Chapter 3 Getting Off Chapter Three –(i) “… These two extremes, monks, should not be followed by one who has gone forth: sensual indulgence, low, coarse, vulgar, ignoble, unprofitable; and self-torture, painful, ignoble, unprofitable. Monks, this middle way produces vision, produces knowledge, leads to calm, penetration, awakening, extinction. And what middle way, monks, is that? Just this noble eightfold path, that is to say, right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. Truly, monks, this middle way produces vision, produces knowledge, leads to calm, penetration, awakening, extinction.
“Monks, this is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, decay is suffering, disease is suffering, dying is suffering, association with the unliked is suffering, separation from the liked is suffering, not to get what one wishes is suffering; in brief the five holding aggregates[1] are suffering.
“Monks, this is the noble truth of the arising of suffering: craving, leading to further being, accompanied by joy and passion, delights in this or that, that is to say, craving for sensuality, craving for being, craving for unbeing.
“Monks, this is the noble truth of the ceasing of suffering: the complete dispassion, ceasing, abandonment, release from, detachment from that very craving.
“Monks, this is the noble truth of the way leading to the ceasing of suffering: just this noble eightfold path, that is to say, right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
“With the thought, ‘This is the noble truth of suffering and this suffering has been understood,’ there arose in me vision, knowledge, wisdom, comprehension and light concerning things unknown before.
“With the thought, ‘This is the noble truth of the arising of suffering and this arising of suffering has been abandoned,’ there arose in me vision, knowledge, wisdom, comprehension and light concerning things unknown before.
“With the thought, ‘This is the noble truth of the ceasing of suffering and this ceasing of suffering has been realized,’ there arose in me vision, knowledge, wisdom, comprehension and light concerning things unknown before.
“With the thought, ‘This is the noble truth of the way leading to the ceasing of suffering, and this way has been developed,’ there arose in me vision, knowledge, wisdom, comprehension and light concerning things unknown before.
“Knowledge and vision arose in me: ‘Unshakable is the freedom of my spirit; this is the final birth; there will be no further becoming.’”
Thus spoke the Auspicious One.
From the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Buddha’s first discourse.
At sunrise the air was crisp and taut. Later it would become heavy, saturated with heat, wilting me. Now, though, there was that keenness of illumination found in the equatorial sunrises of Ceylon. I felt alert and invigorated, the day not yet a burden.
Since I slept in my under-robe (having been told of the Vinaya rule against sleeping nude) there was only the outer robe to throw on before stepping onto the verandah to greet the morning. Already several of the monks were sweeping the dust from their rooms across the verandah and onto the lawn that fronted these quarters.
To my right Ven. Khirti’s door was open; I could see him standing at his desk, examining some texts. To my left the lawn gave way to barren ground which separated the living quarters from the classroom, library, stupa, and shrine at the front of the compound. A few coconut palms rose towards the tropical sky. A dragonfly with an iridescent red body hovered over a dandelion, all four wings vibrating rapidly. Distantly I could hear the traffic noises of Colombo.
I stood idly for a minute, a passive observer, then went to the tap outside the shower stalls to wash my face and head in cool water. I dried off carefully, avoiding chills. I still tended the remains of that nasty cold I’d picked up in Calcutta, the result of meditating too long on cold tiles in chill night air. In the mirror above the basin I inspected my image for signs of lingering inflammation, searching with uncertain results, for the cheap glass distorted my features. My image and I shook our heads at each other, bemused that we should ever have thought it an achievement to perceive the world as we chose, without regard to the way it really was. Cold and heat were indeed relative, and I could attend to or ignore them as I chose (within the limits of my own capacities); but ignoring them didn’t make them non-existent, nor did it make me immune to their effects. I’d sniffled and sneezed the whole journey to Ceylon.
I’d nursed myself on the train to Madras, then lingered several days after obtaining an entry visa for Ceylon. There was money to get rid of. Ven. Dharmapal had instructed me to make my way in Ceylon without money. I stayed in a good hotel, took taxis everywhere, and each day ate three meals in fine restaurants. While walking past a pharmacy I decided not to go in, not even to browse; but I read magazines and novels and smoked American cigarettes. The thought of returning to the gloomy poverty of the lay life was depressing. Although I foresaw an austere lifestyle in Ceylon I preferred my chances there. Free as I then was with money, I expected to be as free without it. But Madras was sultry, so I bought a plane ticket and landed, with a few dollars left, in Colombo, where the sun finally baked away the congestion.
After washing I took the broom from behind my door and joined the morning sweepers. I had doubts about the value of sweeping when there wasn’t even a little pile of dust at the end to show for it; but so it was done by the monks here, and I wanted above all to get along. I wasn’t always happy with the restraints of the robes, but provoking criticism didn’t help me feel better, as I’d found out.
The breakfast bell still hadn’t rung, although my belly told me it was time. Some of the other monks paced up and down, practicing mindfulness. When I finished sweeping I staked out my own length of verandah, but my gut kept rumbling, “Feed me! Feed me!”
My appetite was for something more substantial than mindfulness and my attention turned instead to the remnants of the head cold. How could I be mindful with blocked sinuses? It had been a welcome excuse since Calcutta, but now the alibi was worn as a beggar’s rags, and I wondered how I could decently dress my distaste for renunciation.
I saw Ven. Khirti still standing by his desk. I was more interested in talking about mindfulness than in doing it, and so allowed my pacing to take me towards him. He suffered from spinal deterioration and couldn’t bend to sit. Confined as he was to standing or lying down, the aging scholar was often good for some conversation.
“How are you feeling today, bhante?” Bhante was the form of address I’d been taught to use towards monks senior to me.
“The same, Vinayadhara. The body doesn’t get any younger.” Confronted daily with his ailments, and lacking words of healing or comfort, I always changed the subject as soon as I could.
“Breakfast seems very late today.”
“There’s no point in being impatient, Vinayadhara.”
Impatience hadn’t motivated my comment, so I said nothing.
“It will be ready when it is ready.”
“Yes, bhante.”
“Worrying won’t hurry it any.”
“No, bhante.”
“Patience is one of the lessons the East has to offer the West. Westerners are always in such a hurry. They want everything right away, and if they don’t get it they’re unhappy.”
“Yes, bhante.”
“You’re impatient about your residence visa, too.”
“It’s taking so long.”
“Are you going to the immigration office again today?”
“No, I was there yesterday.” I went every few days.
“And what did they say this time?”
“The same thing they’ve told me every time. My papers aren’t ready yet, but maybe they’ll be ready next time.”
“Then you still have to stay in Colombo?”
“Yes. After they’re approved I can go to the Hermitage.”
Since arriving in Colombo I’d looked to Ven. Khirti for knowledge as I’d looked to Ven. Dharmapal in Calcutta. Both of them recommended the Island Hermitage as suitable for beginning meditation. I’d written and knew I’d be welcome as soon as my application for a residence visa was processed; but even the deference and respect accorded monks didn’t speed up the machinery of a bureaucracy trained for centuries in the tactics of inefficiency by both Portuguese and British masters.
“You need to go to the Hermitage. Maybe there you can do something about your impatience. If you can wait that long.”
“A lot has been achieved through impatience.”
“But impatience is a source of suffering.”
“It’s just so difficult to be patient.”
“Of course it’s difficult. Nobody said it was easy to learn. If it were easy anyone could do it.”
But I wanted patience now. If impatience was a source of suffering so too was the restraint of the robes. The Hermitage was on an island in a lagoon; there would be even less opportunity for diversions than here. My feelings alternated between bravado and trepidation. The idea that happiness was to be had by giving up, not by acquiring, was both fascinating and frightening. To go to the Hermitage would mean undertaking an uncomfortably large commitment to myself; I asked myself why I should want to go there at all if I was already so disenchanted with meditation.
“Bhante, you’ve told me about different kinds of meditation; now I’ve been reading about Buddha-nature, and I wonder what sort of meditation is best for realizing that.”
“Buddha-nature? Where have you been reading about that?”
I told him. “Conze! His views are pure Mahayanist. Anything he has to say about the Theravada tradition is probably wrong, because he’s only studied it; he’s never practiced it.”
Ven. Dharmapal had tried to explain the differences between the Theravada and Mahayana sects of Buddhism, and Ven. Khirti continued my education.
“The only way to understand the Dhamma is to practice it. To strive for the goal of nibbana.”
