Chapter 5
Getting Off- Chapter Five – (i)
Once the Auspicious One lived near Savatthi, in the Jeta Grove of Anathapindika’s monastery. Late one night Rohitassa of the devas approached the Auspicious One and, in resplendent beauty, shed brilliant light over the entire Jeta Grove. Then he saluted the Auspicious One and stood at one side. So standing Rohitassa the deva said to the Auspicious One:
“Is it possible, lord, that by going one can know, see, or reach world’s end, where there is neither birth nor decay nor death nor falling nor re-arising?”
“Friend, I declare that it is not possible that by going one can know, see, or reach world’s end, where there is neither birth nor decay nor death nor falling nor re-arising.”
“Wonderful, lord. It is remarkable how well it was said by the Auspicious One that it is not possible to know, see, or reach world’s end by going.
“In a former life I was a hermit named Rohitassa, Bhoja’s son. Endowed with psychic power I could walk in the sky. Lord, my speed was such that for instance in the time it took by one with a string bow, a skilled, experienced, and trained archer, to shoot across the shadow of a palm tree, in such a time I could make a step from the Eastern to the Western Sea. Endowed with such speed and stride a wish came to me to reach the end of the world by going. I lived for a hundred years and, save for eating and drinking, for defecating and urinating, for sleep and rest, I walked for a hundred years and without reaching the world’s end I died on my way.
“Wonderful, lord. It is remarkable how well it was said by the Auspicious One that it is not possible to know, see, or reach world’s end by going.”
“Friend, so do I declare. But I do not say that one can make an end of suffering without having reached the end of the world. And I further proclaim, friend, that in this very fathom-long body with its perceptions and thoughts, there is the world, the arising of the world, the ceasing of the world, and the path leading to the ceasing of the world.”
The world’s end cannot be reached by walking, yet there’s no surcease of ill without it’s being reached. Therefore he will find release and reach the end who wisely knows the world and has the pure life fared. Calmed, he knows the world’s woes and end; no more for world’s he cares. Anguttara IV, 45
Carika: it was like walking down a very long ambulatory. The pavement was still cool and damp, although rays from the early sun were already shining across the curls of mist that rose from the narrow blacktop. I walked through countryside, fields and forests and gentle hills with an occasional house, its front doorstep on the edge of the roadbed as if the pavement were its sustenance. The hills were unprepossessing until I’d climbed half a dozen of them.
I did most of my walking in the morning, before the asphalt became so hot it would stick to my toes and burn if I didn’t step lightly. Even now the tar patches on the road were soft and slightly mushy beneath my bare feet. Morning, before the day’s heat, was the time for carika, wandering, and for collecting almsfood. Afternoon was time enough for seeking suitable quarters against the night: a village vihara, a school, or (if one was near) an ara๑๑a, a forest hermitage.
I walked slowly. Eyes downcast, I restrained as best I could the sense-faculties, finding little delight in a world wherein lurked old age, suffering, decay and death, wherein I was wearied of endless reassurances, while balancing on the brink of the chasm, that all would be well provided only that I didn’t look down.
I walked slowly. Eventually I wanted to visit ‘Sumana, whom I hadn’t seen in a year, but not yet. For now there was no place I had to get to, so there was no point in walking faster.
Carika, it was called: wandering, and it had been praised as a suitable life for one who would give up the ways of the householder, leave the dust-trap, and take to the road. The reality of my life was more modest than the image, however: I hadn’t cut myself off from the Hermitage. I’d abandoned neither kuti nor contents, but simply closed the door and walked away from them for a while. Crackers was kuti-sitting.
While walking past a farmhouse some people called out to me, in Sinhalese, “Where are you coming from?”
I pointed with my thumb over my shoulder, not ceasing to walk.
“And where are you going to?”
I pointed ahead of me, saying nothing as I walked on.
What could I say? I wasn’t “going” anywhere; I was simply wandering about. I didn’t bother to learn the names of villages I walked to, through, and from. But people were never satisfied with a reply of “Nowhere.” They wanted positive content, something they could know and hold to: “I’m going to Dodanduwa.” That they could repeat to each other with assurances that they’d learned something.
A sarong-clad youth stepped onto the road, stood directly in my path, tucked a fold of sarong between his legs — a common gesture I took to be a show of humbleness — and bowed his head as I approached. A crowd began to gather. My scant Sinhalese was discovered.
Wait. Wait, the youth signaled. He spoke with one of his friends, who ran off. There was usually someone around who spoke English, a village postmaster or schoolteacher. Monks don’t converse standing in the middle of the road, though, and I was conducted to the farmhouse porch and seated on a chair. Tea was prepared. Soon someone who spoke passable English was brought. Everyone stood around expectantly until I’d finished my tea; then questions were asked.
“Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“The Sangha’s my family. Everyone is my brother.”
“Hmm. Mother still living? Father still living?”
“Quite.”
“In America? What do they do? How old are you? Do you have any uncles? What do they do? How do you like our country? Do you have any cousins? What do they do?”
Such was the level on which we conversed. And, hungry for human contact, I accepted such encounters or, displeased with their shallowness, declined to talk and walked on.
Once in the early afternoon I declined an invitation to take a “late lunch.”
“Do the monks in Hiniduma take food after hours, then?”
“It’s offered to them,” was the suave reply.
Sometimes I declined offers of money and bus tickets.
“I prefer to walk, thank you.”
“Sir, where are you walking to? What do you want to do there? Why don’t you take the bus? It’s so much easier. Don’t you know it’s dangerous to wander about like this? You don’t know what might happen to you.”
But even after I listened to such warnings I still stubbornly chose to walk when I could as easily ride, for such was the advice of the Vinaya. I recognized that nowadays the situation was different (the basic transport in the Buddha’s day had been the ox-cart) and there were times when transportation had to be taken, but I felt that the principle behind the rule was sound: since monks don’t engage in worldly commerce they should never have to get anywhere faster than they can walk. A carika monk should never have to get anywhere at all. If his walking was purposeful it wasn’t carika, wandering.
The tumult and crowds connected with ox-carts and buses were detrimental to the cultivation of mindfulness. And if not to have greater opportunity to cultivate mindfulness, what reason was there to walk on paths other than the leaf-strewn ones of the Hermitage?
A goat grazed peacefully on outcroppings of grass beside a cutaway. Ahead of me I saw a CTB bus tearing around the blind curve created by the cutaway, horn blaring to scare off any oncoming traffic. The road was narrow and allowed no room for error. The goat looked around wild-eyed for an instant, spotted the onrushing bus, and flung itself violently against the cliffside in a desperate effort to get out of the way! The bus missed the goat by inches and, with a grinding of gears and a scream of acceleration, hurtled on towards me,
I had half an impulse to fling myself, like the goat, as far from the path of the bus as I could. But, knowing better, I quietly stepped off the road, turned my back, took a deep breath of fresh air and closed my eyes. I stood motionless while the bus roared past me swirling my robes and raising dust to mix in with the oil fumes pouring from its exhaust. Only when my lungs began to ache and the bus was a distant clatter around a bend did I again open my eyes and breathe again. The silly goat was placidly grazing the same outcroppings, having learnt nothing. The bus was out of sight. The world was peaceful again. And people wondered why I chose to walk when I could ride!
