Into the Himalayas

I bought tea for these guys in Badrinath. Interestingly it was a bit difficult to buy tea for just a few because there were many wandering and 'homeless' pilgrims around town. If I announced that I was buying tea, then I would have been on the hook to buy tea for a hundred people. I had to motion with a little gesture of the head that they should follow me into a little tea shop. "Chai! Chai! Chai!", is the chant heared on the street from morning to night. It was cold in this high mountain place so the hot tea was a good support for body and mind.

Badrinath has an old temple right on the edge of the river that flows through town. You have to cross an old bridge and take off your shoes and buy some prasad to leave as a blessing. Then past the guards and into the central hall to see the temple statues. I beleive this temple was intially built by a mega-master of spiritual power who went by the name of Adi Shankara. It was only a few weeks earlier that I noticed a picture of a monk meditating on a leopard skin and was somehow attracted to it. It turns out it was Shankara and it truly amazed me how it seemed he called out to me through the ages.

It would be truly impossible to express the depth of who he is and what his teaching represents. So I will leave you with the invitation to look into it for yourself. The depth of the Vedic tradition is like the vastness of time and space itself, of which Shankara's work is but a small piece.