Chapter 6 Chapter Six (i) … the Auspicious One addressed the monks:
“Monks, the world burns. And how does the world burn? The eye burns, matter burns, eye-consciousness burns, perceptions perceived by the eye burn, and whatever feeling arises, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral dependent upon perceptions perceived by the eye, that too burns. And with what do they burn? They burn with passion, I declare; they burn with hatred; they burn with confusion; they burn with birth, decay, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair.
“Monks, the ear burns … “Monks, the nose burns … “Monks, the tongue burns … “Monks, the body burns … “Monks, the mind burns, ideas burn, mind-consciousness burns, perceptions perceived by the mind burn, and whatever feeling arises, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral dependent upon perceptions perceived by the mind, that too burns. And with what do they burn? They burn with passion, I declare; they burn with hatred; they burn with confusion; they burn with birth, decay, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair.
“Monks, perceiving this the noble disciple conceives aversion for the eye, conceives aversion for matter, conceives aversion for eye-consciousness, conceives aversion for perceptions perceived by the eye, and for whatever feeling, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, arisen dependent upon perceptions perceived by the eye, for that too he conceives aversion.
“The noble disciple conceives aversion for the ear … “The noble disciple conceives aversion for the nose … “The noble disciple conceives aversion for the tongue … “The noble disciple conceives aversion for the body …
“The noble disciple conceives aversion for the mind, conceives aversion for ideas, conceives aversion for mind-consciousness, conceives aversion for perceptions perceived by the mind, and for whatever feeling, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, arisen dependent upon perceptions perceived by the mind, for that too he conceives aversion.
“And in conceiving this aversion he becomes rid of passion, and by the absence of passion he becomes liberated, and when he is liberated there comes the knowledge that he is liberated, and he knows that birth is finished, that he has lived the spiritual life, done what is to be done, there is no more returning to this world …”
From the Adittapariyaya Sutta, The Discourse on the Fundamentals of Burning S.iv,168; Vin.1,34
“Hello, V. Just back, are you?”
“Yes. I just said hello to the Mahathera and came up here. How’ve you been, Crackers?”
I came in and set down the crate and baggage. Crackers bowed down. I was used to being bowed to by Sinhalese laypeople: that was part of the life here. But I still felt strange when a fellow Westerner bowed to me, just as strange as I’d felt when, at ‘Sumana’s place, I was the bower and he the bowee.
I looked around. After these months of absence the kuti felt not quite familiar, and my eyes touched the walls and contents, re-establishing contacts.
“It was good to use the kuti while you were gone, V. I’ll move back to my place after dana if that’s okay.”
“Of course. No hurry.”
“It’s a nice kuti. I’m sorry to leave it.”
The place was recently built. The decrepit kuti Crackers had been assigned to was tiny and cold, and there was no prospect any of the nicer housing would soon be vacant.
“Sabbe sankhara anicca.” All conditions are impermanent.
“How’d you get back here at this time of morning?”
“By bailing as fast as I could.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to stay afloat.”
“This fisherman came by in his canoe and offered me a ride across the lagoon.”
“So you took it?”
“I figured it was a lot better than waiting around the landing point for Piyadassi this evening. But when we were halfway across and taking on water fast I wasn’t so sure. You ever been in one?”
“No. But I hear them at night, when the fishermen slap the water with their paddles. That can really bust up a meditation session.”
“Not nearly as much as when one of them uses a stick of dynamite. That’s as devastating to meditation as it is to fish.”
“What’s a fishing boat like to ride in?”
“It’s long enough, all right, but it lacks something in width. It’s so narrow you can’t put your feet side by side. There’s only room for one foot in front of the other.”
“I think I’d try to straddle it.”
“I did try that, letting my feet dangle in the water. But I guess that’s not the sort of thing monks do around here, because the fisherman told me to stay in the boat.”
“It had a leak, did it?”
“It’s made from a dugout log. It’s got these planks that are joined to the log, raising the freeboard. And it’s got a lashed-on outrigger. Otherwise it’s just your basic dugout log. But my extra weight put the waterline above the joint of the log and sideboard. We wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t found half a coconut shell and bailed like mad.”
“That would have been funny, if you’d had to swim back to the Island.”
“It wouldn’t have been funny at all. I could swim back, but that crate couldn’t. And it’s got most of the originals of Ven. Ņanavira’s letters and a valuable typescript too.”
“Ņanavira’s letters? From all I’ve heard of them I’ll be glad to have a look.”
“Just remember that you owe your chance to see them to half a coconut shell.”
“Bhante, I hear the upasampada is set for the next full moon.”
“That’s right, Vinayadhara. Is that too soon for you?”
“Why do you ask that? Do you think I’m rushing things? Do you think I should wait before taking the higher ordination?”
“I didn’t say that. If I thought that I wouldn’t have agreed to give you upasampada. I just asked if it was too soon for you.”
“I want to be a bhikkhu. I’ve been a samanera a year and a half. That’s long enough. I’m ready for it. I think all of us are.” Also being given the higher ordination were three other samaneras, an East European, an Indian, and a Sinhalese; very international. There would be only one samanera left.
“A year and a half isn’t as long as you think.” He’d been a bhikkhu for over forty years. “But it’s long enough to prepare you for the bhikkhu’s life.”
“Do you think I need any more preparation for upasampada?”
“You mean you want to know what things you’ll have to memorize for the ordination ceremony?”
“No, of course not, bhante. I know that.” I had several typed sheets containing all the formularies I’d need at the ordination and afterwards, as a bhikkhu. There wasn’t much. “No, I want to know what more I might do to prepare myself for life as a bhikkhu, after upasampada.”
He nodded and made a sort of throaty hmm, as if to say, “I understand your question. It’s a good one, and I’ll make an effort to give you a good answer.” I nodded into the silence and then sat, quiet but uncomfortable, my mind flitting aimlessly while my question, stranded in doubtful terrain, waited for directions, for an answer.
“How do you feel about this step you’ll be taking?”
“It’s just part of the monk’s life, bhante, to go from samanera to bhikkhu.”
“That sounds quite confident. You don’t have any doubts about doing this, then?”
Doubts? I wasn’t sure whether I had doubts, but I was quite sure I didn’t want to have any, so, “No, bhante, I don’t have any doubts,” I said.
“I see. Some do and some don’t. Some have a lot of doubts and some have few doubts. Some have doubts about themselves, some have doubts about the Dhamma. All kinds of people take to this Teaching. Some have doubts they don’t want to face.”
“Oh?” Was that a pointed remark? “What sort of doubts did you have, bhante, when you were ordained?”
“Me? Oh, mostly about my family. I wasn’t sure it was the best thing, because they expected me to care for the family estate.”