Being the most important tourist/pilgrimage site in Ceylon, Anuradhapura overflowed with strange people fulfilling — or not fulfilling — strange destinies. The most ordinary of citizens was swept along by the floodwaters of the pilgrims’ ebullience. The flat plains of his daily life were inundated by a tide of piety, and in those currents he drifted, clinging as if to a raft to whatever newly-rediscovered religious certitudes would float him.
All rafts were made of wood from the specie ficus religiosa, or bo-tree, for the lost city of Anuradhapura was home to Sri Maha Bodhi, a bo-tree which, according to legend — and perhaps legend was correct in this case — had entered into the world as a branch of the very tree under which the Buddha had sat when he had attained nibbana, extinction. This branch, having been rooted, had been brought to Ceylon and planted here some twenty-two hundred years ago, and it was forever being proclaimed as the world’s oldest historical tree.
It was certainly the world’s most venerated tree, and it was to see it and bow before it that busloads of pilgrims arrived daily, mingling with carloads of tourists and foot-loads of carika monks.
The American monk who sat at the root of a tree beneath a one-clouded sky wasn’t so sure of his motives. Perhaps he didn’t want to allow that he had any. At least he would have been reluctant to admit that the question of motives, of past history, had any relevance to one who sought involvement solely in the here-now. His question was “What?”, not “Why?”.
The root of a tree had been home to many a bhikkhu in the days of the elders. But although Anuradhapura didn’t lack for tree-roots it sorely lacked for monks sitting beneath them. I undertook to narrow the gap.
“What are you doing, reverend?”
Christ! Again? I opened my eyes halfway and took several deep slow breaths. This wasn’t the first time meditation had been interrupted by fervent upasakas who, between murmurs of “Sadhu, sadhu,” congratulated me on my desire for solitude, assuring me there wasn’t enough of it going around these days.
“I say, are you there, reverend?”
I opened my eyes fully and looked up at my inquisitor. He wore trousers and a T-shirt, and pushed a bicycle.
“What can I do for you?” I wasn’t sure, for his T-shirt was stenciled PLANNED PARENTHOOD.
“I want to know what you’re doing, reverend. Don’t you know it’s raining?”
“It’s only a mist. It’s not coming through the foliage.”
The bicycle he wheeled along was as white as his double-wedged beard. His shock of head-hair, though, was black and partly braided. His skin was baby-smooth; his eyes were afire.
“The ground is wet,” he insisted.
I was indeed a bit damp where moisture had permeated the sitting-cloth. My back was stiff. This meditation was over.
“Do you object to my sitting here, then?” I adopted an attitude of meekness, prepared to leave.
“Of course not. I only asked what you were doing, but you didn’t give me an answer. No matter, no matter,” he insisted, waving off any possible response with his hand. “My question was merely rhetorical. I can plainly see that you’re meditating. Good for you. I used to meditate myself.”
“Oh?” So that was it. He wanted to talk shop.
“I’m just going along to Sri Maha Bodhi. You come too.”
“I’ve already seen it.” I didn’t move.
“Today?” he insisted.
“A few days ago,” I admitted. “When I first arrived.”
“You should see it daily while you’re here, sir. You may not get a second chance. Come along and have another look.”
I could do without the rain, but it persisted and I didn’t quarrel with it. I chose not to quarrel with this man either. He pushed his bicycle as I walked beside him along the bund past a small muddy tank.
“Reverend, of what faith would you be?”
“I follow the Buddha.”
“Oh?” He was surprised. “Then where is your fan?”
“In this weather?”
“You see, I’m a Hindu myself. I’m not sure of Buddhist customs. But I have great respect for Lord Buddha. I believe he was a wise and holy being. So we may converse without disagreement.”
“If we have anything worth saying.”
“Reverend, as I wander through these ruins I’m continually impressed. At one time this was surely one of the great cities of the world. They say it rivaled Babylon. And it was founded by Hindus and made great by Buddhists.”
“And discovered by the British.”
“Tell me, reverend, of your thoughts when you stood on the summit of Mahintale.”
The land around Anuradhapura was flat except for the hill of Mahintale where, according to legend, the conversion of King Tissa and 40,000 of his subjects was effected.
“I haven’t been to Mahintale.”
He was openly astonished. “Reverend, do I hear you right? You’ve been in Anuradhapura for, how many days? Three?”
I nodded.
“And you haven’t yet climbed Mahintale?”
“That’s right.”
“But that’s one of the great historical sites of Buddhism. Have you no interest in the glories of your own religion?”
“Not the historical kind.”
“Then why have you come here?”
“From a faded curiosity.” I left unsaid that I hadn’t come to see Anuradhapura so much as to see others seeing it, to discover what it might be that they actually saw in it.
“If you were to climb Mahintale I’m sure you’d be inspired. Do you know there are nearly 2,000 steps carved out of solid rock, going all the way to the summit? From up there you can see the ruined fortifications of the ancient city, and the tanks, the ruined palaces and stupas. Do you really mean to say you have no interest in seeing all that?
“I feel like Dr. Johnson felt about the King’s Highway when it opened. He said — according to legend — “that it was worth seeing, but it wasn’t worth going to see.”
“Doctor who?”
“Samuel Johnson? The dictionary-maker? Never mind. Anyway, a monk is supposed to exercise control of the senses and not be attracted to this or repelled by that.”
“But Mahintale is part of the history of that Teaching. Surely you’re attracted to that story. After all, you’re Buddhist. This is part of your heritage!”
“I’m more interested in my present than in my heritage.”
We walked in silence for a while.
“Reverend, when I was younger I used to meditate. I used to live in the jungle. I fed on roots and leaves and berries. I wished nothing other than to attain the divine vision. But when the chance arose to pay homage to the teaching I follow, which means my whole life, I took it!”
“Why didn’t you keep on meditating?”
“I’m telling you, because of this opportunity. Now I follow the path of faith and service, and I recommend them. Meditation was too dry for my taste.”
“Then it should be perfect for this sort of weather.” And when he didn’t respond I added, “With faith, service, and storm-clouds I’d worry about a flood, myself.”
We came to the modern town, a collection of weathered and cheerless buildings set beside muddy streets, grassless.
“Reverend, see this town. Then see the ancient city.” He pointed to the earth mounds and the tumbled stones. “When the bo-tree was young the city thrived. Now it’s come to ruins.”
