Chapter 4
Getting Off – Chapter Four –(i)
… there is a gradual training, a gradual doing, a gradual progress in this Dhamma and Vinaya. Just as a skilled horse-trainer, having taken on a fine thoroughbred, first trains it to wear the bit, then trains it further, thus the Auspicious One, having taken a person to be trained, first trains him thus:
“Come, monk, be virtuous, live controlled by the conduct of the monk’s obligations, be endowed with right conduct and pasture, seeing danger in the slightest fault. Undertake the rules of training. Train yourself.”
When a monk has done all that the Auspicious One trains him further, saying, “Come, monk, guard the doors of the senses. Having seen something, don’t be entranced by the form or detail. For if one lives with sight uncontrolled there might arise desire and aversion, which are unskillful unprofitable things. Progress in restraint. Guard sight, achieve control over sight. And live thus, guarding and controlling the ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind.”
When a monk is guarded of the senses the Auspicious One trains him further, saying, “Come, monk, be moderate in eating. Having considered, eat food properly, neither for fun nor indulgence nor charm nor beauty, but take just enough to maintain the body and keep it going, protected from harm, for furthering the divine life. Think: ‘Thus I will settle old feeling and not arouse new feeling, and there will be for me subsistence and blamelessness and abiding in comfort.’”
When a monk is moderate in eating the Auspicious One trains him further, saying, “Come, monk, dwell intent on heed. During the day while walking or sitting cleanse the mind of obstructive things. During the first part of the night while walking or sitting cleanse the mind of obstructive things. During the middle part of the night lie down on the right side like the lion, foot resting on foot, mindful, aware, having determined what time to rise. During the last part of the night, having risen, while walking or sitting, cleanse the mind of obstructive things.”
As soon as a monk is intent on heed the Auspicious One trains him further, saying, “Come monk, be possessed of mindfulness and awareness. When approaching or departing establish awareness. When looking ahead or behind establish awareness. When bending the arm in or stretching it out establish awareness. When carrying the outer cloak, the bowl or robe, when eating, drinking, chewing, tasting, when defecating or urinating, when walking, standing, sitting, sleeping, waking, talking, or being silent, establish awareness.”
As soon as a monk is possessed of mindfulness and awareness the Auspicious One trains him further, saying, “Come, monk, find a solitary place …”
From the Ganaka-Moggallaana Sutta, Majjhima 107
The Island Hermitage was gifted with the spirit of solitude, and I partook of it as fully as possible. No one spoke to me and I spoke to no one unless there was some specific information to convey. When seeing each other at breakfast we never said “Good morning.” When departing after pirith, our evensong, to our solitude we never said “Good night.” When passing each other on a footpath we never said “Hello,” but at most would smile gently and move the head in a barely perceptible nod.
True, there was one talkative samanera who would approach me (if I gave him the chance) with some bit of gossip when the monks gathered on the porch outside the danasala before pirith, but I would listen to him noncommittally, tolerating the conversation with studied politeness. It displeased me that I wasn’t as uninterested as I tried to be.
“Have you heard the latest news, reverend? I mean about Israel? The whole Middle-East situation is very tense just now. There may be a war.”
I stopped my careful pacing. Expressionless, I looked him full in the face for several seconds before saying, merely, “Oh?” But he was undeterred.
“Yes, both sides are mobilizing. Egypt has been closing off some of Israel’s shipping routes. They’ve signed military pacts with some of the other Arab countries, and also they’ve ordered the U.N. to withdraw its peace-keeping forces.”
“That’s a long way from here,” I pointed out and, turning away, continued my pacing, but he joined me.
“Yes, a very great distance,” he agreed. “But you used to live there, didn’t you? So you must be interested to know what’s happening. There must be friends in Israel you’re concerned for.”
“I wasn’t concerned before you told me this,” I said, unable to get away from him. “And I’m going to try not to be concerned about it now. I have no interest in such things,” although in truth part of me did have an interest. I’d lived in Israel; I’d known people there. But another part of me saw my mind seizing upon the information as a beggar might seize a stale crust, and scorned the concern.
“I just thought you’d like to know. The airport at Cairo has been closed down. The situation is very tense.”
“The Hermitage is my home now,” I said. “This is my world. For me there’s nothing outside of it.” And I smiled enigmatically and continued my pacing, keeping my attention on the in- and out-breaths.
None of the other monks spoke. They knew, as did I, the Buddha’s advice: Monks, there are two things to do when meeting together. Either discuss Dhamma or keep the noble silence. They paced their own length of ground or stood in one place swirling their robes to chase off the mosquitoes.
I scratched my arm, but mosquito bites weren’t the only itches I had to contend with. What was happening in Israel? Would there be war? What about the kibbutz? Were my friends safe? No, I wouldn’t think about those things. Instead I looked across the lagoon, but the rowboat wasn’t back yet. It was our transportation to the outside. Perhaps tonight there’d be a letter for me. No, better not think about that either. Just be mindful, I advised myself, and continued my pacing until the Mahathera arrived. As the senior monk of the Hermitage he saw to it that it ran smoothly. He left his sandals outside the door and took his place onthe bench that ran along two sides of the danasala. The rest of us followed. We sat cross-legged and waited silently. He turned down the kerosene lamp on his table, then raised his hands in namaste. We followed him and began by chanting the salutation to the Buddha. Evening pirith had begun.
Iti pi so Bhagava …Thus, indeed, is the Auspicious One: worthy, fully self-awakened, endowed with (right) knowledge and conduct … Thus the attributes of the Buddha, the Auspicious One, were enumerated, and then those of the Dhamma: Well-expounded by the Auspicious One is the Dhamma, a non-temporal viewpoint, a “come-and-see” thing, leading, to be realized individually by the wise.
And when the Sangha, too, had been honored we lowered our hands and chanted Pali verses in plainsong. I didn’t know the verses by heart and sat silently, flinching each time I heard near my ear the familiar whine of a mosquito searching me out for an after-hours meal.
Smoke poured from the coconut-husk fire that was made each evening to repel those voracious hordes with whom we shared the island. I had doubts as to its efficacy, but in my aversion to the torment of both their bites and the anticipation of their bites I was willing to try any nostrum available.
I shared the island with many beings beside mosquitoes. There were five dogs of uncertain breed, four Sinhalese monks, three German monks, two mongooses, and an elderly ex-philosophy professor who frequently fretted over the lack of sanitation and worried that his food wasn’t clean enough. There was a lagoon full of fish, a sky full of birds, a tree full of bats, a jungle full of jungle, and a well full of tadpoles, the water of which gave me a two-day fever after I brushed my teeth with it in order to prove to myself that I wasn’t fussy about sanitation.
I took delight not so much in solitude as in the idea of solitude, and chose to regard the Hermitage as overpopulated. Hardly a day went by in which somebody didn’t speak to me. Just the other day Kierkegaard (in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript) had told me:
“It is madness … that a being … uses all his strength to lay hold of the perishable, clinging to what is precarious; it is madness for such a being to believe that he has gained everything when he has gained this nothing — and is deceived; or to believe that he has lost everything when he has lost this nothing — and is no longer deceived. For the perishable is nothing when it is past, and it is of the essence to pass away, quickly as the moment of sensuous enjoyment, and farthest possible remove from the eternal: a moment in time filled with emptiness.”
When I was alone, though, I still cast about for things to do.
In the kitchen I could hear the two servants, just back from town, opening doors and moving things about. The old man, Piyadassi, doddered over to the Mahathera, laid the mailpouch on the table, and shuffled back to the kitchen to start the fire and make the evening tea. I tried to ignore the mailpouch, but my mind drifted to it hungrily: if there were a letter for me it would offer greater possibility of stimulation than any amount of chanting, than any amount of tea.
