My Travel Adventures

I woke up a few minutes after four this morning as Sparsh began to rouse the house for our journey to the train station. Frantically but methodically, we washed ourselves and packed the last of our belongings before loading them into three cars and piling the fourteen-headed group inside them. The ride was smooth. Although I had been woken up a few times that night by the loudest thunder I had ever heard, the roads did not seem dangerously wet, and indeed, it was early enough in the morning that the lack of traffic added considerably to my feelings of safety.

With our trip over, I think it would make sense to compile a short index of things I learned to recognise at temples and holy places. This way, I will be able to look darned smart next time I go to a museum. Avalokiteshvara (Tibetan: Chenrezig; Chinese: Guanyin): “Lord who looks down with compassion,” a major bodhisattva. (S)he is often portrayed with four arms, one holding a string of jewels, and another holding a lotus, symbols that refer to the prayer “Om mani padme hum” (translated as “Praise to the jewel in the lotus” or “I in the jewel-lotus”). Another common portrayal of Avalokiteshvara has one thousand arms and eleven faces stacked on top of each other in three rows of three and two rows of one. Bhavachakra: A painting that comprises concentric circles demonstrating Buddhism’s core teachings on samsara, cyclical existence. The hub of the circle displays a pig, a rooster, and a snake, which represent the three poisons of ignorance, attachment, and anger. The second layer exp...