“Impermanence is the nature of all things.”
“But does that take away from what was? In my days, sir, I’ve been a planter, a teacher, a businessman. Now I’m retired and I’m devoting myself to bicycling through Ceylon to spread the message of population control. That’s my present contribution to society. But when I think of when I used to meditate in the jungle I don’t think any the less of it because it’s past. That doesn’t detract from it; that makes it complete.”
“I don’t want to detract from your memories. But I don’t want to add to them, either.” I remembered my own search for Golden Times. “I just want to recognize them for what they are, memories and nothing more. To glorify a memory is only to glorify yourself.”
“Exactly, reverend. I’m glad you understand me.”
We walked past a building that had a line painted high on one of its walls, and a message marking it as the high-water point of the flood of a few years past.
“For that end, one can glorify anything. Even a flood.”
“I see we can’t agree on anything, reverend.”
Sri Maha Bodhi was on the other side of town. In spite of the drizzle there were quite a few pilgrims performing various offices of worship, as well as several tourists taking photos.
We parked the bike beside one of the carved guardstones warding the stone stairs. I noticed the risers were also ornately carved. In the shrine room multitudes of oil lamps burned. We walked through crowds of pilgrims and clouds of incense. Bright lights shone on statuary and murals.
The murals portrayed scenes from the Buddha’s life when, not yet enlightened, he had been known as Gotama. One mural showed a collage of scenes from the court life of the young prince: his triumph in an archery contest, his learned studies with his tutors, his palaces staffed by female musicians, his marriage to a beautiful princess. Another mural showed the prince slipping from the palace beneath a full moon. In her chambers his princess slept beside their new-born son. The prince had named him Rahula (Bondage), and had resolved to break from the bonds of wife, family, and kingdom. He’d never forgotten those times when, as a youth, he’d ventured outside the palace and encountered an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and, finally, a recluse. Now he resolved that he too would renounce the world and seek an escape from decay, disease, and death before he became ensnared in those bonds as well.
Cutting off his hair and donning the ragrobes of the recluse he spent the next seven years seeking the way to the ceasing of suffering. He studied under the greatest masters of his day. He mastered all they had to teach and was invited by each to share in leading the company: the highest honor a teacher can bestow upon a disciple. But each time he pronounced himself a seeker, declined the honor, and continued his search. He followed various ascetic disciplines of physical deprivation and fasting. Finally he concluded that self-torment wasn’t the way to awareness and resolved to try yet another approach: meditation. So he sat down beneath a bo-tree beside a river and there, during the night, he came to understand what he had not understood before.
In the courtyard we could glimpse the tree. It was secured from encroachment by a picket fence of gold. The fence was secured by walls. The thin branches of the tree were supported by iron posts. Its sparse foliage had a distinctly reddish sheen, unlike the natural and more luxuriant green of other bo-trees. It was dying of old age.
Around us people venerated the tree with mumbles of words, with incense, flowers, trays of offerings, little brass bowls of food, and with money slipped into conspicuously-placed collection boxes. (NO COINS, the sign over the boxes said: they had the best concession in the country at this vihara, and the monks weren’t going to bother with small change.) Nobody, as far as I could see, offered any fertilizer.
For a while the two of us gazed at the tree. My companion’s lips moved, perhaps in prayer. It was impossible to get close enough to the tree for a good look, let alone to sit down under it (which, of course, was the only reasonable thing to do with it). Like the Dhamma, it was enshrouded by tradition, and I suggested to my guide that I was prepared to take my leave of both him and the tree.
“But don’t you want to worship, reverend?”
“Not particularly.”
“You don’t want to show respect for the great event that happened under the Bo-tree of which this is a branch? I’m but a Hindu, myself, yet I honor that event, the Enlightenment. You, you’re Buddhist. A converted Buddhist. How is it that you don’t do so?”
“The Buddha has said that a disciple shows him the most honor by practicing his Teaching.”
“Ah, that is very wise. Very wise.”
Emboldened by that I enquired of him, “What was it you were doing just before? It looked as if you were praying.”
“Yes, reverend. That’s just what I was doing. I was praying. Why? Don’t you?”
“No, I never pray.”
“Really? I always pray.”
“Oh? Who do you pray to?”
“Why, to myself, of course,” he replied with surprise, and I took my leave of him.
In Calcutta I’d given money and possessions to drowning beggars. Here, however, the pious were drowning in a sea of tradition. I had no ontological life raft to offer, so I went back to the hard wet ground beneath an unvenerated unprotected tree where, alone and undisturbed, I pondered the choices I was making.
This wasn’t the first aranya I’d stayed at on this carika and I realized by now that the Island Hermitage provided a unique service. It was the only place I’d found where I was left alone.
This place, for instance: in the middle of a hilly forest vastly more spacious than the Hermitage care had been taken so that all kutis were within both sight and sound of their neighbors. These monks believed in sharing their solitude. Care was taken so that all monks at all times had a perfectly definite task to do, preferably together.
Now, venerable, it’s time for gilampasa,” said the monk sent to fetch me off to afternoon tea, which included a piece of munchy brown palm sugar. By calling tea time “gilampasa” (Pali for “medicine”) they transformed it from a snack to a therapy, allowable at any hour, and we all trooped to the danasala each afternoon to take the cure.
Gilampasa was furnished by the dayakas. Each afternoon a new group arrived, an extended family of a dozen or more. They replaced the last group and were responsible in their turn for one set in an endless series of gilampasa-breakfast-danas. So we gathered in the danasala, where we sat through yet another in an endless series of pa๑ca silas and sermons (mercifully brief this time) and then, these dayakas having been welcomed, we each took our medicine and felt all better.
“Now, venerable, it’s time to bathe.” And we gathered at the well.
“Now, venerable, it’s time to gather flowers for worship.” And with little baskets we visited each flowering plant and harvested what we could as offerings for the Buddharupa.
“Now, venerable, it’s time for the worship.” And we all trooped to the shrine room where, with flowers, incense, statuary, bowing, and chanting, we honored the Buddharupa.
“Now, venerable, it’s time for bowing down.” And we all bowed to the senior monks and recited our lines asking for forgiveness.
“Now, venerable, it’s time for evening gilampasa.” And we each consumed another cup of tea, another piece of sugar.
“Now, venerable, it’s time to take rest.” And I was escorted to the kuti they provided for me where they left me alone at last with my thoughts.
“Now, venerable, it’s time for breakfast. And I was summoned to another day’s activities. Another walk to the danasala single file, silently. Another pa๑ca sila. Another sermon. Another meal.
For the dayakas it was an annual outing, a time for sermons and tradition, for remembering departed ancestors, a holiday with trimmings of piety. It was the Sinhalese version of the family reunion. I could hear them late into the night, singing songs as they prepared the next day’s food for the monks. For us, though, it was a daily event, part of the routine. After breakfast we swept up the sandy areas surrounding the kutis.