“What do you think now?”
He smiled. “People have all kinds of doubts. Especially Europeans and Americans. Sometimes they worry that they’re monks from pride; sometimes they’re seeking higher status, all sorts of ego things. Maybe they suppress their real reasons. There’s all sorts of lower reasons for seeking the higher life. I’ve seen some become bhikkhus just because they wanted to prove how good they were, or how much they could endure. They were all so sure of themselves.” He shook his head sadly. “You see, it’s so easy to fool yourself about why you’re doing this. I’ve seen it happen so many times already.”
“And what happened to the people who fooled themselves about taking the higher ordination?”
“They disrobed, most of them. One or two of them may have stopped fooling themselves. A few kept up the charade and stayed in robes anyway; but mostly they disrobed. They stayed around for a year, or two, or three, but eventually they went back to the lay life.”
“That’s a big thing, bhante, to disrobe. The Buddha warned about the dangers of disrobing. But did he ever give warnings about the dangers of ordination?”
“I don’t know.” The Mahathera didn’t discuss Suttas. He discussed existing situations.
“Actually, I don’t expect my life to change much after upasampada.Here at the Hermitage there’s not that much difference between samaneras and bhikkhus, is there?”
“Then why are you so anxious for the higher ordination, if there’s not much difference?”
“It’s not so much the higher ordination that’s important to me, bhante. It’s taking ordination at the Hermitage.” I’d already started to consider what name I would choose as an outward sign of my altered position. Ņana-something. It wasn’t so much the alteration from samanera to bhikkhu that mattered as that of becoming one who fully belonged at the Hermitage, no longer in the more tenuous position of an adoptee.
“Have you heard yet from your teacher?”
“Yes, bhante. That was the letter that came last night.” I’d written to Calcutta to ask permission both to take higher ordination and to take a new teacher, as I’d been instructed by the Mahathera, who wouldn’t ordain me without it. I’d been surprised how difficult it had been to ask that permission. “Everything’s set. Ven. Dharmapal gives his approval.”
“There’s another solution,” the Mahathera observed, “beside taking upasampada, if all you want is ordination here. You could disrobe, and then I could re-ordain you as a samanera again. You could take a new name, if that’s your goal.”
I was shocked. Was he going to refuse permission for the higher ordination after all? “What do you mean, bhante? I want to be a bhikkhu. I’d rather be a bhikkhu than a samanera.”
“Since you don’t see much difference between them, why?”
“Maybe there’s more difference than I know about. How can I say when I haven’t been a bhikkhu yet?”
“If you want to be a bhikkhu there must be some difference you’re hoping to find. There must be some dissatisfaction with life as a samanera to make you want to change. Now, I’m not asking you to tell me anything about that if you don’t want to. But if it’s dissatisfaction that’s making you want to stop being a samanera, then maybe there are dissatisfactions that will make you want to stop being a bhikkhu, too. I want you tothink about it, and decide for yourself why you want to be a bhikkhu instead of a samanera.”
I felt uncomfortable, being challenged like that. The Mahathera often seemed ready to show me more of myself than I cared to see.
“Okay, bhante, I’ll think about it. I really will,” I promised, to end that uncomfortable topic. I didn’t need to think about it: I knew. Being a samanera was no longer sufficient. At first it had been too much; now it wasn’t enough. Keeping vigilance was wearying, while crossing the sea of desire. I expected to find buoyancy in the discipline and obligations of the bhikkhu’s life.
“You can’t be too sure of yourself, Vinayadhara. I hope you understand that if you follow this path at all you do so with earnestness instead of complacency. It’s not an easy life. There are difficulties; you’ve already learned that.”
I’d questioned him once before about how to deal with arisen sexual yearnings. He’d advised cold bathing, leaf raking, and asubhasaņņa, perception of the foul.
“And if your effort is anything less than total,” he continued, “it won’t be enough to overcome the delusions and temptations that will assail you and make you lose sight of majjhima patipada, the middle way.”
“Bhante, what about my question?”
“Your question?”
“How to prepare myself for the bhikkhu’s life?”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been discussing?”
“Is it?”
He looked at me a moment, searchingly, then relented.
“First of all, comes your sila. It’s the foundation for the whole of this Dhamma. Without being firmly based in good conduct, that concentration should come to growth and maturity, such a thing isn’t possible. As a bhikkhu you’ll live restrained by the restraints of the Patimokkha” — the major rules incumbent upon bhikkhus — “and you don’t want to establish a false relationship to it. You should live seeing danger in the slightest fault. Even the least rule is to be observed. Decide for yourself whether keeping the precepts is what you really want.”
I wasn’t sure whether keeping the precepts was what I wanted, but I was sure I wanted it to be what I wanted. What I really wanted was to put an end to the question, “What should I do?” and I hoped the Patimokkha would aid me.
I listened to the Mahathera attentively as he spoke of the advantages of restraint, of renunciation, of dispassion and harmlessness, and the perils of pride, falseness, attachment and aversion. That was better than having my motives challenged. I’d found a question — little did I really care about the answer — that gave me an excuse to disturb the Mahathera’s solitude, to pass the time with shop talk and to find comfort in good advice.
But his good advice was no more comforting than his challenge that I examine my motives, and I realized that I’d come calling on the Mahathera not with a “good question” — “What should I do to prepare myself for the bhikkhu’s life?” — but with an ego-trip in hand. Did he suspect, as I did, that the real purpose of my visit was to be comforted and re-assured that I was really doing the right thing by becoming a bhikkhu?
“Bhante,” I said when I was prepared to leave, “do you think, then, that I’m rushing things? Should I wait and postpone upasampada? Am I trying to go too fast?”
“Go fast or go slow, as you like, Vinayadhara, but go carefully.”
At the upasampada I docilely did what was expected of me, said what was expected of me, and didn’t think much about what was being made of the event. I felt whimsical. I accepted the visitors who flocked to the Hermitage (relatives and friends, mostly, of the Sinhalese who was part of our group of ordainees). I accepted the rituals, the formalities, the obligations and responsibilities without question. I accepted, along with a new almsbowl and new robes, a new name, Ņanasuci. Suci, the dictionary told me, meant purity. Knowledge of purity. I was happy to be a “Ņana,” one of that lineage. In a separate ceremony Crackers was ordained as a samanera and given a new name.
“How do you feel about having a new name, Ņanasuci?”
“It’s no big deal to me.”
But I agreed when I was asked, “Just a little deal, then?”
“You should have become Ņanacrackers,” I said. “Then I could still call you Crackers.”
“You still can.”
