Los Angeles - Cayenne

Gilles is a good friend living in Cayenne, French Guiana. We first met through couchsurfing. When I arrived in French Guiana, he made me discover the country by air. He has just conveyed a small plane from Los Angeles to Cayenne with two friends.

You can find his blog here

A few pictures from there :


The trip



Left : Guillaume. Right : Gilles. Guillaume flew me to Camopi the first time I went there from Cayenne






...

Gotama's compassion

Tiruvannamalai - Ramanashram

This ashram was advised to me at Arnaud Desjardins' ashram in France as a true spiritual place to visit. This ashram was founded by Ramana Maharshi. 'Maharshi' means great sage. He is very famous in India and also all over the world. He spent 20 years meditating in some caves on the Arunachala hill before opening his ashram. Now people worship in the ashram's temple, and mostly on his grave. They chant the vedas several times a day. There is a good energy there, that means for me I feel more equanimous there, and it is a place where my concentration in meditation is better. But nothing very interesting. There is a bunch of other ashrams in the area, and in one of them, twice a day during 15 minutes, the guru, who is a woman, comes, sits silently in front of the people coming there, then walks in the room and looks at the people. Most people are in a kind of meditation during that time. That was an interesting experience. The kind of experience I was expecting before coming to India.


Roof of the Ramanashram from Arunachala hill







This is Ramana maharshi.



Inside the ashram









Monkeys in the ashram



Lol



Local food. No spoon, of course :-)

Tiruvannamalai - Arunachaleswarar temple

Monkeys on Arunachala hill



View from the hill

Mad fellow

I spent a week serving in Igatpuri, in the vipassana center. On the second day of the course, one student, around 55 years old, began walking around talking to himself. Since perfect silence must be maintained, we quickly noticed something was wrong with him. At that time, students had only practiced breath awareness. But for the ones who have gross mental formations, some problems can already come up. He actually couldn't sleep the whole night. He was all the time asking the same questions, one after the other, without stopping : "are we in England?" "are we in Burma?" "are we in India?" "am I dreaming?" "are you a doctor" "am I a psychiatrist?" "are you my teacher?" "am I God?" "are there women around?" and so on... He was actually constantly trying to divert his attention from a problem he couldn't face. Sometimes he would bend down, take his face in his hands and shout for a few seconds and then straighten up saying : " everything is ok". I had never seen such a disturbed person. From what he told us it appears that he had taken lots of drugs, had been in jail for killing somebody, was used to sexual abuses on young boys and to steal money. The first thing is absolutely clear, the others are quite difficult to make sure. He ended in a police station, not without biting another server on the way...

Vipassana International Academy

This is the last vipassana center I have been to, near Mumbai. It is also the biggest one in the world, and the most active.








The whole area around the center is desertic. But inside there are lots of trees. Every leaf of every plant in the center is so healthy. Full of the energy of the meditation - the energy of equanimity.



Burmese style bell.







Dhamma sevak



Lotus flower






One again :-)



The main pagoda






Long course area. There is another pagoda there (on the left). The academy is divided in mainly 4 areas. The first one is the vipassana research institute. There people try to understand the actual words of the Buddha, solving the problems of translation by using the definitions the Buddha himself gave of every word, which requires the help of computers because the litterature of his word is quite huge. There is the main center were are hold the 10 day courses and satipatthana courses. There is a long course center were people take 20, 30, 45 or 60 days courses. Another area is under construction, for very long courses : 90 and 120 days ! I guess when you come out of that you are almost a buddha :-)



View over Igatpuri

Back to Mumbai

Yesterday morning I was in Kathmandu, I flew to Delhi. Today I'm back to my starting point in India. Strange impression. Tomorrow I'm going to Igatpuri internationnal vipassana center, 3 hours away by train. I'll take an advanced course there till the 23rd.


Cows in New Delhi.

Pashupatinath

Ajit showed me this burning ghat.
























These people pick up the remaining wood in the water after the family has gone.


















Many people come here to die, if possible while bathing their feet in the holy water of this dirty river. The orange thing all the way down the stairs is actually a man in that case.