They were well-behaved, these ara๑๑a monks, Unlike many of the yellow-robed village monks I’d met, they were strictly traditional and traditionally strict. They had no luxurious sofas to lounge on while chewing pan or smoking beedies, listening to the radio, laughing over some bits of choice village gossip, indulging in pleasures of the senses while spurning those that came from solitude, lacking in self-control.
They showed me how they did things. Every phase of daily life was assumed to be more than I could manage without their help. My ignorance of the world was a foregone conclusion. I played along with this attitude and showed concern to do things properly, i.e. their way rather than mine. But sometimes I failed to understand them, or the necessity of their way wasn’t as obvious to me as to them, or their way grated on my own sense of propriety, and then I would have to make an extra effort to be accommodating, eager to show my eagerness.
They taught me how to draw water from the well, how to pour water from a basin, how to bathe myself, how to clean my teeth (they were opposed to tooth paste, using only willow sticks, which have an astringent taste), how to wash robes, how to dry both robes and bowl, how to wear the robes (though I thought that by now I had that, at least, figured out), how to turn the flame higher and lower on the lamp, how to fasten the window latch against brigands, how to light my way, when walking at night, by carrying a lamp, how to meditate (they said I wasn’t breathing properly: if I hadn’t figured out makeshift methods I might have suffocated long ago), how to wear sandals (as protection against snakes, they cautioned me), how to gather flowers for worship, and how to sweep the leaves.
Leaves were to be swept with the broom held right hand over left. They’d corrected me on that matter the first time I’d picked up the broom, and I reluctantly acquiesced. And they’d demonstrated, too, how, when done their way, the broom strokes formed a regular zig-zag design in the sand. Imperfections in my raking technique were pointed out to me with a maddeningly friendly attitude that contained no trace of the saving grace of condescension.
“Now, venerable, it’s time for sweeping.” And after sweeping around the kuti I swept leaves from the cankamana, which here was an unroofed length of sandy ground whose borders were lined with whitewashed rocks. At either end of the ambulatory were enormous and coldly comfortless cement meditation seats.
As I finished sweeping the length of it some monkeys in a tree overhead had a quarrel and both I and the just-swept ground were showered with large quantities of leaves, twigs, and monkey curses. By now I was tired of the zig-zag pattern I’d learned, so when I reswept the cankamana I tried some variations. I was getting into some slightly inventive wavy lines when, with a smile expressing infinite patience at my lack of understanding, a bhikkhu again demonstrated, in minute detail, how the sand was to be raked. There was only one proper pattern for sand to be raked in. All other designs were heretical. They would have no false patterns in their sandboxes, and I decided to leave.
The mapila hung from the third pillar. It had broad alternating bands of yellow and brown. I saw it as soon as I stepped onto the cankamana, to pace the roofed sandpath that served as walkway here.
We already knew each other, sort of, although our acquaintanceship was still short of the nodding stage. The snake had lived here longer than I, though, and I wasn’t about to intrude into its space. I hoped the feeling was mutual. Once I’d gone as close to it as I dared, yet it still gave not the slightest recognition of my presence. Perhaps we hadn’t been properly introduced.
When I’d tried some yoga on the cankamana, though, I’d found that it kept a careful eye on me. I was doing standing asanas; it was doing nothing. When I finished them I put my head on the ground, kicked gently with my feet, and stood on my head. I heard a plop behind me and managed to look around. The mapila was on the sandy ground. Whether it had jumped or fallen I didn’t know. It reared up full, as high as it could (it was maybe a two-footer), its head towards me. Although I’ve been told that snakes have no eyelids I could have sworn it blinked several times, hard, in astonishment. My headstand was evidently the damndest thing it had ever seen in its entire life. And then, perhaps afraid that my actions were aggressive, it turned tail (what creature can better turn tail than a snake?) and slithered away as fast as it could. I didn’t see it again that day.
It often disappeared for days at a time, though, only to reappear again, as it had now. It hung its head and about eight or ten inches more of itself over the edge of the roof-pillar, putting our eyeballs on about the same level. It waited, motionless.
It waited for a meal, if it could manage it, of a gecko, a small tan knob-toed lizard. Geckos lived as easily upside-down on the underside of the roof as on the walls and ground. I stood at one end of the cankamana debating whether to walk here or to seek a snake-free area when I saw that there were in fact two geckos on the sloping underside of the corrugated asbestos roof. Neither were yet near the mapila, but as I stood and watched a little drama unfolded.
One of the geckos began clucking softly in what seemed a throatier and more dulcet tone than the normal shrill clacking, whereupon the second gecko — whom I took to be the male — took heed, looked about, and located the first. He was in the neighborhood of the second pair of pillars; she, the fourth. Hanging from the leftward of the third pair of pillars was the mapila.
The male gecko, as if stalking prey, began moving towards the clucking female. The female stayed where she was. The mapila stirred ever so slightly, then froze, waiting. The he-gecko, with frequent scuttles and cautious pauses, moved on an erratic course. His eyes looked glazed. The female continued her siren-song. The mapila’s skin quivered slightly in anticipation as the gecko neared.
That part of my sympathies directed towards the geckos urged him to the right side of the ambulatory. It was obvious not only that he didn’t yet see the mapila but also that only interference would deter him from his objective, the she-gecko. I sat down against one of the end pillars so as not to interfere. I couldn’t help but be involved, but I wasn’t about to choose sides. I didn’t even want to be on my own side, whatever that was.
That part of my sympathies that was directed towards the mapila cautioned it to silent patience: already it had made several moves that would likely have betrayed its position to eyes less filled with lust and more with caution than those of the he-gecko.
The male passed the third set of pillars on the right side and the mapila had, clearly, no chance. The gecko was a good three feet away and, moreover, somewhat higher along the sloping ceiling than the snake on its pillar. He was past his unnoticed danger, and all would have been well for the geckos had not the female, now that the male was in close pursuit, decided to play coy. Just as the male approached her she waggled her tail, made an altogether new sound which immediately reminded me of the screech of a cat, and scuttled away, directly towards the snake. The male followed, right behind.
The mapila, in suddenly renewed anticipation, lifted his head a good inch off the pillar wall, then froze, poised. The she-gecko led the male on a zig-zag stop-and-go path, closer and closer to the mapila. I watched, fascinated. At the last moment, just as the snake tensed and hunched its head, ready to strike, the female stopped dead. She veered and ran at an angle that took her away from the snake, though still on the left side of the ceiling. The male followed. The snake, seeing its hopes fade, flattened its head against the pillar again.
The male gecko puffed out its neck and waddled towards the female in what I took to be a courtship ritual. She flicked her tail sensuously, like a cat, and edged away from him, clucking softly. Her sham evasiveness slowed down into a dance, sort of a four-step, and the male touched her, nose to nose. I was curious to see them mate. How did lizards get off?
