Below are additional pictures and comments for Luoyang. It rained and was heavily overcast today in Luoyang. Not a good day to be outside again but a good day to update and work on pictures. I paid for the Tibet tour this morning. Now I can take care of airfare to Lhasa and return afterwards to Beijing.

To the left, is a map of how Buddhism came from India to China showing the routes via the silk road (in red), and the blue to Chang’an (Xi’an) and Luoyang. This area in northern India southwest of Tibet is still the central foundational location for what in considered as Tibetan Buddhism.  Once the weather clears up, I hope to go the Long Men Grottoes and Shaolin Temple before heading to Xian next Monday. Their pictures will appear here as well. In the afternoon I decided to take a walk and get a foot bath, then walking further I came across Zushi Temple, dedicated to Lao Tzu. A brief description and a few pictures from the Buddhist White Horse Temple are below…

It is as though now that I have entered this journey, there is an acknowledgment that there is no turning back to the person I was before I left. I’ve been gone for only a week, and it seems so long ago. I have always been enamored with the stars and cosmos… what is seen as universal. It makes sense now that what is changeless and immortal is not your mind/body, but rather the Mind that is shared by all existence. Stillness that never ceases because it never becomes more than the present. It simply is. I think this is helpful in releasing ego that then dissolves into nothing. It is here that we can enter the mystic nature of who we are. A commonality that enhances… as if a cosmic field of vision that becomes you. I know that’s all pretty deep, but going there is what literally helps me to focus and see beyond myself.

It is where my Taoist beginnings are taking me now that means I must get my “mind right”. As if living a dream as the dream becomes me. All else falling away, this re-enforcement of Buddhist and Taoist thought moving me fearlessly as Van Morrison would say….”Into the Mystic”.

As if on que, I found the Zushi Taoist Temple, dedicated to Lao Tzu just around the corner from where I am staying. It was constructed in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. According to the inscription the temple underwent frequent renovations during the reigns of Hongzhi, Kangxi, Yongchan, Qianlong, and Jiaqing up to the period of the Republic of China.