Late Night Los Angeles

My root Buddhist teacher, Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche made a request to me when he heard I would attend the Buddhist Pilgrimage he had organized for early 2008 to India and Nepal. He asked me to write online about my experiences during the trip and post photos of what we encounter. I believe he was aspiring that his other students around the globe could follow along on the pilgrimage from afar, and that they would then have the opportunity to make aspiration prayers for the perpetuation of the Dzogchen Lineage at the same times as we are visiting each of Buddha’s four sacred places as well as the many other places that are revered by Buddhists that we’ll visit during the pilgrimage.

I created this blog to help fulfill my teacher’s aspirations, and to hopefully inspire some others who would like to be traveling with us, or who plan to make a similar pilgrimage in the future. I called the blog "Path Buddha” since I would like this blog to focus on Dharma. Khenpo Choga teaches that Dharma for me as a student of the enlightenment process is only these following five types of my own positive thinking: renunciation, compassion, faith, loving-kindness and wisdom. In his remarkably effective English shorthand, Khenpo defines Dharma within one's present moment thinking as, “my five positive thinking, only, only, only.” Dharma for me is also synonymous with my personal Path Buddha. I'll certainly do my best to focus on the Dharmic aspects of my experiences, but I'll also write about the people, places, transportation, accommodations, food, shopping, and other experiences that arise during the tour.

If you’d like some background on the pilgrimage, you can read this page that I published on the Dzogchen Lineage website to announce the pilgrimage.
http://www.dzogchenlineage.org/pilgrimage.html
It mentions some of the stops of the tour as well as other details about the offerings being made during the pilgrimage.

It's after 1AM here in Los Angeles, the day of our flight to India. In 12 hours I'll be at LAX. A Sangha member in LA asked that I write a little about the food during the trip, so I'll mention that I'm staying in Altadena tonight with Alexi's sister Nicole and signifigant other Lorna. They made a wonderful dinner that included lentil curry, quinoa, steamed greens, tomato salad with yummy homemade dressing and a chocolate-covered frozen coconut sorbet dessert.

Back to packing and then sleep.