Maybe I didn’t feel quite so blessed the next day. Well, I did, but the day was miserable anyway. We got up at five in the morning for breakfast and boarded the bus at six for what was supposed to be a seven hours bus ride to Varanasi. It was the time for Dewali, Hindu festival of lights. There had been, and still were, celebrations to complicate things. And, well outside of the monsoon, or rainy season, had come a couple of days of steady rains, leaving the already bad roads much worse. They created more mud-holes and potholes to dodge. Khenny said that Rinpoche had brought the rains as a sign when he came to Bodhgaya. I know there were a few others who felt the truth in that comment. The bus drivers said they had never seen the roads in such bad shape and the

traffic so bad. I found myself in the worst traffic jam of my life in the middle of nowhere in India on the “highway” heading to Varanasi. Truck after truck after transport truck was lined up, one after the other. Jillian, the tall red-headed monastery secretary, said that this wasn’t a traffic jam – it would require at least some movement to fit that definition. This was more like a long parking line. As we passed trucks headed the other direction, I saw some of the drivers curled up asleep in their seats, oblivious to the noise and pollution outside their open windows.

I hadn’t slept well the night before and thought I would sleep on the bus. That would have been nice. Maybe I would fall asleep for five or ten minutes as we were sitting still, but once the bus was jarring in and out of a thousand potholes for the next five or ten, there was no rest. We thought it would never end. But what was the use complaining? We were in the middle of a road with nothing around except the occasional settlement of squalor. All the pilgrims handled it very graciously.

But the jarring movements seemed to make my bladder smaller. I cursed the black tea with the diuretic caffeine that I had with dinner the night before and with breakfast that morning. I watched Indian man after Indian man urinating alongside the roadway. Most had their backs to me, but some seemed not to care too much about modesty. In the more remote regions in the country , I was also allowed to witness many people taking their morning dumps. These people had no running water or toilets in their humble homes, some made of mud, others of thatch and some made very simply with brick. They would go to the open ditches along the road for their bathrooms. It began to look normal after awhile to see men squatting, doing their business. We began to do the same after so many hours on the bus. When enough of us were ready, the bus would stop and everyone would get off and try to find a semi-private place to pee. There really wasn’t any place. A row of women would separate from the men, with skirts hiked up around or with pants pulled down, moons shining freely, huddled behind an abandoned old truck or a part of a broken brick wall. Once a couple of us squatted right beside the bus, below the windows, in the middle of the road, in open daylight, with truck drivers watching. When you have to go, you have to go.

I didn’t feel much like talking so I kept to myself. David was in the seat beside me for the entire trip. He started out trying to teach me about Buddhism. It didn’t take long before my brain felt very full and he could see that I had enough. We respected the relative quiet after that, each of us trying to sleep, although, again, other than five minutes of drool here and there, there really wasn’t much sleeping.

So, I couldn’t help but hear the conversation in the seat behind me. Scottie, a schizophrenic from Seattle, was beside the window. He was very colorful in personality and in dress, even with a slight Scottish lilt to his voice that I might have only imagined. I had witnessed his generosity. I had been the recipient of it even. The night I had a little too much rum with the fun crowd, of which he was a certified member, he had given me his bracelet with twenty-seven purple beads, one quarter of the number for the traditional mala, the Buddhist rosary. These bracelets were used as a sort of substitute. When chanting the mantras, you were to go around the bracelet four times for each circle you would have made on the necklace, a bead for each mantra. And he had given me a book on Buddha and Buddhism that he had carried around for many months, reading often. He had found it in an old bookstore. It had a black hardcover to which he had very nicely glued some postcards with Buddhist flare. Inside, the left hand pages were in English, the right in Japanese. It was a nice book. I don’t know why he felt the need to pass it on to me. Like some of the others, he had a desire to teach me, the non-Buddhist thrown into their midst by fate for some unclear reason – maybe for my salvation and conversion. I think he liked to think of himself as setting an example for everyone – of the Buddhist concepts of non-attachment and compassion. The gestures towards me were sincere and heartfelt and much appreciated.

