Observations...

....as days go by

I've nearly completed half the number of days of my scheduled stay in the United States and as each day goes by, I have nothing else to offer except observations. After a long walk for an hour and a half, walking through snow in the Western Springs park, watching the orb of the orange sun set behind the elms at 4.30 p.m. the chillness of the air was trapped within my thermal clothes, settling directly on my skin. But I have befriended this cold weather and I know it will not harm me.
It was my day out on my own, three days ago when I took the Metra train from Hindsdale to the Union Station and walked my way up beside the Chicago River to a cab. I was off to the Field Museum of Chicago, where I walked and walked and walked for five hours non-stop, visiting country after country, the ancient world of dinosaurs, the remains of Pompeii, walking underground when the human shrinks and the worms and insects of the earth are larger, contemplating on the one landmass of pangea that contained the earth, meditating before the powerful statue of the Amida Buddha in the Japanese section and looking deep into the Mandala Yantra in the Tibetan wing. I filled myself with a California Grill vegetarian sandwich and tomato basil soup after I conveyed with quite a little bit of effort that I wanted totally vegetarian food at the Corner Bakery.
The next day passed by with a visit to the Lemonte Temple for Shri Ram and the day after to the Balaji Temple at Aurora. The more I travelled around the city and downtown, the more I felt at home with myself.
The identity crisis of my country and the other country, how great this or that is, how small this is or how clean that is....the screen of confusion about superiority or inferiority of developed and developing nationalities...has now lifted. The sky is clear. Each human is a speck of consciousness, no more no less. And whatever experience that tiny speck needs to gather or share in the course of evolution, it will drift like a cloud to that country, finish its job, and move on back or forth. This experience gathering happens not just in this lifetime, but has been happening and will continue to happen till this ice block of the body melts into water, evaporates into vapour and dissolves into the nothingness of the cosmos.