Traveling to India. New Delhi

Before getting into “my list” of spiritual places I have visited, I will provide a short introduction to New Delhi, the capital of India.

New Delhi

All roads in India go to New Delhi, the city where most people probably land.

Indira Gandhi airport

You are arriving at the Indira Gandhi International Airport. It’s a relatively new airport, organized like any major airport in Europe or the USA.

After getting your luggage, you will go to passport control. There are no extra security procedures, such as fingerprints or head-shot photos, so it should go pretty fast.

New Delhi airport

There will be frequent money exchange points on your way, starting from the “luggage hall” and continuing in the arriving hall of the airport. You will need cash to pay for a taxi or metro, so you must exchange some money. As in any other city in the world, the rate of exchange in the airport is not the best compared to the options outside, so I would advise you to not exchange here all the cash you have brought with you.

Telecommunication

Communication is extremely important in India. People widely use mobile phones and even the rickshaw driver will have a cellular phone in his hand. A SIM card is recommended, especially if you will be staying in India for several weeks or months. For example, having a telephone number will give you an advantage when booking train or airline tickets online, which will help you save time and avoid stress.

I bought a prepaid SIM card with call and 3G mobile data in the airport. The service there is fast and painless – you are getting an activated SIM card after just a few minutes of waiting. The service providers know what they are doing and are well prepared; for example, they have a camera to take your headshot photograph if you don’t have a photo with you. They will open your phone using the right tools. (For example, I had the latest model of the Samsung Galaxy 7, which required a special key to open the cover, and they had that key.)

The best cellular operator in India in autumn 2016 was AIRTEL (don’t confuse this with AIRCEL, which has less coverage and lower quality). I bought the lowest amount of call minutes and data, which cost around 15 euro (17 USD), and that was more than enough for a two-month trip.

AIRCELL

From airport to city

The airport has a connection to the city itself by a fast – and I’d even say luxurious – express train, which is smoothly connected to a modern subway. As an option, you can take a taxi from the airport, which might be faster (not necessarily during rush hour), but will also be more expensive. Both the express train and the taxi have air-conditioning systems. 

Express train

As an alternative, you can take tuk-tuk, which is exotic and relatively cheap, but you might be surprised by the air pollution. This is one of the reasons why I try to avoid tuk-tuks in big Indian cities.

Tuk-tuk

Air pollution is a problem not only in Delhi, but also for all bigger cities in India.

Traveling in the subway in Delhi is easy and relatively inexpensive. For your convenience, print the New Delhi metro map in color before your trip and take it with you. The tokens for the metro are sold at the counter inside the station. Please remember to save the token until the end of your journey – you’ll need it at the exit point. There are security checks like those at the departure premises at the airport. They will scan you and your luggage. There are isolated security check cabins for women.

New Delhi subway

The New Delhi subway is relatively new and well-organized. The interval between arrival trains is just a few minutes. The subway transports a huge number of people. Ninety-nine percent of metro travelers are male and one percent (maybe even less) are female. I haven’t seen a single child in the metro and mostly I was the only woman in a long underground carriage. There are some emergency phone numbers for females, and I would recommend saving them if you are a solo traveler.

Help phone numbers

In the next Article: Accommodation in Delhi

Review on Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and lessons learnt

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) is a movie about Benjamin Barker, who, being conquered by his angry mind, became a murderer and finally was murdered himself.

                                                                                             Sweeney Todd © IMDb

Unjustly convicted and imprisoned, Benjamin Barker returned to his native city. Led by his irritated mind, he programmed himself for revenge and changed his name to Sweeney Todd.

As that, the protagonist, putting all his effort into vengeance, is not capable of catching either hope for a brighter future or any opportunities in his new life. His anger spreads and hurts innocent people.

Benjamin’s mad mind pushes him to murder anyone who enters his barbershop. It doesn’t matter who is in front of him. Whether it’s his offender (Judge Turpin) or anyone else, his anger hits everyone.