One of the mongooses scuttled in, worried at something in a corner, making certain perhaps that it wasn’t a cobra in disguise, then scurried across the floor to where I sat cross-legged on the bench. He jumped onto my lap and began vigorously clawing at my arm until I placated him by scratching his back, then his belly. I didn’t chant.
“What have I to do with rites and rituals?” I’d asked myself. “And what have rites and rituals to do with me?” And I asked no one for a list of the Suttas that were chanted each evening. And I told no one (for no one ever asked) that though I’d been studying the Suttas for several months now I hadn’t yet found any passage where the Buddha had advised chanting.
And, “I hate memorizing,” I told myself. “I don’t want to memorize any more.” And by the time the sounds were half-familiar to me I’d already added to my repertoire so many justifications and rationales for my neglect of the dull task of memorizing that I now possessed the position as surely as I’d once possessed the task of raking leaves. And the possession of the pose made it impossible for me to the see — sabbe dhamma anatta: all things are not-self — that it was only a pose, and not an identity.
When the chanting was finished we rose and, in order of seniority, bowed down before the Mahathera and recited our line, asking forgiveness for any possible offenses during the past day. On full- and new-moon days we four samaneras renewed our dasa sila vows by formally repeating them.
The Mahathera turned up his lamp, studiously affixed his wire-frame glasses, and sorted out the letters. Those concerning the running of the Hermitage he kept. The three remaining he placed on the edge of his table: two together — they would probably be for Ņanarasa, he got a lot of mail — and one for somebody else. Me? Something was due by now. Don’t think about it, I told myself.
Piyadassi shuffled in and mumbled something in Sinhalese to the Mahathera. The Mahathera replied in a loud voice but the old man, nearly deaf, had to shuffle over closer, hold his hand up to his ear, crouch down and watch carefully with his alert eyes while the Mahathera repeated himself even louder. We sat silently, each of us involved in our own reflections, while Piyadassi brought out the tea cups, two at a time, in five separate trips, then the kettle. Nothing was done in a hurry. Caution and custom were valued higher than ease and efficiency. We sat silently while Piyadassi shuffled down the line of monks, filling cups. A lemon was passed down the line. I sat waiting for the sweet tea to cool off, smelling the appetizing fragrance of the lemon.
I was hungry. Not eating after midday wasn’t difficult at all; not missing food was the problem. I told myself that since I wasn’t going to get any more food until breakfast there was no point tormenting myself by thinking about it now. But sometimes a stray thought would take root and bloom into a full-blown food fantasy. I was prone to these fancies at tea time, when the aroma of tea and lemon could evoke hot dogs, fries, and a strawberry shake. To dispel these images I experimented with a reflection on the loathsomeness of food, one of the meditation subjects the Buddha advised.
The Mahathera poured some tea into his saucer and set it down on the floor. The mongoose jumped off my lap and, making gentle honking sounds, like a duck with laryngitis, scurried over. He lapped up the tea and sniffed about, hoping for more.
The only sounds were the occasional chirps and croaks of unseen creatures. Far away I heard the splash of a fisherman, settled into his outrigged dugout log for the night, then nothing more. Outside, the world was pitch dark, offering nothing to attract the eye or ear, a world without promises. Out there solitude awaited me.
I scratched restlessly at various vague itches. The smoke-fire was dying down to smokeless embers and mosquitoes were attacking more frequently, more vigorously. I was tired of sitting; the dregs of tea had grown cold. The mail still sat there. One of the other monks got up and straightened his robe. He looked at the letters on the table, then walked out: no mail for him. I could hear him on the verandah, putting on his sandals, and then watched the beam of his flashlight bob out of sight. ‘Rasa left, collecting his two letters.
Unwilling to wait any longer (for what? for whom?) I got up and gathered my robes about me against the emptiness that filled the night. I looked at the Mahathera’s table as I passed it and — no mail this time, no diversion from the evening’s solitude — went out into the night.
“I need cigarettes, bhante.”
“What do you need cigarettes for?” the Mahathera asked. All supplies and special requests were routed through him.
“I smoke them, bhante.” I explained.
“Hmph, better if you learned to do without them.”
“I don’t know if I can, bhante.” But I really didn’t know if I wanted to.
“You’ll never know if you don’t try.”
“I’ll try it then, bhante.”
I returned to my kuti, my hut, and lit up my after-dana smoke. I’d brought two cartons from Colombo, but even with the most careful rationing I didn’t see how they’d last more than a couple of months. And there was no money left except for a few coins. So I waited a few weeks and then approached the Mahathera again.
“I need cigarettes, bhante.”
“Didn’t you give them up?”
“No, bhante.”
“Did you try to give them up?”
“Yes, I tried, but I wasn’t able to give them up.”
“It’s by means of desire that desire is to be given up.”
“I need more time. I can’t do it now.”
“Every time a monk comes here who smokes we get trouble.”
“I won’t make trouble, bhante.”
“If you can’t control yourself with cigarettes how can you control yourself in more difficult matters?”
I knew that he himself smoked, very privately, so I said nothing.
“The dayakas, they don’t like to see monks smoking. If they see a monk smoking they think he has no control.”
“Yes, bhante.”
“And the Samitiya,” — the lay organization that provided much of the support for the Hermitage — “what if they ask what we spend their money on? They don’t like their money being spent on cigarettes for monks with no control.”
“Yes, bhante.”
“And the other monks here, if they see you smoking they’ll think you’re wasting your time here.”
“Yes, bhante.”
He looked at me shrewdly. “How much do you smoke?”
I’d planned on asking for a pack a day, but that look of his intimidated me. “Half a pack a day, bhante.”
“No, that’s too much.”
“That’s only one pack every other day.” I was a whiz at math.
“No, I’ll let you have two packs a week. No more.”
“That’s not enough, bhante. Maybe I can work my way down to that, but to start with I need more.”
“One pack every three days, then. No more than that.”
I did a quick calculation. “Very well, bhante.”
“No smoking outside your kuti,” he warned me.
“Very well.” I still had my reserve to fall back on.
“And no smoking when there are upasakas on the island.”
Sometimes dayakas brought dana; sometimes laypeople came to visit. Sometimes men stayed overnight or longer, but women were always gone before the sun.
“Very well.” With a pack every three days I’d only need about two cigarettes a day from my reserve.
“And start learning how to give them up. That smoking, that’s no good.”
“Very well.” My reserves might last close to half a year yet: the specter of want was allayed.
“When you need cigarettes you tell me.”
“I need cigarettes, bhante.”
“I’ll tell Piyadassi to get them from the village when he goes there.” The rowboat went every afternoon.
“Can I have two packs every six days? That would be easier.”
“No, one pack every three days.”
That afternoon, with a new-found security, I threw into the lagoon the coins that were still left me, and was glad to be rid of them.
Every third afternoon I went down to the boatdock.
“I need cigarettes, bhante,” I told the Mahathera privately.
“Get a pack of cigarettes today,” he told Piyadassi in Sinhalese.
“Eh?” Piyadassi, nearly deaf, cupped his hand to his ear.
“Ek paket sigarros,” the Mahathera repeated louder.
“Eh? Eh?” Piyadassi strained to hear, while his eyes danced and the Mahathera was forced to repeat himself loud enough for everyone to hear.
And every third evening I sought out the Mahathera and he slipped me the pack discreetly, even when we were alone, with a discerning look. He was very tall, upright, and imposing — a descendant of the Kandyan kings — and although he would be a friend to anyone who would let him I found his piercing glances altogether too intimidating.