Dear V [‘Sumana wrote],
Congratulations on becoming a ‘bhikkhu.’ Even though your name is now changed “officially,” i.e. official like on the outside of envelopes, etc. (ha, ha!) inside the envelope you’ll continue to be V.
And so I did.
Chapter Six (cont.) (ii) On new and full moon days bhikkhus met in the chapter house for a review of the Patimokkha, preceded by a confession of faults. The room beneath the library had been set aside for meetings of the Sangha. We met there in the afternoon, several hours after dana. So on the new moon following the upasampada I returned after dana to my kuti and privately read through the copy of the Patimokkha that had been given me. I wanted to discover what might need to be confessed.
For one thing there had been the bushes. One evening after pirith, when returning along the narrow path that led to my hut, some branches had brushed against my face. Without considering, I’d reached out and snapped them back. There’d been no need to do that. I could have pushed them aside, or even just let them be. They weren’t in my way any more than I was in theirs. But I’d snapped the branches back and left them hanging by a few threads of bark. Already the leaves were withered, evidence of my transgression. In damaging plants there is a case involving expiation: number 11 of the category pacittiya dhamma.
Just as bad: I’d taken life. Those damned mosquitoes. There was the one at the well, and that other one I’d slapped at during pirith. Both of those had been intentional: they counted. Should any bhikkhu purposely deprive a living thing of life it involves expiation. Number 61 of the same category.
Then there were a number of rules of conduct to be dealt with. True, they were the least important of the Patimokkha rules, but even they were to be observed. I still made exceptions of the dana-food and picked and chose among the less spicy offerings, setting aside all animal protein and all sweets. That might have been allowable before, but it was a fault now, and I’d have to change. I was a bhikkhu now, no longer just a samanera.
I was a one-mealer now, too, and by 11:00 pangs of expectancy were assailing me strongly. At dana maintaining mindfulness while eating sometimes required more effort than I could manage. That was also counted as a fault. I gathered the list of faults together in my memory when the bell summoned the bhikkhus to the chapter house for the gathering of the Sangha.
The idea, as I understood it, was not that through confession one obtained absolution, but rather that first, the prospect of having to confess to a fault was a useful deterrent, and second that faults brought out into the open were less likely to be repeated. Confession was a device for becoming more aware of those problems and propensities which were serious enough to result in a lack of accord with the Vinaya. To see a transgression as a transgression and to confess it was an encouragement to self-restraint in the future. For it is through perceiving one’s faults that one comes to growth and development in this Dhamma-Vinaya.
Outside the chapter house the bhikkhus gathered. Now we were eight.
“How do we do this?” I asked ‘Rasa. I’d memorized the formulary for confessions, but wasn’t sure of the procedure.
‘Rasa took me aside, where we would be out of hearing of others. Confession was made only to one other monk except in serious cases called sanghadisesa. One confessed serious faults to the whole (local) Sangha. Those offences included masturbation and other sex-related acts, except for actual intercourse. That was beyond the pale, entailing defeat, whereby one was no longer entitled to be a member of the Sangha. Three other offences entailing defeat were taking human life, theft, and falsely claiming to have attained to supernormal states.
We arranged our robes in the semi-formal fashion and squatted facing each other, hands in namaste.
“Who goes first?” I asked.
“You do. The less senior bhikkhu always goes first.”
“Okay, but I don’t know how to specify the faults in Pali. Can we use English for that?”
“For what?”
“I don’t know the Pali for the faults I’m confessing.”
“Didn’t you get a copy of the formularies? I know several copies were made.”
“I got one; but it’s just a general guideline, isn’t it? Doesn’t it have to be modified according to circumstance?”
“No, no, you just say it. Do you have it memorized?”
“Yes, but …”
“… then just repeat it. It starts, Aham bhante sabbapattiyo arocemi. Don’t you remember it?”
“Yes, but …”
“… then just repeat it. Go ahead. That’s how we all do it. You don’t have to list your faults. You know what they are.”
“I thought that we’d talk for a while about it. I thought confession would be more than repetition of a stock formula.”
“That’s the way we’ve always done it. Do you want to start doing it differently?”
“No, of course not.” And in Pali we proceeded: “Sir, I will declare all my faults.”
“You’re supposed to say it three times.”
“For the second time: sir I will declare all my faults. For the third time: sir, I will declare all my faults.“
“That’s good. That’s good.”
“Sir, I’ve committed numerous faults, based on various grounds, such as sanghadisesa. I will confess them in your presence. But listen, I didn’t fall into any sanghadisesa offences. Are you sure it’s right to include it in the formula?”
“I don’t know what you mean. My Pali isn’t good enough to understand the formulary.”
“You mean you’ve said this every two weeks for so many years and you don’t know what it means?”
“I’ve read translations. I just don’t know the meaning word for word from the Pali, so I can’t answer your question. I’m sorry. Look, do you want to do this, or what?”
“I guess so. I mean, sure. Go ahead. It’s your turn.”
“Friend, do you see these faults?”
“Yes sir, I do see them.”
“Friend, restrain yourself in the future.”
“Very well, sir. I’ll restrain myself well.“
I waited, uncertain whether there was anything to do at the end of the formulary. Should I bow down? But ‘Rasa said, “And again.”
“Again?”
“We say it three times.”
I looked at him, trying to decide whether he was putting me on, and decided that he wasn’t. “Really?”
“Yes, really, Ņanasuci. Really. Look, nobody’s making you do this. I’m telling you how we do it because you asked me.”
“Okay, okay, we’ll do it three times. I was just surprised. I didn’t expect it.” And twice more we repeated the formulary. Then ‘Rasa made his triple confession to me and we returned to the door of the chapter house. The others returned in pairs after having completed their own confessions. When we were gathered together we entered the chapter house for the recitation of an abridged version of the Patimokkha.
Just before we entered, ‘Rasa turned to me and said, “Look, if it bothers you that much then next time, before we meet, come over to my kuti and we’ll talk it over. If you want to tell someone all the gory details I’ll listen to you then. Okay?”
“Okay.” And we went inside for the recitation.
Full moon was fifteen days later. This evening we would formally declare our residency for the Vas season. After dana I again reviewed the bhikkhu’s rules. I prepared my new list of transgressions and set off for Ņanarasa’s kuti.
As a samanera there hadn’t been these problems. Each new and full moon day we repeated our dasa sila vows; but if I’d killed a mosquito, told a lie, or broken other sila there was no confession to make, no expiation. It had been easy to be heedless. Life had been simpler then; now I felt constrained by the fastidiousness of the Patimokkha.
After some polite talk ‘Rasa came to the point. “So, you don’t like confession, do you?”
“I think the idea of confession is fine. What I don’t like is the non-confession we seem to have nowadays.”
“Another sign of our decadent times.”