Murdering innocent people, Sweeney Todd continuously harms his own soul by absorbing heavy, dark energies. He is steadily turning towards Darkness and shutting down a new and brighter future not only for himself but also for others, including his teenage daughter and his new spouse.

The lesson learned:

In the Western world, revenge is an acceptable reaction to someone who has made you unhappy. People fight against those who insult them because they think they have lost their happiness due to an injustice enacted by the offender, not because of their own imperfections. When an angry person hits back at his offender, he makes the problem bigger, creating the same effect as pouring petrol into a fire – the fire becomes larger and more dangerous.

The Eastern world, experienced with spiritual wisdom and meditation practices, teaches that instead of petrol, one should pour water into the fire, which would extinguish it.

That essentially means that if you have been offended, you must not only observe your emotional state but also keep your mind above the situation. A balanced mind in this case can become a friend and won’t give anger a chance to push you towards words or actions, which would badly affect your future.

Some people might argue that they want to hit back at an offender because that action would teach the offender a lesson. In addition, they would get the personal satisfaction of the protection themselves. However, this is a reaction of your ego; reality shows that hitting back does not make things better, only worse.

Hatred absorbs a lot of time and effort; you are shifting your focus from your life’s goals to the distracting direction of revenge. You risk turning your life into hell – irritation and anger as a chain reaction are jumping up from the offender to the innocent one, hurting guiltless people only because they were in the way.

The worst thing happens on the deeper level of the subconscious – an uprising of the karmic nodes. Each karmic node would require attention, if not in this present life, in the next. You’re going to meet the same spiritual entity (a person) again and again to solve the problem – to unleash the karmic node. This involves extending your existence in the physical world and prolonging your path to liberation.

Anger management by G. Buddha:

One person, who lived on the Earth about 2,600 years ago, invented a technique helping people manage anger. As a matter of fact, that technique was a remedy addressing any imperfection of the human mind, creating the chance for full enlightenment and, consequently, providing a fast track to liberation from the physical world. This person is best known as Buddha, but his real name was Siddhartha Gautama.

Gautama became fully enlightened at the age of 35 and, driven by compassion, helped people until his death at the age of 80.

Buddha’s meditation, known as the Vippasanna technique, helps balance and manage your own mind. He invented the technique with the intention of removing imperfection (= sins) and avoiding generating new ones.

For example, going for revenge, a person would generate a new karmic node with each offender. Each karmic node, as a heavy stone, would prevent him from climbing up to the goal – liberation from physical reality. 

Each and every one of us, time after time, has faced a situation with a person who has insulted us. Buddha was no exception – he also met offenders, but he could transform negativity into positivity without hurting the offender, also gaining extra psycho-energy for himself. In this article, I provide two examples of how he did it. These examples I have heard are from the Vipassana meditation course.

One day, Buddha received a visitor. The man was very irritated. He told Gautama that though he pretended to be a spiritual guru, he wasn’t because, according to the man, a true yogi was supposed to have long hair, tiger fur, and other accessories.

Buddha listened to the man without interrupting. When the offender finished, Buddha asked him, “Are you, dear sir, getting guests in your house?”

“Yes, I am,” answered the offender.

“Do they give presents to you?”

“Yes, sometimes they do bring me presents.”

Buddha said in a calm voice, “I do not accept your present to me. Take it back and go home.”

The offender wanted to fire but left with empty hands because the fire died when Gautama poured water on it. The offender had no other option than to turn back and go home.

Another case of anger management from the life of Buddha.

There were some people who were jealous of Gautama’s fame and popularity. They decided to damage his reputation.

They sent a young, beautiful woman to his ashram, and she attended Buddha’s teaching. Every morning the woman passed the people in the ashram and told them she had spent another night with Gautama. Time passed and one day many important people gathered in the Buddha’s ashram. The woman came also. It looked like she was pregnant. She accused Gautama of being the father, using nasty words. Buddha listened to her and said in a calm voice, “We both know the truth." The woman became nervous; the wooden piece attached to her belly dropped out and everyone saw that she had lied.