One afternoon I went down to the boatdock to make my request. Piyadassi was just getting ready to leave. The Mahathera wasn’t there. There had been quite a few days recently when the Mahathera hadn’t been around to relay the cigarette communications to Piyadassi. Sometimes I hadn’t been able to find him anywhere, and on those occasions I’d had to wait an extra day to get my rations, a day that ate into my reserves. They were being used up faster than I’d expected. Now again the Mahathera was nowhere to be seen. Piyadassi was preparing to leave. I didn’t want to wait another day for my rations.
“Sigarros.” I held up one finger to Piyadassi. “Sigarros.”
“Ek Sigarro?” His eyes shone; he had no trouble hearing me.
“Ba ek sigarro. Ek paket sigarros.”
Piyadassi put an imaginary cigarette to his lips and inhaled inquisitively. I nodded and he broke out grinning. That evening he handed the packet to me directly.
Three days later I went down to the dock. Again the Mahathera wasn’t there.
“Ek paket sigarros,” I told Piyadassi. “Ek paket sigarros.”
“Me sigarro you no no. You espeak Mahathera. Mahathera espeak me sigarro you no no. You, he espeak.” And he shook his head sadly, picked up the oars, and rowed off to the village.
I stood on the dock and watched the boat round a corner of the island and disappear, then returned to my kuti. I counted out my remaining cigarettes, lit one, and exhaled angry smoke through my nostrils. The paranoia here about tobacco was worse than anything I’d encountered in India about hashish and opium. I could see that if I were to go to the Mahathera now any request for cigarettes would become subordinate to a discussion on the hierarchy of authority. And, almost certainly, he’d impose even stricter rules than before if he allowed me cigarettes again at all. On the other hand I could bide my time and wait for him to speak up. Then I’d be in a much stronger position, and the cigarettes would start again on the same terms as before.
I took a drag on the cigarette and decided: that’s what I’d do. I wouldn’t go to him about this matter. I’d wait for him to speak to me. And while I waited I’d ration myself carefully: no more than half a cigarette at a time, and then only to allay the severest need. I took another drag on the cigarette, then put out the flame and saved the butt.
During the next week the Mahathera and I said nothing to each other. Each day I fought to ignore the tickling at the back of the throat which called for my attention. My resolve wavered, and I cast about for means of shoring it up. Sometimes the means closest to hand was another half a cigarette. One of Ven. Ņanavira’s letters concerned smoking, and I tried to draw strength from it.
“Let me recall my own experience when I gave up cigarettes. I had been smoking forty or more a day for several years when I decided to give them up. I remember walking in the park not long after I had finished my last cigarette, and feeling pleased with myself that I had actually taken the decision. But the principal thought that assailed me was this: though I had no doubt that I could stick to my resolution, there was one thing that I really needed to confirm it and to fortify me in my determination not to have a cigarette, and that one thing was … a cigarette. Far from its being obvious to me that in order to give up cigarettes I should give up cigarettes, I had the greatest of trouble to resist the pressing suggestion that in order to give up cigarettes I should take a cigarette.”
Another week passed. Reserves sank lower and lower. It occurred to me more and more frequently that maybe the Mahathera wasn’t going to ask my pardon and restore my supplies. And after the last cigarette had been smoked I sat back and gave myself a pep talk. As I’d argued about food, so I now argued about tobacco, that I wasn’t going to get any more so there was no point tormenting myself by thinking about it. And in the face of that good logic there still arose the continuing suggestion that what I needed to confirm my decision was a cigarette. Tobacco fortified my identity, and going without it was like giving up a piece of myself. I could never admit — especially to the Mahathera — that I was that needy.
“It’s by means of desire that desire is to be given up,” Ven. Ņanavira had written. But it was pride and conceit that kept me from the disgrace of recanting and asking for more cigarettes.
“Enough of this sensuality,” I told myself as erotic impulses assailed me. It would be so easy to give in, as I’d done, more than once, in Colombo. But if I wasn’t going to give it up now — or try to — when would I? Tumescent, the body would throb with frantic magnificence. And, restraint lost, I would get off. To avoid that required sufficient resolve to put sensual thoughts out of mind.
Even the food I ate could affect me. Nonstarchy foods could leave me thoroughly starched. Curds, Nestomalt tea, any sort of animal protein would so stir my juices that life became pressingly difficult. I’d been shocked, though, to learn at dana that merely looking at a bowlful of steaming rice and curries could trigger an erection. Did this sensuality have no limits at all, then, to the objects upon which it could seize for its stimulation? And as I ate I could feel the warm hard almsbowl nested in my lap pressing against another warmth, another hardness.
Occasionally Western tourists, having heard of the Hermitage, would hire a boat to the island for a tour. Once I looked up from my almsbowl and saw a young couple coming up from the dock. The woman’s face was angelic, but her red hair was teased into a myriad of flame-like darts that set me afire. I lowered my gaze to the bowl and firmly kept it there. I knew I was blushing. I ate no more, but waited uncomfortably for the dana to end. Then I returned to my room, closed the shutters, and sat unmoving in a corner, in the dark.
A while later, hearing voices outside, I peered through a crack in the shutters and saw the Mahathera showing the young couple around. I watched until she was out of sight, then returned to my corner and sat some more.
I sought advice from another monk.
“Have you tried taking cold baths?” he asked.
“Sure, but I can’t take cold baths all day long.”
“Sweeping the leaves off the paths is a good outlet for physical energy.”
But I didn’t like that idea either: I’d had enough of leaf-sweeping in Colombo. Besides, I told him, nights were the most difficult times. How could I sweep leaves then? But my counselor didn’t know.
“Find something else to do,” was the only other advice he had. And I returned to my kuti and sighed.
I sought advice from myself.
I took out a notebook and titled a page “Disadvantages of Masturbation.” Then, after some thought, I wrote:
“1. It’s an energy drain.
“2. It’s a distraction from meditation.
“3. It puts me out of accord with the Vinaya.
“4. There’s a mess to clean up.
“5. I’ll regret it afterwards.
“6. …”
I put the pen down, dissatisfied. Reviewing the hazards of sensual indulgence, I saw, was no more useful than seeking a cure for cancer by listing all its unpleasant symptoms.
I even sought advice from the Suttas.
I found no shortage of warnings that sensuality was of little gratification, of much danger. It was an obstacle, a pitfall, a disease. The enticing nymphs of my fantasies were described: In this body there are head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, midriff, spleen, lungs, bowels, entrails, gorge, dung, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, grease, spittle, snot, oil-of-the-joints and urine.
And poems were sung in honor of those maidens:
Of bones this body’s made, by flesh and blood encased, Wherein decay and doom are laid, conceit and envy placed. (Dh. 150)
And how should those arousing images be combated? Attention to the foul should be developed to put away lust; amity should be developed to put away anger; mindfulness of breathing should be developed for the cutting off of thoughts; perception of impermanence should be developed to remove the conceit “I am.”
One Sutta compared sensuality with the itching of a skin disease: the torment of itching was greater than the satisfaction of scratching. Ven. Ņanavira, suffering from satyriasis, had had something to say about that. I leafed through my copy of his letters until I found what I was looking for:
“… to cure an itching skin disease the first thing to do is to prevent the patient from scratching and making it worse. Unless this can be done there is no hope of successfully treating the condition. But the patient will not forgo the satisfaction of scratching unless he is made to understand that scratching aggravates the condition, and that there can be no cure unless he voluntarily restrains his desire to scratch and puts up with the temporarily increased discomfort of unrelieved itching. And similarly, a person who desires a permanent cure from the torment of sensual desire must first be made to realize and understand that he must put up with the temporarily increased discomfort of celibacy (as a bhikkhu) if the Buddha’s treatment is to be successful …”
Was the Sangha, then, some sort of hospital, and the robes the attire of the in-patients? The disease was torment enough; would I be able to survive the cure? I put the letters down and considered the blank unresponding walls.