Nibbana was the Pali. The Sanskrit word, used by Mahayanists, was Nirvana. Ceylon was a Theravada country.
“But, Vinayadhara, the Mahayanists, they say they’re going to refuse nibbana until everybody can attain it. They think that to find freedom from suffering while others still suffer is selfish. They say it’s more generous if we all suffer equally. That may be democratic, but it’s not the Buddha’s Teaching.”
“But if the Buddha-nature is in all of us, then …”
“… Buddha-nature? What is this Buddha-nature?”
“It’s the nature of the Buddha,” I explained.
“Where is this Buddha-nature even mentioned in the Suttas?”
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“The Pali Suttas don’t even mention it.”
“Then where does it come from?”
“This idea, that within us there’s a Buddha-nature, and all we have to do is to realize it — that’s just a variation on the idea of ‘soul’, the idea that there’s something eternal within us. And what does the Buddha say about that?”
“That all things are impermanent?”
“And that all things are not-self.”
“I have trouble with that idea.”
“If you didn’t you’d either be enlightened or a fool. But the Buddha has said that if you look for a self you won’t find one.”
“Then Buddha-nature is just something some people made up long after the Buddha was gone?”
“It was easier than bothering to understand the Teaching. Because the only way to understand is to practice.”
“But to practice you have to know what to do.”
“Read the Suttas and find out. It’s all been translated from the Pali. I’ve told you that all the texts are in the library. Ask the chief monk for the key. And start by reading the Vinaya to find out how to behave as a monk.”
How to behave? Was he suggesting that my conduct was less than perfect? I didn’t get the chance to ask (or to find out I dared not ask), for the temple boy brought Ven. Khirti his breakfast, and he excused himself. He was unable to eat with the rest of us in the danasala, the dining hall. I returned to pacing the verandah, knowing the bell would ring soon now.
He was right, of course: reading scholarly opinions would never lead to an understanding of this Teaching. I’d heard that advice before and, actually, had already taken the Vinaya from the library. But though the scholarly books were sometimes ponderous, sometimes condescending, they were also, sometimes, right on. Birth is the cause of death, one of them told me. We start dying the moment we’re born. All the circumstances which may bring about actual death are but its occasions. How can we be at ease in the interval?
The temple boy rang the bell demandingly, but I waited until some of the other monks had turned towards the danasala before I made any move in that direction. Not only did I not want to seem hasty, but also it would do me no good, for early or not, breakfast wouldn’t begin until the chief monk had been seated and everything had been done in its proper place.
I took my seat, cross-legged, at the end of the long bench and waited quietly. There were no dana dayakas; there would be no pañca sila ceremony to wait through. I didn’t know how the food was obtained when it wasn’t brought by dana dayakas; somehow things had been arranged to function smoothly; somewhere someone made it his or her personal concern to see to it that there was always breakfast, and I accepted the arrangement without further inquiry.
When the chief monk arrived the temple boy served the food. As always when there were no dayakas it was plain and unassuming: stringhoppers, Nestomalt tea, and bananas.
Stringhoppers were a stringy tangle of steamed rice-flour served with various sauces and picants, and I shoveled away all I was given, washing it down with estate tea from Upcountry, lavishly fortified with malted milk powder. The bananas today were the small sweet variety. Other days we got a larger type, called plantains, which were more delicately flavored, more coarsely textured. There was a third variety as well, very fat with a reddish skin and those were really good, sweet and creamy, but those, alas, I seldom saw since they were looked upon as village food, common, and therefore unsuitable as offering to anyone as venerable as a monk.
Hungry as I was, this venerable monk would have been glad to have another banana or two, even of the small variety, but none were offered, and I did without. Doing without seemed to occupy a substantial part of the monk’s life; but apparently not substantial enough for all. There were, I’d read, thirteen allowable practices, called dhutangas, by which one accepted ascetic disciplines beyond those required by the Vinaya. Some of them seemed easier than others. There was, for example, the austerity of eating only food obtained on the alms-round. My breakfasts weren’t obtained on the alms-round, but my lunches were, and I looked upon the alms-round as a pleasure rather than a hardship. There were some dhutangas, however, that indeed seemed austerities, and among these was that of eating only once a day by giving up breakfast entirely.
When my last stringhopper was eaten I considered how ravenous I’d be, if I gave up breakfasts, by the time the lunch bell rang. Yet there were monks in the Buddha’s day — and there still were now, apparently — who lived so from choice. There were even monks who undertook the austerity of living on twenty-one mouthfuls of food a day. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to give up the necessary pleasures of life, but was chagrined to find that the idea fascinated me. What compensations could be found in such practices? Would I have sufficient perseverance and strength to adopt that life? How would it benefit me?
The commentary that described the dhutangas didn’t answer these questions. Nor could any of the monks here, for I was quite sure none of them practiced any dhutangas, not even Ven. Khirti who, with the continuous pain of deteriorating spinal discs, found his days bleak enough without undertaking any additional austerities.
After breakfast I padded barefoot back to my room, where I hung up the outer robe on the robe-rack and lit a cigarette. There was enough money left to support that habit a while longer, but as I smoked I calculated my reserves. Monks didn’t ask for things unless they were invited to do so, and as yet no upasaka had offered himself as a dayaka. There were other things, too, that monks didn’t do.
“The dayakas, they don’t like to see monks smoking,” a monk explained. Occasionally I would notice, near one set of rooms, a faint aroma of tobacco; but nothing was said about it and I politely refrained from asking. We kept our bad habits to ourselves.
“The dayakas, they don’t like to see monks wearing only the under robe,” another monk said when I walked bare-chested to the wash stand, and he instructed me on wearing the robes.
“The dayakas, they don’t like to see monks use money,” still another monk explained, and gave me a booklet of prepaid bus coupons for my trips to the Immigration office.
They didn’t need to use money, though, for family and friends saw to their material needs. But I didn’t know how they managed their other needs, for although most of them spoke English and all were cordial, none was open to me about personal matters, and I didn’t ask. Most of the monks here were older; there were a number of vacant rooms.
I didn’t know how to manage my own other needs either, for in the last few days I’d felt vague stirrings of a sexual desire which had been more or less dormant, put to sleep a good half-year ago by small but regular feedings of various drugs.
“Read the Vinaya and find out how you’re supposed to behave,” Ven. Khirti had said. I looked at the books around me. Several lay on the floor beside the bed, open and face down; others were on the table by the window, beside the typewriter and the stack of typed pages. I picked up one of the books.
The five volumes that made up the Vinaya made for fast reading. Much of it I skipped entirely, for its content was predictable from its form. An incident would be described in which someone was outraged by the conduct of a bhikkhu and the Buddha would then make a rule forbidding that activity. Then variations on the incident would be described, showing by example just where lay that thin saffron line that marked the boundary between the allowable and the disallowable.
Playing with one’s food, digging the earth, having a mirror (though there’d been mirrors in every temple I’d yet seen), trafficking with money, claiming (falsely) to having attained to supernormal states or (even in truth) telling laypeople of such attainments, sleeping (in the same room) with a woman, and masturbating were a few of the hundreds of things prohibited bhikkhus. It left me feeling glad to be still only a samanera and subject to nothing more complicated than the dasa sila.
The changes were rung on entire categories of the bhikkhu’s life, describing in minute detail, for page upon page, exactly what, for example, was proper behavior in the company of a woman (aside from discussing Dhamma, practically nothing), and what behavior was improper (practically everything), what sort of speech was acceptable (two kinds: talk of Dhamma, or “the noble silence”) and unacceptable (lies, gossip, talk of chariots, kingdoms, women, wars, etc. etc.), how, what, and where to eat, dress, walk, teach Dhamma, behave towards one’s teacher, and get along with other monks.
Mixed in with all this were charming little stories of such a different nature than the categorized legal cases that I wondered which was the real Buddhism. As I read now I came to the story of the anger-eating demon.
A certain demon appeared in one of the heavens and sat on the throne of Sakka, King of the Devas. The devas, or deities, who saw this were shocked and outraged that such a sniveling ugly wretched gnome-like demon would dare to sit on the throne of Sakka, their King, and they expressed their indignation. As they carped the anger-eating demon grew in stature, his features became less loathsome, his power increased. The more anger the devas displayed the more he grew until at last he was a gigantic radiant powerful malevolence before whom the devas fell back in silent fear. Then Sakka, King of the Devas, came back from wherever he’d been, sized up the situation, and faced the demon.