He moved around to her tail, but she skittered off again and the chase was resumed. Was she being a tease? Had he been boorishly callous of her needs? Or was this just the way such business was conducted among geckos?
Their path took them now on another zig-zag course more or less towards the mapila. Clearly they hadn’t seen it even though it had been, I felt, excessively rash. Now it boldly lifted its head and was clearly intent upon striking at the first reasonable chance.
Perhaps it knew more than I about courtship rituals of geckos for I, had I been able to do so, would have advised it to wait: the geckos’ last pause left them still nearly two feet from the snake’s pillar, and at a difficult angle in the corrugation. Their next scuttle seemed likely (but not certain) to put them lower down on the underside of the sloping roof, closer to the edge, and perhaps at a more feasible angle as well. But the mapila, its hunger clearly greater than its patience, swung itself outwards. It leaped upwards just as the male gecko ran his body halfway up the tail of the female.
With a shriek the female tried to scurry off, but her tail was pinned by the male who, although he saw — at last! — the approaching danger, was unable to extricate himself from his awkward perch until it was too late. For an instant I thrilled at the danger the geckos were in, then realized that the snake had aimed poorly. Its path carried it a good three inches to one side of the lizards and also — it hadn’t heeded my advice, had it? — its jaws missed the level of the geckos by perhaps two inches. Its head flicked upwards vainly, jaws gaping.
Only after their danger was past did the geckos manage to extricate themselves from each other and scurry off in opposite directions. The mapila landed on the ground with a plop, recovered itself, and looked towards me. For sympathy? For encouragement or advice? Perhaps to see if it could find cause to blame me for its failure? Or just to make sure I was offering it no threat? Then it crawled off in the most dejected manner a snake is capable of, and disappeared into the jungle. Its every movement seemed to radiate anger, hunger, and thorough disgruntlement.
The geckos took separate shelter, badly scared, their amorous activities clearly at an end for now. I wondered if they would ever meet again, and if so whether they would remember the perils that awaited the incautious. Their dalliance in forgetfulness had nearly cost them one of their lives. Would they learn anything from the experience? Would the mapila? Would I?
Chapter Five (cont.) (ii) It was the only vihara around, and in this gloomy room where the monks slept en masse the lumpy four-poster I was shown to was the only bed left. I sat down on it and sorted through my bag. It was all in a mess again.
This was the only vihara for miles along this graveled road, an ancient spiritless building, very slowly gone to seed. In front of it was an even older stupa. Fifteen hundred years old, the resident monks claimed proudly; dating back to the time of Buddhaghosa the Commentator, and I’d tried for their benefit to be impressed, but had failed.
I sat back in bed and stared at the dusty canopy overhead, brown with age, torn from rot. Then I dug out my book from the bag, opened it, and read a paragraph.
“Then, Bahiya, you should train thus: ‘In the seen there shall be just the seen; in the heard there shall be just the heard; in the sensed there shall he just the sensed; in the cognized there shall be just the cognized.’ Thus, Bahiya, should you train yourself.
“When, Bahiya, for you in the seen there shall be just the seen, in the heard there shall be just the heard, in the sensed there shall be just the sensed, in the cognized there shall be just the cognized, then, Bahiya, you (will) not (be) that by which (tvam na tena); when, Bahiya, you (shall) not (be) that by which, then, Bahiya, you (shall) not (be) in that place (tvam na tattha); when, Bahiya, you (shall) not (be) in that place, then, Bahiya, you (will) neither (be) here nor yonder nor between the two: just this is the end of suffering.”
I put the notebook down. There was nothing there for me to chew on, to occupy myself with for a while. Only the same old platitudes about giving up, no diversions at all. I wasn’t inclined to try another dry paragraph, sawdust to a thirsty man.
I knew what I needed to do: sort out my stuff and organize it, make it easier to get at. My hopeless ideal was an arrangement where everything was on top.
I shuffled things about: put the towel on the nightstand; set the bowl on the towel; put the Thermos by the bowl; lean the umbrella against the wall; move the cloak to the bed; place the book on the table; put the candle on the towel; put the Thermos on the book; put the pocketknife in the bowl; put the bathing cloth … where? Back in the bag? Okay for now, but keep an eye out for a better place. Get unpacked; you’re here for the night; get settled in …
And I moved things from here to there, from there to here, until the space around me was criss-crossed with the trails I’d blazed. This territory was now known and explored. It was mine. What few possessions I had were distributed the way I’d chosen, and this area, so recently alien and uninviting, had now become my refuge, my shelter, my space.
I sat down beside a rock, beside the road, beside myself. What was I going to do? My feet hurt. I was tired of walking, tired of wandering, tired of this whole boring routine. I wanted it to end, and dreamt of the day when I would be back at the Hermitage, or some other cosmopolitan community, where there would be sufficient diversions so that I wouldn’t have to face each moment as if it were an eternity that I could never adequately fill.
Around me was nothing at all. Drought-parched bushes rose fifteen feet above me, dusty and unstirring in a dead and changeless atmosphere, taut with heat. This scrub jungle nearly encroached upon a straight motorable dirt-and-gravel road which gave no promise of any arrival, of any departure.
I sat down in an insufficient patch of shade. The sky was forbiddingly guarded by a sun which dominated. The umbrella was scant protection.
I asked myself: what was I going to do? But no suggestion offered itself, like a well to the thirsty, to my attention. My options were limited. I could sit there with no diversions at all and face the endless monotony of an endlessly monotonous world, or I could superimpose variety by making distinctions, by doing something.
My feet hurt. I had all day to travel the few remaining miles to the vihara where I planned to put up for the night. Walking had become ponderous drudgery. But the prospect of doing nothing appalled me. Anything was better than the oblivion of inactivity. I got up and, lacking option, walked on.
The only village, a good half hour walk along narrow footpaths, consisted of perhaps a dozen wattle huts. Walls cracked and crumbling, roofs of tar paper and cajan (plaited coconut fronds), they were scattered about on small patches of field won from the surrounding jungle. Everything about this village seemed tenuous, as if it were only barely holding its own against the patiently pressing encroachment of creeper and bush. The women — I saw no men about — all seemed to be pregnant. Their poverty was carried with the same stolid acceptance as were their pregnancies, as if every expenditure of energy only put them further into debt.
As I stood before one of these houses on pindapata, hoping for some foodscraps, a starving dog with patches of hairless skin edged up and sniffed cautiously at my ankle. Behind me someone threw a rock at it and it ran off howling and yelping in pain and terror, although the rook had missed it entirely and clattered harmlessly upon a patch of gravel.
A turkey cock in amorous feathers strutted by, hooting softly. His wings, tautly aflutter, fanned out and brushed the ground. His distended crop, normally sky-blue, turned red as I watched, though I saw no hen for him to woo.
