SIXTEEN YEARS AGO
In 2003, Vanessa Teahen, Joey Waxman, and about 38 others joined our teacher Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche on a four-week Buddhist pilgrimage to India. The trip was structured around the key sites of the Buddha’s life as well as other important locations for Buddhists, and within that framework we experienced a powerful fraction of the sights, tastes, sounds, emotions, and wild ideas of the most chaotically harmonious country in the world.

The pilgrimage took place in the beginning of Vanessa and Joey’s relationship, when we were both fairly new to Buddhism. We had met the previous year at Hawthorne House, a small nursing home in Boulder run mainly by students of Kongtrul Rinpoche. Joey had been studying with Rinpoche for four years. Vanessa had only started coming to teachings a few months earlier. It was during the pilgrimage that she formally asked Rinpoche to be her teacher.

WHAT WE WOULD LIKE TO DO
Now our daughter Lila (who we knew nothing about until she appeared in 2005) is scheduled to turn 14 this December. On her birthday, we hope to be back in India with Rinpoche, taking Lila on her first pilgrimage. Specifically, we hope to be in Bodhgaya, the holy site in the North where the Buddha meditated under the Bodhi Tree until he fully awakened to his enlightened nature and demonstrated the full potential of the human heart and mind.

We are fundraising to make this hope a reality. The pilgrimage itself goes from December 6 to 15. In addition to Bodhgaya, we will visit Sarnath, where the Buddha gave his first teachings, Rajgir, where he first taught on the ultimate nature of the world and the beings in it, and Varanasi, the holy Hindu city on the Ganges, which dates back to about 1000 B.C. We plan on arriving in India a few days early and staying a few days late to make our travel more relaxing and to give room for unexpected experiences beyond the pilgrimage.

NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT
It seems like the perfect time to make this journey. Rinpoche hasn’t led a pilgrimage in many years. Lila has a growing desire to travel and she’s at an age where even a brief immersion in a foreign culture would have a major effect on broadening her mind. She’s also interested in the ancient roots of the community she has grown up among. Eighth grade seems like the ideal time to take her. School is still not highly demanding and she hasn’t fully locked into the teenage social world. They say the brain changes a lot during this time and you can almost see hers changing from the outside.

Vanessa and Joey are also both at points in our lives where a pilgrimage would be a great benefit. For those of you who don’t know what we’ve been up to these last 13 years, we’ve been two of the main resident caretakers of Pema Osel Do Ngak Choling, a Tibetan Buddhist center in the woods of Vermont. Pema Osel is Rinpoche’s main teaching center east of the Mississippi. Just a few people live here, but some of our events have drawn over 300 people. Vanessa is the event coordinator and one of the center’s co-directors, Joey is the head of study and practice, and both us wear many other hats. The activity is constant. We also engage in daily meditation practices, teach online courses, attend several teaching and practice programs each year, and do about a month of personal retreat each. When we’re in the right state of mind to appreciate what we’re doing, we know this is an incredibly fulfilling life. But it will be helpful and refreshing to return to India and gain a higher vantage point from which to view our lives and our place in the world. The pilgrimage will help us recognize and come out of habitual patterns and narrow-minded views that tend to develop when one doesn’t come out and look around. We hope to return with fresh perspectives to share with others.

THE MAGICAL DISPLAY
India has so much to teach us. Though people on average have very little, they maintain such presence, integrity, cheerfulness, and kindness. Because most places are so crowded, so hot, and so-out-in-the-open, people enjoy a much deeper familiarity with the magical display of birth, old age, sickness, and death. And being with Rinpoche will enrich the whole experience many times over. His presence makes it clear that the point of the pilgrimage (and everything we do) is to develop our wisdom and compassion so that we can become a great benefit to others. Every pilgrimage site is saturated with the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha as well as his disciples over the last 2600 years. The blessings in each place are palpable. And beyond seeing sights, Rinpoche adds many other mind-transforming components to the pilgrimage, including the powerful practice of dana, or generosity, where we offer large quantities of food and blankets to people in Bodhgaya.

NOW WE ARE ASKING FOR MONEY
When we were writing down a list of reasons why we wanted to go to India (which some might see as a highly impractical idea) Vanessa said, “I want to go outside my comfort zone.” We agreed that this would be a great benefit for all three of us. Then we realized something that made us very happy. We need to raise money to go to India and asking for money is one of the things that makes us most uncomfortable!

We've estimated the total cost of the trip to be $9000 and have already received a $500 check from one of our friends. We can fund $4000 of the remainder from our own savings. That leaves us $4500 more to raise through GoFundMe. 

As fundraisers always say, “No amount is too small.” We feel confident that we will be able to go to India. Even if our fundraising comes up short, we’ll still find a way. But every donation means a lot to us. It means we have some common values, some shared belief in a positive purpose to life, a purpose based on something bigger than our small, individual self. Even if you read this page and decide not to donate (after all, there are so many good causes and no one can give to every single one), you will have made a connection to the pilgrimage. In some way, you will be there with us. Thank you.


Taj Mahal watercolor by Lila, October 2019

Top photo:
Visit with HH 17th Karmapa, December 2003