I sat cross-legged fidgeting with a half-finished letter when Mr. Barua arrived with an upasaka who spoke English. He gave me four packs of cigarettes. They bowed. I moved to the chair while they sat stiffly on the bed, lower than me.
"Reverend, you are knowing this here is Mr. Barua?"
"Mr. Barua gave me the robes I'm wearing."
"Yes. You are wearing. Here this Mr. Barua is happy to present you with these cigarettes of your request."
"Thank you, Mr. Barua."
"Thank you," Mr. Barua gazed sadly at something just behind my head.
"Reverend, we are much of happy that you are being a good examples to the Buddhist peoples of Calcutta."
"I don't want to be a good example. I just want to be a monk," I replied, but I wasn't so sure of that now; being a monk wasn't as easy as I'd expected, nor as rewarding.
"Yes, that is right. We are happy to be having such a good examples as your holy self, reverend, to show to us poor Buddhists of Calcutta."
"If you think I'm making such a good example how come none of you are following it?" I was nothing if not direct.
Actually my example, such as it was, wasn't being entirely ignored. In some Buddhist countries all men became monks part of their lives, even if only a few weeks; but that tradition had largely died out among the Calcutta Buddhists: the slow process of assimilation into the dominant Hindu culture was at work. Now, in separate (and less publicized) ordinations during the past three weeks two boys and a young man on leave from work had been ordained, all with the intention of disrobing again in a short while. I was considering that possibility myself.
One of the boys had obviously been coerced into the robes by his family and was very unhappy with the regimen he was subjected to. The other boy accepted his lot more as a Stoic than a Buddhist, knowing it would soon be over. The young man seemed to be willingly fulfilling a familial obligation. Such was the extent of the stir my ordination had made, and thus was my example being followed.
Our talk sputtered. There were pauses while Mr. Barua's friend thought of what he might say next and how he might say it. I made no attempt to keep the discussing going, though I responded politely enough. This conversation was their idea, not mine. I preferred to be alone, unconstrained by the formality of visitors.
"Mr. Barua is saying you not to forget dana is at his house for Sunday."
"I'll remember."
Every few days I'd been going to Mr. Barua's house for a meal. I was received each time with reverence, gave the pańca sila (unless I forgot it: it still wasn't memorized perfectly), and be served a sumptuous meal of rice and curries. At first I'd wanted to take all my meals in the vihara, where they could be eaten without upasakas and without ceremony; but then I'd found that the restraints and formalities of the outside dana were a small price to pay for the pleasure of being on my own on the walks to and from Mr. Barua's apartment, free. Those were highlights of my days. Ven. Dharmapal had tried at first to provide me with an escort, afraid that I might get lost or mugged or something, but I'd successfully resisted that effort.
"Mr. Barua is saying that if you should be wanting to anything you must be saying to him."
"Thank you, but I don't need anything right now." But I was merely unsure of what I did need.
"Thank you," Mr. Barua said.
After my visitors left I turned to my window-ledge shelf and prepared the incense holder, a heavy clay Buddha that Hum had made and given to me. Other people had supplied me with packets of incense. The Buddha, earthen, bulky and dark, put me in mind of the white plastic Buddhas I'd seen sold in the shops of Katmandu. Those were lightweight because they were hollow and could be filled with modeling clay (though some travelers preferred, prior to mailing them home, to fill them with less innocuous substances). They were Oriental versions of plastic Jesuses, and I'd made up a song about them:
I don't care if they make ‘em cruder,
I'm gonna stick with my plastic Buddha
riding on the front of my rickshaw.
For a rupee and ten paise
you can't get one any nicer,
guaranteed to be without a flaw.Whoops! That was singing, wasn't it? I'd just caught myself -- again! -- humming a tune. Not singing was as hard as it was unrewarding. Giving up music (giving up anything), as I was becoming unhappily aware, involved more than making a simple decision to do so.
For a while I watched the smoke rise, writhe, and vanish. I tried not to think about anything else. Perhaps there was something to be learned from doing so. A Zen monk, so I'd read, had achieved enlightenment upon hearing a bell struck; but if the smoke of the incense held any revelations for me I received no sign of it tonight, and after some minutes I realized that I had to get out of that room lest, from boredom, my mood should turn black.
I tucked cigarettes and matches into my belt, adjusted the robes, and went outside to the courtyard. At this hour the gate was locked; the only way out was to climb over it. I looked up. The bars were higher than my reach; each iron bar was tipped with a brass spikelet. When I grasped the bars they felt cold. I looked out onto a sleeping street. A vehicle sped down a nearby road, unseen. I listened for a while, but heard nothing more.