“I’m Sakka, King of the Devas, at your service.” And he bowed before the anger-eating demon. At this the anger-eating demon shrunk in size and lost some of his radiance.
“I’m Sakka, King of the Devas, at your service.” And he bowed again, and the anger-eating demon shriveled down to his original gnomish proportions.
A third time Sakka bowed to the anger-eating demon and placed himself at the demon’s service, and the anger-eating demon vanished entirely and was never seen there again.
I finished my cigarette and went outside to sweep up the leaves. The monks all did something each day in the way of keeping the temple tidy and functional, so I’d begun to help the monk who swept leaves. I’d applied myself with such diligence that by now I’d almost taken over the job entirely, being helped only occasionally by one of the other monks.
“Sweeping is a good time to practice mindfulness,” I’d been told.
“I thought mindfulness was to be practiced all the time.”
“It is. But with some chores it’s harder to be mindful.”
“I tried being mindful when I was typing.”
“And what happened?”
“My fingers got all mixed up.”
I’d taken up the task because sweeping was one thing to do with the monk’s life that (I thought) I already knew about; but it didn’t take long for the job to become a bore. Was this all there was to the monk’s life? I didn’t understand why enlightenment couldn’t result from mindfulness about things more enjoyable. How about mindfully indulging in erotic imagery? As I gathered leaves I also gathered images of that flirtatious young lady in Calcutta whose ripe body and long black hair had known the touch only of my gaze.
I was glad the task of sweeping leaves would die a natural death any day now, when I received the residence visa and departed for the Hermitage, for there seemed no other way to end the job. It had come to be my possession because about a week ago I’d sought for it and, it seems, won.
I’d been cautiously sweeping near (but not too near) the bushes behind which lived a nest of biting ants (carefully staying out of their way) when one of the senior monks came bustling up to me.
“Vinayadhara; Oh, Vinayadhara.”
“Bhante?”
“That’s not the right way to sweep the leaves here.”
“The right way?” I didn’t see the error of my ways.
“Give me the broom” — rakes were unknown in Ceylon — “and I’ll show you the right way, the easy way, the traditional way of sweeping the leaves. Come now, give me the broom.”
He held out his hands and waggled his fingers, nodding emphatically. I handed him the broom and felt my surprise turn to astonishment and then resentment. I’d been enjoying what I was doing. Now he was sticking his nose into what I thought was none of his business, and destroying my pleasure by turning a pastime into a chore, in which there were many wrong ways and but one right way one. I listened sullenly to his instructions while understanding grew on me.
“You see, Vinayadhara, your hands are wrong.”
I inspected my hands to see what might be wrong with them.
“I mean, you hold the broom wrong. The right hand should be on top of the left.”
“What difference does that make?”
I knew what difference it made: in Ceylon as in much of Asia the right hand was the hand for eating, the left the one for washing oneself after moving the bowels. The left hand was lower than the right in this respect, so it followed (somehow) that it should be lower in all respects. Being left-handed in this part of the world was a source of many minor difficulties. But my instructor explained it differently: “That way you can swing the broom more effectively.”
He emphasized his words with a vigorous sweeping motion, and swept as he talked, working at a rapid pace, much faster than I was interested in, raising dust.
“Look, look how quickly it’s going now, Vinayadhara.”
“I wasn’t in a hurry.” But I was ready to argue, until I thought better of it and waited.
“Your way, with your left hand on top, is backwards. You can’t get an effective swing, and that’s why it takes you so long. Right hand on top, Vinayadhara. That’s the correct way. Now you try it. I’ll watch to see that you do it right. Here, take the broom.”
“No, that’s all right, bhante.” I didn’t want a supervisor, and felt anger rising to flush my face.
“All right? What do you mean, all right?”
“If the way I sweep leaves is going to make people unhappy then I’d rather not do it. I’ll find something else.”
I waved off the broom he held and started to walk away.
“What’s that, Vinayadhara? What do you mean? Come back!”
I stopped, unsure how the conflict had arisen, unsure how it might be ended.
“Vinayadhara, I didn’t intend to offend you. Please believe me. It was for your own good I tried to show you the right way, but certainly I don’t want to offend you.”
Mollified, I would have dropped the matter if he had said no more. But he continued:
“In viharas, Vinayadhara, samaneras are expected to listen, to take heed, to, to, what is that English expression?, to lend an ear to the words of the senior bhikkhus. That’s why you’re here, Vinayadhara. You’re only a samanera, you know. But forgive me” — he smiled broadly and patted me on the shoulder with pudgy fingers — “yes, forgive me, please, if I’ve offended you in some way.”
Offended by his apology, I found nothing to say.
“I ask you, Vinayadhara, to take back the broom — here, take it, now — and to continue sweeping in any way you like. Take the broom, Vinayadhara, take it, that’s right, thank you very much, now you keep on sweeping as you like, even with the left hand on top. And you know, Vinayadhara, you know that if you need more help I’m always glad to lend a hand. Glad to.”
And he’d smiled again and left, and since that incident I’d seen no choice but to continue sweeping the leaves each day, left hand on top of right, at my own deliberate pace.
Footnote:
- This technical term requires extensive explanation to be intelligible. Briefly, the aggregates (khandhas) — form, feeling, perception, conditions (sankharas) and consciousness — are the basic constituents of experience; when involved with attachment they are involved with suffering (dukkha). Chapter Three (cont.)- (ii) After sweeping it was time to get ready for pindapata: the longer I delayed the hotter it would get and the more hurried I’d be.
I dressed in the formal style, tucked a handkerchief into my belt, and took the almsbowl from its stand. The bowl was held inside the robe where it was somewhat protected from damage by a careless movement (though really it was metal and unlikely to be damaged: the custom derived from the days when clay bowls were more common).
Barefoot, I walked slowly past the library and into the front part of the compound. Already worshippers were there, bowing, making offerings, and circumambulating the stupa (a large white plaster hemisphere which housed, I was told, a single hair of the Buddha, preserved now for 2500 years). I went out the temple gates into the lethargic energy of Colombo.
There was more than one incentive that had made me decide to obtain my midday meals by going on pindapata, the almsround, rather than to accept the danas which were provided at the vihara. For one thing, I liked the food better.
When, newly arrived in Ceylon, I’d first eaten the food offered by dana dayakas, I’d been appalled to find that Sinhalese curries were so unspeakably hot that I was unable to take more than the smallest taste of them with the rice that formed the base of all noon meals. Yet, monks are supposed to eat what they’re given, without regard to their likes and dislikes: so I’d been told. But try as I might to accustom myself to the chili peppers (used with extra liberality in food prepared for monks, so that it should be tasty enough!) they remained more than just unpleasant. An overdose, which wasn’t much, would start my mouth burning as if it had been scraped raw. Then the fire descended my throat as I swallowed and lodged in my bowels. My nose became moist and runny; my eyeswatered as if I’d been delivered of a stout rap on the bridge of the nose; something at the top of my throat became tightly, painfully, constricted; and in the extreme I got a case of the galloping hiccups that just wouldn’t quit.
When I went on almsround (particularly so when I varied my routes so that I was never fully expected) people would give me only what happened to be around the house rather than specially prepared food, and the chili content of my meals dropped to a tolerable level. The first bonus, then, was that without having to pick and choose among the contents of my almsbowl my meals became more palatable.
For another thing I came to be regarded by some of the Sinhalese monks as exceptional. They asked me, as if I were doing something difficult, “How can you eat that food? It has no flavor!”
But the most important reason of all was that it gave me a chance, as much as my trips to the Immigration office, to get out for a bit and away from the monotonous peace of the vihara, for it was sometimes more peaceful than I could stand. Afternoon outings to restaurants and tea shops had come to an abrupt end with my arrival in Ceylon: that just wasn’t done here.
I walked down the street slowly, eyes lowered, oblivious as I could be of everything more than about fifteen feet in front of me (but not as oblivious as to not look for traffic before crossing busy Galle Road). Several neighborhood food shops lined the road. I stopped at the last of these, turned facing the shopfront, and stood silently while the lady behind the counter quickly wrapped some food in a piece of paper and came out. With a move of my right hand I opened the front of the outer robe (what a time a flasher could have, I reflected) exposing the bowl (as well as my chest), into which the woman gently placed her offering. She bowed to me. I quietly intoned, “Sukhi hotu,” may you be happy, and, letting the robe drape over the front of the bowl again, like a curtain on a performance, turned and continued on the almsround.