“You said it, I didn’t.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“I’ve thought about the formula for confession, and it seems to me that in the place where it says, you know, ‘sambahula nanavatthuka sanghadisesadayo,’ and so on, that that’s meant as a blank spot to be filled in.”
“Sorry, my Pali’s not good enough.”
“It means, ‘numerous faults based on various grounds, such as sanghadisesa,’ and so on. But if I haven’t fallen into a sanghadisesa why should I confess to it? You know what I think? That in the Buddha’s day when a bhikkhu confessed he changed the wording right there to suit his needs.”
“That could be. But we don’t do it that way at the Hermitage. Here we always repeat it just like it is.”
“You know what else I think? That a monk is supposed to confess when he’s got something to confess to. He shouldn’t have to repeat the words every two weeks whether or not he’s broken any rules. But if he has done something that should be confessed to he should correct his position right away, and not conceal it until the next recitation of the Patimokkha.”
“Of course. Only that’s not the way we do it here. For a few months I lived with some other monks up near Kandy. That’s beautiful up there, by the way. Next time you go on carika you should go up that way. Anyway, up by Kandy every evening we’d meet and talk. There were four of us, and if anybody had anything to say about his conduct for that day, well, that was when it got said. But we don’t do it that way here.”
“Would you like to get something like that together here? It could be apart from the formal confession.”
“I’m satisfied with what we have.”
“But it’s so meaningless! How can you be satisfied by repeating formularies?”
“If it’s so meaningless why do you care so much about it?”
“Because purification isn’t achieved by ritual. The words we recite should be the basis for discussing faults, not just a formula. Then we can become more aware of whatever problems there are. A good idea has been reduced to ritualism, and I’d like to see it become a good idea again.”
But I didn’t tell him that repeating a mere formulary was as sandpaper on my skin, and that I hoped the fortnightly confession of faults wouldn’t cease in time to grate merely because it had become familiar, callused tissue, as had happened by now with the nightly pirith and bowing down. I’d stopped going to that.
“So you’d like to make confession more meaningful?”
“That’s right.”
“How?”
“I’d like to tell you what things I’ve done, to confess to you here, in English.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“Let’s see. I’ve killed several mosquitoes.”
“Intentionally?”
“Oh, yes. It doesn’t count if it’s not intentional.”
“That’s true. So you killed some mosquitoes. Do you regret it?”
“I thinkone of those mosquitoes was totally unnecessary. I just got angry at it. It wasn’t even biting me. I didn’t like it buzzing at my ear.”
“Do you see the fault?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then restrain yourself in the future.”
“I will. And then two days ago I ate dana noisily because I was greedy and unmindful.”
“Do you see that fault?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then restrain yourself in the future.”
“I will. And then …”
When I’d confessed to all my faults and had nothing further to say I took my leave of ‘Rasa and returned to my kuti.
Why had I bothered? How had that confession been more meaningful than the one in Pali? It didn’t even feel like a confession. Perhaps I’d really wanted to discuss the various entries in my Spiritual Savings Account at First Buddhist National, wherein I secretly kept track of my credits as well as my debits. Perhaps I’d wanted only to show the slightness of my faults (“Once,” I confessed to ‘Rasa, “I didn’t wear my robes evenly all round”) and to suggest thereby the extent to which I was one who fulfilled the obligations. Perhaps I’d just wanted to talk shop, to take a break from the hard work of inactivity by doing something.
I returned to my hut and waited for the bell to ring, teetering between efforts at concentration on the brooding verge of a cliff beyond which all prospects were distant, as I’d once brooded, with nothing else to do, on the sheer edge of a hill I’d shared with a bear.
I had a project. For the kuti I’d designed a piece of furniture which would serve all needs, and with lumber supplied by dayakas I pieced it together slowly.
A typewriter had been offered and ordered. As soon as government clearances were received for its import it would be delivered. I’d already filled out all the application forms and expected approval soon. Then I would use the typewriter to type a final draft of the Letters of Ven. Ņanavira: by now I thought of them with a capital L, as a book title.
With publication of the Letters I would fulfill my remaining worldly ambitions, I told myself. Then I could return to full-time meditation. I could again be Ven. Ņanavira’s student rather than his editor. This was a debt I owed to the Sangha as well as to any Westerners who might someday find themselves trying to discover what relevance, if any, the Suttas might have to the problems that drove them. For the Suttas were a hundred generations old now, and imbued with a very different cultural outlook than ours. But the Letters were the product of a contemporary Westerner with understanding of Dhamma. And with directness and humor he steered me clear of muddled translations, scholastic irrelevancies, and mystical confusions.
How could I have been so foolish, in those first hectic months at the Hermitage, as to have destroyed my copy of that first botched transcript of the Letters? I’d fancied then that since I had to give up everything I’d start by chucking out whatever was nearest to hand, getting rid of things as quickly as possible. I’d leapt with enthusiasm from one decision to another.
Enough of books! It was all well and good to have guidance, charts for navigating unknown waters. They might show how to get from Here to There, pointing out the dangers that lay on the way. But one could study such charts all one’s life and still never arrive at There unless one set sail.
The principal, I now decided, was right, but the method was faulty: things have to be given up in the right order. The charts for guidance to the safety of the thither shore were certainly to be abandoned and not carried about with one after having landed, refuge gained. But neither could one expect to find Sanctuary by abandoning one’s pilot before one had sailed clear of the sea of want.
I had no idea how to use the Letters, or the Suttas, to get me beyond this flood of instability, of holding onto, of anger and clashes and jealousy and suffering and ambition and fear in which I saw all humanity drowning, like the beggars of Calcutta. We were all beggars of one sort or another, I hardly the least.
The piece of furniture — a desk — played a small part in that great imagined flight to safety and security. It was the desk that V built. The typewriter that would go on the desk would produce the manuscript that would produce the book that would yield the understanding that would liberate my mind from the bonds of attachment. I didn’t hide the absurdity of it all from myself, but rather relished it, cultivated it, rolled in it, giggling, and kept on building the desk.
The increased U.S. presence in Viet Nam produced a corresponding increase in the U.S. presence at the Hermitage. A number of Americans trickled in, motivated in part, I gathered, by a desire to avoid involvement in the war. I was sorry that the war could affect a place as remote as the Island.
When, eventually, a group of seven Westerners, mostly Yanks, was ordained everyone (but me) was excited about it. People kept trying to find in us evidence to support the belief popular in Ceylon that after 2,500 years the Sangha would have a renaissance. I didn’t dispute that such a renaissance was needed, but saw discouragingly little real evidence of it.