In this village I felt like an intruder. A boy led me from house to house lest I lose my way among the pathways that meandered around fields of vegetables and rice paddy. These people could obviously not support me. It would be better if tomorrow I were to go to the danasala of the ara๑๑a, even if that was a considerably longer walk. They’d be happy to feed me there. Now at each house some little bit of food was spared me until the almsbowl was sufficiently full for me to return to the cave where I stayed, more or less.
It wasn’t really a cave, not the way one thinks of caves: deep tunnels of utter darkness, silent save for the occasional water drop echoing enormously. This cave was formed from the overhang of one gargantuan boulder atop another, and it had been improved upon. Boulders formed roof and two walls. Two mud walls had been built. The resulting room was more or less protected from the wind. The construction, involving cement lattice-work windows, was of recent date. Much older was the drip-ledge, a carefully chiseled groove running along the lip of the roof-rock so that water would drip to the ground rather than run down the sloping underside of the rock. I’d seen how, in recently-built caves at the ara๑๑a, they’d made drip-ledges with cement, disdaining the chisel.
When I’d told the monks at the ara๑๑a of my intention to stay at this cave by myself for a bit they’d opposed the idea on the grounds that I’d have to do without gilampasa. I suspected that their opposition went deeper than a lack of tea, but I’d smiled and assured them that I didn’t need such medication. Nonetheless, the samanera who’d shown me the way here had brought a supply of tea leaves, sugar, and kerosene as well as a kettle and a lantern, so I was well-provisioned.
This cave, if I wanted to believe my guide, had been shelter for many a monk and recluse and even — I was told — a home long ago to arahats. And he’d pointed out how the ceiling still bore faintly discernible marks of ancient artistry.
Looking carefully at the underside of that vast roof-rock I could detect the remains of ancient efforts. Here was a hand — or was it some monstrous foot? — and there some other indeterminate but artistic lines that defined nothing save their age. I could discern the purposeful hand but could perceive only scattered details, not the overall plan. So perhaps it was true that the cave had been inhabited, off and on, for several thousand years and — who knows? — perhaps by arahats.
At present, though, there were no arahats living here; only a young monk who was apprehensive about being so alone, so remote, atop a hill which, he suspected, was also home to a bear. I was determined to stay there long enough, though, so that I wouldn’t feel I’d been scared off, distinguishing carefully between being scared and being scared off.
There were no arahats living in the cave, but I shared it with a family of chipmunks who lived atop the front wall, near the drip-ledge, and who didn’t hesitate to let me know they didn’t appreciate my company. As soon as I entered the cave they yipped at me until they tired of it. Then the smaller ones began to become curious about me. They edged towards me, tails flicking, quivering noses extended, nearly on tiptoes. A larger chipmunk — the mother, I assumed — kept a distance and yipped merciless curses or warnings or encouragement or merely excitement, I didn’t know which, while I rearranged my robes and prepared my dana.
Taking the almsbowl, I stepped outside to eat in the clearing in front of the cave. Like the surrounding jungle, the cave smelled slightly steamy, slightly moldy. Decay was as evident as growth. I dipped a pitcher into the half-filled rainbarrel which was the only source of water I’d discovered. I didn’t know how it might get filled up again.
The monkeys were there, of course. When they saw me several of them climbed up onto a rock, where they perched like gargoyles, radiating expectancy, waiting for a cut of the goodies.
The bowl contained packets of offerings, each wrapped in a banana leaf or scrap of newspaper. I unwrapped packages of polished rice, some sort of curry, a few bananas, and a plastic bag with a bit of dahl. I also found that not all the newspaper scraps were in the ornate curlicues of Sinhalese script. Several of them were from the Daily Mirror or one of the other English-language papers.
At the Hermitage a newspaper had been available daily if I’d ever wanted to see one, but I never had. These bits of paper, though, were different. I read them avidly, even when they reported the most boringly obscure local events, soccer scores, or the daily transactions of the Ceylon Tea Board. They were little peepholes into the world I’d given up, illuminating bits of random data. They were not so much news as clues, and now I read a detailed item on the proceedings of the Civil Court in Kandy Assizes with a sort of archeological interest while I pushed food into my mouth mindlessly.
The monkeys edged closer. The young ones, not yet fully coated with hair, sat naked and wide-eyed with nervous mouths beside their mothers. When I’d eaten I scattered rice about and watched the monkeys stuff their mouths as fast as they could, not missing a grain. A squabble broke out and there was a brief snarling and baring of wicked-looking fangs, then it ended as quickly as it had begun. Several times a tail flipped up and one of the monkeys emptied his bowels without ceasing to fill his mouth.
I scattered food closer and closer to where I sat. The monkeys edged closer to me, glancing up from the ground more frequently, making sure I wasn’t doing anything unexpected, until one of them was close enough for me to touch him.
I did. As he gathered rice I reached down and touched the course brown fur of his back. He leaped away, baring his fangs, screeching angrily, badly frightened. I knew they didn’t like being touched. The other monkeys shuffled uneasily, disturbed by the screeching, prepared to flee but reluctant to abandon the food. Ripples of emotion spread out to the younger monkeys who hovered near the outer edge of the group, snatching up the occasional grains that fell their way. They edged closer to the jungle, ready to flee at the next screech. Then as they saw order restored in the inner circle and the outraged monkey warily resumed his gobbling, giving me dirty looks, the younger ones too settled down and the crisis was past.
The plastic bag which had held the dahl wasn’t quite empty. I held it out. One of the monkeys steeled himself to reach out and take it from my hand, examining my face all the while for aggression. As soon as he had it he backed off to the edge of the clearing, where he sniffled at it curiously. He licked the outside of the bag and looked greatly puzzled to learn that it wasn’t edible. After several attempts he finally discovered the opening, but still didn’t discover the idea of reaching in with a hand. Instead he licked first around the opening, then went in face-first, all the while trying to watch me, of whom he was suspicious, and the other monkeys, of whom he was even more suspicious. He glanced towards the jungle, unsure perhaps whether to take his booty to the greater shelter it offered or to stay where he was, hoping for more. Finally he took a deep breath, stuck his pink face all the way into the bag, took a greedy sloppy lick, and pulled the bag off to look around, his tongue circling his mouth, licking the yellow mess off his face.
I laughed and he leaped backwards, his eyes wide and lips taut, prepared to defend himself should I attack. I’d forgotten that what was laughter to me was a baring of fangs to monkeys, and I confined mirth to an inward chuckle.