I didn’t usually stop at stores because it felt like extortion: the shopowner knew he had to put something in the bowl to assuage the sensitivities of his customers, whether he wanted to or not. But whenever I tried to pass by that one store without stopping — a tiny fruit and sweet shop, it was — the middle-aged woman who operated it would run after me with her offering, so I knew: she was one of the faithful.
I went from house to house, stopping before each. Usually someone came out with some sort of food, often wrapped in newspaper, which I accepted with a blessing before proceeding silently. If nobody came I stood silently, motionless, for a minute or two before moving on: I wasn’t asking for food, I was making myself available in the (likely) case that they wished to avail themselves of the chance to do something meritorious by contributing to my continued survival and well-being. Acting with such motives allowed me to feel that I, too, was doing something generous by making myself available. I wasn’t a beggar. I distinguished carefully between sukhi hotu and paise sahib. And when someone mistakenly offered me a coin I refused it with a silent unsignaled rebuke.
After all, I didn’t have to go on pindapata. There was plenty of food available at the vihara which would be served me with no effort at all on my part. But by going on almsround I was somehow earning the food, becoming more worthy of it.
Barefoot, the pavement grew warmer and warmer. If I went on the almsround too late I’d have to seek out patches of shade to stand in. Yet barefoot and humble was the proper way, and though it would have been understood, if I’d worn sandals, that it was because of tender feet, I declined to wear them. Not only did I want to do things the right way, the way of the Dhamma (and not be discovered as the tenderfooted neophyte that I was), but also I had now adopted as a standard the goal of being able to get along needing as little as possible. So, walking more quickly in sunshine than in patches of shade, I continued on the almsround.
I had enough now: the bowl was over half-full. Much of this was space taken up by newspaper wrappings, air pockets, and packets of tea and sugar, but I had an ample meal in the bowl. The tea and sugar I donated to the temple’s kitchen, where the temple boy would sell it for the few paise it brought him.
I turned back to the temple. I was beginning to wilt in the heat. Twice I was stopped, once by an old woman, once by a young man, and accepted food which I didn’t want.
When I’d first gone on pindapata I’d been unwary and had accepted too much. With the unsought offerings of the return trip added to the bowl it had been filled to the brim. The heavy rice heated the metal so that I had to use a handkerchief to shield my hands, while the steam rising inside the robe turned my chest pink and damp. Now I knew when to turn back, but still sometimes I would say quietly to an over-zealous householder, “Tika, tika,” little, little.
I’d asked whether I could refuse such unsought offerings and was told the story of how Ven. Moggallana, while on tour with the Buddha, had accepted unasked-for almsfood from a leper. Worse luck still, as the leper made his offering his thumb fell off and landed in the bowl.
“Did he eat it?” I was incredulous.
“Yes, yes. He ate the rice.”
“Did he eat the thumb?”
“No, no. It’s forbidden for monks to eat human flesh.”
Just outside the temple gate a young woman offered a coin. I silently refused, but she was insistent. Unable to keep my eyes modestly upon her slim ankles, I looked up. For one frantic moment I felt my gaze become locked, like the safety cap on a prescription container, to the mounds of her breasts. They were two stupas my eyes tried to circumambulate; but then I recovered my purpose and looked up to her face.
She wore a red spot on her forehead. She was a Hindu, then, and probably didn’t understand our customs about money. The dot, I noticed, was the plastic stick-on kind.
“Monks don’t accept money.” I spoke softly. Her raven hair was braided, rich and soft. I lowered my gaze and turned aside.
I hurried into the vihara. When I reached the back part of the compound, behind the library, I pushed the robe back over one shoulder to let some sweat evaporate. In my room I tossed the damp outer robe onto the bed and spent several minutes toweling my body. My testicles were sensitive and I avoided touching them. When I was cool and dry I had a look in the bowl. There were some biscuits to munch on while I sorted out the food, unwrapping little packets, putting the offerings of tea and sugar aside for the kitchen. I ate a banana and put a few aside in case I wanted them this afternoon. The desk drawer in which I kept a spare under-robe was also my larder.
I was becoming increasingly unhappy about my attachment to a three-meal day. I hoped these private afternoon snacks would end, like the sweeping, when I went to the Hermitage, but I also discovered a dread of being hungry and knowing there would be nothing to eat for another sixteen hours. I sensed on some precognitive level that by storing food for afternoon snacks I wasn’t trying to break the rules of the Vinaya; I was simply responding to the specter of unsatisfied need. The Vinaya rules just happened, somehow, to get in the way. They were innocent bystanders (by-laws?).
I smoked a cigarette, then put on the outer robe and went to the shower room to rinse the sweat off my body. In the Buddha’s day monks had bathed in a stream, a lake, or by a public well like everybody else. There had been no private showers and thus there had come to be a rule against bathing nude. But I was surprised to have been told more than once to wear an old underrobe or bathing cloth while showering, although each shower stall was enclosed and had a latched door affording complete privacy. The same reasoning required of me that I always have a fresh under-robe held loosely about me before removing an old one.
“To be a monk you must wear the monk’s cloth. When you stop wearing the monk’s cloth you stop being a monk.”
“Even if it’s just for a moment?”
“Even if it’s just for a moment”
“When I put the robes back on do I become a monk again?”
“No. Removing the robes means renouncing the vows.”
“Can I ever become a monk again?”
“Of course, if you get ordained all over again.”
But I didn’t like showering with a wet robe clinging to my body. I bathed without it, but kept the cloth belt draped loosely about my neck, and thus remained a samanera by a few threads, and kept my feelings to myself.
After showering I made ready for vandana, the daily bowing-down ritual. There was a way of wearing the robes so that the left arm was in a sleeve, like the formal going-outside style, but which still left the right shoulder bare, like the sleeveless going-about-the-temple style, and it was in this way, which I thought of as semi-formal, that I now folded the robes about me. Taking the vandana cloth, I went out.
The chief monk sat by his office in front of the library. Worshippers were bowing to the Buddharupa housed in the shrine room. Others walked clockwise around the stupa, talked amongst themselves, tended the grounds, filled oil lamps, lit incense, and scattered flower petals on the offerings-table.
The devotees who were talking with the chief monk made way for me. I spread out the cloth and bowed down before him, arms and forehead resting on the cloth. Straightening up, but still on my knees, I placed my hands together and entreated: “Okasa divarattayena katam sabbam aparadham khamatha me bhante:” ‘Hear me; forgive me, venerable one, for all offences done in the (past) day and night.’ And “Khamami khamitabbam,” ‘I forgive that which can be forgiven,’ he responded. I bowed again, gathered up the cloth, and took my leave with a namaste. The chief monk returned to his conversation and I returned to the living quarters, where I repeated the performance with the other senior bhikkhus. The junior monks each made their own rounds at their convenience. I went to Ven. Khirti’s room last.
“How is your typing coming along now?” he asked, after I’d bowed down and recited my lines. He was referring to the pages that were stacked beside the typewriter in my room. I’d spent a lot of time typing them.
“Oh, that; I finally finished it yesterday.”
“That must be a relief to you.”
“I’ll return the typewriter later, if that’s all right.”
“Of course. It was generous of you to do it.”
“I’m stuck in Colombo anyway, and I’ve got the time.”
“I’m sure Ñanasumana appreciates your help.”
“He couldn’t get it done otherwise.”
Until my arrival Ñanasumana had been the only American monk in Ceylon. He’d been here for over a year, and lived now in a shack on the edge of the dry-zone jungle. I’d taken a bus to the village where he got almsfood and walked from there through sparse jungle to his dwelling to meet him. We’d spent several days together talking, and when I returned to Colombo it was with a sheaf of papers I’d offered to type for him. These papers were the letters of the late Ven. Ñanavira Thera.
Ven. Ñanavira Thera had been an English bhikkhu for fifteen years. In the last years of his life, plagued by illness and unable to meditate, he’d written letters to interested laypeople discussing what he’d learned as a monk, and the problems he’d faced. Ñanasumana had collected some of these letters. He placed great importance in them not only because of Ven. Ñanavira’s understanding of the Dhamma (“attained to view” was the phrase ‘Sumana had used) but also because of his ability to explain in Western terms what it was he understood.
“I hope these letters have made you ask yourself some questions.”
“They sure did. I’m glad I made myself a copy.”
“More important than copying is understanding.”
“I wouldn’t presume to claim that.” But I was uncomfortable with my modesty.
