Author: Mat Koya

So now the conferene is over, we entered the social program, which brought as the day before to Lonavala and the Purohit Hotel. The poverty in India is really scary. Approximately 60% of the people are living in slums and I’ve seen slums before only on the TV or in the movies. To see this makes me sad, but people smile directly in my eyes, holding the hands of the kids makes them happy. Seeing the monks in robes with us, makes them worshipping them. This attitude of mind is so different than in Japan or Europe, where I’m at home and it leaves a feeling of embarrassment in myself and some hidden tears in my eyes. It also makes me feel so greatful, that I’m able to do all these things right now.
8 o’clock breakfast and after a meditation session led by one of the monks, who has a lot of experience, which one an feel through his vibrancy. Explanation about mindful breathing, practice and a Q&A session took all the morning and after lunch we started our trip to the Karle Lena cave.
All these days in Mumbai it was not raining, which made us forget, that we are on the end of the rainy season in India, therefore we were not really equipped for that what was coming now. It was raining, not only raining like we know it from Europe, it was heavily raining and we got wet down to our bones in a couple of minutes, well and our cloth are still wet, while I’m writing here in the hotel room. But anyway. it was worth the effort. This cave, carved out from the rock by Buddhist monks in the 2nd century BC were really impressive.

After more than 2h bus ride we arrived in a hotel and it’s noisy outside since.
It seams that Vodafone cut my services, that’s why the stick won’t work and my phone is not working as well. I don’t really understand why, so I have to wait until Wednesday so that I can check it out.

That was the most interesting conference I ever attended. Papers were not only dry academic, but reflected experience and practice in different countries. Most interesting was the panel discussion yesterday, which showed a gap between Theravada or maybe better to say Buddhism as it was established by Buddhagosha especially in the South of India and Mahayana. I also learnt that this split shows not only in general teaching, but even in the language used. In Theravada Pali is the lingua sancta and old Mahayana scriptures are all written in Sanskrit. Of course this reflects in practice, as well. The Theravada-people mostly practice Samatha and Vipassana and the practice focuses on the partitioner, whereas in Mahayana practice is done for the benefit of all sentient beings and the variety of meditation practice is wide, lasting from mindful breathing to visualisation in connection with mudras and mantras as it’s done in Vajarayana. I always looked on Theravada as a part of Mahayana, as well as Vajrayana extends Mahayana in my eyes, so the wish for building bridges between the two surprised me to some degree.
Interestingly in Vietnam a “national Sangha” is established, which tries to unity all 3 vehicles common there. I still don’t understand how.
The monks coming from Burma, explaining their own way and their courages and compassionate reply to the regime in their country really impressed me deeply.

So yesterday I didn’t manage to post any news, just all the sudden I got busy. Whole Thursday morning we spent in a Vodaphone shop to get a sim card and a usb-stick. This beast still doesn’t work smoothly with my linux distri on the eepc. I installed the betavine stuff, but still no joy …
After we thought it’s a good idea to get lunch at the hotel and drop our stuff off there …. and since then we both got busy. The first participants of the conference at the Somaiya Institute arrived and all the sudden I was also in. So instead of doing sightseeing, I’m sitting in the auditorium and listening ….

The conference is about Meditation: Texts, Tradition and Practice.
Tomorrow we will visit some caves outside of Mumbai. Curious.

Bye bye Nyutsu Hime
What for a morning. At 5 o’Clock Takeshi San came to pick us up. With a real mystery scenery Koyasan said good bye, the sun not yet up on the sky, from our house we can see the top of the Daito in mystical twilight and from here we started this morning our journey. While driving down the mountain Takeshi suggested to say good bye to Kami Sami at Amano. Takeshi frequently before checkin plays the flute at Amano jinja, so we went there and the Kamis from Koysan welcomed us with a beautiful morning atmosphere.

Yummi in the air
Kansai Airport was now only a short drive away and Takeshi dropped us off, as he had to hurry back home to bring little Mayana chan to school. Before check-in we got some hot cakey and toast with egg for breakfast. Check-in became a funny procedure as the girl had some trouble finding Germany – what was not so funny to her … on the end we got 2 seats on the emergency exit with extra free space for our big European feet
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls: the first impression from our plane … looks a bit used, but the stuff from Malaysian Airlines is as friendly as the air-condition is cold and we are freezing. They topped it with the best vegetarian food I ever got during a flight! So now people are queuing for tandas, the bathroom, in front of our nose.

No, we don’t scan cappuccino
A so called technical stop brought us to Starbucks in a brand new airport building in Kote Kinabalu. Somehow their coffee always tastes the same, you can lean on that, but the speed of serving varies. Well we thought we were late and we had to go once again through a security check, which was painless and friendly, only the cappuccino didn’t got checked.
When we were seated again, the first purser came, to make sure we will get the right vegetarian meal on our next flight to Mumbai. These people really take their job – to make you feel pleasant on board – serious. The main players in air-traffic might want to take a workshop with them…..

People think we are crazy
instead of enjoying the coldness of the airondition in the plane as everybody else does, we are sitting here as if it’s in the middle of winter, with jackets, blankets and a cap on the head in the plane heading to Mumbai.

After we savely arrived in Mumbai we went by prepaid taxi to our hotel. Traffic in India is breaking every concept of working traffic Everyone horns and mystically it works without any accident and we finally arrived in a nice and airconditioned hotel room.

So now I’m still trying to get the picts off the iPhone to my linux eeepc, you will see, after I managed

I was thinking a long time about blogging or not and finally decided to give it a try.

The next 2 month I will spend travelling in India and I will try to use this platform for a kind of diary.

So it’s good bye Koyasan tomorrow morning.

I‘m not yet really satisfied with the design … hmm now I will see also how can I improve that on the way with a little 10 inch and linux installed on it. Kind of reality test for that stuff