Since I’d been around for a few years now it was natural that the new samaneras who wandered the footpaths of the Hermitage should sometimes find their way to my kuti for advice and conversation. Sometimes I felt self-satisfied to be in the position of counselor to those less knowledgeable than me; other times I considered it a bad commentary on the Sangha today that anyone as conceited as me could be so placed.
“I used to do the same thing as you,” I told them. “I used to discover a problem or invent a question about the Teaching. Then I’d worry about it and call it ‘Dhamma-thought,’ and finally I’d bring it to one of the senior monks. But I never wanted to talk about the real problem, which is the need to have problems. What I really wanted was to talk about the Teaching so I wouldn’t have to face the hard work of practicing it. All the talk was just a smokescreen to hide from that fact. It took a long time to realize that.”
And my comrade-in-renunciation would leave to return to the practice, or he would leave to seek out someone more open to conversation, or he would try harder to involve me in talk. Sometimes I permitted the chatter to continue; sometimes the problems were real.
“Maybe I rushed into this too fast,” Crackers speculated. “Maybe I need more time to get ready for the monk’s life.”
“You want to prepare for the monk’s life by leaving it?”
Crackers laughed, then turned serious. “Those first few months were great, V. I couldn’t give up things fast enough. It felt like there were no obstacles between me and nibbana, only distance.”
“And then something happened?”
“First meditation got more and more difficult, and now I’m plagued by thoughts about home and travels and mostly sex. And I don’t know what to do about it.”
“So you’ve been thinking about disrobing.”
“Not exclusively. I’ve also been thinking about women.”
“Does thinking about women make you any happier?”
“It makes me hornier. But I just can’t help it. I get involved in sexual fantasies without realizing it. Sometimes I get a hard-on when I’m not even thinking about sex. If I don’t get some relief soon I’ll wind up in the hospital with blue balls.”
“The renunciation blues; I wrote that song when I was in the hospital a few years ago. I had the same thing as you, except it was my liver that was blue. It’s a bad case of withdrawal symptoms.”
“Oh-oh. Is that fatal?”
“A few years back there was a German here who drove himself so hard he broke his health completely and had to be sent home. But it doesn’t have to be that difficult.”
“I’m all in favor of avoiding difficulties.”
“I don’t know how to avoid them, but maybe talking about them can make them less important. Keeping a sense of proportion can be hard when you’re plagued with a sex drive.”
Crackers clenched his fist and raised his arm at the elbow. “Sometimes it just pops up, completely unexpected.’
“Maybe it’s useful to know that you’re reacting the same as everyone who comes here.”
“I’m not unique?”
“You’ll see it happen to these new samaneras too. They’ll drive themselves until they’re so overextended in terms of their real capacity for calmness and insight that they can’t handle it any more.”
“That’s what’s happening to me.”
“I used to feel that a minute not spent in meditation was a minute wasted. I established the same sort of impossible regimen nearly everyone tries when be first gets here. It took me four months to wind up in the hospital.”
“I’d be embarrassed to tell a doctor I had blue balls.”
“But the Hermitage is a sort of hospital itself. Only it specializes in diseases like desire.”
“I don’t know if I can manage the cure.”
“Everyone goes through that. First the practice breaks down, then a lot of old itches start up again, then thoughts of leaving begin. Some go; some don’t. When I went through it I didn’t know it was a pattern, so it worried me more than it needed to. But just knowing it’s all predictable might make it easier for you to get through it.
“I still miss lots of things. Don’t you?”
“Of course. But the big things, like family and friends, stuff from the past, that’s seldom thought of.”
“What about dope? I still miss that.”
“There were times in the first year or so when if I’d had dope I’d have taken it. I’m glad there wasn’t any. I don’t miss it. But I do miss some things, and giving them up is when the difficulties start.”
“What do you miss?”
“Sex.”
“Food?”
“All sensual things. But when you’ve said sex you’ve said it all. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“People? Don’t you ever get lonely?”
“We use other people to distract us from facing our own reality. Sure, I’ve felt loneliness, but even harder than loneliness is inactivity.”
“That’s the hard one for me. There’s not enough to do around here.”
“The Buddha tells us about stopping and we chase after it as fast as we can. He tells us about quietness and every time the mind thinks it’s found a bit of silence it cheers.”
“But the Dhamma is supposed to be about ending suffering, not making more. How come I’m finding so much misery from it.”
“The Teaching doesn’t produce the misery. You do. You always have. The Teaching is making you face that misery for the first time. You’re used to getting your ego fixes. Sensuality, activity, assertion, all the things being feeds on. Now that you’re cutting way back you’re going through withdrawal symptoms. All those black uglies you feel, that’s just your addiction calling for its fix.”
“It’s so hard!”
“Of course it’s hard. If it were easy anyone could do it.”
“There must be an easier way.”
“If there is I don’t know it. I’d never have considered the idea of renunciation if I’d ever found any other escape from dissatisfaction.”
“It’s as bad as when I gave up opium.”
“They have a lot in common. The symptoms are the same, the treatments are the same, and the progress of the treatments are the same. Don’t you remember what it was like when you stopped taking opium?”
“Sure. There was a little voice inside my head that began talking to me about dope. How long it had been since I’d had a fix, and where I could get some, and whether I really wanted to quit, and how nice a fix would be right now. It just nagged and nagged until all I wanted to do was to shut it up. And the only way to shut it up was to take a fix.”
“And when you still didn’t take a fix it turned out there was more than a voice in your head, wasn’t there? Something began kicking around in there and making you unhappy.”
Crackers sighed and looked pained. “Yeah, that’s what’s happening.”
“You’ve got to find your level. You can’t go cold turkey. This is what happens to everyone who tried to give up addiction to self.”
“But it leaves me back where I started from.”
“Don’t try to judge your progress by how good your meditation is going at the moment. You can’t take an outside view of what changes are happening to you. But it’s apparent to me that you’ve developed greater calmness. Of course you’re not very happy about what you’re going through. Who would be? But you’re able to observe it from a certain distance now instead of being caught up in it. That’s a change that comes with meditation.”
“You can see a difference?” Crackers was pleased. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Addiction to being is more fundamental than addiction to opium, but they’re both addictions. The treatments correspond.”
Crackers thought about it. “I remember a lot of times when I was giving up opium when I didn’t see how it could be any worse, and then it was. And I can remember times when I thought it was all over, that I’d kicked it, and then it came on again.”
“In this practice I don’t say that you’ll find worse to come. I only say that I did, and ‘Rasa and other monks say they’ve had similar experiences. We’re talking here about the most fundamental addiction we’ve got, the conceit ‘I am.’ That conceit has only begun to fight, and believe me, it’s going to fight you all the way, just like your opium habit.”
“You make it sound formidable.”