“It’s not a question of whether you claim it; it’s a question of whether you’ll strive for it.”
“Of course I’ll try to understand it, bhante.”
“How?” He was building to some rebuke.
“By meditating on it.” I hoped that was the answer he wanted.
It wasn’t. “The understanding I’m talking about is the understanding of restraint. Restraint of speech, of body, of mind.”
“Sometimes that’s difficult.”
“Of course it’s difficult. If it were easy anyone could do it. It requires patience with yourself.”
“I’ll try to be patient.”
“When you came back from pindapata didn’t you cross the courtyard with your robe pulled back over your shoulder and your chest exposed?”
“It was so hot, bhante.”
“But you should have the patience to wait until you get to your room. The dayakas, they don’t like that.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“Of course you don’t. You already said you have no understanding.”
“I’m sorry, bhante.”
“You should listen instead of arguing.”
“I’ll try not to argue. But sometimes I don’t understand why there are these little rules. If you can give me a good reason for them they’ll be easier to keep.”
“I just gave you one. You weren’t listening.”
“I’ll try to listen better.”
“Of course the rules are bothersome sometimes. Why do you think they were made? But you need to balance that dissatisfaction with a sense of the necessity of the monk’s life. Lack of restraint leads to attachment and unhappiness. If Ñanavira communicates that much his letters are worth reading.”
I nodded, more to show that I was listening than that I was pleased with his words.
“All action arises from the base of dissatisfaction. The one who’s truly satisfied is truly still.”
I tried to be still and listen.
“You’ve tried escape from dissatisfaction, and it didn’t work or you wouldn’t be here. The Dhamma is for facing that dissatisfaction.”
“You’re right, bhante. If I didn’t see that I wouldn’t be here. But living with restraint is like driving with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake.”
“And you want to take your foot off the brake. Maybe some day you’ll understand that you don’t travel the eightfold path the same way as you go down Galle Road to the Immigration.”
“But bhante, I know Galle Road goes to the Immigration Office; I’ve been there. How do I know the eightfold path goes to enlightenment? What if it doesn’t?”
“Then you’ll have wasted your time.”
“But how can I know whether this Teaching works?”
Ven. Khirti chuckled and shook his head in an ask-a-stupid-question gesture, but his reply was sincere. “It’s good to question things; I don’t say it isn’t. The Buddha advised everyone to inquire carefully, not to just accept things on faith. But there’s more than one way to inquire. If you want to go to the Immigration, and you see directions telling you how to get there, which do you do: do you begin a learned inquiry to decide whether the directions are accurate, or do you follow the directions and see whether they lead you to Immigration?”
“I follow the directions.”
“Just so, the only way to be sure about the eightfold path is to follow the directions. Understand the meaning of restraint and you’ll find out for yourself about the path.”
But his reply didn’t satisfy me. I didn’t want to be told that the way to quell doubt was to practice the Teaching. I wanted firm and solid proof in advance so that — it occurred to me unexpectedly — so that I wouldn’t have to practice it.
After a bit of chatting about the article he was writing concerning appropriate meditation subjects (“in- and out-breaths,” he advised, “use the in- and out-breaths”), I took my leave of Ven. Khirti and returned to my room. The lunch bell would ring soon, but because of the after-pindapata snack I wasn’t hungry. The strong savory aroma coming from the almsbowl didn’t affect me, and I would be glad if the bell was late.
I looked at the typescript stacked beside the typewriter and picked up the carbon I’d made for myself, glancing at it here and there, gleaning phrases (“revolt is the first reaction of an intelligent man when he begins to understand the desperate nature of his situation in the world …”) and reflecting on what I’d learned, from my talks with ‘Sumana as well as from his own letters and from Ven. Khirti (who also had known him) about the late Ven.Ñanavira Thera.
English-born and English-raised, he was the well-educated only child of a well-to-do military family. He’d come to Ceylon shortly after having served in World War II, taken ordination, eventually settled into the comfortable solitude of a hut in a remote jungle near an undistinguished village — the same hut ‘Sumana now lived in — and remained there the rest of his life.
In the last years of his life, when he wrote both his book,Notes on Dhamma, and the letters I was now thumbing through, he’d already been suffering for a dozen years from the dolors of intestinal disorders (“stomach trouble is the principal occupational hazard of the bhikkhu …”), which, he found, undermined his purpose in being a monk (“the ravages of amoebiasis play havoc with the practice of meditation … though perhaps in other respects it may not be very serious: ‘Just a little scarring of the intestine,’ as one doctor told me, rather leaving me wondering whether he would describe a bullet through one’s brains as ‘just a little perforation of the head’”) and left him with “little hope of making any further progress in the Buddha’s Teaching in this life” and also with a distaste for living. That distaste was aggravated when, while taking a course of medication to quell a fresh outbreak of intestinal infection, he experienced “an abnormal, persistent stimulation which, though no doubt neutral in itself (it is, indeed, disagreeable when observed dispassionately), is a pressing invitation to sensual thoughts.”
I looked away from the typescript to the sickly-green of the wall and considered the word satyriasis. What affliction could be more unfortunate for a monk? The effort needed to control my own growing sex drive seemed slight compared with the challenge of restraining an erotic stimulation that left Ñanavira with “an appetite for several young women daily.”
Because his failing health had already reduced his ability to practice the Dhamma he had turned to writing as a way of filling up his days. Now, having to live with an appetite he could neither disperse nor satisfy, he turned as well to thoughts of choosing between the lay life and suicide. (“Wife or knife, as one might say.”)
He probably never really doubted which choice was right for him. After several unsuccessful attempts (“One lives and learns — a particularly suitable motto for the unsuccessful suicide, don’t you think?”) over a period of three years, he succeeded at last (“… and if I cannot practice mental concentration I have no further use for this life”) in answering “the crucial question, whether or not I should do better … instead of killing time, simply to kill the body.”
‘Sumana had shown me the still-half-filled bottle of chloral ether he’d used.
“Attained to view,” ‘Sumana had described him, and after all my questioning I still wasn’t sure what that meant. There was the state of the unenlightened, still bound by attachment, suffering, and sensuality, and there was the state of the enlightened (the arahat, “worthy one”), free of attachment, suffering, and sensuality. But there seemed to be also a third case, the sekha, or “trainee,” who had one foot in each world. Perfect freedom, it seemed, was achieved in stages. To understand that I conjured the image of an air bubble which, freed of its trapping, still rises, not yet having broken the surface. The sekha was one who, having understood the root of suffering (“… our natural assumption, which supposes that the subject ‘I’ would still continue to exist even if there were no objects at all …”) was bound to fully purify himself of ego concepts, but who, having not yet done so, wasn’t yet completely free of attachment, suffering and sensuality. He saw the deceit we each of us perpetrate upon ourselves (“… in the actual attainment … the mind becomes steady and there is direct intuition instead of discursive thinking …”), but had not yet fully relinquished it. Such a person was Ven.Ñanavira Thera.
I pictured it as a sort of unification (“… unless one’s thinking is all-of-a-piece there is, properly speaking, no thinking at all …”) between two opposites (subject/object; yin/yang; electron/proton) by which there resulted a nullity, a voidness, and it was only later that I learned that to give up mysticism it was necessary to give up intellectualization.
I put down the typescript. I’d have to write a letter of my own to ‘Sumana to go along with those of Ñanavira. On a fresh sheet of paper I wrote, “Dear Sumana,” and then looked up at a spider crossing the ceiling and remembered the shack in the scrub jungle of the dry zone.
“Colombo’s a total loss,” he’d told me. “Get out of there as soon as you can.”
“Why? It’s a pleasant enough city.”
“But it’s still a city: the noise, the crowds, the smell.”
“Don’t forget I’m coming down from Calcutta. By comparison it’s quiet as the jungle.”
“I bet you won’t feel that way a year from now. Whenever I go to Colombo my head feels like it’s been filled with cotton. I can’t think.”
“It must be easier to meditate out in the jungle.”
“In Colombo I can’t meditate at all. Can you?”
“No.”
The distant repetitious thunk of a chopping tool cut the palpable stillness of the jungle air into discrete units.
“The worst thing about Colombo is the hypocrisy.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It’s the stifling traditionalism of Sinhalese Buddhism. Instead of treating us as people the upasakas treat us as objects of veneration. You didn’t come to Ceylon for that, did you?”
“To get bowed down to? I still feel funny when someone does that to me.”