I had seen him hand out money to beggars. He had given me some half rupee coins to hand out once, when he saw that I wasn’t doing so. We had quite the conversation (well, to me, it was a discussion, to him, a teaching for me) about the true meaning of compassion and generosity. Can you, and should you, hand money to everyone? Is that the truth? Maybe give to the lepers and the cripples, but to everybody? Even those with sound mind and body and able to work? Were we doing them any favors, or just perpetuating the cycle? I had read that Buddha was one of the first to believe in a hand-up, not a handout. But Scottie was adamant, “Just give.” And he gave and gave. And I know he had much less money, or potential to earn money, than me. But was that the answer? Is true compassion about giving materially, or about how you treat people? Was handing out half rupee coins about helping them, or about making yourself feel better about you? You must be a good person, just look at how you give. It comes down to a very philosophical question – is there such a thing as true and pure altruism? Don’t we all get something for giving something? There is self-esteem, pride, respect from others. Can you separate that out? And, a concept that bothers me - the Buddhists often say that to give is good karma. You try to spend your whole life accumulating good karma, even saving your merit with prayer so that you don’t lose it, so that your next life might be better. So, are you really helping them, or helping yourself? And does it matter? “Just give,” says Scottie.

And he gave everything he had. He told the story on the bus of a young Indian man who approached him about help with school. The young man had an American sponsor who had died eight months prior. Now he didn’t have any money to finish his education. He was getting behind, and was very sad, because he was a serious student. He wanted to be a medical doctor. He needed over one hundred American dollars to catch up. Scottie made an appointment with the young man to go to his school, to meet his teacher, to be sure it was on the up and up. The teacher told him that the young man was an exemplary student and a role model for others in his class. So Scottie gave more than was asked, he gave $200, and a promise that if they would write him letters and tell him about school, he would try to send them another $20 every month once he got back home to Seattle. Maybe if he could just drink and smoke a little less, he could send that money with no problem. And it seemed, because he had given so much cash, Scottie wouldn’t be able to continue his desired travels to Nepal after the pilgrimage. He not only gave the money, he gave that piece of his life, of his chance to experience.

I have to think it must be the very same young man who had approached me. He had told me the story of how an American man in the US Navy from San Francisco had come alone to Bodhgaya to die of lung cancer at the age of thirty-five. This American had sponsored the young man through school until he died several months ago. He said he loved the American very much. He had tears in his eyes as he told me of his death, and how he had burned his body and set the ashes free in the Ganges River in Varanasi in good Hindu tradition. He told me he needed $100 to take a test to be able to go on with his schooling, so that he could become a medical doctor as he liked biology and wanted to help the poor. I was moved and considered helping him. I began to ask him questions, details. There were inconsistencies with his times and dates. He didn’t know anything about biology. And I thought perhaps this was just another scam after all. These beggars learn to work people. Even Damashoku had said so herself. She was supposed to be the physical manifestation of green Tara, the goddess of compassion. She had refused to give money to a boy with polio who had broke out in tears in front of her on the streets. Her comment had been that they are all actors. Later, in the village, I saw this young man on a very nice motorcycle, even though so many people could not begin to think of owning such a luxury in this poverty stricken land. Why didn’t he have the money for school then? Was that really why he wanted it?

At five o’clock we stopped for lunch. Yes, it was eleven or twelve hours after breakfast. It was the first place our leaders felt was safe. It didn’t look at all safe to me. That’s how you get traveler’s diarrhea, by eating unsafe foods, and these roadside stands were famous for it. Suzanne and a Frenchman had already had their turns. I didn’t want mine. And anyway, in the spirit of speed, we were forced to agree on one meal for everybody. It was dal (lentil sauce) with rice and vegetable curry on the side, as this was the traditional Indian meal. It didn’t sound or look good, and neither did all the disease carrying flies that were coming into the open air restaurant to escape the rain. I decided to pass. I was happy to find three small bags of peanuts for five rupees each. And then not so happy to find that there were about eight peanuts in each one and the rest were badly tasting spicy rice puffs.

Darkness came as we boarded the bus for the last leg of the journey. At ten pm, sixteen hours after setting off on our seven hours bus ride, we arrived at Hotel Hindustan International in Varanasi. It was a Best Western, and although still very Indian, was like a familiar little piece of home.