It was probably the world's biggest prayer wheel and, like modern plumbing, it was indoors. The Tibetans seemed impressed by both facts. The walls of the octagonal structure containing it portrayed religious figures and deities, some of whom had many arms. One had numerous heads, each piled atop another: Avalokitesvara, the deity of compassion. There was a rigid formalism in the postures and backgrounds, as if each portrait revealed in itself an entire life.
I followed the line of devotees as we circled the prayer wheel, always keeping our right sides towards it. It occupied nearly the entire room. The devotees kept the wheel spinning -- each turn a completed prayer -- and I gave the handle a pull as it lumbered past, just to keep my hand in.
"Aren't you going to see the Dalai Lama?" Ganesh had asked before the course had ended. The Dalai Lama (and hundreds of his Tibetan followers) had gathered here to perform a ceremony honoring the place where the Buddha had sat when he'd woken from the sleep of ignorance and craving. That place was shaded by a venerable Bo-tree, an offshoot of the original.
I hadn't expressed enthusiasm. "I don't know. He's not going to come to me, that's for sure." But I doubted that I would go to him either.
"I'm glad I went. I'll probably never have the chance again, and he's the spiritual leader of millions of people. And he's a far-out dude."
"Maybe I will go, after all." But I had nothing to say to him and doubted, too, that he had anything to say to me.
Tibetan Buddhism was very big among freaks, and many had passed in front of the Dalai Lama. A few had obtained short audiences. No doubt my robes would have entitled me to one also. But none of the reported conversations interested me. The Dalai Lama seemed to be heavily involved in the politics of exile. What he had to say about Dhamma seemed a repetition of traditional Tibetan dogmas. I expected more from a spiritual guide. I'd conversed with Goenka-ji: he was as impressive as any teacher I'd met, yet I found no interest in remaining by his side either.
"Even if you don't talk with him, just seeing him is worth it."
"Maybe I will go." But privately I summed up my attitude more definitively: you seen one guru, you seen 'em all. I remembered some advice I'd been given long ago, when I'd asked about teachers: Let the practice be your teacher.
But if I didn't care to see the Dalai Lama why had I bothered to join the line outside the Tibetan Temple to circle the prayer wheel? And why did I go around twice? I felt a bit foolish doing it: it was so contrary to what I thought really concerned me. But it brought back memories of Nepal, of the Monkey Temple atop Swayambu, of many magical times in the Himalayas. Perhaps I was doing it for old-times' sake.
It was something to do. Now that the course was over the freaks had left, for the most part. Now that the Dalai Lama's ceremony was over the Tibetans, too, had left, for the most part. But going around twice was exercise enough for me; I left the Tibetan Temple and walked along the road.
The little village had reverted to a more familiar somnolence. Dogs ranged among the chi stands, sniffing out crumbs. I stopped at a stand that seemed less bedraggled than the others.
"Ek chi dudh." One milk tea.
I sat on a rude bench and sipped the overly-sweet milk tea. The chi-wallah had a screened case, but it contained no gulab jamuns, only stale rolls, and I contented myself with tea.
Pigs rooted among the litter-piles. Buffalo were herded along the road. The village beggar remained, forlorn at the prospect of harder times to come. Paise, sahib. The mud huts of the village encroached nearly to the doorsteps of the pilgrimage sites and ancient ruins, but the imposing pyramidal Maha Bodhi Temple dominated everything: the Temple of the Great Awakening.
The Buddha had had milk-rice, not milk tea. Seeking enlightenment, he'd practiced the strictest asceticisms possible, until he was so thin and weak he was at the point of death. Then he concluded that if there were an escape from suffering it couldn't be through such deprivations, for he'd followed that path as far as it would go. To regain the strength he'd lost he accepted milk-rice from a village girl.
"That milk-rice must've given him a charge," Ganesh had remarked when I'd told him the story of the Great Awakening.
After eating, he'd gone to the banks of the river, the Nerañjara, sat beneath a bo-tree, and resolved: Let skin, sinew, and bones waste away; let flesh and blood dry up; I will not move from this seat until I have attained perfect wisdom.
In those days the village had been known as Uruvela, and only later came to be known as Bodh Gaya. The river must have shifted course in the intervening centuries: it now passed a good half-mile from the revered site of that Awakening before turning aside and flowing towards the Ganges.