“Why did you come here, then? Why’d you become a monk?”
“I was disgusted.”
“With the world?”
“And with myself. For being part of the world, I guess.”
“Running away?”
“The world is an endless series of frustrations. Why stick around for that?”
‘Sumana laughed. “Uptight, were you?”
“Even about little things. I’d get angry if a beggar hassled me. I guess I just got tired of being angry so much.”
“I didn’t used to get angry; I just got tired. I even got tired of escaping into booze and women.”
“Were they hard for you to give up?”
“The women, sure.”
“Do you still think about them?”
“I don’t have time to. I’m too busy meditating.” Then, “What were your escapes?”
“Dope, mostly.”
‘Sumana made a sour face. “That’s evil stuff.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I defended myself but I didn’t feel that, wearing robes, I could defend dope, even though I wasn’t against it. What I was against was that even with dope the world hadn’t done as I’d bid it. Just so, I wasn’t against anger; I was against the ineffectiveness of my anger. That’s what had disgusted me.
I looked around ‘Sumana’s shack. It was a single room of brick with large glassless windows. The floor was earth; there was a raised area with a tangle of bedding. The only furniture was an armchair, in which I sat. ‘Sumana sat on a window-ledge.
“This place used to belong to Ñanavira Thera. I got it when he died.” He described the corpse and the cremation.
“Is it hard to live on your own like this?”
“Don’t even think about it. The Island Hermitage is the place for you.”
“Why?”
“First, it’s hard to find a suitable place. Almost every possibility is either too near something or too far away from something. And although it’s easy to find a village willing to support you it’s hard to find one where the people will leave you alone.”
“Like with the pañca sila and bowing and all that?”
“They’ll find an endless number of reasons for hanging around. Don’t forget, we’re strange objects to them. Not only are we white foreigners, but we’re also living a lifestyle they’ve never seen. You don’t think the village monks live like this, do you?”
“But what if I did find a place to set up?”
“That’s the second thing. You can’t believe the hassles that come to those who build. This place was already built; I just had to move in. But I tried to modify it once, and I could talk about the problems I had until your ears fell off.”
“I’ve endured frustrations before.”
“But you’re just not ready to live on your own. You’ve only been a monk a month or two. Even I stayed with my teacher longer than that, and I was criticized for leaving too soon, and rightly so, as I’m finding out.”
“What about looking for a teacher?”
“Let the practice be your teacher.”
“Then you think the Island Hermitage is the right place for me?”
“I think it’s the only place for you.”
The dana bell rang. I took my bowl and joined the other monks who were moving towards the danasala. That room was crowded with dayakas. I went to my place, set the alms bowl on the table, and sat down cross-legged on the bench, making sure the robes draped properly and that I wasn’t exposing myself to the unwilling examination of the plump brown ladies in gold-embroidered saris who had come for other reasons entirely. I sat silently while the rest of the monks drifted in, each with his almsbowl, and while the chief monk gave the upasakas the pañca sila and a short sermon. Then the people bowed and murmured “Sadhu, sadhu,” and it was time to eat.
I took the fruits and sweets and put them aside on a plate and separated the packets of food I would eat from those I wouldn’t. I recalled that amongst the practices of dhutanga monks was that of stirring up one’s curries and rice so that they became uniformly mixed, in order that one would not pick and choose at favored morsels. Carrying things to extremes seems never to have been a rarity amongst Westerners who have sought the robes (any Westerner who would become a monk would already be an extremist); ‘Sumana had told of a Western monk who included his fruit, banana peels and all, his bowl of curds, even his Nestomalt tea, in the mixing-up process, spooning down the results with a gusto which must have arisen from somewhere other than his taste buds.
I accepted a token offering of rice from the dayakas and, when the other monks had been served, dug in, refusing all offers of curries. I had several times to refuse one man’s urgings that I accept some pieces of what looked to be a German wurst. Six months ago I’d have scarfed it down, but more recently I’d chosen to be a vegetarian.
I’d been surprised to learn, in Calcutta, that Buddhist monks were not required to be vegetarians; not only surprised but shocked (was nothing sacred any longer?), and had asked for an explanation.
“There are three occasions,” the Buddha said, “When I do not allow meat for a monk: when it as been seen, heard, or suspected” to have been killed on his account.
“Monks,” Ven. Dharmapal had told me, “don’t kill animals. You should have nothing to do with taking of life. But when an animal is dead already, then you can eat it.”
“But by not eating meat a monk can show the people that killing is wrong,” I argued.
“That won’t show that killing is wrong; that will show that eating meat is wrong. But what harm is there in that? What good is refusing? It doesn’t matter what you put in your stomach; it matters what you put in your mind.”
“What if I don’t want to eat meat?”
“Then you don’t have to. Only, Vinayadhara, you must be careful of one thing. Now one thing means you should not think you are better than the monk who does eat meat.”
“Of course not, bhante; of course not.”
And in Colombo Ven. Khirti told me, “Refusing meat doesn’t save lives. Many creatures lose their lives to give you a bowl of rice: insecticides kill many; others are killed unintentionally by the plow and other ways. Don’t imagine that by being a vegetarian you’re saving lives. Possibly more lives are lost to provide you with a meal of rice than with a meal of meat.”
“Animal protein is bad in two ways,” ‘Sumana told me. “First, it’s bad for you physically because it’s got a cellular box that’s hard to break down. Vegetable protein is easily broken down into basic aminos; it’s more useful because it’s more fully digested. Secondly, it’s got a heavy aura, an animal aura, and it stimulates the baser feelings, the sensual centers. Stay away from meat: it’s a drag on the practice.”
“I’ve never been a vegetarian before,” I told myself in India. “At least not seriously. Vegetarianism is so common in India that this seems like a good time to try it out.”
And in Ceylon I told myself, “This must be the spiciest food in the world! I’ll never get used to it!” But the vegetable curries, I found, were mild compared to the fish curries; and the fish curries were tasteless compared to the meat curries; and I put the meat and fish aside, repelled.
But after the main course, when curds were served with honey, I accepted some.
“The dayakas, they like you to accept something from them,” one of the senior monks told me.
“Their saying is, ‘No merit without curds,’” ‘Sumana claimed.
“This stuff tastes great,” I decided, and accepted the curds gladly, with the honey, a darkish syrup with a nutty bouquet and slightly bitter aftertaste, and lapped it up even though it was animal protein.
When the dana ended I returned to my quarters and, like the other monks, washed the bowl, laid it on a handkerchief on the grass, and allowed it to dry in the sun. I’d been reprimanded before for having forgotten the bowl, leaving it to bake for hours. Now I paced the verandah while it dried, trying out mindfulness. Then I took the bowl back to my room, hung up the outer robe, and lay down to let some of the heaviness of digestion work itself off while I took a cigarette. ‘Sumana had told me that at the Hermitage the Mahathera (“Great Elder,” meaning the chief monk,) was a smoker. I nursed hopes of getting cigarettes from him.
I noticed the nearly-blank page I’d left on the desk and remembered the letter I’d started to ‘Sumana. I put the paper in the typewriter and wrote.
I’m sending you the completed typescript of Ven. Ñanavira’s letters, keeping one copy for myself per our agreement. I must admit to being most impressed by them. He sure tears into scholars, doesn’t he? And “scientific method”! It makes me glad I’m not a scientist. But most useful to me are his warnings about how misleading are the Abhidhamma, the commentaries, and the whole traditional (mis-)interpretation of the Suttas. He’s surely saved me many blind alleys. “Ignorance of them leaves less to be unlearned,” indeed!
I can’t follow all his discussion, but I’m impressed by the range as well as the depth of his understanding, and above all by a transparent honesty and a sense of humor about both the world and himself.
Speaking of the tradition, I had another example yesterday. I remember you said that you shaved every month or two, when your hair got long enough to need cutting. But around here whenever I let my hair grow for more then a week someone a1ways points it out. “The ‘dayakas,’ they don’t like you to go so long without shaving,” they say. “They think it doesn’t look nice.” As if personal appearance is supposed to matter to monks. So yesterday when I came back from ‘pindapata’ the chief monk was standing outside his room running his electric razor over his head, which was already smooth, and looking very pointedly at my week-old growth.
Anyway, I haven’t yet looked at Ñanavira’s book, “Notes on Dhamma,” since I’ve been too busy with the typing. I’ll save that treat until I get to the Hermitage. But I’ll let you know what (if anything) I make of it.
