St. John in the Woods

I visited India and Nepal for the first time on a Buddhist pilgrimage led by Shantum Seth in 2007. The following — which I wrote in a travel journal in Dharamshala, India — is from my 2008 trip.

I dreamed about dizzily riding the winding, narrow roads of Dharamshala.

In this reality — not the world of dreams — riding in a taxi this morning, on the way to the old church called St. John in the Woods, I participated in an interesting conversation. Mimi (who is in her seventies but unlike certain relatives I could mention is a real woman rather than a deranged power-tripping white male trapped in a woman’s body), Inge, and Manny were all in the car with me. We discussed Buddhist cosmology.

“There is no soul, so what reincarnates is a stream of consciousness — this is what each of us has, according to Buddhist cosmology,” Inge said. That is her interpretation — this topic has been looming up during the retreat, at least since Nicky Breeland’s talk.

There is no separate solid existence — no soul — only the mindstream is reborn. It is one thing that “doesn’t have interconnectedness,” as Manny put it. Inge noted that it seems a bit inconsistent. Mimi asked whether there’s an over mindstream connected to all. “Soul isn’t in the vocabulary,” Manny said. Yes, I know that Buddhists, unlike Hindus, don’t generally believe in a soul, despite…