At the Sarnath Stupa

Indian monks bearing the cold

Teachings in Sarnath

Had a great  first day at the teaching of  His Holiness Dalai Lama. His Holiness spent most of the day talking on the importance of developing love and compassion and training our minds away from negative/selfish thoughts  and action.
He talked broadly on the fact that while material wealthy may bring comfort, it will never bring peace or happiness of mind. He explained that human greed  is causing the destruction of the environment, corrupt business as well as bad politics and is overall increased distrust, jealously, competitiveness and inflated egos among us humans; all of which have negative effects on our health and happiness. When he teaches he talks as a spectator with no agenda, making it very clear just how harmful we humans are to each other and our planet. Maybe I am just hearing him loud and clear these days but  for me he is the only leader that makes sense anymore.

street market

He also mentioned the need for more ethical society stating that with more divisions between people, broken families, poverty, disease and war torn societies that ethics compassion needs to be taught to children early on in schools. Of course he also linked this statement to religion and said that out of the 7 billion people on the planet, 1 billion  do not have religious belief and that 6 billion have one religious faith or another; however out of those people more than half are not practicing their religion. His point being that ethics and morals which came out of the various religions are no longer being practiced and  that religion is becoming corrupted and or treated only as cultural ritual. Less and less people are no longer studying and using the guidance from religion to train their mind towards positive thoughts and actions. I have to agree with him; e.g. today after the teaching I saw many ' Buddhists' walk around the temple saying their prayers or making offerings to the Buddha statue while elbowing each other out of the way, ignoring the beggars, kicking the stay dogs and shouting at the rickshaw drivers.  Hmmmm  not much patience and compassion there. It is easy to make offerings, do confession, fast for a month,or wear the religious garb but so much harder to control one's mind and mouth; and I stand guilty as charged too. Anyway His Holiness is advocating the teaching of ethics and moral based on human values not necessary  religion. He teaches this not to be all Kum buy ya  (ok promise one day I will learn to spell) or trendy but out of practical need because if we humans keep on going with selfish greed we will destroy the planet and kill each other. Anyway he was very inspiring, yet also harshly true; looking forward to tomorrow.

Making cow dung fuel

t-shirt wearing goat stealing a treat

Cows wearing sack to beat the cold

It has also been fun walking around Sarnath taking in the sites and just getting used to being in a village where most people live in poverty. A day in Sarnath includes such things as inhaling the smoke from the cow shit fires, walking along muddy broken paths with open sewers or fields that double as the common toilet by torch light and then bumping into  or trying to avoid cows, goat, chickens or water buffalo. The there are the kids and the beggars and the sellers of everything from, fruit , chia and plastic Buddhas. Here's a few pics of the day.