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Published: July 17th 2006
razorbacks around the world
even the ancient hindu's were Hog fans. Woo Pig Sooie!Hey guys,
Thanks for all of the comments, questions and complaints. I love hearing from you guys. Even the random stuff. I wanna thank everyone visiting via Facebook, especially Austin for keeping everyone updated. It really means alot when I see how many people have checked my blog.
Now onto the interesting stuff. I'll try to keep these short and spread out b/c I know you guys will get bored with me eventually and then my self esteem will plummet, and thats no good.
We have been in Bangalore for a little over a week now. The weather is amazing here. The city is at a higher elevation than Dehli, Agra and Jaipur so the temp hovers at an amazing 75 degrees or so. It is the monsoon season, so it rains almost every night, but thats not a big deal. The city is very modern so there is plenty of shopping and things to do. We dont live any where near the central parts of the city, so transportation is hard but we are working on it.
Last Wednesday we took a religious tour of the city. We went to a few different temples and a
relief sculpture
the detail they put into these statues is incredible. some places are hollowed out or appear to be lace. i couldn't believe it. no wonder this temple took 140 years and it was still never finished mosque to kinda get the feel for how people in India practice their beliefs. The worship is interesting, to say the least. I think sad would better describe how I felt.
The highlight of the day was visiting the Mosque. Connected to the mosque was an orphanage and as we were walking around to the entrance, we saw that all of the kids were outside playing. One of the little boys, in classic boy fashion, stole a soccer ball from a group of girls and threw it over the fence into a tree. I retrieved the ball and punted it as high and as far as I could. You should have heard how excited they got. After the tour they let us go out into the yard with the kids. I got some pictures of the kids before I realized that video might work better. When I went to show the kids the video they all huddled around. I was swallowed in a sea of kids. I didnt want to leave.
Friday the school took us to a restaurant called "The Only Place." They had a huge steak menu! It was so good and so cheap. The Double
Filet Mignon was 345 Rupees which is about 7 bucks. Marcus swears we will be going back every week.
This weekend they took us on a field trip to a nearby town (only 5 hours by bus) to see some Jain and Hindu monuments. The Jain monument was the world's tallest Monolith (statue made of one piece of rock). It was son of the first man to reach Nirvana and he was naked. Awkward. They pour water on his head as a blessing and they change the type of water at different points in the year which changes his coloring. During our visit he was yellow. To get to the monolith you have to climb the more that 680 stairs that are carved into the mountain. All without shoes because the entire mountain is considered sacred. Talk about fun. In monsoon season.
Check out the photos below. They tell a little more about what we have been up to. I love you guys and miss you all. Hope to hear from you soon.
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ashish
non-member comment
Jain monument
Jain religion has 2 sects. One Digembar meaning "Sky Clad" and Shwetambera meaning "White Clothed". Ideologies of both the sect is same. Only difference is in how their monks clothe or not. Monks are spiritual gurus and are very highly regarded by Jain community, which is less in numbers but very influential and the wealthiest. A Digember monk leaves everything in the world to study and attain knowledge. This process of leaving clothes and everything materialistic is gradual. A monk can be initiated into monkhood only by “Acharyas”, senior monks through various tests& judgment. A Jain monk always walk by foot and never use vehicle to travel, They never stay at same place for more than 15-20 days and does not own anything. They eat once a day at the most and meal is pure vegetarian without root vegetables etc. Most of their time is spent in the study and some time in the sermons. The picture you have shorn here is of Lord Bahubali who attained Nirvana in the beginning of this era. According to the story, Bahubali was one of the 2 sons of King Rishabhdev. When Rishabhdev renounced the world to get initiated into monk hood, he divided the kingdom between Bahubali and his elder brother Bharat. Bharat however wanted to become the king of whole world and so he had to fight with his own brother. So to avoid any unnecessary bloodbath, both kings decided not to involve army and to fight individually. Bahubali defeated Bharat but in the process realized that cause of the fight was meaningless. The kingdom was anyway supposed to go one day. There on, he renounced the world and became monk. After severe practice he attained Nirvana. This statute is depicting the pose when he was in the 2 years long meditation.