Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is a Gothic church built by the Crusaders, but only a trained eye of an art historian (which happens to be my case) can spot it. The decoration of the interior – each chapel decorated by a different denomination – does not resemble anything one would expect to see in a Western Gothic church. One striking element is the amount of lamps hanging everywhere, some of them works of art in themselves.

Lamps in the rotunda over the Edicule.

Lamps in the rotunda over the Edicule.

Lamps in the rotunda over the Edicule.

Lamps over the Stone of Unction in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Lamps in an Armenian chapel.

Lamps in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Lamps in the Orthodox chapel over Golgotha in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Lamps in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Edicule

This is perhaps the only chapel in the world where the altar is not shared but divided between three denominations, each allowed to decorate only a third of it. The chapel is tiny, hardly big enough for three people to stand in front of that altar. This is the Edicule, or the Tomb of Christ, the place where His body was laid after He was killed. Many people were killed afterwards because many nations wanted to control this place.

A chapel has been built around the tomb. It has been rebuilt many times afterwards, the present one dates from 19^th century. It is hight time to rebuild it again, but there is no agreement as to who should be allowed to rebuild it, so it has been bound with iron bars to stop it falling apart. So it stands, a perfect symbol of an imperfect church.

Many people from all over the world come here and want to enter this place. You can enter, there is no restriction, but you have to be prepared to queue for more than an hour an you won't be allowed to spend inside more than a minute.

The Edicule seen from the entry to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Iron bars binding the Edicule.

The door to the chapel.

The door 

The door to the Tomb from inside the antechamber.

The altar inside the Tomb.

A Coptic chapel at the back of the Edicule.

The dome above the Edicule.

More about the Tomb of Christ on my other blog

Shah Nematullah

From the times of Muhammad there is a war within Islam between the fundamentalists, who say that jihad should be understood as a real war and that infidels must be killed, and the sufis who say that jihad is an inner war within one's soul between an egoistic infidel which is to be killed and the true inner believer who sees all people as children of God. There is a war between Wahhabis who say there are no saints and all mausolea must be blown up and the dervishes who treat their Sufi teachers as saints, build mausolea for them and make pilgrimages there to be close to the masters even after their death. The fundamentalists hate the dervishes but the dervishes refuse to hate anybody, including their oppressors. One of those great Sufi teachers was Shah Nematullah who lived in the 15^th century and whose tomb is in the village of Mahan, close to the city of Kerman, in the desert of central Iran.

I went there (almost a decade ago) and found a charming place with an atosphere of quiet prayer, very different from gaudy and crowded Shiah mausolea near Tehran. A relaxed atmosphere where men and women pray together in mixed groups – very unusual in the present-day Iran, men and women are strictly separated in mosques. It is interesting that the mausoleum is open because the Iranian regime persecutes the Sufis, including the Nematullahi order.

More about Shah Nematullah

Deserts and mountains around Mahan.

Minaret of the mausoleum of Shah Nematullah

Inside the mausoleum courtyard.

Courtyard of the mausoleum of Shah Nematullah.

A door inside the mausoleum of Shah Nematullah.

A portrait of Shah Nematullah over his tomb.

The dome above the tomb of Shah Nematullah.

A quiet prayer in the mausoleum.

Bukkokuji

Waking up bell at ten to four in the morning, at four everybody must be in the zendo, or meditation hall, sitting still facing the wall for forty minutes, after that twenty minutes exercise and a jog through the town, then back in the zendo for another forty minutes of silence, after that about an hour of sutra recitation, only after the sutras a breakfast, a bowl of watery rice with a pickled apricot. Then work, in a garden or polishing floors or something. This is a morning routine in a Zen monastery, the rest of the day is similar. Begging rounds in the town are not every day but they are regular, begging is one of the three pillars of Zen (together with work and meditation) and the monks live off what people give them. Selfless giving is the first step on the path to wisdom and accepting gifts is giving people a chance to make that step.

I know this because I spent some time in a monastery in Japan. It was a long time ago, more than a quarter of a century, but it was a memorable experience. The monastery was called Bukkokuji, in the town of Obama in Fukui prefecture. The name of the master was Tangen Roshi. One day I asked if it was OK to take some pictures documenting the life of the monastery, he said yes and here is the result.

More about Bukkokuji

Bukkokuji main hall

Bukkokuji door knocker

Bukkokuji meal time

Bukkokuji monks leaving the temple 

Monks begging from door to door.

Monk's straw sandals.

A bonsai in Bukkokuji

Tangen roshi.

Ladakh

Ladakh: a little corner of the Tibetan Plateau that belongs to the Republic of India. The land which at the altitude of around 3500 metres above sea level is closer to heavens than almost any country, where barley is the staple food because nothing else would grow there,where it seldom rains because few clouds break through the barrier of the Himalayas but there is enough water in rivers flowing from the Himalayan glaciers and fields of barley must be watered every day, only then they are green. The land where the old religion of Tibetan Buddhism is still practised because the Chinese hungweibins did not reach here, where the ages-old monasteries still stand, where ancient sutra libraries are still full and the sutras are even paraded in processions through villages carried by boys.

I visited this land over thirty years ago and took a few pictures with my old 35mm film camera. I visited Leh, the capital of the old kingdom, where the castle similar to the Potala in Lhasa towers above the city. I visited Spituk monastery that rises over the valley of Indus and Shey monastery where a library of ancient books is kept.  I haven't been there ever since, I guess it might have changed in the meantime. Perhaps the pictures may be even more interesting for this reason.  

Leh seen from the royal castle.

A street in Leh.

The valley of Indus seen from the roof of Spituk monastery.

Ancient sutra library in Shey monastery.

Sutras paraded in a procession through a village.

Prayer flags in Ladakh.

Old stupas in Ladakh.

Only the fields that are watered every day are green.

Poznan

Poznan may sound exotic to some people, but for me it is where it all started. This is where I was born, read my first travel books and started dreaming of hitting the trail myself. Which did happen, many years ago. I don't live in Poznan any more but I do visit it every so often. It has changed in the meantime. When I lived there it was a gloomy communist town but since the end of the communist era everything was transformed. Nowadays it looks a bit exotic even to me.

Poznan airport

Poznan green trams.

Poznan green trams.

Poznan renaissance town hall.

Poznan mediaeval market square.

St Jan Nepomucen at the Market Square.

Gothic church of St Martin in Poznan.

Flags of Poznan International Fair.