India Semester Overview: Sept. 12 - Dec. 14, 2008
Go! Go forth to India and live! There's nothing that I've done that has been more expanding, more eye-opening, and more exciting all at once. I'd recommend this experience to anyone looking to learn a little about themselves and the world, but more about the vastness of all that there is to be learned, and the pleasure of learning it experientially.
--Julia Bloch, "From Brahma to Buddha" India semester alumna
Whenever I meet a ‘foreigner’, I always have the same feeling: ‘I am meeting another member of the human family.’ This attitude has deepened my affection and respect for all beings. May this natural wish be my small contribution to world peace. I pray for a more friendly, more caring, and more understanding human family on this planet. To all those who dislike suffering, who cherish lasting happiness, this is my heartfelt appeal.
--Tenzin Gyatso, the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet
Exploring a traditional village perched on the Tibetan Plateau. Sipping butter tea around a kitchen fire. Smelling jasmine flowers and curries sold in the bazaar. Listening to horns and bells echo over ancient monastery walls. Watching colorful prayer flags blowing in the wind on top of a Himalayan mountain pass. Throughout this cultural immersion program, we will live and study in the country that gave birth to two of the world’s major religions—Hinduism and Buddhism—and will travel amid some of the most spectacular landscapes on earth. On this journey, we will meet many of the people who keep ancient traditions and spiritual practices alive, including possible audiences with the Dalai Lama and/or the Karmapa. And at the same time we will witness and study the forces of modernization and globalization that are influencing all aspects of traditional ways of life. Though it is impossible to predict the most memorable experience you will have during the Global LAB India semester, those who choose to participate can expect to embark on a journey of discovery that may well last a lifetime.
Primary Locations: Tibetan Communities & Culture of the Himalayas
Semester students watching the moon rise over the Himalayas in Ladakh
Ladakh
Few things could be lonelier than that landscape of storm-beaten rose-brush and rock, and yet I never felt alone. All round me, along the path, in the willow grove, by the stream, on and between the rocks, there were signs that others had passed the same way. Prayer flags shook out their yellow and red rags from the heart of a gully or from the tops of crags above me; stones arranged in half circles, in sacred letters…I came to the fork in the path and looked up. There, half a mile above me, was the monastery; there Go-Tsang was at last, high in its cradle of rock, with nothing but the wide, burning sky behind it.
--Andrew Harvey, “A Journey in Ladakh”
High on the Tibetan Plateau in India’s northern-most region is the former kingdom of Ladakh. Known as “Little Tibet”, Ladakh has been open to foreigners only since 1974. Prior to 1962, when the threat of Chinese invasion prompted the rapid construction of a road into the region, travel to Ladakh involved several weeks of difficult walking at high altitudes. Over the centuries, many teachers, nomads, traders, and pilgrims did make this journey over mountain passes, across vast plains and from one sparsely settled town to the next, most with ancient monasteries built into the cliffs above the villages. Because of the nearly impassable Himalayan ranges to the south and southwest, almost all of Ladakh’s cultural influences came from its neighbor in the other directions—Tibet. As you walk through some of the quiet side streets of Leh, Ladakh’s capital, it is easy to think that you’ve stepped back in time and are wandering through a traditional Tibetan town before the Chinese invasion. In fact, as many experienced travelers have noticed, Ladakh is one of the very few regions in the world where Tibetan Buddhism and all its cultural forms have flourished without interruption since introduced more than 1000 years ago. This continuity and endurance of a religious tradition and the people that support it, set in a landscape of austere and formidable beauty, help make Ladakh one of the world’s most magical destinations.
Jaipur, Rajasthan
On the edge of the west Asian desert, capital of the land of kings and queens, Jaipur is the site of exploration into multiple religious traditions in India: Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, and Sikhism. Founded by Maharaja and astronomer Jai Singh II in 1727, popularly known as the Pink City, Jaipur is hailed by urbanists as the most thoroughly planned city in India. While most Indian cities sport narrow lanes twisting into unrecognizable confusion, Jaipur's wide streets are based on Hindu architectural manuals.