“It’s a good thing we’ve got the Dhamma as a guide. It tells us that this is a gradual teaching, and that we can’t do it all at once. So why don’t you find a measure that’s right for you? Decide what you can handle on a day-to-day basis without driving yourself beyond your capacity. Put sila first, even if you can’t do anything else. But whatever you do, do it mindfully. Don’t let those black uglies catch you unaware.”
There was a knock on the door and I let in Ņanapasata, one of the new American samaneras.
“I thought I heard voices, so I figured you weren’t meditating,” he explained.
I looked outside and noticed the sun approaching the horizon. It wouldn’t be long until the pirith bell would put an end to this gathering, so I let it proceed.
“What were you talking about?”
“You mean you’ll talk about anything?”
“Actually, I want to complain about the Dhamma. It’s too hard.”
“Practicing the Dhamma is the hardest thing I know of.”
“The practice is easy. It’s the philosophy I’m having trouble with. I’m working on it, but it sure is complicated.”
“How are you working on it?”
“By thinking Dhamma-thoughts and trying to visualize the Dhamma. I’m trying straight insight meditation, because that’s the way to burst through the bonds of illusion right away. I don’t want to take that calmness meditation, because that’s the long way ’round. The real reason I came by was to tell you about this wonderful new meditation technique they’ve just discovered in Burma. They say you can get enlightened in seven days.”
“How many days have you been doing it?” Crackers asked.
“They don’t say for sure you get enlightened in seven days. Maybe for most people it takes longer. But it can be in as little as seven days.”
“That’s just about a week.”
“Do you get a money-back guarantee?”
“You can laugh if you want to, you two, but you’re missing a rare chance. It doesn’t take long, so it’s worth giving it a try, isn’t it? Instead of spending years on that meditation you’re doing, and maybe then you still won’t be enlightened.”
“I’m always suspicious of teachings that promise fast results.”
“You can wait if you like, but I can’t. I intend to open a ministry in Florida and spread the Teaching, and it’s for the sake of those people in Florida that I’m taking the fast way, even if it is more of a challenge.”
“Florida?”
“That’s where I think the need is greatest. That’s why I’m in a hurry.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry with your right foot that you forget to move your left.”
“Don’t you think I know how to walk?”
“The Buddha says that insight and calmness are developed in tandem. You can’t progress in one and lag in the other.”
“But with insight meditation you can see the world as it really is, always changing from instant to instant.”
“Who says it’s changing from instant to instant?”
“The Buddha. I shouldn’t have to tell you that, you’ve been a monk so long already.”
“I read where the Buddha talked about change, and about impermanence, but I don’t remember anything about flux.”
“Flux and impermanence are the same thing. That’s obvious.”
“Not to me. Flux means continuous change, but impermanence means eventual change. Fuzzy thinkers confuse the two.”
“You must get that from Ņanavira.”
“Certainly not from the commentaries.”
“Why do you think the Buddha talked about not-self, then? If a thing doesn’t stay the same for even an instant you can’t say it exists. And if it doesn’t exist, it’s not-self.”
“Not-self has to do with ego, not with the suppositious non-existence of things.”
“Not according to this new meditation method.”
“I know the idea of flux is popular today, and I suspect that it’s because it’s such an easy explanation. But the Dhamma is perception, not explanation.”
“What this meditation method does is sharpen your perception so you can see how fast everything is changing. Once you see how fast it’s changing you give up attachment to it. That’s why it’s called penetration through insight.”
“I don’t cling to things because I think they’re unchanging. I cling to them because they do change. If I didn’t already perceive their impermanence I wouldn’t need to cling to them. Take this desk, for instance.”
We looked at the desk for which the typewriter was soon expected. It was nearly finished.
“If that desk were to get smashed, or catch fire, or something, that would be for me a cause of unhappiness.”
“Even knowing that it’s possible is already a source of unhappiness,” Crackers said.
“But the supposition that the desk is in flux is no cause for dissatisfaction. If it’s in flux then it’s always in flux, and yet it remains the same unchanged desk. So what do I have to worry about flux for?”
“You don’t understand because you haven’t seen the universal flux. But those who practice insight meditation know what’s meant by change.”
“The kind of change the Buddha spoke of is the change that undermines attachment, and shows us that our effort to possess has been in vain.”
“You and your existentialism! Do you really think it’s necessary to be so philosophical about the Dhamma to understand it?”
“Maybe you mean analytical rather than philosophical. But no, I don’t think it’s necessary to be analytical. That’s one of several possible approaches. But I do think it’s necessary to refuse to accept every easy explanation that comes along. I’m skeptical of those easy doctrines that people find comfort in and think they’ve learned something.”
“You have to get your comfort somewhere,” said Crackers.
The bell rang for pirith and the conversation ended.
It seemed, from what the new samaneras told me, that something was happening back in the States, something called “The Sixties,” and I was missing it. And I sometimes felt, when I listened to their gossip, a sense of impoverishment to be missing such a vast number of potential Golden Times, until I caught the feeling, flipped it over on its back, and saw that thecreature was made entirely of absurdity. I turned from the seductive charms of a life of accumulating back to that quiet and subtle involvement in oblivion which raggedly edged every experience.
“Get thee gone,” I commanded that sense of impoverishment, and was chagrined to find myself unobeyed.
Chapter Six (cont.) (iii) 9:30 … time to meditate again.
With distaste I turned from the desk, where I’d been studiously composing a paper on the Sutta usage of the word vibhava. The desk was long since finished, but the typewriter was still snarled up in red tape. Perhaps after it arrived I could use the red tape in place of typewriter ribbons. In the meanwhile I used the desk for scholarly pursuits.
“I have a private dictum,” Ven. Ñanavira had written. “Do not imagine that you understand something unless you can write it down.” But the correlative didn’t hold, that if you could write something down you could understand it.
The prospect of sitting quietly for the next hour trying yet again to achieve concentration and clarity didn’t fill me with cheer. I’d had to establish meditation hours which had, of late, become increasingly difficult to hold to. How easy, and how comfortable, it would be to be neglectful of even the time set aside for meditation.
I found within me a strong temptation to drop the practice altogether, to convince myself that I’d attained to something, to anything, and therefore needn’t go on struggling. Or, just as good, to convince myself that I was incapable of attaining to anything and therefore needn’t make the effort. Either way, the case being then closed, I could move on to easier pleasures than those obtained by this difficult practice. But I couldn’t do it. The self-deception involved in legitimizing that sort of position was more than I could muster.
I postponed sitting for a few minutes by limbering up on the ambulatory. Doing so, I’d found, made a significant difference in the length of time I could sit in a full lotus before my knees would ache so severely that I had to unfold my legs. I preferred the lotus position because it gave the body a triangular base on which to rest, eliminating physical wavering. (Saying from a Zen collection: When standing, just stand. When sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble.) I also preferred the lotus position because I had a good one which marked me, as much as my russet robes, as a meditator.
