1-2-11 - Eric Arnow sends a note about leaving Southern India.

Hadn't heard from him in a while.

I wrote him right back that I'm going to Southern India later this month for a four month stay. Clay's coming with me and we'll go to a couple of music and culture festivals in Chennai then Pune (Poona) where we have some good music and drumming contacts which might lead to some study there for him.

Then bye to Clay and back to Chennai to meet Katrinka who's coming for a month. We're planning on doing a bit of visiting in Bangalore and then going to Thiruvanamalai which I'd initially chosen because the Ramana Ashram was there. Then it turned out that I have a few friends there and others I met who'd been there and so it seems like it was a good choice. Katrinka and I plan to do a bit of traveling from there like to Kerala, but getting to know one place well works best within our limited budget.

While there I plan to work on the four projects I have had in mind for some time: Shunryu Suzuki archive upgrade, mainly improving lecture text presentation, Suzuki related oral/written history, a memoir emphasizing the lives of others (not the excellent German movie), and a pamphlet for Dharma Sangha Germany with their sutras in the German they're chanted in, English, and Japanese where applicable, and a lecture by Richard Baker that seemed particularly appropriate, one he gave at an ordination with a lot of guests. We'll see how far I get on all this. I also planned to do some work last year in Germany I didn't get to because I spent all my time there joining in with the group, studying German, traveling, and walking around.

If anyone has suggestions for what to do where we'll be in India, please suggest.

More later on all this. Maybe I'll make this the first entry in a section called India Journal - but not to journal too much and not get to that other stuff.