Creating order and harmony and encouraging the same within its population, Jaipur's streets are home to hundreds of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who are working to address various social issues in the state of Rajasthan, ranging from prosthetic limbs for amputees and arm-powered wheelchairs for polio sufferers to advocating for injured street animals and providing stabilizing population controls for dogs and cats.
In addition to service projects and individual explorations of these organizations and artisans, Jaipur serves as a base for our travels and exploration of brilliant forts protecting the city valley as well as investigation of tribal and Rajasthani village cultures. We will have the opportunity to travel to other parts of Rajasthan as well, including Jodhpur, Pushkar, and Jaisalmer, to name a few of the special surrounding towns, while exploring the reality of traditional village life.
Jaipur is a meeting place of modernity and traditionalism. We'll have the opportunity to hear folk musicians come together with pop artists to create collaborative work, explore fantastic Hindu rituals seeking understanding of the complexity of worship in this religious tradition, and engage with the founders and staff at NGOs who are making positive changes in their own community to create hope for a better life for their neighbors.
Nightly worship ceremony in Varanasi
Varanasi (Benares)
Banares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old of all of them put together. Mark Twain
Banaras is a magnificent city, rising from the western bank of the River Ganges, where the river takes a broad crescent sweep toward the north. There is little in the world to compare with the splendor of Banaras, seen from the river at dawn. The rays of the early-morning sun spread across the river and strike the high-banked face of this city, which Hindus call Kashi—the luminous, the City of Light. The temples and shrines, ashrams and pavilions that stretch along the river for over three miles are golden in the early morning. They rise majestic on the high riverbank and cast a deep reflection into the water of the Ganges. Long flights of stone steps, called ghats, reaching like roots into the river, bring thousands of worshippers down to the river to bathe at dawn. In the narrow lanes at the tops of these steps moves the unceasing earthly drama of life and death... But here, from the perspective of the river, there is a vision of transcendence and liberation…. Diana L. Eck, from Banaras, City of Light
In Varanasi (also known as Kashi or Banaras), our students have the opportunity to enjoy an intensely thriving city located above many of the most sacred ghats of the Ganges River. It is here where Hindu bathers such as Brahmins, sadhus or other yogis stir in the dawn's misty, incensed air to seek a ritual dip in the cherished Ganges. Varanasi is also a place where Jains, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and other devoted worshippers have made their home and practiced their own forms of religion for centuries. It is amid this vivid, inspirational celebration of life and transformation that we immerse ourselves, live with families, and participate in service projects. In informal daily sessions, leaders in the community will also help us explore the history, religion, philosophy, arts, language, and politics that make Varanasi so vital. Here we will observe festive celebrations, as well as somber cremation ceremonies on the funeral pyres along the banks of the Ganges. Walking among the narrow cobblestone streets of the Old City, we can visit the most sacred Shiva temple in all of India. We will have the opportunity to watch traditional dances performed on the steps of a Hindu temple, attend a candlelight sitar and tabla concert and drink many cups of chai with inhabitants of this intriguing city.
Eleven kilometers away is the holy Buddhist city of Sarnath, where the Buddha delivered his first teaching after reaching enlightenment. A visitor to Sarnath can listen to Zen monastics chanting and drumming in the Japanese temple, hear monks offering Tibetan prayers and take a turn spinning prayer wheels at the Tibetan temple, and make visits to Chinese Buddhist and Thai Buddhist temples to witness examples of religious ritual and tradition from those cultures as well. Each of the Buddhist temples in Sarnath is constructed in the traditional style found in the host country that built the temple. Resident monks from all over Asia maintain temples in this holy city. Visiting other Buddhist pilgrimage sites in the region is possible on weekend excursions from Varanasi. Rajgir, where the Buddha gave sermons during the monsoon seasons and Nalanda, a center of Buddhist learning for over seven centuries and famed for its master teachers are both in this region. (In the seventh century, more than ten thousand Buddhist students and scholars conducted their studies in Nalanda.) We can also visit Vaishala and Kushinagar, where the Buddha gave his last sermon before passing into Nirvana.
Semester students enjoying a private audience with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala