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 araņņa, 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 araņņa, they'd made drip-ledges with cement, disdaining the chisel.
When I'd told the monks at the araņņa 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 "ņana."
"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.
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