“Attention to the foul” wasn’t the only treatment prescribed. The Suttas also recommended meditation on death. Then there were the charnel-ground contemplations. Visualization of a decaying corpse. Perception of the loathsomeness of food … Christ, you’d almost think there was something gruesome about the Teaching. And then to have to give up sex, too … I picked up the letters again and browsed through them, searching perhaps for greater motivation.
“… whereas, since Freud, the most extravagant fancies in the realm of love are considered to be perfectly normal (a person without them is regarded as a case for treatment) in the realm of death (the other great pole of human life) any strange fancies are still classified as “morbid.” The Suttas reverse the situation: sensual thoughts are the thoughts of a sick man (sick with ignorance and craving) and the way to health is through thoughts of foulness and the diseases of the body, and of its death and decomposition. And not in any abstract scientific fashion either …”
I copied the passage into the notebook, beneath the list of disadvantages. Then, below that, I copied from memory:
There was a young lady from Natchez Whose clothing was always in patches. When kin would inquire About her attire She’d reply, “When Ah itches Ah scratches.”
But the image of a young lady in revealingly torn clothing did nothing to ease my own itching. How could I find relief, short of breaking faith with the Vinaya? “Attention to the foul”: would ardor be allayed by the contemplation of a little fecundity? And as intoxicating images of sexuality festered in my mind I dabbed at them with the calamine lotion of reality by focussing attention on the unappetizing aspects of sex: the sweat, the smell, hair caught in the mouth. Then, when a more realistic picture had cooled me down, I began to perceive the complex relationship problems posited by the fantasy or, lacking them, its barrenness. And finally I called to mind the arguments I’d had with myself when thoughts of food and, later, tobacco, had assailed me.
“V,” I told myself, “you’re just not going to get any sex today, nor tomorrow either. So there’s no point in afflicting yourself with yearnings for what’s not available, unless you’re just interested in tormenting yourself to pass the time. I mean, don’t you have anything better to do than that?”
Chapter Four (cont.) (ii) “What should I do?” I asked the Mahathera. That was just after I’d arrived at the Hermitage.
“Do? What do you mean, do? You want to know how to meditate? How to observe the dasa sila?”
“No, bhante, I mean, what are the daily tasks here? Polishing the Buddharupa, or cleaning the danasala, or clearing back the jungle. I mean, is there anything I’m expected to do?”
“Clear back the jungle?” The Mahathera looked at the brambly forest surrounding us. “Where would you clear it back to? Or do you mean the jungle of the mind? Perhaps that’s what you wanted to clear back?”
“What I meant was, what’s expected of me here?”
“Nothing. The only demands made on you here are the one’s you make on yourself. There are no daily tasks. Of course, if you want to do something you can always find work to be done. But the Samitiya pays the servants, and the dayakas help too. No, there’s nothing you’re supposed to do here except practice the Dhamma. Nothing at all. Unless you feel like sweeping leaves off the paths. There’s no end to that kind of work.”
But I didn’t want to sweep leaves off the path, so I returned to my kuti, to books which I hoped would tell me what I should do.
Monks, apply yourselves to meditation, they advised. The monk who meditates knows things as they really are.
Every few days I returned a stack of books to the library and took out another stack, equally tall, to pore over.
One thing, I read, if developed and made much of, leads to great benefit, to great release from burden, to mindfulness and awareness, to the attainment of vision and knowledge, to a happy abiding in this very life, to the realization of the fruits of knowledge and deliverance. What is that one thing? It is mindfulness on the in- and out-breaths.
I’d devoted a few days — and nights — to puzzling over Ven. Ñanavira’s book, Notes on Dhamma, and found much of it difficult. (I too, he’d written in a letter, find it difficult sometimes.) What I could understand of it I appreciated, but it was vastly more imposing, more compressed and concise, than his letters, and because of its tone of authoritativeness and precision lacking too in the wit and transparency of the letters.
I re-read the letters, then returned to the Suttas.
“Herein, a monk sits down cross-legged with the back erect. Placing attention on the face he inhales mindfully, he exhales mindfully. When he breathes a long breath he knows, ‘I breathe a long breath.’ When he breathes a short breath he knows, ‘I breathe a short breath.’”
I’d tried to learn what I could from books on Hinduism, but they only bored me, and I put them aside. Some of the Mahayana books amused me (especially the Zen artists), some mystified me, most left me cold. I returned to the Suttas, about which I was becoming knowledgeable.
“Here a monk masters Dhamma. He spends the day in that mastery. He neglects solitude and does not devote himself to development of calmness. That monk is called ‘Full-of-lore,’ but he does not live by Dhamma.”
What was I goingto do, then? How much more time would Idevote to reading advice that I should give up reading that advice? And what would I do otherwise? Slide back into sensuality? Rake leaves?
“And what, monks, is the aim of the life of the recluse? The destruction of lust, the destruction of hatred, the destruction of delusion are the aims of the life of the recluse.”
I sat on the chair by the table and looked around. On the wooden mattress-less bed were several books, one of them open, spine up. On the table were almsbowl, vacuum flask, flashlight, matches, kerosene lamp, papers. A pile of books was in one corner. Against one wall some shelves were filled with papers, robes, books, and an oblate-shaped leaf fan. A broom stood in one corner; a water jug in another. On the cement floor were scattered several paduras, straw mats.
“Monks, here are the roots of trees; here are empty places. Meditate, monks. Do not be neglectful lest you regret it later. That is our instruction to you.”
The root of a tree was hardly possible in a place as mosquito-plagued as the Hermitage, but perhaps an empty place could be arranged. To start with I stacked up all the books, tucked the pile under my chin, and carried it off.
One of the monks was sweeping leaves on the path near the library. He stepped aside to let me pass.
“Where are you going with all those books?”
“I’m taking them back to the library.”
He looked at the stack of books I carried, then at the pile of leaves he’d gathered. “Some are leaf-people,” he observed, “and some are book-people.” And he returned to his sweeping.
I took the bed out of the kuti too, and the table and chair, and kept only the paduras on the floor. On the shelving I left only what was clearly essential: a lamp, the requisites of the monk, Ven. Ñanavira’s letters …
More papers. Did I really need them? I thumbed through the letters one last time, asking myself each time I read a few lines whether I could get along without them. Each time the answer was the same. I gathered up the papers and disposed of them. Then I returned to the kuti, empty now of distracting objects, sat down on the paduras, crossed my legs, straightened my spine, put the attention on the in- and out-breaths at the tip of the nose and, at last, began to meditate.
… mindfully a long breath in and mindfully a long breath out; mindfully a long breath in and mindfully a long breath out; mindfully a long breath in and mindfully an itching toe; oh no, oh no, an itching toe, and should I scratch it? maybe so; try not to, though; back to the nose: mindlessly that itch arose; gotta scratch it: hold back, slow: better wait and meditate and mindfully a long breath in and ah, that’s better, heed your breath, forget about everything else and mindfully a long breath out; mindfully a long breath in and mind, you’re getting really good: concentration’s where it’s at, calmness, insight, all of that is better than a wandering mind, uncontrolled and unrefined, dreaming dreams of … whoops! where is it now? oh, there: a long breath out; mindfully a long breath in and mindfully oh no! oh no! it’s back again, that itching toe which bothered me; I’ll scratch the itch, but mindfully; scratch with mindfulness and then back to the practice once again; oh, that’s nice, that feels good, but now the itch is on top of my foot and if I scratch it there it’s just gonna move up my leg and I’ll spend the next ten minutes on a body rub and I’m supposed to be meditating, I’m on company time.
