Last weekend was Indian Independence Day, and the local India League of America had a big celebration for it. As I planned to go, I decided to wear something in orange, since it’s one of the colors of the Indian flag. But the only orange t-shirt I own is this one, from Woot! shirts:

The event was in a giant expo hall, cavernous and noisy. People crowded through the aisles and booths in a manner equally fitted to a Delhi bazaar as a suburban American weekend. My friend Shriti and I swerved our way through the crowds.

We’d glanced at the booth of a local Hindu temple, looking at the books and pictures they had on display. As I turned to walk on, an old Indian man stopped me and looked at my shirt. “This is a very good shirt,” he said. I thanked him and started to move on, but he spoke some more. “Many companies these days will tell you lies through marketing. They tell you that their products are nutritious. It’s very bad, this dishonesty.”

I shrug and smile in agreement. I could have explained, “See, there’s this video game, and an evil robot tells you you’re going to get cake if you finish. But there really isn’t any cake.” But I figure if he wanted to think I was taking a stand against, say, Vitamin Water, I’d accept that as a valid interpretation of the shirt.

My article, “Ghost Crossing” appears in Elephant Journal. My first article for them. Enjoy!

Here are two photos, if you want to picture the place I describe.

The travel guides and Delhi maps all show the Buddha Jayanti Park, and I’d read something about it, that it was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama, that it was in recognition of Buddhism’s role in Indian history. But I’d never seen anyone refer to actually going to it. When I decided to go, I flagged down an autorickshaw, but he had never heard of it, and even though I showed it to him on the map, he ended up declining my fare. The next driver seemed to have a possible flash of recognition at “Buddha park,” and I showed him the map and he started going… to a service center, where he took my map with him so that he could get directions to it.

Eventually, I found myself riding through a forest on a curvy road, through sparse traffic, when I saw a sign above the retaining wall: “BUDHA JYANTI COMMORATIVE PARK.” “Here you are,” he said with some relief. Just beyond the gate there was a parking area, and to the side, there was an area where the ground was sunk a little below street level, five ragged tents stood, their residents sitting on the gravel outside. I walked toward the official entrance to the park.

I started walking on a path that cut through a grassy park. Some couples and families were having picnics on the green, or the “brown” in places that the grass had dried up. As parks go, it was pleasant but shabby, generally consistent with Indian standards, and all in all nothing special. But I started off enjoying the stroll, finding a sign that pointed down a path to “BUDDH STATUE.” Following the path, I eventually got to a few more signs pointing the way to the statue. And then there was an unmarked intersection, but the left path led to a dead end and a pile of dirt. A small concrete footbridge went over an emptied pool. Another sign pointed the way to the statue.

I began to get exasperated. I’d long passed the domain of the picnicking couples, and now was alone, no one else in sight. I made up a joke imagining a Samuel Beckett Commemorative Park, full of signs promising that the statue of Godot was surely just around the corner. I began to get exhausted; I didn’t expect the walk to be that long.

I remembered a story from Korea, that a park near one of the temples promised the world’s most beautiful Buddha at the end of a footpath up a mountain. When visitors got to the top of the mountain, they were greeted with a breathtaking view of the valley below, sweet green trees and a gentle river, and a plaque advising them that if they couldn’t see the Buddha there, they should go back to the temple and meditate more.

Perhaps Buddha Jayanti Park helps us see the opposite. It’s easy to be inspired by love of Buddha and compassion for the world when a gentle mountain breeze blows across your face, songbirds make a peaceful tune, and you see the valley from afar. That’s not the Buddha that really needs practice to see. It takes practice to see Delhi’s park as a manifestation of the Buddha, the chattering of crows, the cow pie that’s decaying on the walkway, the empty pools, the unfinished construction, the stray dogs fucking on the lawn, and all in the baking heat of Delhi August, and to remember the gatha, “May I hear all sounds as the voice of the Buddha.” The suffering in the world is not usually caused by people looking at beautiful hillsides. The suffering is caused when we can’t see what is–Detroit to Delhi, so cold it kills you to so hot it kills you–as the Buddha speaking to us.