I watched one of the females. She was bent over, picking up rice-grains with both hands as fast as she could: red-faced, black-eared, auburn-furred, her teats hung down her chest like two empty sausage casings. Suddenly the male leader cackled loudly and bounded over to her. He got behind her upturned rump, yanked her tail high, leaped on her, his toes holding onto her legs from the rear, his hands holding her tail aside, and he thrust furiously into her for perhaps four seconds. Then he hopped off his perch, took a few steps aside, sat down on the ground, ignored both the rice and his paramour, and picked globules of sperm off his tiny penis and ate them. The female at no time paid any heed to her lover’s wooings, and never paused in her gathering of rice.
For months afterwards every sexual image that came to mind was broken at once of its allure by the memory of that impersonal and gross display of monkeyfucking. Besides, I thought she was the ugliest one of the lot.
When the rice was eaten I washed out the bowl, being sparing of water, and dried it with my towel. Much of the black coating inside the bowl was gone now — eaten away by the powerful chilies that flavored so much food in Ceylon — and the metal rusted quickly now if I didn’t keep it completely dry. Renewing the protective coating seemed to be a laborious affair involving days of baking on repeated applications of a mixture based in linseed oil, and I was more inclined to put up with this bowl until the time came for me to become a bhikkhu by taking upasampada, the higher ordination. At that time I would be given a new bowl as well as new robes and a new name — a name beginning with “๑ana.”
“Vinayadhara” was too polemical. Upasampada would be my chance. I wanted to be entitled to partake of the stricter training-rules the bhikkhus lived by, and to follow that line of growth. I didn’t like the idea of watching others grow in the Dhamma (and in seniority) while I lingered behind, still only a samanera.
I put the bowl on the shelf I’d fashioned, then paced the length of the cave, not being mindful. Meditation was so repetitive, so inactive, so insufficient to my needs, that the mind cast about for an alternative. Something new; something absorbing; something to do.
The cave offered no prospects, so I took a sitting cloth and went for a walk. The monkeys were nearby, but they showed no interest in me: I offered no food. They groomed each other. Combing through the thick auburn hair, they picked at one another’s skin, occasionally popping some small discovery into their mouths. I had neither hair to comb nor comb to comb it with, for that had been flushed down the toilet.
All was quiet save for one bird and a slow distant moan that was the wind brushing the top of the hill. Near the top I wended my way over, around and under an intricate labyrinth of rocks and came out on a ledge which was otherwise inaccessible, looking down a precipitous prospect. On the ledge were a few gnarled trees and a rocky outcropping which had once been a habitable cave. Now it was occupied, by day, by bats. There was guano six inches deep on the floor and the cave stank to hell, simply terrible. There were about a dozen caves on this hill and all save the one I used were in similar condition. In one of them there was a hollowed oval in the bat dung, and powdery traces, like pawprints. It was these that made me suspect the presence, on occasion, of a bear.
Near the edge of the hill a natural concavity in the rock formed a perfect seat, complete with backrest. I spread out the sitting cloth and settled back, looking out.
Before me, a thin line beneath the sky, was the distant sea, sharp and bright. Behind me, a thin line above the land, were the massifs of Upcountry, vague and dark. Below me, the flat greens and browns of the sparse jungle were broken here and there by irregularly-shaped fields where villagers tended scant paddy. Beside a waterhole a diminutive figure raised some bit of cloth into the air and slapped it down onto a flat laundry rock. Just as she raised the cloth above her head the sound of the slap reached me. The disjunction between the two separate senses made my sense of reality itch, and I idly scratched at it with rationales about “the speed of sound” and other bits of jargon: as if it were more important to explain a dysfunction than to observe it; as if understanding were a matter of explanation rather than perception.
The experience simply was: colored shapes, sounds, movements, patterns. I injected into it an explanation, a meaning, and infected its vacuous core with a significance, a heart. Without that it was of no importance. What was important was the difficulty I seemed to have in accepting the unimportance of it, of me, of this world. I kept wanting something to happen. I kept fearing it might. I kept seeking something to distract me from the depressing perception that whatever happened was still the same old stuff, endlessly repeated.
Close by birds darted about, catching the incessant wind in arrowed wings, disappearing like sparks. I looked outwards over bleak jungle to the vague markings on my horizon.
It wasn’t just that it was the same old stuff, endlessly repeated: it was that it was in itself so uncommunicative, never revealing in itself any meaning or purpose or essence, leaving it always and ever for me to invest in it — tiresome proposal — a function or an end.
None of it sufficed: the world had been insufficient to me as a layman and the world was insufficient to me now. It could never fill me more than briefly; yet what I sought was something so satiating as to eliminate the possibility of ever being hungry again.
It was necessary, so the Suttas told me, to reduce my appetite for a world that was more aroma than substance, in which I kept seeking a promise of fulfillment that was never given, only hinted at. But the world I gazed out on was a drab and barren world, a world devoid of the seductive perfumes with which the mind tried to anoint it.
Something to do: that’s what was needed. My eyes roamed about, seeking anything which the gaze could seize upon. Ears, nose, body, mind, all were prowling, hunting as the bear or leopard. I kept waiting for something to happen.
You’re being absurd, I told myself. Everything is already happening. Nothing is ever going to happen. The only thing that is happening is your waiting for something to happen. Stop waiting for something to happen and everything will.
And then I caught myself waiting for the not-waiting to happen, and didn’t see any way in which I could make the not-waiting a fact instead of an explanation. Another proof of the impossibility of renunciation.
Something to do. Being requires activity. My existence was different from the existence of, say, a rock. The rock simply was, all the time, and never had to do anything to achieve its rockness. But whatever I was I was because I chose to be it. I played the part. I played with the part. I played in the part. I was dependent upon the part, and so my identity was always contingent upon my involvement with, and in, things. I didn’t know how to free myself from being a character in my own book, for a minute with nothing to do was a minute of death.
Chapter Five (cont.)- (iii) The eerie whine which rose about me was pervasive: it not only came from all directions at once but also from all distances at once, so that the ears were confused. I could only hear the noise, I couldn’t placeit. It was something like the whine of power lines, although there were no such lines nearby. But if I looked carefully into the scrub brush that grew in this sandy soil I could see mosquitoes stirring and understood that it was their collective evening song, their pirith.
I climbed over the small sandridge that separated the fields of scrub brush from the beach and stepped down towards the sea. I walked mostly along the shoreline, where the hardpacked sand made for easier going. My footprints formed tiny pools of water which were rounded and smoothed by the first wave to reach them and obliterated by the next. The breeze coming in off the ocean obliged me to hold the robes together lest they flap about like sheets on a clothesline. I carried the outer cloak, folded, slung over my shoulder.
The mosquitoes were right: it was evening. The sun was already half dissolved in the ocean, its top half reflected, distorted in a gently rolling sea. Silhouetted against the sun was a steamship sailing the horizon, bound perhaps for Thailand, Singapore, Australia, or other distant ports. I sat on the beach and watched as streaks of cloud, smears on a pale heaven, took on the rapidly changing colors that were the brief twilights we had.
