Namaste to Bodh Gaya and all its amazing eccentric pilgrims and seekers

It is probably not an exaggeration to say that millions have attended the various kinds of Buddhist retreats worldwide, ranging in length from weekends to years, in the past 35 years that the various traditions have made available.  Every retreat offers teachers and participants a challenge. Perhaps our retreats in Bodh Gaya have been unique in the sheer variety of challenges to teachers and participants compared to the West. A number of Facebook friend will have travelled to India. Others may consider the journey. The motives that take people to India vary immensely.

I have listened to countless stories in confidence from participants involving events, public or private, sometimes around power, money and affairs of gurus, lamas, ajahns, zen masters, vipassana teachers, yoga teachers, advaita teachers East and West including this wallah. I can also recall on the Bodh Gaya retreats:

• The Catholic priest from India who no longer believed in God.
• The elderly American shouting out in the monastery grounds  at the top of his voice in the middle of the night “If the Dalai Lama does not get rid of his anger, it will follow him into eternity.”
• The bank robber on the Interpol list who was on the run from the UK.
• The 16 year old Scottish girl who fled her aristocratic family to travel overland to India. Her family had no idea what happened to her.
• The US disciple plotting to kill Osho. Osho had convinced him to give up his inheritance to Osho.
• The well educated European woman who believed for days she was the Buddha, She claimed I was her disciple, commanded to giving teachings on her behalf.
• My six month old daughter sleeping on my lap in front of the meditation hall during a meditation.
• The meditators arriving with malaria, dog bites, TB, cholera, hepatitis, appendicitis, amoebas, pneumonia, fever, parasites, drug addictions, bronchitis, dysentery, worms, bedbugs, fleas and numerous other ailments. At times, we relied on the wisdom of the doctor in the village to prescribe medicine, as well as our medical manager on the retreat. The nearest hospital is a three to four hour taxi journey to Patna where the most robberies take place on any road in India. Taxi drivers refuse to use the road at night.
• The breatharian who lived on air, chai and a bit of biscuit for 20 days.
• The Tibetan monk having a secret affair with a young Western woman
• The Canadian who went into a spell of mental disorder after taking a new kind of anti-malaria tablet.
• The Argentinean who had taken far too many drugs.
• The Brazilian artist with her two young children. She died a decade or so later.
• The various people from various countries who said they remembered their past lives, saw ghosts, left their body, could read the minds of others, got all their chakras spinning and developed psychic powers.
• The anguished Dutchman who gave all his savings to a Lama. The Lama told him he would be reborn as a disciple of Maitreya Buddha if he donated  his money to him.
• The young Israeli robbed of two years of savings on the day he arrived in Bodh Gaya.
• The Indian bride who cried over the way her American husband and mother-in-law treated her on the retreat.
• The range of ethics, Samadhi, jhanas and formless realms that the meditators experienced to varying depths.
• The Chilean who had been tortured for a year during the military dictatorship
• The English woman who killed herself in Dharamsala. Her friends found a long unfinished letter to me which they posted onto me.
• The mother on a search for meaning after her son committed suicide.
• The sadhu who heard voices telling him he was the saviour of the world.
• The reports of happiness, joy, inner peace and gratitude.
• The frantic Canadian citizen who I had to wrestle to the ground in my room at 3 am.
• The GI who slaughtered Vietnamese villagers.
• The  experiences and realisations of the significance of love (metta), compassion, appreciate joy and equanimity.
• The Austrian who laughed aloud for eight hours without a break.
• Various Israeli soldiers traumatised in invasions of Lebanon in 1978, 1982 and 2006.
• The kindly Argentinean professor who fell in love with the Dharma.
• The French woman who cried and cried throughout the night. She insisted I hold her hand in her vulnerability under her mosquito net until she slept.
• The mice or rats that triggered a collective stoic stillness or a pandemonium in one corner of the meditation hall.
• The Spanish cyclist who bought several bicycles for people in the village.
• The people in the Dharma hall who fainted, cried, screamed, laughed and meditated.
• The countess numbers who sat cross legged on the teacher’s bench at the front of the Dharma hall with myself (or Radha) and bared the depths of their inner life to a hall full of people during the evening Inquiry sessions