Take care.
I took the letter out of the typewriter and was about to sign my name when I realized that I wasn’t sure how to spell it. Perhaps it was just old post-dana weariness that blocked my mind, but although I knew there was an “h” in the word, just now it escaped me where it went. I tried several alternatives on a piece of scrap paper, but although none of them looked completely wrong none of them looked quite right either.
It was such a long name, anyway. Nicknames didn’t seem to have been used in the Buddha’s day, but ‘Sumana shortened his name in informal situations. What could I make from Vinayadhara? Vinnie? But it might be supposed that “Vinnie” was short for Vincent, and although I wasn’t convinced yet that I wanted to be Vinayadhara I was quite certain I didn’t want to be short for Vincent.
None of the other syllables in that long name lent itself to a reasonable-sounding familiarity either. “Vinnie” … “Vin” … “V”. Why not? Sure: “V” had a nice ring to it. And there’d be no trouble spelling it. Then I remembered that I’d thought highly of Pynchon’s novel, V. V: the cleavage point between subject and object: me. And so I finished the letter:
I don’t know what customs there are in the Sangha about nicknames, but my name seems too long for such an informal letter. Why don’t we just shorten it? I’ll sign myself,
Yours in the Dhamma,
V
Chapter Three (cont.)-(iii) I wrapped the package, then sat down, wanting another cigarette already. I read a few pages of the Vinaya, then tired of it. In Calcutta it would be getting near tea time. For the first time in weeks I thought of the lanky Swedish girl I’d been with in Katmandu, our opium pipe had been more exciting than our sex, but a clear image arose of her naked body on the tigerskin rug on which we slept. Aroused by the memory of blond pubic hair, I put on the outer robe and went outside, into brilliant sunlight where a wash of heat wilted my passion.
I couldn’t really leave the vihara without good reason, for it had been made clear to me that it was proper conduct, before going out for anything other than pindapata, to announce my departure and purpose to another monk. Nor could I talk with Ven. Khirti, for his door was closed. No one seemed to be about. I was uncertain what to do with myself, for to return to the relative coolness of my room might rekindle a passion I preferred dormant. When I tired of standing on the verandah I meandered finally towards the library to examine once again titles I’d inspected before.
All the books were kept behind locked glass doors, making it necessary, for more serious browsing, to get the key. I didn’t feel like seeking out the chief monk and pursuing the sociabilities that were a requisite part of asking for his keys, scores of them, connected to each other by a tangle of chains and loops of twine. The front of the vihara was abandoned to the afternoon sun. I circled the stupa alone for a while, keeping my right shoulder towards it and walking clockwise. Then I poked around the shrine room, and finally drifted back towards the living quarters.
I didn’t think much about anything in particular; I tried to be merely an observer. I felt neither content nor discontent, only a vague sort of psychic twitch or buzz in some remote and otherwise void corner of my mind, fretting over this lack of interest, of variety, of stimulation. I felt a trifle bored: I didn’t quite know what to do next, and looked for some event that would hold my attention, when I noticed an unfamiliar monk walking down the corridor.
I watched him. He hadn’t seen me. He stopped at each door and peered oddly at it, craning his neck and twisting his squat body as if he hoped by so doing to be able to see through, or around, the closed door. Then, after a pause, he moved on to the next door, almost as if he were prowling.
I didn’t know what he was looking for, but I was looking for something to do. Maybe we were looking for each other?
He had a slightly disreputable look about him. His every gesture betrayed his awareness that he was out of place in this temple, and I thought to receive him with friendliness, a fellow traveler on the path to enlightenment or the grave, and a potential source of diversion as well, but he saw me.
He had turned to look one last time at a particularly opaque door when he saw me watching him, and at once his demeanor changed. Without smiling his eyes lit up; he came towards me, robe dragging a bit in the back, with hands in namaste, like a newly-ordained samanera anxious to bow, although he was middle-aged.
Samaneras don’t bow to each other, so I put my hand out to stop him, but instead of bowing he bobbed his head repeatedly while he slowly walked around me, inspecting me curiously from all sides, muttering in Sinhalese. My friendliness dissipated as I watched cautiously, trying to figure him out.
“Sinhala ba,” I told him. No speakee Sinhalee.
“Sinhala ba?”
“Ba.”
He considered the problem for a moment, then took hold of a fold of my robe, and kneaded it in his fist.
“Civara, civara.” That, I remembered, meant robe.
“Civara. Yes. Robe. Englaisi: robe. What about it?”
“Civara, civara.” And with Tarzan/Jane gesturing he made it clear that he wanted me to give him a robe.
At first I doubted my understanding of him. I found it difficult to believe that a monk would find it necessary to get robes by begging for them in other viharas. Why, just yesterday the dana dayakas had presented each monk here with a new under-robe, and windfalls of robes, towels, and such-like items seemed to come along with some frequency. Did this fellow actually have trouble, then, in getting robes?
“Civara? Give you civara?”
“Give. Yes, yes. Give civara.”
His temple was, perhaps, poorly supported or (unlike this one) supported by the poor. Anyway, I didn’t really need that new under-robe and decided to give it to him.
I led the strange monk to my room. A faint odor of bananas pervaded the room, making me reluctant to invite him in lest he smell it. But he came in uninvited and immediately busied himself examining everything he saw, oblivious to anything so intangible as an odor. The fruity aroma reminded me that the under-robe was in the same drawer as the bananas, and I wondered how I could get the robe out without exposing the food.
I’d never before seen anyone quite so enthralled by things. There was something distasteful, gauche, even obscene, about the way he pounced on each object within his reach, fondling it, evaluating it, absorbed in it as ink is absorbed by a blotter, and I began to wonder just what kind of monk this person was, as well as what kind of person this monk was.
He seemed to have forgotten me entirely, and I began to feel put out. Then I realized that while he was examining other things it would be easy to slip the under-robe out of the drawer. While he examined the handsome green-and-gold satin Thai shoulder bag I’d been given in Calcutta I took out the under-robe and handed it to him. He took it distractedly and with neither thanks nor gladness stuffed it into his own shoulder bag, a ratty old thing.
Holding the satin shoulder bag he peered up at me expectant and hopeful.
Why not? I thought. Less is best. Here’s a chance to rid myself of one more of the world’s burdens, and at the same time to do something meritorious.
It gratified me to put myself in such a favorable light, the bright young novice, unattached to the world’s fetters, generously helping one who, though senior, doesn’t yet understand the attraction, the repulsion, the danger, or the escape from attachment to material things. And, as graciously as I could manage, I made it clear to him that the shoulder bag, too, was his to keep. Satisfied with his bounty he left, and I closed the door behind him. Being alone again was a relief after having had to tolerate the sadness that lurked behind the hunger of that monk’s aggressiveness. Compared to him I was well along the path to nibbana.
I took off my outer robe, sat down on the bed, and thought about nibbana. The arahat, having already abandoned all passion, seemed as remote as he was perfect. It was the sekha, not yet uninvolved with the world of want, who was the more appealing figure. By picturing the attainment of the sekha I could indulge my fantasies of attaining to wisdom (trying hard to ignore the precipice that separated the fantasy itself from the clarity which was being fantasized) while at the same time sublimating that putative wisdom into a reverie of sexual encounter.
Outside, I’d been embarrassed and panicked when I’d been nearly unable to withdraw my gaze from a pair of lovely breasts. Alone now, I had time for a leisurely, if imaginary, inspection. Through the magic of tumescence the walls of the room were transmuted into the foliage of a jungle and I was transmuted into a sekha. Seated beneath a tree earnestly engaged in meditation a great peacefulness filled my being, and a pervasive sense of sanctity. And it was with no loss at all to that sense of sanctity that, as excitement rose within me, my fantasy leaped a chasm towards the culmination of a courtship. The object of my desires, a raven-haired Hindu beauty with perfect breasts who didn’t know any better, was also the symbol of my selflessness. For whose sake, if not for hers, did I renounce my vows? She lingered with me beneath the tree.
“My, what a nice full lotus you have.”
“The better to ravish you with, my dear.”
Clothing melted from our bodies. We merged with the rhythm of the universe, and in orgasm I gave freely of myself without thoughts of ego-desire but (could I help it?) with a generous measure of libido-gratification.
