished buses. A wisely asked T to go up to the next small settlement, and ask around there. About 20 minutes passed, and A`s mobile phone rang. T had managed to find out that the buses weren`t coming up to Mcleodganj that evening, but instead would leave from the bus stand in lower Dharamsala. T then managed to find us an autorickshaw. We piled in, and hurtled down the road towards the lower Dharamasala bus stand, about 12 kilometers away.

On arrival, T discovered that the Volvo bus had been cancelled, and she raced up to the ticket window, pushed her way through the crowd that had gathered there, and got me a ticket on one of the other buses leaving that evening. You`re my new best friend,I told her. We made sure that my pack got into the luggage compartment of my new bus, I paid the autorickshaw driver to take A and T back up to Macleodganj, and I took my seat on my new bus.

The trip to Delhi was without incident, and more comfortable than I`d expected. In the morning, three other travelers and I split the fare for a taxi to take us to the Paharganj district downtown. Once there, we split the cost of a simple guestroom for the day so that we`d have a place to relax and shower, arranged a taxi ride to the airport for that evening, and headed out for some last shopping.

On arrival at the airport, the sense of passing through a cultural looking glass kicked in. Delhi`s international airport is new, attractively designed, and efficient. Soon I had passed through security and was on an Asiana jet, headed eastward into the night. Flight attendants began to bring me cold drinks, and a video panel offered me a wide choice of entertainment options, along with the latest world news from CNN. I went into overwhelm and promptly fell asleep. By the time I woke up for breakfast, Korea`s green outlying islands were passing under the wing of the plane, and we smoothly glided into Incheon airport.

Of all the world`s airports that I`ve passed through so far, Incheon most celebrates consumer culture. The autorickshaw ride suddenly felt like part of a distant, vanished past as I walked past shop after shop of high-status, designer goods being sold by impeccably groomed young salespeople. At one point, I passed a small group of Tibetan monks who had been on my plane. Now they were inspecting a top-of-the-line briefcase, holding it up at various angles, their faces expressing gentle humor and a hint of perplexity as they appeared to be wondering how on earth one might us it.

A few more minutes passed, and I was walking onto another plane bound for Osaka. Two hours later, we had glided into that airport, and I had piled into a shuttle van, bound for my brother`s house in Kyoto. Two members of the reservation staff had consulted with the van driver to be sure that he`d know exactly where to take me, and how to call my brother if needed. A tourist office representative had made sure to give me a beautiful tourist guide to Kyoto and had wished me a pleasant stay. The van cruised smoothly along an expressway--no cows, no motorcycles carrying entire gracefully-balanced families, no cyclerickshaws gamely pulling huge piles of cargo, just a few other late-model vehicles.

Now I`m borrowing my brother`s laptop while he and my sister-in-law C make a quick run for fresh vegetables for tomorrow. So far, we`ve had two walks through this beautiful city, admiring the two rivers that flow through town, the green mountains that surround the city, the famous Philosopher`s Path along a crystal-clear stream, and a beautiful Shinto temple and its extensive gardens. I`ve learned how to take the bus and have had wonderful snacks and meals. Kyoto is as lovely as I`d imagined, and it`s easily the cleanest city I`ve visited.

I can tell that I will love the 2 weeks I will spend in this beautiful princess of a city. But I don`t want to leave you thinking that Mother India suffers in contrast. True, her streets are dusty and noisy, and traveling through her lands can sometimes challenge travelers from elsewhere. But there`s a part of her that will always live in me. I was reminded of that during my last, sweat-drenched day in Delhi, drinking the chai offered by a Punjabi tea merchant whose face reveals his passion for his products, the young shoe-shiner who did his good-natured best to beguile the beautiful young Norwegian who accompanied me, and the Kashmiri bazaar owners who got the better of me during a bargaining session but made the experience a pleasure. Not all that`s beautiful in this world is orderly.

I'm back from a wonderful meditation retreat, as of today, and will have more to say about it later. I'm borrowing a friend's Internet connection right now, so I'll just quickly post two links to photos from the retreat. Sadly, there are no photos of the resident monkeys snatching food from the plates of unwary retreatants--a very common happening during mealtimes, though they never got anything from me.

Photos of the retreat

Photos from a special teaching session

I may post more tomorrow, or may wait until I arrive in Japan--this Friday! I leave tomorrow evening by overnight bus to Delhi, then am scheduled to fly off very early Friday morning.

I hope all is well with you!

From tomorrow until June 13th, I'll be offline at Tushita Meditation Centre, participating in a silent retreat. Please don't worry about me! I'll post an update once I'm back in town.

Walking up Jogibara Road this morning after breakfast on the rooftop of the Carpe Diem restaurant (which offers good cheer and the best muesli in town), I was enjoying the usual schoolday parade of parents bringing their youngest children downhill to the Tibetan Children's Village (TCV) preschool. Since I first arrived here in March, I've loved this heartening sight: the dozens of wide-eyed children, each dressed neatly in a school uniform and sheparded by one or both parents, or sometimes an older brother. During rainstorms, the children perch on their mothers' or fathers' shoulders, sheltered by umbrellas. Meanwhile, on both sides of the road, Indian and Tibetan stallowners and shopkeepers set up for their day. Yesterday, I noticed an Indian stallkeeper silently praying, his forehead pressed against the wall--his way of beginning his business day.

Today, without warning, came a disruption to this usual order. All the Tibetans began sprinting for the small gap on the downhill side of the main chorten, through which pedestrians can squeeze to get to Temple Road, which leads up from the main temple and His Holiness' residence. For a split second, I was startled. But then I realized what must be happening, and I began to sprint for the gap, too, just behind a panting elderly woman with her cane. The sound of a police siren confirmed my guess: His Holiness was traveling up Temple Road from his residence to the main TCV school, off the Naddi Road above town, where he was scheduled to begin two days of teachings. Everyone, including me, hoped for a glimpse of him as he passed by.

We were too late, though, and the crowd slowed to a stop. "Too late!" someone commented to me, smiling, and an elderly man grinned at me, as we all turned back.

Several minutes later, as I continued my walk up the steep Dharamkot Road to Tushita Meditation Centre and the morning meditation session there, I heard the siren again from the opposite hillside, which the Naddi Road crosses. I stopped and watched the line of cars, led by a police vehicle, moving slowly in the direction of the TCV school. By now, I've learned how to tell which car would be carrying His Holiness. I watched quietly, tears coming to my eyes, until the cars passed around the corner and out of view. I'd seen this same procession pass by me four or five times as I walked up from the Tibetan Library, where I'd been taking classes. On one rainy April day, I'd been alone on a stretch of road as the cars passed by, and His Holiness had bowed, smiled, and met my eyes as I bowed back. One doesn't forget such an experience.

When teaching my English class, I sometimes collected short news articles from around the world to discuss with my students. The challenge in doing this project is that most reported news is grim. I sometimes managed to depress myself as I searched for a few articles that were not about war, violence, greed, anger, or other forms of destruction. Hope returned as I watched His Holiness make his way to the TCV school. I knew that he was scheduled to introduce the children to the fundamental Buddhist principles of compassion and interdependence. Watching the cars move across the hillside, I was reminded that on any day, all over the world, countless people of goodwill are quietly doing the work of peacemaking, though very few of them ever make the news. And if one shares the belief of Tibetan Buddhists--or is willing to entertain the possibility--among them could be Chenresig, the Buddha of Compassion, considered to be embodied these days as the 14th Dalai Lama.