I walked the ambulatory to limber up for meditation, and also to delay as long as I could the oppressive task of sitting down and facing again the need to train a mind that no longer wanted to be trained.
A leaf insect huddled in a corner, disguised as a small brown serrate-edged leaf with several disease spots that didn’t fool me at all. I paused in my pacing and swept it off the cankamana with the broom. Not only did leaf-insects sometimes get disconcertingly underfoot but also the mongoose, if it happened along, wouldn’t be fooled either. He would chew up the hapless but crunchy bug as if it were an hors-d’oeuvre on a cracker. The insect skittered wildly across the ambulatory floor, bouncing blindly off the walls. I pushed it out the gate and watched as it scuttled sightless on the soft jungle earth. It humped up against a small rook where, fully exposed, it huddled motionless, dreaming dreams of anonymous sanctuary.
As I walked I looked down at my feet. One after the other they entered my field of vision, then disappeared beneath the folds of my faded brown robe. Without enthusiasm I put my attention on the walking, and observed how it felt to walk. “Walking” was a composite of a number of separate perceptions. I chose several. I observed the feeling on the sole of each foot as it touched the ground, first the heel, then the ball of the foot, then the toes in a glissando from the little to the big. Then the other foot.
Awareness: heel ball toes; heel ball toes; heel ball toes … all the way to the end of the ambulatory. When a stray thought entered it was to be observed as a distraction and dismissed. I didn’t name each part of each step; I simply observed. It’s only in describing “mindfulness” that it becomes necessary to use words.
Thoughts: ideas appeared. They arose, the Suttas said, and they endured, and they disappeared. And, the Suttas said, they were to be observed. But I could see no more than their enduring. When I tried to watch a thought arise I found that as soon as I saw it it was already risen and I was too late. And whenever I tried to watch a risen thought disappear I found that I didn’t know how to watch something that was no longer there. And as long as it was there it hadn’t disappeared yet. So what did the Suttas mean by “arising” and “disappearance”?
Soon my attention began flickering between mindfulness of the walking and thinking about the projects upon which the mind fed. The mindfulness had very little direction to it, and was not easy to stay with. The thinking about was strongly directed, ontological, and compelling.
The desk had long since been finished. It was used now as the nerve-center of my further involvement in the Ñanavira project. For one thing I’d written an endless series of letters attempting to unravel from the government’s endlessly tangled spool sufficient red tape to enable that damned import license to be granted. Then we could get the typewriter (which had special features we needed) and make a final copy of the New Revised Texts of the Letters. Such licenses, though, weren’t granted as readily as I’d expected.
I’d gone so far, in this quest, as to take a trip to Colombo, with its hustle and bustle and double-decked buses. I didn’t get the license, but I did get a heavy dose of frustration which reminded me of the frustrations I’d felt in Calcutta. It had been while seeking a government permit there that I’d wearied of the hassles and sought the robes. In Colombo I gave up the quest for an import license and returned to the Hermitage to seek relief.
While still pursuing the vision of a final typescript I researched references, standardized formats, obtained permissions to quote, copied key passages into my quotebook, and edited other bits of discovered Ñanaviriana. Even a little commonplace book yielded bits of treasure: Q: Why the Buddha rather than Jesus? A: Jesus wept. In my spare time I referenced and cross-referenced material, considered and reconsidered, and seized upon every task I could lay hold of. Except, perhaps, one.
… the book, Ven. Ñanavira had written of his Notes on Dhamma, … the book is an invitation, or perhaps a challenge, to the reader to come and share the author’s point of view … My thoughts, when they strayed from awareness, nestled, like the leaf insect his rock, against the secure edifice which the Letters and Notes had come to represent to me.
Set against this edifice was the ongoing awareness of the falsity of any such security, even more so when predicated and founded on a teaching whose message, I had always to remind myself, was that rather than vainly seeking security the happiest choice was to give up the search.
Perhaps it was because of this conflict that, as I settled myself for meditation, I felt a growing uneasiness in the pit of my stomach. I ignored it, closed my eyes, and turned my attention to the tip of the nose, one long breath in. I strove with all possible energy to perceive each little particle of breath-consciousness, every tingle that presented itself for my inspection. My determination was such that my armpits became damp with effort, or tension, or both. I tried to keep out all other thoughts. I tried to ignore, particularly, the growing awareness that pressed resolutely for my attention like a starving beggar, an awareness of anger and fear at my own utter isolation, at my own frailty, and at the dissatisfaction that inhered in every movement of my being. That awareness added nausea to the anger, vertigo, and perspiration that were already upon me. I became frightened and felt light-headed, and knew that I had to stop.
What could I do? Could I face it? Could I go into (and perhaps through) the dizziness and vomiting? Or would I have to turn away? Would the vomiting be anything more than a distraction from that perception of my situation which I sought? If something could arouse such primal fears how could I ignore it? But the converse was equally pressing: if it aroused such fears how could I face it? Would I break my health and have to be sent home? And was that what I was really after? Did I seek the relief of not having to try any longer? Even failure became success if that was all I wanted. Before such ambiguities I was unable to choose.
I tried to think about it, but that was also not facing it. There was a fundamental difference between thinking about and observing, and without even being observant of what I was doing I found that I’d already somehow chosen to think about those fears rather than face them. I told myself — perhaps truthfully, I shall never know — that if I forced myself to continue facing the fearful fact of my impotence against the universe I would achieve nothing, except to vomit.
There was no question about the origins of this malaise. I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital for this, as I’d once done with an undiagnosed case of withdrawal syndrome. “A liver problem,” the doctors had mistakenly labeled the problem. “Existence” was the name I would give it.
I opened my eyes, feeling weak, and stared unseeingly at the wall opposite me, calling it mindfulness. I didn’t need to look at the clock to know that I’d only been sitting a few minutes, but I looked anyway. There was still most of the hour to go. There was this hour before dana, an hour after dana, one more before pirith, yet another after it, and tomorrow’s dawn would start another day, and the day after tomorrow, and days afterwards, without end, in which I would be forever with the choice.