Is there a mosquito in here? Is that why my toe itches and — oh, that feels so good — the tops of both feet itch so much? And now my back itches too, I’ll scratch it a little, ooh, nice, okay, too bad there’s all these distractions from the practice because they’re so … the practice! You’ve forgotten it! How can you be so mindless? Back to it:
… mindfully a long breath in and mindfully a long breath out; mindfully a long breath in and mindfully a long breath out; mindfully review your face, relax those muscles and erase the lines of tension that compete for your attention; no distress: everything is peaceful; rest but do not doze; meditate upon the nose as each breath passes in or out the nose-tip just observe it; don’t react, just heed fully a long breath out; mindfully a long breath in and mindfully a long breath Shit! there is a mosquito in here, I can hear it whining. Hunt it down? No, let it be. If it comes around to me I’ll just have to — breathe in — to catch it, but as long as — long breath out — as long as it doesn’t bother me I’ll leave the legs crossed, try — mindfully — to keep it up, meditation, long breath out, mindfully a long breath in and mindfully … mindfully … mindfully …
My mind emptied (quiet, weightless, steady, void): it was no longer filled with thoughts about, there was only awareness of, and not even awareness of the breathing now, but of a tiny cool spot of space somewhere in front of my face, quite distinct from awareness of the breath. There was a steadiness to it, a fineness, a silken coolness that was altogether pleasant, butthe pleasure of which I had to ignore. For as soon as the thought, “pleasure,” arose that very thought filled the voidness of which that silken cool spot was the shell. The impalpable joy of voidness was dispersed by thinking about it. It was very shy, this elfin nothingness that so attracted me; it required a great deal of patience to find it.
Some sessions seemed fruitless: I never got past mindfulness of the breathing. In some sessions this spot, this nimitta, never became refined enough. But this one had been good, no thoughts about at all, not even an undercurrent, no wavering. Then this cool emptiness of a spot winked once and vanished back into mindfully a long breath in and mindfully a long breath out, and I knew that I would have to rest shortly anyway because the effort of concentrating so intently for so long a time — maybe a whole minute — was exhausting.
For a while I sat still, my mind flickering between moments of concentration (on that spot, the nimitta) and minutes of mindfulness (of the breath), and then outside thoughts began pressing in. The mind was satiated. It was time to stop sitting and walk for a while.
The set of my shoulders dropped slightly; I relaxed for a while, then grasped hold of my feet and lifted my legs out of the lotus position. They’d long since grown numb beyond the point of tingling and I stretched them out now in front of me, waiting for feeling to surge in and subside before I would walk on them. I looked at the leaves of the jungle just outside the window screens, mostly observing, just a little thinking about. Occasionally I became aware of some feeling somewhere on the body, but did nothing about it. In another minute I’d get up and pace for a while; then I’d sit for another session. When I was tired of walking I could sit. When I could sit no longer I would walk. The mind was no longer so filled with grappling hooks, and I was content with just that much.
With poor control, in one unchecked, sensualities collect. A mind well-tamed the wise extol, and pleasure comes from mind’s control. (Dh. 35)
I looked over the list of dhutangas and, as if I were shopping in a supermarket, selected those that appealed to me. Never-lying-down: that sounds formidable. Lately I’ve been crashing out after those huge danas the dayakas bring. I’ve got to develop more energy somehow. This Dhamma is for those who strive unremittingly for alertness. Maybe I’ll give it a try, see if it helps. Then there’s eating but once a day. If I pass up breakfast, though, I’ll only stuff myself more at noontime. Besides, I don’t think I’m ready for it now. Better pass on that one; maybe later on.
Here’s a couple I just can’t do: accepting only almsfood and wearing only rag robes. Between the accusations of putting on airs and concern that, poorly fed and poorly dressed, I was a disgrace to the Island’s supporters, I’d be caught in a withering crossfire. On the other hand there were two freebies: not living in a village and having only one set of robes. TheHermitage wasn’t a village, and I happened to have (and need) just the three robes. The robes (as I tried to remember each time I put them on) weren’t for adornment or beauty but only as protection from insects and elements and as a covering for decency’s sake. For that, one set of robes was adequate.
Then there were three I wasn’t even going to try: dwelling only at the root of a tree, dwelling not even at the root of a tree but only in dewy places, and dwelling in any chanced-on place. That last one, that was for wanderers, carika monks, who traveled about on foot with no fixed abode except during the rainy season. My abode was settled: I was Hermitage monk.
What else? This one might be interesting, eating only twenty-one bites. That would help me cut down on noon danas. Of course I’ll allow myself breakfast, too. All I’m given for breakfast; twenty-one bites for lunch: that sounds right. And — hmm — sleeping in a cemetery? That’s intriguing. Doesn’t sound too difficult either. I don’t think I’d be scared.
There’s no dangerous wildlife about except a few snakes, and for that I’ve got the mongooses to protect me. The mosquitoes would be nasty, though: I’d have to get hold of some repellent or some netting.
Reading further I learned that there had been a scandal in the Buddha’s day when a monk was accused of taking part in a burglary because no one could vouch that he’d gone to the cemetery merely to spend the night in meditation. That was when a rule was made that before spending a night in the cemetery someone has to be informed. All the others were to be done privately, lest they be a cause of conceit; only this one had to be pre-announced.
There was a cemetery on the island, complete with two graves. One of the graves was that of Ñanatiloka, the German bhikkhu who, in 1911, had founded the Hermitage. Not many people seemed to get buried here.
The next time I saw him I told the Mahathera that it was my wish to spend the next night in the graveyard.
He looked at me sharply: “No, you’re not going to spend any nights in the cemetery.” The idea upset him: I could tell.
“But bhante …”
“Why do you want to do such a thing?”
“Because …” I wasn’t sure. “To practice mindfulness of death.”
“Why can’t you do that in your kuti? Americans always do crazy things. Then you’ll go tell people you sleep in the cemetery. That’s no good. We don’t want any of that here.”
“But bhante, I wouldn’t tell other people. I’m telling you, nobody else. The rule says I have to tell another monk. And I need some mosquito netting.”
“No. You’re not going to sleep in this cemetery.”
And I didn’t.
I didn’t pass a night without lying down either. I tried it for five nights, sitting or standing. If only there’d been a way to prop up my head it might have been possible. But as I dozed my neck sagged into an awkward position and kept me on the border of wakefulness. My arms hung heavily from the shoulders. The body became such a hindrance to the solid sleep the mind craved that at last, at some dismal hour of the morning, I relented and stretched out, lying down with luxurious relief. I surrendered to comfort and slept deeply for the few hours that remained of the night.
I didn’t restrict myself to twenty-one mouthsful, either. I ate slowly, or tried to. I mindfully formed the rice and curry into a ball, mindfully raised it to my mouth, and mindfully flicked it in. And only when I’d mindfully lowered my hand and was otherwise unoccupied, only then would I slowly chew and swallow the food. And I would reflect, or try to, that the food was only for maintaining the body so the practice could be continued. I tried to practice the perception that food was a loathsome mass that I saw otherwise only through the distorting lens of my desires, while my stomach sent up gurgling grinding digestive messages through the gullet, “More! More!” and my whole innards were set to trembling with craving for food that wasn’t arriving quickly enough. Only after I’d swallowed would I mindfully allow myself to begin making up another riceball.