Afterwards I reminded myself that although the Vinaya treated very harshly of sexual matters (the very act of sexual intercourse, for example, meant defeat for a bhikkhu: he couldn’t in this lifetime be readmitted to the bhikkhu Sangha) I, I reminded myself, was only a samanera, and the extent to which the Vinaya actually applied to samaneras was, for me, a matter still in doubt.
Intercourse, certainly, was beyond the pale even for a novice, but masturbation, now; that was less certainly a fault. Or, since I wasn’t really able to argue that it wasn’t a fault, at least if it was a fault it wasn’t that bad a fault. Or, if it was a serious fault it was so for the bhikkhu, not for someone who was only a samanera, like me. And I tried to ignore the little voice within me that shrilly insisted that my arguments were fruitless and that if I was going to allow myself the release of sexual fantasies I’d have to pay for them with a commensurate amount of guilt, just like everybody else. No freebies for monks.
Afterwards I felt that same aimlessness that had confronted me in the library settle again, like a robe, over my being, and I cast about for diversion.
I didn’t feel like reading. I had no correspondence to catch up on. Memorize Pali? That was even less appealing. What else was there? Meditation? I really ought to: that was why I’d come to Ceylon. Okay; but first I’d eat those bananas, because their odor was tickling my nostrils.
Making sure the door was locked I dug the bananas from the drawer and set to work on them. And when I’d finished I reached my hand out between the bars which were set in the window and threw the peels as far to one side as I could. They landed out of sight some distance down the alleyway that ran behind the building. Then, not really dissatisfied, not really satisfied, I wondered what it was that I’d intended to do next. Oh, yes: a cigarette. I got out matches, tobacco, ash tray, and was about to light up, when a loud rapping on the front door interrupted me. Through the frosted glass in the door I could discern a bulky figure.
“Vinayadhara! Oh, Vinayadhara! Are you there? I want to see you in my room, Vinayadhara!” And the figure disappeared.
Shit. He couldn’t know about my masturbating, could he? Had he smelled the bananas, then? Even worse, had he seen me throw the peels out the window? I was sure he was going to question me about eating after hours. Why had I done it? Now I was in trouble. What defense could I muster? How much did he know? What if he were to write the Hermitage and advise them not to accept me? Where could I go then? What could I do? Maybe I should confess and ask for forgiveness. But he’d never forgive me; he hated me. He didn’t trust me. Why else would he go around spying on me?
I put on the outer robe, unlocked the door, and went down the hall to the Ven. One’s room. He was reading some sheets of paper while lying on a couch styled after those found in psychoanalyst’s offices.
“Vinayadhara?”
“Yes, bhante?”
“I’m glad you’re staying at the vihara just now, Vinayadhara, because you have good literary sense.”
“I used to want to be a writer.”
“The printer has just sent me some proofs, Vinayadhara, the printer, because they’re going to publish another of my articles. So much to do. So much to do.”
“Sometimes now I don’t even want to be a reader.”
“You know how busy I am, Vinayadhara, all the time with my dhammadhuta” — he referred to his missionary activities — “so I’m asking you, Vinayadhara, would you mind, please, to help in reading these proofs for printers’ errors?”
So it wasn’t over my misdeeds at all! My heart lightened and I felt glad that the feared reprimand was not to be.
“I’ll be glad to help, bhante.”
“You know what proofs are, don’t you, Vinayadhara?”
“Sure. But I’ve never proofread printers’ proofs.”
“You know the proofreader’s marks though, don’t you?”
“Most of them.”
“The printers aren’t always so familiar with English as we are, you and I, and sometimes they make mistakes.”
“I’ve noticed that in many of the pamphlets I’ve read.”
And I took the papers from him and turned to leave.
“Just a while ago, Vinayadhara, did you see a strange bhikkhu here? Now strange means, a bhikkhu who doesn’t live at this temple?”
“I saw a strange monk; but I thought he was a samanera.”
“No, he was a bhikkhu.” Something about his manner made me sense trouble.
“I saw him. But I didn’t know he was a bhikkhu, so I didn’t bow to him as I should have.”
“You should always ask a strange monk if he is a bhikkhu. How else can you know whether to bow? But I don’t ask because of that.”
“Then why do you ask me?”
“I ask because I also saw him, Vinayadhara. Just as he was leaving, you know. And he had a shoulder bag just like the one you use, so I wondered where he got it.”
His bland tone tried to mask an underlying tenseness, and I warned myself to be wary; but instead of replying noncommittally I heard myself say, “Yes, that was my bag.”
“He stole it from you?”
“No, I gave it to him, and an under-robe as well.”
I could see nothing wrong in that; but my inquisitor could. He sat up on his couch.
“You know, Vinayadhara, sometimes it’s very difficult to advise you about what’s proper behavior because you’re sensitive and take offense easily. But I hope you won’t take it wrong and become angry with me when I tell you that it’s not right to have given away those things like you’ve done.”
“You mean generosity isn’t a good thing?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You said giving things wasn’t right.”
“I never said anything about generosity. I said it was wrong to give those things to that monk because …”
“… but bhante!” I was agitated. “That’s what generosity is. It’s giving things to other people!”
“Now you’re not listening to me, Vinayadhara. You’re not hearing what I’m saying to you.”
“I heard you say it was wrong to give things.”
“You interrupt me before I finish what I have to say. It’s not proper for you to do that; it’s not good behavior. It’s not the way a monk should act!”
I stood in silence, waiting sullenly for him to finish whatever it was he’d started to say.
“You shouldn’t give things to that monk, Vinayadhara, because we know him. He’s been here before, always asking for things, always taking everything he can get his hands on, and do you know what he’ll do with those things you’ve given him, Vinayadhara? Do you know what use he’ll put them to?”
“I suppose he’ll wear the robe and carry things in the shoulder bag.”
“He’ll take them back to the store where they were bought and sell them back to get money.”
“Really?”
“Our dayakas spend much money to buy those robes in the first place, and now they’ll spend still more money just to buy back the same robes again, and that’s just because of what that monk does, because of his greed, Vinayadhara, that’s all it is, greed, and you’re helping him, and that’s why I warn you about him, Vinayadhara, not because I’m against generosity, but because that monk isn’t a proper field of merit, there’s little merit in helping such a person, Vinayadhara. It’s not good, it does much harm, to help someone like that.”
I found nothing to reply to, and if he’d left it at that I would have kept within me the tumultuous mixture of emotions I was feeling: anger, humiliation, self-righteous indignation, a bit of sadness and frustration at my inability to prevent my meetings with this monk from degenerating into quarrels, and a measure of shock at learning the true purposes of that strange monk. If I’d known his intentions I would never have given him the robe and bag. But the Ven. One spoke again and I reacted with anger.
“Anyway, Vinayadhara,” he said, “it’s your duty, you know, your duty to help the monks of this temple before you give things to strangers.”
And, “I’m sorry, bhante,” I replied coldly. “The next time I get a robe or a shoulder bag I’ll make sure that you get it.”
I turned quickly and walked out, seething, before he could reply. Quickly I marched down the hallway back to my room and locked the door behind me. My duty! Who was he to tell me what my dutywas?
First he calls that other monk greedy, then he puts in his own claims. And how can he have the nerve to ask me to proofread his lousy homiletic sermonette just before he attacks me? Andgenerosity: what a thing to criticize me for! What a crime! The sooner I get out of this place and away from that kind of treatment the happier I’ll be. That rotund effeminate conceited meddlesome gnome-like ass: who did he remind me of? Somebody very specific …
Was it somebody I’d just met? An old friend? It was someone I’d been thinking of recently. Then I remembered: the anger-eating demon!
And gradually I recalled the story of how the demon had grown in stature at each display of anger, and suddenly I became aware of how with the increase of my own anger the Ven. monk came more and more to dominate my own mind. I was all puffed up, bloated with anger. And then I recalled how the demon, when confronted with amity, had vanished away.
With an effort of will I forced myself to calm down. I relaxed my neck and jaw muscles; I stopped chewing on my tongue; I eased the tension across my shoulders. As the tiny muscles around my eyes relaxed I realized how tense I’d been. I sat down on the bed and leaned back against the wall. Then the distention released itself, like pent-up flatulence, and I relaxed.
What was it I’d meant to do? I thought for a minute and then remembered: I’d intended to meditate. Right. I folded my legs and closed my eyes. I turned my attention away from the Ven. One and for the first time today concentrated on my chosen meditation object, the in- and out-breaths. I exhaled, and felt air rush past the nose-tip, a cool refreshing breeze.