This NY Times story is about Paris, not India, but it got me thinking, particularly because I’m leaving for Delhi tomorrow and people I talk to keep saying, “Take lots of pictures!”

I always find that when I get home I look at my pictures, and when I see museum or zoo or other display pictures I always wonder, “Why did I take a picture of that?”  It’s an animal in a cage, or a painting on a wall.  It doesn’t really say anything about the experience I’m having.  It’s not a picture I couldn’t have just looked up online, if I wanted to see what an orangutan or an O’Keeffe looked like.

The impulse to take pictures in museums makes sense; especially if you paid a fee to bring in a camera, you feel like you ought to get your money’s worth.  And you might be feeling guilty about not taking as many pictures for all the people who told you to take lots of pictures.  Of course, there’s no risk in this picture, no possibility that some person in the background wouldn’t want to be photographed, or that the scene will change as you’re getting your camera ready.  It’s an easy shot.  So you take it.

Which leads me to a resolution for this trip: no pictures in museums.  If there’s a museum with displays I want to see, I’ll take the time to see them.  But the flip side is another resolution: more pictures outside of museums.  More people, more actions, more smiles, more memories.

In a couple months, I’ll be making my second trip to India to see the places where Buddhism was started.  And I’m a little geeked about it, because it’s an exciting break from my usual life.  A little scary–okay, sometimes a lot scary–overwhelming, and chaotic, but there’s something compelling about India that makes it a great place for a pilgrimage.  Because India traveling is challenging and often requires some adjustment of thinking, occasionally my thoughts about it seem a little like Dharma talks.  Other times, because India is such a marketplace of practical setbacks, my thoughts are more detail-oriented.  If I talk about it as part of a Zen teaching, it’s hard to tell where the “Dharma talk” ends and where the “travel tips” begin.

Or, if I share advice on a travelers’ website like India Mike, I wonder how much my Dharma training seeps in, and if it makes me kind of a know-it-all on there.  So it goes.  I don’t know everything about India travel, but I do know a thing or two about the lessons we might need to unlearn if we’re going to see India for what it is.

Some people on IM preparing for a trip ask questions looking for reassurance about safety. One person said he didn’t want to take anti-malarial pills, because he heard they didn’t work. I wondered what he meant; did he mean that someone had taken them and got malaria anyway? Or did he mean that someone didn’t take them and didn’t get malaria? Either is entirely possible, because there’s always a risk.  That’s what risk is.

The Buddhist teaching on dukkha could be translated as “life is risky.”  We want to be told with certainty that the future outcome is there. Another traveler asked if she should bring her netbook computer–she wanted to know, will it get stolen?  What if I leave it in my hotel room, locked? Will my hotel room have a safe?  Will the hotel staff be digging through my stuff when I’m gone?

To face risk, we need to keep don’t-know mind.  No one knows.  You could ask your hotels if they have safes–some do, some don’t.

Yet there’s also a benefit to focusing loving-kindness.  The hotel owners are sentient beings who want to be happy.  Whether they steal your belongings or not, they are acting for their own happiness.  Practically speaking, though, they know that they make their living renting rooms to visitors, so in all likelihood, they don’t want to steal from their guests and get a bad reputation.

The other side to this is nonattachment.  I always give this advice to people who travel India on a budget: don’t take anything you can’t afford to lose. If losing it would be an utter disaster and destroy your life, it’s not worth the risk.  If people really get this, they’ll know that no object’s loss can destroy your life. It will be inconvenient and disappointing if your camera doesn’t make it home–especially because of the once-in-a-lifetime photos you’ve taken!  If you are overtaken by fear of losing your possessions, you’ve already lost them.  If you can visualize losing them and keeping your equanimity, then you won’t have to worry too much.

Really, it’s less likely that your possessions will fall to malicious theft than that they’ll get broken when you drop your bag, or will get muddy in the monsoon rains, or you’ll misplace them… or they’ll get taken by a monkey.