It was cold at night, with one shoulder bare, and I moved about. The meeting hall was locked, as was the meditation room where I'd stayed when I'd first come to the temple. Only the shrine room remained open. A candle, left by some late worshipper, still burned, giving luster to the brass Buddharupa. I hadn't come here for worship, so I didn't bow down to the image, though I knew by now that protocol applied to statuary as well as people. I'd come here because there was nowhere else to go.
I sat on the cold tile floor, covered my right shoulder with some of the robe, and leaned against a tile wall. I decided not to go back for a blanket. The cold was preferable, for it was real. I wasn't so sure about the monk's life. I'd wondered lately whether I'd get as far as Ceylon, as a monk.
I'd be leaving in another week; I could stick it out that long. To disrobe here would be a sticky scene. I'd wait until I was on the way to Ceylon. Buy clothing with the travel-money. Change in a rest room or a phone booth. Supermonk indeed!
It had been great the first few days; then it had become wearing. I had yet to put an end to suffering. "You have to want to give up," Ven. Dharmapal had told me; but wanting to give up wanting was still wanting.
"Being a monk is very easy!" I'd said. "Being a layman is what's difficult." But there was something very difficult about the monk's life, and I was beginning to suspect that it was its easiness. I hadn't forgotten, though, the endless hassles from which this life was supposed to be a refuge. Disrobing would mean going back out to that world. What could I do? Maybe write a book about my experiences? Maybe become a guru and minister to the welfare of nubile maidens?
The chill breeze reminded me of where I was. I still wasn't ready to return to that room, and it occurred to me to try meditating. That was something I wanted to do before disrobing.
I began by sitting in an almost-full lotus, but after a few minutes my knees started hurting and I settled for a half-lotus. Eyes closed, hands on lap (I was trying out hand positions, trying to find the right one for me), back erect, my posture seemed pretty good. But what came next?
I thought of the different lessons I'd learned from Ven. Dharmapal and remembered the story of the monk who'd levitated to fetch down the wooden bowl from its bamboo pole. Even though he'd been rebuked by the Buddha I still thought psychic abilities would be fine to acquire. Levitation, for example, would eliminate tiresome train travel. If I could discover how something as fine as that was done I'd even be willing to stay with the robes. At least as far as Ceylon.
I sat on the cold tiles (levitation would keep my rump warmer too) and, eyes shut tight, tried by force of mind to will myself off the floor, to visualize myself floating in the air, to make the visualization so real that it became the reality. Float, I willed myself: float, float! I pictured myself flying cross-legged over mountains and lakes (Vinayadhara Airways?) as I moved southwards towards Ceylon while nearby eagles hovered and far below dusty villages lay trapped by surrounding jungle. If I could levitate myself to Ceylon I'd be glad to go as a monk. How fast would I be able to go? How long could I fly at a stretch? Like a bird ... like a plane ...
The insistent throbbing of one leg fallen asleep brought me back from my Supermonk fantasy, and I stretched my legs while feeling cascaded back, tingling and burning something fierce. I'd have to concentrate better than that or I'd never get off the ground. It didn't occur to me to doubt that with sufficient determination to concentrate on the image of me, here and now, in this shrine room, floating one inch off the ground -- that was a modest enough start -- that I could maintain attention on that image for as long as I wanted: float, float, float ... nor that with sufficient determination I would achieve it. Float, float, float: every beggar has his own refrain.
I knew monks weren't supposed to display their psychic powers, but ... what if someone were to walk in on me while I was levitating? That would be no fault of mine. And I fantasized the acclaim that would follow upon the accidental discovery, and the modesty with which I would respond.
Was I floating now? I tried to imagine that I was, but although with eyes shut tight there was one less sense faculty telling me I was still on the ground I knew, even so, that I wasn't yet floating: my ass was cold and sore. I'd been told that that was a good way to get hemorrhoids, sitting on cold cement.
Nor was that the only danger to my health. There were stomach diseases: the hazards of Indian foods were magnified as a monk, for I found myself with little control over my own diet. And I'd already had enough intestinal problems without needing increased risks. I was even more susceptible to head colds: my bare skull left me more exposed. I wondered how long it would take to grow hair and beard again.