There were plenty of old leafless coconut fronds lying about on the beach. I planted the narrow end of one firmly in the sand and used the broad end as a backrest. It was springy and I could rock slightly. Little sand insects, disturbed, leaped about. Where the robes didn’t cover they tickled until they settled again. They didn’t bite. Like mosquitoes, they were night creatures.
Down the beach was a fishing village where men were pushing their long narrow outrigged dugouts down the sand into the sea, two men to a boat. Once afloat the men rowed out past the jetties, then set sail for deep water. Against the already darkening sky the most distant of the boats, near the horizon, was visible only as a bobbing lantern.
The boat, the men, the bait and tackle, their dinners, their thoughts, an entire cosmos of specifics, were assumed, concentrated like a bouillon cube, in that single distant point of light which was hidden half the time by waves. Each speck of bobbing yellowish light on the horizon meant two lives which, shortly after sunrise, I could see reconstituted, like lemon juice, as they sailed back home, where a small truck waited to collect their catches.
‘Sumana was around somewhere, probably meditating. That’s what I should be doing too. I moved my legs into the lotus position. I’d spent the day mindlessly enough. Let the night, at least, be put to good use.
Daylight hours were devoted to scholarship. We’d agreed, ‘Sumana and I, to prepare an edition of Ven. Ņanavira’s writings and try to have it published. Sunlight hours were spent now copying, correcting, comparing, collating, assembling with scholarly diligence pages which were devoted in part to pointing out the futility and sterility of such labors (… modern scholarship is inauthenticity in its most virulent form …).
I was aware of the discrepancy, but managed to ignore it by keeping busy. At last I had something to do. I’d found the task of re-arranging a teaching of giving up tasks, of playing with a practice whose goal was kammanirodha, the ceasing of action. I involved myself with writing about the Uninvolved. And I filled myself with it.
After all the tension and high energy of carika, where time had been structured less than I could tolerate, it was a relief now to have a definite activity with a definite goal. I luxuriated in it and held onto it and kept at it even when my eyes wearied and my head began to ache dully. Even that was preferable to that incessant vertiginous view gained on carika of a world that was indifferent, which I couldn’t control, and which didn’t even mock my efforts to possess it.
Each evening, when shadows lengthened and the sun grew less intense, we put aside our literary labors and left the cajan hut. The hut was a simple roof without walls where we sheltered from the sun; it was no protection from the mosquitoes that each evening invaded the land which lay behind the windbreak of the dunes. I’d tried working one night, but the lamplight had attracted so many mosquitoes I’d been driven off. Now each evening we went our separate ways. I wandered around the area or sat meditating until, wearied, I fell asleep to wake, at first dawn, with the world. We seldom met after sunset, both of us needing, or wanting to need, solitude.
It wasn’t just to repay a debt of gratitude that we were interested in seeing the letters published. We’d discussed our motives when we’d decided to involve ourselves.
“It’s not really what a monk is supposed to be doing, all this paper work and editing.”
“No, of course not. A monk who hasn’t attained to view should be meditating.”
“Even so, I can see lots of reasons for doing this.”
“So can I.”
“There’s only, what? Six copies of the letters now? And all the copies of Notes on Dhamma have been distributed.”
“Sometimes Westerners come through. It would be nice if they could get off on this.”
“It would be helpful for us, too, to have some other interested people around. We could give each other support when it is needed.”
“The letters are a bridge to the Suttas.”
“They put the Dhamma in the context of contemporary Western ideas and make it more accessible.”
“I’ve learned a lot about the ideas that I’ve always accepted uncritically before. And about existentialism.”
“This is the best time to get it done, because in a few years we’ll both be so involved in meditation we won’t have the capacity for this sort of work. It’s now, when we still have a heavy activity-habit to kick, that we can take on the burden of this task.”
“It’s not a burden for me. I enjoy editorial work.”
So we’d continued, editing by day, meditating by night.
I opened my eyes and looked around. The moon, just past full, was rising over the coconut estate. It was yellow and fat. In its light the stars paled. I sat quietly for a while. When I looked at the sky I saw the stars not as a curved sheet but as a three-dimensional network, which disoriented me. I composed a haiku:
I knew a man who couldn’t name a single star, yet he could see them.
And after I’d settled on the wording I absent-mindedly wondered what to call it.
When I’d sat as long as I cared to I got up and continued down the beach.
At the fishing village a few boys sat around a fire drinking tea. The men were out fishing. Their village consisted of a half-dozen cane-and-cajan Quonset-shaped dwellings, sand-floored, open at the front. Daytime, while the men slept, the boys cleaned fish and hung them on racks to dry. The beach was kept spotless. Neither litter nor fish scales lay about to attract quarrelsome gulls. These people lived in peace with their surroundings and disturbed nobody. They were Moors.
I took a way that led around the dwellings. It wasn’t just that it was improper for a monk to be in a village at night; also I didn’t want my mood to be punctured by the courtesies, offers of tea, sociableness and conversation I knew they would extend to me if I walked by. I didn’t want any of that now. Now that I was getting sufficient stimulation in the daytime I was better prepared to spend my nights in solitude undisturbed by anything outside myself. Being friendly and being sociable were two different things, and even between ‘Sumana and me we tried, not always successfully, to limit our talk to Dhamma.
At the landward end of one jetty was a grassy knoll, kept close-cropped by cattle. As I approached, a cow looked up, took fright, and trotted off. A few stands of cactus — the kind the Israelis call sabra — perfectly offset the two huge boulders which forced a windbreak on the knoll. Both boulders were flat on top, and I saw ‘Sumana atop one of them. He was facing seawards, meditating, and I left him undisturbed.
I sat down and leaned up against the other boulder. A night bird flapped past, hooting as it flew. Muffled, echoed, and distorted by the cliff and the sea breeze, the crash of breakers established a rhythm of sorts.
I looked about me. I listened. In the semi-darkness there were no colors, only shapes in different tones of gray. The percept which I called “boulder,” opposite me, glinted slightly; it was differing tones of light gray. The sounds which I called “breaker” continued sounding. The identities, “boulder,” “breaker,” were my own invention: the identities inhered not in the objects but in my consciousness. My relationship to those identities normally overrode my relationship to the things themselves which, obscured behind the mask of familiarity, were barely noticed at all. What was usually noticed was not a “gray shape” but a “boulder,” which was a different thing altogether, a thing which had other qualities besides “grayness” and “shape,” a thing which was for something (“for leaning against,” “for breaking the seabreeze,” “for me”) whereas the “gray shape” wasn’t for anything, and was thereby much more a thing in itself.
All that could be heard were sounds; all that could be felt were feelings; all that could be seen were colored shapes. I chose to associate sounds and shapes, to imbue them with some fullness of being greater than I could know them to possess, and called them “hooting owl” or “crashing waves,” and thought that by that identification I had located myself.