I counted each handful carefully. Nineteen … twenty … twenty-one. That’s it. That’s it? Really? But I’ve hardly begun. I looked hungrily at the mess of rice in the almsbowl. Why fight biology? I decided to take more. Say, twenty-five or, no, that’s only four more bites, say, thirty mouthsful, that’s nine more. And when I’d eaten the nine more bites of food I regarded the plate of fruit and sweets that had also been set out and wondered why I subjected myself to this ordeal by hunger. Was it really possible to overcome desire, to be content with little, or even nothing at all? Or was I just playing games with myself, to see how much I could take?
Chapter Four (cont.)- (iii) From the Monkey Temple, atop Swayambu, the view of the Himalayas was grand. We sat on a wall beneath the main stupa, listening to the resonant dissonance of Tibetan services. Lamas passed by counting prayer beads and withered purple-clad refugees spun prayer wheels and chanted: Om mani padme hum. Om.
“That music is so far out,” my Swedish girlfriend said.
“I’d even become a monk if they’d let me jam with them.”
“They can have your mind, but I want your body.”
“Let’s do a number,” someone suggested, and we smoked a pipeful right there at the Monkey Temple, all of us smiling and nodding to the Tibetans who tried to sell us things.
“How about the Blue Tibetan for some momos and chi?” someone suggested.
As we went down the endless staircase to the bottom of the hill we saw some monkeys quarrel in a tree. One of them fell to the ground and ran off.
“We’ll do some good stuff when we get home,” I told my friend.
Then other images flitted through my mind. I remembered those Golden Times in the Birla Temple in Delhi, Zeus’ cave on Crete, the beach at Eilat, a smoky room in the Gulhane. It didn’t matter where: the theme was always the same. Only details changed.
The fantasies and memories revolved around the various pleasures that, no longer available, not yet forgotten, stewed about in my mind, enticing me. “Look,” a voice within urged. “There’s some exotic food, a farout temple, tribespeople in fantastical garb, Himalayan splendor, ocean’s ease, good friends, good dope, good times. It’s all right there, and it can all be yours for, for … free, for nothing at all. You want it? Easy. All you have to do is say two magic words, that’s all, just two little words. Then it’ll be just like before, instead of all this solitude. Sound nice? It’s yours for the asking. All you have to do is say those two little words, I disrobe. Just those two little ones …
And I looked around my little kuti. The kerosene lamp, on the stool beside me, cast a feeble light, leaving the far corners gloomy. I sat cross-legged on the padura, which was both my bed and meditation seat. On a shelf I kept the requisites and little else, perhaps a pen, a notebook, one text. I’d supposed that by emptying the room I would empty the mind as well.
The mind was hardly empty now. It fizzed and gurgled with some sort of digestive ailment (starvation? sensory deprivation?) and cast about for something substantial to chew on. I found myself uncrossing my legs and standing up before I quite realized that I’d intended to do so. If I’d thought first I’d have urged myself to try for just a few more minutes of mindfulness. But now that I was already standing I chose instead to go outside to the cankamana.
Thirty feet long by three feet wide, the cankamana was my walkway, my ambulatory. When I could no longer sit I paced slowly, trying to be mindful. Sometimes I attended to the walking, sometimes to the in- and out-breaths, sometimes to the breezes or sounds that touched me, but now I paid no attention at all. I lost myself in myself, a mote drifting restlessly in an eternal breeze.
My thoughts drifted back in a slow reverie about my travels across Asia, a reverie which meandered eventually to those halcyon days in Nepal just before I’d gone down to Calcutta. Ah, those golden days in Katmandu. Ornately carved wooden temples guarded streets lined with vendors of silks, spices, brassware, plastic Buddhas …
It was at the Monkey Temple outside Katmandu that we’d sat on a wall, my friends and I, and smoked a chillum of hashish, listened to the temple music, and then wandered through town. I’d really enjoyed myself. But I’d left it, gone down to Calcutta and ordination. Maybe I should have just stayed there instead of coming here. Why did I ever leave it in the first place if I was enjoying it so much?
And before I quite realized that the intention had arisen I found myself face to face with a question that didn’t drift by with the reverie but plunked itself down before me and demanded to be answered: if I’d been enjoying it so much why had I left Nepal? It just didn’t make sense. And I thought more about that Golden Time.
Golden Times was my name for memories that I enjoyed re-running in my mind, like a favorite movie. They were the moments of magic which made the plodding drudgery of other times worthwhile. Now as I walked the ambulatory I recalled that Golden Time in Katmandu, and gradually forgotten details dawned upon me.
It had been hot, for one thing: there’d been no shade at all, and I’d been uncomfortable in that glaring sunlight. How come I’d forgotten to remember that? I’d sweated from the climb to the temple and my clothes felt sticky. I’d nearly forgotten that too. It had been my dope we’d been smoking, no one else had offered anything, they’d all protested that they didn’t have enough to spare, or none at all, and I had suspicions of being used. In fact, I hadn’t been pleased at all with the company I kept. They were always complaining of this or that, how one was ripped off by a rickshaw-wallah or another had been treated harshly by a government bureaucrat. I was with them only because by late November there were few of us around. As for my Swedish girlfriend, I’d already decided that when I left Katmandu I’d be traveling alone. Then I recalled with surprise that I hadn’t even been feeling well that day. I’d been mildly feverish, with an uneasiness in my bowels. My headache hadn’t been helped at all by the hash, and I hadn’t been enjoying myself at all. But: if I hadn’t been enjoying myself at all how was it possible that a few minutes ago I’d been remembering that day as particularly pleasant?
This realization that some part of me was unreal frightened me. I wondered how many other ways I might not be deceiving myself. And I called to mind some of those other Golden Times. I re-created those warm sanguine feelings that I’d used to wallow in uncritically, and, trying now to recall the situations as they’d actually been rather than as I’d always chosen to remember them, I found one by one that they were flawed creations nearly all. And even those that still seemed flawless were changed now, transmuted from flawless gold to flawless lead by the alchemical knowledge that now suffused my consciousness: that it was possible at any moment to shatter yet another Golden Time by recalling, even by accident, some detail that would expose the memory as no more than a mockery, a memory of what had never happened, only of what I wanted to have had happen. And that this was even a possibility was already a tarnish on the memory. This nothingness, this mere smog-filled puff of possibility, had already laid the grime of experience over the stolid unreality of my fantasies.
And was my life so miserable, then, that I had to make up stories to amuse myself (or be amused by stories made up by others) because the fiction so surpassed the fact in attractiveness that I’d as soon ignore the fact altogether? And wasn’t awareness of the here-now a way of giving up that escapism? Walking up and down this ambulatory, seventeen paces long, trying to be mindful, was a healthier thing to do than disrobe and carry on a search for more Golden Times, filling my life with fictions, pursuing endless careers.
Can’t stand the peace and quiet around here? Disrobe now and leave the Hermitage and it’ll just be the same old routine. What would you gain by leaving? Friends? Until you’re friends with yourself how can you be friends with others? What else could you gain? Admiration? Sex? Schopenhauer knew something about that: Sexual desire … is the quintessence of the whole fraud of this noble world; for it promises so unspeakably, infinitely, and excessively much, and then delivers so contemptibly little.[2] No, if you disrobe you won’t be any better off than now. No matter how difficult the monk’s life might become don’t ever deceive yourself into believing the lay life is easy, or even very satisfactory.
