More Thoughts from India

Considering that I was brutally interrupted yesterday, I want to continue writing today (you can feel completely ok with just throwing this away if you're not in the mood - I won't know anyway). Anyway, what I wanted to tell you about was the Hindu thing.

I'm just now beginning to learn a bit about Hinduism. The first thing I found out was that although they pray to about 300,000 different gods (or more), the basic Hindu religion believes only in one god, which encompasses everything - plant, mineral, animal, matter, energy, thought - everything. All those elephant-headed, six-armed, five-eyed colorful things are just manifestations of the one and only.

This already was news to me, and I've been looking at things (Hindu things) a bit differently since then. We saw a video last night, that is about "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" book. I actually have the book, believe it or not. This is not the "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" that was written several years ago - this is a religious work written many centuries ago. It is read aloud to people who are on the verge of death, and different chapters are read after death - to the person who has died, in the belief that his spirit (or whatever you want to call it) is still there.

The idea (as far as I understand it) is that every individual self/spirit/soul/whatever is actually a limitless part of the limitless entity that is god. When the soul inhabits the body, it becomes so attached and involved with everything that is called "I", that it sort of "forgets" that it is really something else, that can actually exist beyond the limits of this identity. Liberation is identified as "remembering", or recognizing your true self, and the "Book of the Dead" is read aloud to help the spirit remember that.

All this is really interesting, because you can sit there and meditate, trying to disassociate yourself from your normal identity, trying to comprehend that everything that appears to be a part of you (your nose, your thoughts, your toothache) - is just a figment of your own imagination. And then try thinking the same about whatever is outside of you – the view from your room, the weather, the neighbor you don't get along with...

So this is what I've been thinking about lately. This is what's left, after you get into the routine of stretching your nose to your knees twice daily, and there isn't much else to do during the day. Don't worry, my Teacher's Training Course will be starting in 4 days, and then I won't have time for any of this - I won't have time to write either, probably.

I've been told here that I write too many e-mails. So maybe I should stop here.