The lesson: Keeping your mind in balance gives you a great advantage in a situation when you face an offender who has the intention of making you unhappy. A trained mind that focuses on positive decisions will help you figure out the right solution for the problem you face.

Review on: Self-Hypnosis and Positive Affirmations : The Art of Self Therapy by Josephine Spire

This is a self-development book for self-growth

This is a self-development book which will be useful not only for people who would like to get rid of bad habits and addictions, but for anyone who is seeking either self-growth or self-motivation for a new challenge or improvement.

What I like the most in this book is the intention to help people clean their minds and improve their quality of living.

The book contains some important principles of Eastern philosophy – “The thoughts that pass through our minds are responsible for everything that happens in our lives because as human beings we act on our thoughts.”

The self-hypnosis technique in the book begins with closing your eyes and concentrating on breathing – the same as in any meditation technique, but Josephine Spire empowers it by the verbalization, i.e. scripts, written specifically for a certain problem. All scripts are very powerful, and some of them contain highly spiritual principles such as forgiveness.

However, there is space for improvement as well:

1.     It would be useful for readers to have the statistical data about people’s recovery from addictions by hypnosis and/or self-hypnosis.

2.     Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t find practical advice about how to read the “self-hypnosis” text. Definitely, you can’t read it if your eyes are closed and you are concentrating on breathing. It might be useful to provide a link to the professionally read script online or to give a useful piece of advice regarding this. For example, download the voice recorder to your smartphone (if you don’t have one already); choose a peaceful moment for recording (maybe a certain day of the week or time of day); read it for the first time without recording, just listening to your own voice, etc.

                 Click here to find the book on Amazon

Is Vipassana meditation a fast track to liberation?* Part V

Which things to take with you to Vipassana

·      Alarm clock (old-fashioned mechanical one, not on your smartphone)

·      Flashlight

·      Lock for your door

·      Umbrella for protection against rain or sun

·      Comfortable pants or skirt to sit in the meditation postures for long hours

·      Couple of modest T-shirts or cotton blouses

·      A hat

·      Sunglasses

·      Himalayas: rain umbrella, coat, rain pants, waterproof boots

·      Indian rupees—currency—1,000 rupees will be enough to pay for laundry and small purchases

·      Bottle for water

·      Electric kettle might be useful, if permitted

                                                                              Vipassana retreat Pushkar 

After the course 

On the tenth day of the course you will get an opportunity to buy some books about Vipassana meditation based on teachings by the founder of the technique, Gautama Buddha. 
Also for sale are DVDs and CDs with lectures of the organizer of Vipassana centers worldwide, S.N. Goenka. The main languages of the books are English and Hindu, however, DVDs and CDs are available in a number of languages.

The lectures are the most valuable asset in the methodology of Vipassana nowadays. You can download them to your laptop or smartphone and listen any time. 

The lectures are extremely helpful for refreshing your memory back home, whether you are going to continue practicing the Vipassana meditation in the future or not. Well-structured and thoughtful lessons are delivered with a calm voice of a reader with a daily teaching. 

                                                                                                      Pagoda in Mumbai 

Questions & Answers

1.Q: what is being liberated?

A: being liberated means to have a freedom from Samsara; no return back to the physical world.

2. Q: is not freedom already present?

A: The freedom, which is already present, gives you a chance to take higher risks. It's not liberation itself.

3. Q: can i liberate after attending the first course of the Vipassana meditation?

A: No. The liberation process takes much longer time.

4. Q: Does the liberation have something to do with enlightenment?

A: Yes. A person who reaches full enlightenment is liberated from Samsara.

5. Q: how long it takes to get full enlightenment?

A: For Siddhārtha Gautama, known as Buddha, it took about 6 years

6. Q: I don’t want to liberate. Is there any other advantage of Vipassana Meditation?

A: Yes. For example, Anger management.