The tea had come in a throwaway clay cup, the Indian version of the Dixie cup. Intended for a single use, they were poorly fired. Minute bits of clay added a richness of flavor and texture to the tea. When I finished I tossed the cup onto the litter-pile. It broke into a dozen pieces, and I walked on.
Since the Goenka course had ended I'd moved to the Thai Temple down the road. I wanted to stay in Bodh Gaya a while longer before continuing on my pilgrimage. If the temples in Thailand were anything like this one they'd be fine places to live. Ganesh had spent a month in Thailand waiting for money and knew about their temples.
"Wait'll you see the temples in Bangkok," he'd said. "Now, those are beautiful. Compared to them, this one's a dump."
The dump had a magnificent lawn leading to a large preaching hall, tile-roofed in the bangled ski-jump curves of Thai architecture, with an oiled teak floor and one elegant Buddha-rupa. Another stretch of lawn separated this hall from the living quarters. Rooms opened onto a verandah circling a leaf-strewn central courtyard. One of the rooms here had been allotted to me while I stayed at the temple.
There was no sign of any of the Thai monks. I didn't usually see them about except for dana and evening pirith. The weather was bland for January, but I went to my room anyway. After making myself comfortable I sat down on the four-poster bed and closed my eyes to meditate.
I turned my mind towards the present. Bodily feeling: that was present. The toes: there was feeling; the feet, ankles, calves, knees ... I scanned the body observing what was felt. From the toes up, from the scalp down, from the fingers in, and finally attention rested on the chest, seeking feeling. There was something there, a tight little spot of feeling that caught me unawares. It was unfamiliar, different from all other bodily feelings, and for a moment I felt threatened by it. The words "chest pain" and the implications of the words came to mind, and with the thought the feeling vanished. Then I realized: that spot of feeling was the nimitta that was associated with this meditation. Just as mindfulness of breathing had its nimitta (that cool little spot at the tip of the nose), so too there was a sign associated with this meditation. In the moment of non-recognition it had frightened me. In the moment of recognition I'd frightened it. Now I wanted it back. I turned my attention to the chest area again and probed for it, but it wasn't there. Too bad. It was so calm, so peaceful. It was a little space of non-desire, and I wanted it.
It was with dismay that I again recognized the contradiction. I'd played with it ever since I'd thought of it, even before ordination: How, I'd asked, could it be meaningful to want to give up desire? For as long as the desire to give up was there there was still desire. And didn't that make renunciation an impossibility? But this time, more than ever, the contradiction stood out sharply, for it was involved with the nimitta, and I was dismayed.
And not only had I desired it, but I'd also been frightened by it, until I'd given it a name and thus mastered it. But named or not, the nimitta, if it was anything, was a sign of calmness, not of wanting. Was I afraid, then, of desirelessness?
Apparently so, for the thought that had immediately followed the perception was: If I don't want anything what will I do with myself? How will I fill my days?
First I'd been told to give up material things. That had been relatively easy, for there were enough modes of action with which to occupy myself. Then I'd learned about restraint of the faculties. That, too, I'd managed: sila was the directing of modes of conduct, not the total giving up of activity. Whatever failures I'd met in fulfilling the Vinaya, I'd still managed to fill my day. Then had come the mental disciplines: turning the mind away from thoughts of reputation, of anger, of sensuality ... Each step on the path of renunciation had left me with the question: Now what can I do to fill my hours? And, each time, the prospect of giving up another form of time-structuring had left me with a feeling of bleakness, of emptiness; and each renunciation had been followed by a search for some alternative form of activity. From sensuality to study, from study to meditation, from meditation to joy, from joy to frustration, from frustration to intellectualization, from intellectualization to talk, from talk to writing ...
A door closed sharply and, unexpected, startled me. The sound echoed in my head as the mind gobbled after it. Whatever was happening the mind either shrank from or jumped at, whether it was the feathery nothingness of the nimitta or the sound of one door closing. It was all the same: contact-food for an ever-ravenous mind. Add that to the list of endless tasks I still managed to find for myself in spite of all the renouncing I'd busied myself with these past years. There were still passion, hatred, and delusion, and I still relied on stimulants, irritants, and distractions to assuage that unholy trinity and get me to the next moment. It was discontent (and all that went with it) and not content that was the driving force of all this movement, including the movement towards renunciation. It was that discontent that I wore with pride.
But now I saw -- against my will, it seemed -- still another step to be taken, one more frightening than any of the others: to give up that discontent. If I gave up that what was left? How could I occupy myself? What could I do?