But as I thought about it what displeased me most about the monk's life weren't its restrictions and health hazards, but its pointlessness. What good did it do me to administer the pańca sila formulary to others, or to repeat the dasa sila for myself? What did I gain by the memorization of foreign sounds whose meaning I knew only because a translation was provided? And how did anyone benefit by my doing without pleasures that I'd formerly enjoyed? I felt weighted with the problems and responsibilities of the monk's life and felt a longing for the carefree days I'd once enjoyed.
After I disrobed, I decided, I wouldn't go on to Ceylon. I'd carry out my original plan to go to East Pakistan. But then I remembered that I couldn't go to East Pakistan: the border permit I'd need had been unobtainable. And I remembered, too, how unhappy I'd been to learn that, and how I'd envied the monks, who had seemed free from problems.
And finally I recalled that I'd forgotten -- again! -- to meditate. Why did I keep forgetting to remember? I'd been brought back to reality only by an involuntary shiver which reminded me how cold I was getting.
The candle was burnt low: it dripped wax as the flame flickered in the light but steady breeze that flowed through the shrine room. I stretched my shoulders and became aware of goose bumps on my arms. How could I meditate when it was so cold?
"When you can't meditate," I'd been told, "just be mindful. Be aware of what's happening."
But what was happening?
I was cold: that was happening. To be aware of what was happening, then, I should be aware of being cold. Since it was so noticeable it should be easy.
My shoulder and bare arm seemed to be the coldest parts of me. What was the cold like there? I paid close attention to the surface of my upper arm, probing for coldness. There was a definite tingling feeling, but that wasn't coldness, of course, that was just tingling, the same as the way my leg had tingled when it had gone numb. I probed with the mind's eye for other feelings.
Strange; nothing there except the tingling and, yes, a sort of numbness which, as I examined it closely, was transmuted into a warm and generous glow that pervaded my arm and flowed like rich syrup up into the shoulder area and down to my fingers. Was that really warmth? I thought I was supposed to be cold, not warm.
Surprised, my mind grasped for cold, and my arm shivered at the sudden chill, goose bumps rising like tiny hard nipples. But wait; where was the warmth, then? And there it was, a tingling exactly the same as the tingling I'd perceived a moment before as cold. Now it seemed warm. And it was with astonished awareness that I realized: cold and hot were relative, and subject to interpretation. The only thing real in that perception was feeling. I could interpret that feeling however I chose and perceive it as either cold or hot, but the feelings of cold and hot were entirely voluntary.
I wasn't cold at all now: certainly there were strong tingling feelings on my arm, on my buttocks, over my whole body, but these were simply strong feelings, and it was only my discursive mind that insisted on translating them into coldness or heat. Was that how Milarepa had done it?
Milarepa had been an eleventh-century mystic poet who dwelt year-round in the high Tibetan Himalayas with only one cotton garment to cover himself. To stay alive in the intensely cold winters he'd developed a special psychic ability to generate warmth. Was this it? Just a little twist in point of view?
It wasn't only astonishing, this perception: it was almost far out. I played with it for a while, feeling the temperature differential first from above, then below, demonstrating again to myself that it was a real ability I'd learned, not a delusion. The only reason it fell short of being far out was that it wasn't what I was looking for. It was interesting, sure; but it didn't get me high.
Perhaps, though, this little trick did something to stabilize me, for the thought arose, 'maybe there is some point to all this giving up.' A quantum less dissatisfied, I leaned my head back against the wall and looked up at the Buddharupa curiously. Grudgingly I recognized that the agreement I'd made with myself had been fulfilled: if I could learn something of psychic abilities, then, I'd agreed, I'd stay with the robes. At least as far as Ceylon.
But I wasn't happy about keeping the deal, for I felt tricked. This wasn't what I'd meant at all, when I'd thought about psychic abilities. For one thing it would never get me anywhere. For another, the ability to circumvent cold could be of no value in a place like Ceylon, a few degrees from the equator. And not only was it useless, but it was also -- unlike levitation -- undemonstrable. No one would ever accidentally discover me feeling warm on a chilly night. Acclaim would never ensue.
I crossed my legs, lit a cigarette, and considered the Buddharupa. Its eyes seemed to sparkle gently at some secret joke concerning the wind playing with the candle flames. Then my legs began to cramp again, and I wasn't able to translate that feeling into warmth or cold or anything but pain.
When I finished the cigarette I was ready to return to my room. When I got up to leave I bent my head towards the brass Buddha in respect and in the last flickers of the candle the eyes sparkled.
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