I finally go my act together and took the train out of Varanasi to Bodh Gaya in nearby Bihar state. No tickets left – I have to pay the lowest fare and ride in the Jungle Car standing up. Crammed in the sweating car full of other people jostling, pushing, leaning for four hours with my backpack cradled against my chest with one arm, the other braced against the ceiling to stay upright. Halfway though the journey my attention is drawn away from the flat beige and green fields slowly cruving past in the white light of day outside when a commotion and shouting growls from the middle of the car. It appears one of the tea sellers, a man wandering from car to car, a large metal kettel swung over one arm, a tall stack of plastic cups in the other, has gotten into an altercation. I hear people around him jabbing their finger at him, faces twisted, shouting cheater, cheater, another man grabs him, a crowd of me closes in, encircling him, pushing him down, I cant see him clearly anymore through the throng. All I see is one mans had going up again and again into the air, fist clenched, tendons standing up against the bone, striking down with dramatic flourish. People are shouting approval, justice takes the crowd pushing to the train door where the man is heaved out of the moving train into the fields. As an afterthought someone picks up his badly dented kettle and heaves that out some minutes later. Tried, sentenced and punished at one sitting.

Arriving in Gaya I share a rickshaw with a family of pilgrims staying at a pilgrim resthouse (a grim sort of accomodation but good for the pocket) near the train station but wanting to go out of town to see the place where lord Siddartha Gautama Buddha achieved enlightenment under the Bo tree 2500 years ago. We arrive in Bodh Gaya in the midday heat and I begin my search for accomodation, landing first on a not bad place adjoining the Tibetan monastary where I leave my bag for further looking around. I finally find the Thai forest monastary I was told about by an Indian-American woman back in Varanasi. They agree to let me stay there and I fetch my bag.

The monastery is called Wat Po Buddha Gaya (which means simply, forest temple at Bodh Gaya) in Thai where approximately 10 monks, 2 nuns, and 4 Thai lady pilgrims are staying currently. The monastary is a simple one story L shaped building with a large grove of small trees behind it interspersed with concrete platforms for meditation. Just outside the gate of the Monastary there is a Mosque with several goats grazing in front at all times. Just meters away is ground zero, the large one-roomed pointed temple building and Bo tree marking the spot of Buddha’s enlightenment. I see on the second day that the pilgrim women are cooking for the monks and I beg like mad to eat with them. I am finally allowed to eat with some auxiliary people after everyone is finished (greatist leftovers!).

My meditation here is going so so. The momentum from my stay at the Panditarama Vipassana Retreat in Lumbini, Nepal is still there. The mosquitos and heat are tremendous, during the group prayers in Thai and Pali each evening the mosquitos feast on all of us and test my concentration. During one daytime meditation session I recall a junction in the back way rural route road just outside of Allerton gardens near Champaign Illinois .

One monk is particularly charismatic, Pra Prier Paul who spoke with me of his home in Tripura district of India (a materially undeveloped region in the far east of India where the people look Burmese but have customs and tribal dress reminiscent of indigenous Amazonian groups). He is really on top of world political events and has a clearly informed overview of everything happening in the world (a little unusal for someone taking refuge as a monk). Yesterday my talk with him about world current events (like the slaying of the Nepali Royal Family by their beserk son Birendra) was cut short when the handheld metal sander blade the gardener was using shattered during use and cut deep through his inner thigh as a piece of shrapnel passed only centimeters from his genitals. He was taken quickly in a truck to the nearest hospital by several of the monks.

Bodh Gaya is interesting because here we have the central place of a global religion located smack dab in the heart of the poorest, most illiterate state in India, Bihar. It is as if it was here that the source of suffering and dillusion were discovered for a purpose in the same state where recent caste warfare has cost the lives of several untouchables and Brahmins alike. I have not personally had any trouble when I leave the monastary but have been warned to watch my back by the monks when going outside in the afternoon.