I watched myself uncross my legs and stand, then arrange my robes and go outside to the verandah. A clothesline ran the length of the ambulatory. Several robes hung from it. There was no place to walk. With great deliberateness I watched myself sit down on the edge of the verandah and look at the bushes that crowded together in the center of the courtyard.
I perceived a life-long pattern. In the most overwhelming and in the least of feelings there were anxiety and dissolution. There was a shrinking from and a seeking after. There was a need to touch and a fear to touch, for where I couldn't touch, there I couldn't find myself. The world and I were bound together and held apart in a state of perpetual tension by desire and dissatisfaction.
As if by request an itch appeared, and I almost scratched it before I realized what I was doing. Then I let it alone and felt it drop away from me. Without the itch what was the scratch? Without the scratch where was the itch? The questions echoed unanswered within an empty space in my head, then dropped away, leaving behind peace.
The peace was shocking. I was shocked, appalled, to perceive that all my life had been involved in seeking substance from the world, in being a beggar. I looked at the bushes again, as if for the first time. There was a crystalline sharpness to them, a preternatural clarity. Was it the light? Or was it that, not wanting anything of them, I was able to see them, and not fogs of fancies, mind-fodder? Or perhaps it was some quality of the clay cup from which I'd drunk that over-sweetened tea.
The Buddha had likely had a clay almsbowl in which to accept that milk-rice. Perhaps there was some energizing force in the soil itself that accounted for this energy I felt. It would be a good joke on me if it turned out that in the earthiest of senses Bodh Gaya actually was the spiritual center of the universe.
There was a seeing. I didn't question what sort of seeing. There was: a field of vision, colored shapes occupying that field, an awareness of the field, the vision. There was no ground from which the field of vision was observed. The field of vision was the observing. And, curiously, there was nothing else whatsoever.
I felt neither cold nor warmth, I felt neither anger nor gladness. I could reach for any percept I chose, and perhaps touch it, but I didn't. I accepted the experience as I saw it.
It was unexpected. This sort of perception, the seeing of the world without preference, ought to be a bright and golden moment. I'd always assumed there would be a relief, the lifting of a burden, revealing a new world extending boundlessly into the future with Golden Times. Now I saw otherwise: without the glittery illusions of desire the world was neutral, uncaring, indifferent, and non-indicative. The absence of want was an emptiness without hope, something that wouldn't be worth bothering with if it weren't the only alternative to the misery of want. I sighed deeply, for I felt cut loose from my foundations.
A door shut softly behind me, but I heard sound, not noise. The sound was external and didn't affect the quietness I felt within me.
"Ñanasuci. You are sitting watching the leaves fall, eh?" It was one of the Thai monks. "Perhaps, then, you won't mind helping me sweep them up?"
"I'll be glad to." We took brooms to the courtyard and began sweeping. He smiled at the way I held the broom.
"Ñanasuci. You should put your right hand on top. Like this. Eh?" He demonstrated.
"Of course. How stupid of me. I keep forgetting such simple things."
I swept, a bit awkwardly, with my right hand on top. Involved completely in the activity, I swept attentively and methodically towards the young leafy tree. Empty of past and future, I felt lightened. Lightened, the ground seemed not distant, but remote, and I felt as if I were nearly floating.
The leaves, I saw, were the serrate-edged leaves of a bo-tree, probably an offspring of the one the Buddha had sat beneath the night of the Great Awakening. Having resolved not to rise unenlightened, he had turned his attention upon his own experience and come at last to understand what had not been understood before: Whatever is of a nature to arise, all that is of a nature to cease. To form attachment to the impermanent would lead only to suffering. Attachment was to be given up. And there was a way leading to the ceasing of attachment.
There it was again: the old contradiction. How can one give up the wish to give up? Now, though, I had a perception, one which I couldn't yet formulate but which I saw to be so, and it was this: It is not the things of the world that are to be given up, for the things of the world simply are. It is desire for the world that is to be given up. But desire for is not possession of. What is truly possessed is not involved with desire. Desire is a movement. Possession is a state. The world does not remain still for me to possess it. And the movement of the world is tied to desire as well, for time is that dimension in which we wish and will. In a temporal world possession is impossible. Therefore renunciation too is impossible, not because the world cannot be renounced but because, nothing possessed, there is nothing to be given up.
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