7. Q: What anger management has in common with liberation?

A: A person who is able to control his anger does not generate new karmic nodes.

7. Q: Are foreigners and Indians have separate premises for practicing Vipassana Meditation?

A: No. All people are meditating in the same hall, getting instructions in Hindu and English (other languages are available via audio player).

 8. Q: I like to practice meditations along, is there any chance to have a private room for the meditation?

A: Yes, you will have a chance to practice Vipassana meditation in your own cell in Pagoda.

Do you have your own question?

Most Sincerely,

Jacklyn A. Lo

*Note:  This article is based on my personal experience and thoughts after my first 10-day meditation course of Vipassana, and is not presented to be an absolute truth. – Jacklyn A. Lo

Is Vipassana meditation a fast track to liberation?* Part IV

Practical advices

Here are some practical advices below that might be helpful.

1.    Choose the place of Vipassana retreat and book it in advance.

a.    Some places such as Himalayas are booked pretty fast

b.    Not all courses have a teacher, the smaller retreats have only an assistant teacher.

c.     Check the annual temperature on the retreat. During some months, the warmth or rain could be unbearable.

2.    Support your physical fitness by exercising yoga asanas (stretching). Practice a butterfly asana regularly.

3.    Prior to attending the session, regularly sit on the floor in a meditation posture, keeping your back straight whether listening to music, watching TV, etc.

4.    Before your session, try to reduce the amount of meat you consume if you are not a vegetarian.

a.    Avoid eating meat every second day at first, slowly reducing the amount of the meat, replacing it by legumes.

b.    Fasting 24 hours once per week would be beneficial.

c.     Acquaint yourself with Indian cuisine at local restaurants. And, why not try to cook some Indian dishes at home?

5.    Apply the same rule (see number 4) to alcohol, smoking, and drugs — reduce them steadily but surely.

6.    It might be useful to acquaint yourself with any meditation methodology prior to the entering the course, however, it's not essential.

7.    To prevent unnecessary worries, prepare your relatives and friends that you are going to be away from any communication means for 10 days. Create an automatic reply on your email and/or phone.

8.    If you have time and budget travel through India’s spiritual places. I will provide a number of the spiritual places in India with hints and tips in a separate article.

9.    You can use your normal prescription medications from your doctor. In the case of the serious health problems, contact the training center for advice prior to arrival.

Where to go for retreat

·      India versus homeland

Thanks to Mr. Goenka, Vipassana meditation has been spread all over the world, and people can attend the training even in their own country. However, due to continuously increasing popularity of the technique, there might be a problem to book a place in your own country. In some countries. the places are all gone in the first 20 minutes after the opening a registration.

Personally, I prefer to get the meditation technique in the country of origin — India.

                                                                                                            Vipassana retreat near Pushkar, India

·      Big versus small size retreats

There are tens or maybe hundreds of Vipassana meditation centers throughout India, and I divide all of them into two main groups: the smaller meditation centers and the bigger ones.

In the small meditation centers, such as Pushkar, there are around 50 men and 25 women. The advantages of a smaller place are: cozier atmosphere with less noise, perhaps bigger space for fresh-air walking, and more time of an assistant teacher to dedicate to each student. The food preparation is outsourced, which is also positive because of reduced extra activities around you and noise.

The advantages of a bigger center are: larger variety of the people with different geographical backgrounds, you will be taught by a fully credentialed teacher (not an assistant teacher) with his high spiritual awareness in the Vipassana.

·      Himalayas

Very many foreigners, as well as locals, are attracted by gorgeous views of the Himalayas, nice weather and desire to participate to Vipassana meditation there. However, please be aware that the retreat is closed for the winter season; it might be not as warm as you think in spring and autumn seasons, and during the summer, the premises are pretty badly infected by mold.

*Note:  This article is based on my personal experience and thoughts after my first 10-day meditation course of Vipassana, and is not presented to be an absolute truth. – Jacklyn A. Lo

Next article will tell about which things to take with you to Vipassana and after the course.