12- Talk about going a long way to try to put pieces of a puzzle together : I am sitting on the steps of the temple on the site of the original bodhi tree where Buddha became enlightened, reading "the Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist" on my kindle. Worth a least a chuckle.
Interestingly enough, the author, Stephen Batchelor, starts his quest in India and then goes to Vevey, Switzerland, above lake Geneva, near where I just was.

If, as he says, the point is to "encounter the phenomenal world in all its vitality and immediacy" then this is a phenomenally vital place to visit.

And here I thought I was on a quest like no other persons, reading the same books as Batchelor: Ram Dass, Camus, D. T. Suzuki, and then Jung, and on and on and on.
It certainly seemed authentic at the time.

I stand, staring, at a statue of a meditative Buddha and try to pick out the "exquisitely rendered" folds of cloth draping his arms. Without much success. A guy walks up beside me and comments in American english AA to what a beautiful statue it is and aren't the cloth folds especially nice.
I just have to shake my head.
What a bizarre trip this is.
Without drugs, even.
It's fun to talk to him. He's been in India since November and has just gotten to Varanasi. This is his fourth trip to India and he comes for the meditation.
When I tell him that I have been on the road for two weeks and have already been to Geneva, Delhi, Kathmandu, and now Varanasi, he asks, incredulously, why would I do that?
He considers a month the necessary minimum to be in one place.
Little does he know but that I am running on fumes.
Nice guy. We discuss Buddhism and meditation and the business of pewter- making and how difficult it is to compete with so many desperately poor, yet hard-working, people.

If I try to explain this trip to myself, it's that I love being alive and I want to keep pushing the boundaries so that I don't get complacent.

With ever so much computer power, I managed to change my reservations and am now heading generally in the direction of home.
I took a rickshaw to the travel agent and the driver introduced himself as Sillamuddin, a Muslim. You know, he said, like Ladin.
I countered with "you mean bin Ladin, al Quaeda?"
He said, "yes".
I said that that's an iffy way to start a conversation with an American.
We did both agree the Obama is the best.

Everywhere I turn, in every guide book, the is a reference to Mark Twain being here. I simply cannot imagine what this city must have looked like to him, and how he manages it. The man has my utmost admiration.

I hate to say it, but this hotel has terrible food, but the bar is a lot of fun, full of English, French, Indians, Spanish, Russians, Swiss, though no other Americans.


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