I could begin now to appreciate why so few bhikkhus meditated. They’d given it up, if they’d ever begun, in despair or fear and turned to other ways of filling their time: scholarship, writing, preaching, building, social work, the lay life. At the bottom of my heart, I’d copied into my quotebook, I no longer desire perfection. For we who are taxpayers as well as immortal souls, must live by political evasions and formulae and catchwords that fret away our lives as moths waste a garment: we fall insensibly to commonsense as to a drug; and it dulls and kills whatever in us is rebellious and fine and unreasonable …[3]
What could I do? I saw no alternative to agonizing. Perhaps if my anguish became great enough (and I nearly let myself smile at the thought) it would be deemed (by whom, pray tell?) sufficient atonement (for what, pray tell?) and I could obtain permission to stop agonizing. What I couldn’t do was to face my existence without anguish, for anguish was the fact of my existence, and the choice for it, it seemed, had been made before the choice was recognized.
The only possibility of ever justifying giving up the practice was the attainment of the goal. I craved that egoless state merely for the relief it meant to me, so that I could lay down that burden which, I saw, was everything. It included the meditation, it included the nausea, it included both fear and flight. And it included too the depressing awareness that I would rather do anything than face it.
Anything!
The gray mountains were steep, glassine and jagged, and I was lost among them. I didn’t look down. A distant figure scuttled from rock to rock, then crouched and disappeared before I could identify it. But I sensed something frightening — a smoldering furtiveness rather than an open hostility — in its presence, and that sense urged me to climb.
I ascended the steep slope, tense with the fear of falling, until some indefinite time later I became aware that something ominous was about to happen. I’d made no progress upwards, but before me now I saw a cave, dark and cool and beckoning: I started towards it to find refuge from that gray threat when there was an explosion, a flash of light exposing the distant figure falling stiffly. I hadn’t made it quite to the cave’s mouth. I was still trapped in the open beneath a jet-black sky. As I was knocked over by the blast I fell into an unseen pool of some depthless warm and sticky substance. I awoke and understood that I’d had a wet dream.
I was displeased, as I lay there, that sexual desires were yet so strong in me. The shepherd of mindfulness was a lazy lad who fell asleep (under a haystack?) many times each day. While he slumbered the mind sometimes strayed (again!) into the clover patch of erotic imagery. I struggled to my feet and went outside, to the washstand on the porch. This kuti had no cankamana. I was also displeased that on the sanghati, the outer cloak which served by night as a bedcover, there was now a moist stain, for I would have some washing to do this morning. But I wasn’t at all unhappy that I’d had a wet dream and was free, for now, of this growing physical sensitivity.
Except in a dream intentional emission was a serious offense for a bhikkhu (and I was no longer just a samanera), entailing not only confession before the entire (local) Sangha but also the temporary suspension of certain seniority privileges. And yet concealment of the fault was itself a fault which increased daily, like interest on an overdue bill, continuously extending the illegitimacy of such a position. I was glad, therefore, to have found that an end had been made to these difficult days without my having done violence to the relationship I had with the Patimokkha.
The chaffing of the robes had been sufficient stimulation to produce a pulsating ravenous erection, and I’d bathed at the well often, walked the ambulatory, and talked with Crackers.
“It’s just a phase of the withdrawal symptoms,” he told me with some pleasure, and I told him what I’d learned while on carika of the sex habits of monkeys, rousing that tired memory to do battle yet again against the fantasies that stalked my attention.
“All I can suggest,” Crackers suggested, “is that if one thing doesn’t work maybe something else will. Make a change.”
“What kind of change do you mean?”
“If you can’t change yourself, change your surroundings.”
“Leave the Island?”
“It did you a lot of good last time. Maybe you didn’t notice, but I could see when you got back how much calmer and happier you were.”
“I’m not sure leaving wouldn’t be running away.”
“How can you run from yourself? It would be moving, not running. I’ve thought about leaving myself. Maybe set up on my own, like ‘Sumana. But I can’t advise you; I can only tell you what I’d do. If you don’t want to leave the Island, I’ll tell you what. You can stay in my kuti. All you need is a change of surroundings, anyway. This place should do fine.”
“What’ll you do? Go on carika?”
“Oh, no. I’ll stay at your place. I don’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you. I know how you like this kuti.”
Crackers laughed. We both knew how anxious he was to leave his cramped hut.
“But it’s a good suggestion. You deserve the exchange of kutis for thinking it up, whether or not it does me any good. I’ll try it.”
But Crackers’ dank kuti had been no improvement, and I’d tired of resisting that sexuality which skulked about just below the level of full-blown thought. For as resolutely as I steered the mind away from sexual images, to just that extent was there peripheral awareness of the images, so that it was like a lamp on the sea’s horizon, at night, implying much.
I traced the flight of a firefly and wondered: How had Ven. Ñanavira managed? “With an effort I can ignore it for a few days at a time,” he’d written of his erotic stimulation. “But it remains always in the background, ready to come forward on the slightest encouragement.” Yet for three years he’d resisted both the strain of satyriasis and the “strong temptation to return to the state of a layman,” for he had not “the slightest intention of giving in to it.” But that wasn’t so easy.
“Bluff common sense,” he admitted, “is scarcely adequate.” Also inadequate were “constructive suggestions how I should employ my time.” Yet with such a disease he must have been hard-pressed to resist lustful images. How had he managed? “The cure,” he learned, “is essentially a matter of raising the mind above the waist and keeping it there. But this treatment takes time and is hard work.” And that didn’t cheer me at all.
I went inside and tried to meditate. It was the third watch of the night, late enough to be striving for awareness, but when I attempted it, even leaning against the wall for ease, a dull and diffuse backache robbed me of energy. After a while, realizing that I wasn’t going to get any concentration done this morning either, I gave up and stepped outside again.
I walked down to the dock, climbed into the rowboat, and set the oarlocks in place. The lagoon waters barely rippled around the oars as, very gently, I propelled the boat forward. The moon was still two hours from setting: it lit the world in pale shadowy tones, enough to see by. I rowed out a ways and then drifted, far enough from land to be out of range of mosquitoes, paddling occasionally against the slow drift of the boat.
I couldn’t stay any longer. To stay would mean facing the same indestructible needs, the same indisputable dissatisfactions, and in the somnolence of enduring frustration I would find myself plagued again with thoughts of sex. On carika energy was used before it had a chance to devolve into a sex drive. On carika eroticism had not been one of my problems.
But I couldn’t leave, either. To leave would mean quitting the Ñanavira project. It would mean giving up my dreams of publication. What could I do with my books? What about the desk? Who could I talkto? Could I give up all that for a life of solitary wandering? Out there I would face the rigors of a loneliness without diversion. Out there was a world without purpose, endlessly repeated. I couldn’t go out there again.
Between the alternatives of enduring the frustrations of the Hermitage and facing the uniform purposelessness of carika I chose neither. Between the relief of the occasional diversions at the Hermitage and the relief of no pressing sexual urges on carika I chose both. At odds with myself, I sat quietly and drifted in silent water.
Footnote:
3.Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell (Penguin Books, 1946) p.258.