When all does ever burn and fume what laughter is there? What delight? You who are immersed in gloom, should you not seek a light? (Dh. 146)
I worried that it was psychosomatic, this pain in my side. If it were physical it would be the doctor’s responsibility to cure me, but if it were psychosomatic it would be mine. I wasn’t sure, but my visit to the hospital coincided conveniently enough with an unexpected urge to take a break and loosen up a bit.
What should I do? Perhaps I should go slower. Perhaps I was being too hard on myself. This was a gradual teaching. Perhaps I wasn’t yet ready to maintain as rigorous a discipline as I’d been attempting.
Then again, perhaps these bodily symptoms were a signal that I was on the verge of uncovering something significant, which a part of the mind dreaded to face. Perhaps this pain was the mind’s way of diverting attention from itself, and what I now needed was that extra effort to make some real progress at last.
On the other hand perhaps I’d just reached the limit of my present capacities and should hold there, neither increasing nor decreasing the effort I made. And then again, perhaps this pain in my side meant nothing at all. Perhaps it was nothing beyond a pain. I didn’t know.
The Suttas offered the simile of the lute, which had good tone only when the strings were properly tensioned, neither too loose nor too tight. But in music I could listen to a perfect A before tuning my instrument. Where was that perfect note in the Dhamma?
“It’s so hard to find the Middle Way,” I was earnestly counseled, and I could not but agree.
Until I went to the hospital I worried about the pain in my side, which had mysteriously begun several hours after I’d eaten the whole of a fallen coconut. That afternoon I’d met the Mahathera on a path and he told me he’d noticed that I’d eaten almost nothing at dana that day and that I didn’t look so good to him, sort of peaked and wan.
“Why don’t you get more exercise?” he suggested.
Exercise! How could I spare the time for exercise? How could I trifle with such oblique concerns when there was before me the task of putting an end to suffering? Sabbe sankhara dukkha: All conditions are suffering. And I stressed the “all.”
In the storage building I once came upon several heavy brass urns with large screw-top lids that required twenty or thirty full-circle-turns to unscrew. In curiosity I got one open, but saw that it contained only some grayish powdery substance with lumps of porous gray-white matter which at first I didn’t recognize as bone fragments. Then I looked on the bottom of the urn. On a piece of white tape stuck to it was the word, Ņanamoli. I imagined the storage building grown yet older, mustier, dirtier, and then in a corner of that picture placed another brass urn with the label, Vinayadhara on it. Would I die here? Sabbe dhamma anatta: all things are not-self.
In consideration of the Mahathera’s feelings I decided to take an extra fifteen minutes of daily walking, but it would have to come from that hour each day which was “my own” time, time used for bathing, washing robes, and reading outside the Dhamma. (I read Dhamma, a page or two at a time, between meditation sessions. My outside-the-Dhamma reading still included Kierkegaard, who told me about earnest striving: … to shorten one’s hours of sleep and to buy up each waking period of the day, and not to spare oneself, and then to understand that the whole is a jest, aye, that is earnestness.
And it was a jest: it was absurd that after all the effort and expense of educating me in that omnicompetence that is needed to function in a technological society I should now find myself with no greater need nor use for that knowledge than the ability to count to one, to set myself down by the root of a tree or against a wall and do nothing more creative or useful than to observe the in- and out-breaths as they passed the tip of the nose. That I should be educated in external matters with such thoroughness as to reject the external was a jest indeed. And so too was the way I kept finding myself trying to grasp that internality. For although it had changed by now from a flirtation to a preoccupation, still, in trying to grasp it I found myself continually seizing upon its externality.
The monk’s ward of the hospital into which I entered for a few days, for “observations,” was no jest at all. The doctors examined me thoroughly and concluded that I had a pain in my side. “Don’t worry,” they said. (They didn’t look worried that I could see.) “As long as it doesn’t spread you’re in good shape.” They gave me a thermometer and put me to bed beside a young dark-skinned bhikkhu whom I observed throughout the day. Every morning he would wake chipper and alert, feeling no pain at all, and by late morning throbbing misery would have spread through his limbs, and fever and chills would rack him. He would spend his afternoons shivering, moaning sometimes, soaking his sheets with a great deal of malodorous sweat and not feeling at all well. Around dusk he would improve and spend the evening either glassy-eyed and limp or asleep after his daily labors. Malaria was the name the doctors gave to that kind of disease.
Across the aisle lived an old bhikkhu whose particular hell seemed to be some sort of moroseness of mind. When he was well he was friendly, spoke good English, and could converse intelligently, if not profoundly, about the Dhamma. Sometimes, though, he would sit on the edge of his bed, his bowed legs dangling uselessly, naked save for a small cloth which, wadded up, he placed in front of his privates. His head would hang down, his eyes would focus on infinity, and any attempt to approach him would be rebuffed with a few curt Sinhalese words that I didn’t understand and which no one would translate. I didn’t know what name the doctors would put to such an agony. Melancholia?
Next to him an ancient wrinkled hollow-eyed bhikkhu lay in bed and stared at the ceiling all day, dying of cancer.
Cancer: what a final word. All that agony, so much more intense than I could endure, with nothing to look forward to at the end except death. Dreaming feverishly of the miracle cure, the one-in-a-million reprieve, a present from Santa Claus, until the pain becomes so intense and abiding and deep and burning and pervasive and exhausting that the gift one would most wish for from Santa would be the gift of death.
After three days the pain went away and I was released and returned to the Hermitage. I took more exercise, I allowed myself more free time, and I stayed away from fallen coconuts. The Mahathera said that I looked much better.
A period of non-wandering, Vas, was observed by bhikkhus (by those of the Hermitage, at any rate), during three months of the rainy season (the rainy season, that is to say, of the Ganges Valley, where the practice had originated rather than the long wet season of the Hermitage, where we followed the ways of the elders). During this annual quarter bhikkhus were expected, except in special circumstances, to spend every night under the same roof and not to go wandering about the countryside on carika. I was still only a samanera and not bound by the rule, but I remained at the Hermitage anyway. It was a time for retreat even though part of it would coincide with those few months of clear weather that were the Hermitage’s annual allotment. I knew better than to ask whether Vas might not be more properly observed during the time of the year when it was actually monsoon-season at the Hermitage.
At the end of this rainy season we came to the kathina season, kathina being a special temporary relaxation of certain monastic rules concerning robes, a benefit accruing to those bhikkhus who had properly observed the rains-retreat. (Seniority among bhikkhus was reckoned by Vas seasons properly completed.) Traditionally it was the time (for dayakas) of giving and (for bhikkhus) of receiving, and a ceremony, the kathina pinkama, was held. In the days of the Buddha the ceremony had served a definite purpose: by the end of a monsoon robes could rot. A temporary relaxation of certain rules regarding their usage was of some practical importance for bhikkhus. Gradually, as the Sangha deteriorated (in India it reached its nadir just prior to its virtual extinction there in the Ninth Century) it became a time for the obtaining (by bhikkhus) of possessions and (by dayakas) of merit. In Burma and Thailand, I’ve been given to understand, things were different, but in Ceylon there were few places where kathina hadn’t degenerated into a time of preaching and palaver, gobble and grab. They expected, some monks, to be both fed and clothed in the best of style, though few of them even bothered to observe the rains-retreat, Vas. That, though, was hardly my harshest judgment of them.
Usually the Mahathera didn’t involve me in the politics of keeping the Hermitage well-provided for; but all Westerners at the Hermitage were expected to attend this pinkama, even Crackers, a newly-arrived English traveler who wasn’t even a monk. Our supporter wanted to show off as many foreign monks as possible and our nationalities, such as they were, were needed.