• The Austrian who refused to take his daily medication for his schizophrenia.
• The thief who stole two pouches from the huge chest where we stored for safety the meditators valued possessions, such as passports, money, VISA cards and other valuables.
• The American carpet buyer who had made more than20 trips to Tibet.
• The French Canadian who needed heavy injections so he could be taken with the support of three of the Sangha on the 17 hour train journey to New Delhi for treatment before flying home.
• The angry Israeli who obsessively found fault daily with everyone, especially teachers and managers.
• The thieves who climbed over the monastery wall in the night and cleared the washing lines of all the clothes.
• The thieves who tried to break in to get to the chest with all the meditators valuables.
• The Englishwoman who lit a match and accidentally started a fire filling the dormitory. No one was hurt.
• The precious friendships and relationships that developed between Israelis and Germans.
• The Buddhist monk from Germany who walked around 2000 kilometres from Bodh Gaya to Ladakh on the other side of the Himalayas and then back to Bodh Gaya without carrying any money.
• .The occasional meditator from Russia or central Europe who could barely speak a word of English. They relied totally on their eyes to follow others in the daily schedule because nobody on the retreat could act as interpreter.
• The young Swedish woman who sat right in front of me to lip read as she was born deaf.
• The elderly middle class couple with servants and personal chauffeurs  back in New Delhi  who willingly endured our harsh conditions every January for a decade.
• The Buddhist monk who walked through Bihar with his attendant. Bandits put a machete to the monk’s head threatening execution
• A Swiss guide for Mount Kailash who sat annually the Bodh Gaya retreat for a decade before returning to the Himalayas.
• The 70 year old German psychologist who lost his eyesight in a battle in World War 11 when a hand grenade blew up in front of him. An English soldier threw the hand grenade at him. In an Inquiry in the Dharma hall, he said: “In 1944, an Englishman took away my eyesight. Fifty years later an Englishman is teaching me to see.”
• The countless numbers of  VRs and VVs (Vipassana Romances and Vipassana Villains) on the retreats.
• The meditators who at the end of the retreat left to go to Burma and Thailand to take ordination.
• The women and men who left the retreat and, often unintentionally, started a family within hours, days or weeks.
• The practitioners who cancelled their flights home to extend their time in the East for Dharma practice.
• The practitioners who flew home early to start the process of healing painful relationships.
• The accounts of insights and realizations that remained stayed deep and steady for the person through their life.
• The accounts of insights and realizations that did not go as deep as the person thought.
• The meditators who returned to the Bodh Gaya retreat after 10, 20, 30, 35 years or more since their previous retreat in Bodh Gaya.
• Some of these meditators said their retreat in the 1970’s, 1980’s or 1990’s acted as a major turning point in their life.
• After returning decades later, some meditators wept with regret. “After I left India on my first visit, I totally wasted my life. I have returned to Bodh Gaya to start again.”
• Some meditators from the early years have encouraged their grown up children to attend the Bodh Gaya retreat. They sat in the same Dharma hall as their mother or father did 20 or 30 years previously.
• The numerous meditators from the Bodh Gaya retreats who became Dharma teachers, managers, founders and supporters of retreat centres, organisers, caretakers, facilitators, mentors, activists, fundraisers They continue to form a backbone of the Sangha, East and West.
• Those who dedicated themselves to a wide variety of deep values, causes and campaigns including giving support for years to People First, Sister Mary, Pragya Vihar School and other Bodh Gaya programmes as well as elsewhere in the world.
• The endless accounts of deep experiences, spiritual highs and low, awakenings, enlightenments and liberations using every kind of psychological, mystical, spiritual language available or a palpable silence.

 Thousands have attended the Bodh Gaya retreats in more than three decades. It has a special place in the hearts of many  – undeterred by the harsh conditions, the basement, the cramped dormitories, the barking dogs, the loudspeakers and the noise of pilgrim buses parking outside the Dharma hall.

 The Lord Abbot of the Thai Monastery in Bodh Gaya has kindly given us full support to move to Shravasthi, three hours north of Lucknow to offer our retreat there in February 2013.

 Namaste to Bodh Gaya and all its amazing eccentricity in the village and pilgrims and seekers finding their way there.