“Maybe we should just give bhante our passports, and we can stay here,” I suggested to Crackers.
“You can send yours wrapped in a brown cloth and I’ll send mine wrapped in white so the dayakas will know which passports to bow to.”
“Or else we’ll ask the Mahathera to ordain your passport.”
“I wonder where we’d find fans small enough.”
“If they don’t have fans they can’t go.”
In Ceylon monks carried fans with them everywhere, as if they were a ninth requisite. The first time I’d ever gone off the island, on some minor matter or other, I’d been instructed to take a fan with me.
“I don’t have one, bhante,” I’d argued.
“There isn’t one in your kuti?”
“But it’s not mine. It was there when I moved in.”
“It’s for whoever lives in that kuti. You should use it.”
“I don’t need a fan.” For it hadn’t been a warm day.
“In Ceylon all monks carry them.”
But I couldn’t recall anywhere in the Vinaya or Suttas where they were prescribed for monks. What had fans to do with renunciation? And I’d objected: “I don’t need a fan, bhante.”
“It’s not for your needs. It’s for the needs of the other monks. They’ll want to know why you don’t carry a fan, and what can you say?”
“I’ll say my ways are different from theirs. I’ll say I don’t need a fan.”
“And they’ll be insulted; they’ll think you put on airs and be angry with you. Don’t make them angry. Take a fan.”
And so that morning I put on the robes, packed a few things into the almsbowl, put it in the sling, started out the door, hesitated, and then went back to pick up the damned oblate palm-leaf fan that lay on the shelf.
We climbed into the boat and arranged ourselves, Piyadassi on one oar, a monk on the other. As we pulled away from the island I saw it as a whole: lush, fetid, silent, green. Only the library roof betrayed signs of habitation. Coconut palms leaned out over the water, which barely rippled in the close humid air.
There was a second island in the lagoon. It was small, had sparse growth, and the ruined foundation of a house.
“Is that what happens to mud huts when they’re not taken care of, bhante?”
“Sure. A mud hut will melt if it’s not taken care of. But those walls were brick, not mud. They didn’t melt; they were stolen.”
“You mean people stole the house, brick by brick?”
“Sure. They did that during the Second World War. There used to be a European living on that island, a Swissman, back in the ‘Thirties. He built the house and lived there. But you know, he could see war coming, and thought the Japanese would take Ceylon so they could threaten British India. So he gave the land to the Hermitage and left. We didn’t have many monks then. It was very difficult. So the villagers and fishermen, they stole the whole house, piece by piece.”
“Did the Japanese ever threaten Ceylon?”
“Once a Japanese plane flew over Colombo and dropped one bomb. It killed five people, as I recall. So that Swissman, he didn’t need to run from here.”
“Where’d he go? Back to Switzerland?”
“No, he knew there’d be war in Europe. He wanted a place where there wouldn’t be war, so he moved to the South Pacific. He settled on an island out past New Guinea called Guadalcanal.”
We all smiled. “He was killed in the fighting, then?”
“Not at all. He lived all through the war without injury. But on the day the war ended he climbed up to the top of his house to put up a flag, for the celebration, and he slipped from the ladder and broke his neck.”
Neither in sky nor in mid-ocean’s fathoms, nor by entering a mountain chasm — There’s found in all the world no locality where one is not assailed by mortality. (Dh. 128)
Once ashore we rolled our robes up into the formal style and walked over to the nearby road to wait for a bus. An old rattletrap came along and we boarded it. The distaste of oil fumes filled my mouth like a balloon blown too big to spit out yet which I had to be gentle with lest it burst.
We sat in the front rows, in seats designated for monks. In the days of the Buddha healthy monks were expected to walk. The Mahathera gave a booklet of prepaid bus coupons to the conductor, who tore out some of the coupons and returned the booklet with our transit tickets. I slipped mine into the almsbowl and sat quietly.
There was no doubt about where to get off. The place, when we came to it, was decorated with streamers and poster paintings. A loudspeaker amplified the enthusiasm of a portly monk who preached to a crowd. We were greeted, bowed to, and offered coconut water. There was a room, already full of monks, where we could stay during the preliminary preaching. We were expected to be in attendance only for the main sermon and for the dana afterwards (though for me the dana was the main event). There were other foreign monks here, Burmese, Laotian, Vietnamese, whom we greeted politely. Sinhalese monks wandered in and out, as did laymen. Pan was passed around. Beedies were smoked. It was warm; several monks fanned themselves, and the Mahathera noticed.
“Where is your fan, Vinayadhara?”
“Hmm? Oh, I must have left it in the boat or the bus. That was careless of me.”
“Take better care of things. You lose too many fans.”
“I’m very forgetful, bhante. I’ll try to do better.”
“Use my fan for now. But don’t lose it.”
“I don’t want to deprive you of your fan, bhante. And such a nice one, too. I’d hate to forget it somewhere.”
“You won’t. I’ll make sure of that. You take it.”
I took it and shrugged. “I’ll carry it, but I don’t understand why everyone thinks monks need to carry fans.”
“Because that’s the custom in Ceylon.”
But the reason they carried fans, I knew, was to keep their hands busy and give them something to do. If they didn’t have something to do they became fidgety and twitchy. The fans were pacifiers.
Two monks sat across from me, and I observed them. One leaned forward, his forearms resting on his legs. Thumbs and heels of his palms held together lightly, his fingers tapped together steadily, opening and closing cupped hands, driven by some internal mechanism, ticking out time. Next to him a monk chewed pan vigorously. Occasionally he tapped a foot unrhythmically to some internal melody. He waved his fan languorously, a counterpoint to his foot tapping. Both monks wore their yellow robes in the informal style even in public, as did most village monks, lax in Vinaya. Our robes were an earthy russet, the color worn by most jungle monks. City monks tended towards more vivid reds and oranges. These days the robes weren’t just for protection against insects and weather but served also as insignia.
I sat quietly, trying to control the sense faculties and sustain mindfulness amidst the comings and goings of the crowd. With all the eyes around it was easy to maintain mindfulness, but it was a mindfulness tainted with awareness of those eyes not as actualities but as potentialities. I kept my own eyes down, on my hands resting in my lap. The nails, I noticed, were a bit long, and none too clean. I observed them for a while and then, in a moment of forgetfulness, found that I’d joined the crowd: with one index fingernail I reamed dirt from beneath the nails of the other hand, scraping out little black balls which I flicked away from me. And when they were as clean as I could get them by such a method I picked at them, tearing them shorter, playing the fingernail game for all it was worth, even after I caught myself at it.
I sat quietly, appalled to find so little concentration among so many monks, and wished myself back at the Hermitage, where a higher standard of conduct was kept. Occasionally I made an aside to Crackers on the more striking displays of philistinism, but there wasn’t much pleasure in such easy shots.
The loudspeaker gave me a headache. The noise I thought to be a hell-fire and damnation sermon, but when I asked the Mahathera what the preacher was talking about he replied, “He’s telling the dayakashow good it is to be generous.”
“Is it working?”
“Splendidly.”
And then at dana envelopes containing money were distributed to the bhikkhus. We Hermitage monks weren’t put in the position of having to refuse them.
“Paychecks,” I suggested to ‘Rasa, and he replied that as monks at least we weren’t being paid salaries greater than our worth.
Footnote:
2.I must have copied this quotation into my notebook during the period of time in which I wrestled with the urgings to disrobe, as if trying to not scratch an itch. It was during that time that I developed in a few weeks the views which are set forth here in one uninterrupted monologue. NEXT CHAPTER NEXT