I took the footbridge across the Bhagvati. Below me I could see women wading in the shallow water, washing laundry. The day's snowmelt wouldn't reach here until evening when, for a few hours, the river would move swifter and higher.
The fields ahead were a delicate green: the Spring growth was just beginning to appear. I saw the hill of Swayambu, no longer hidden by the city, partly forested and darker.
"Why you do that?" my beggar-friend had asked, and his question plucked at my memory, leaving me wondering too. I'd considered all the answers by now and had realized they were beside the point. Explanations were ego-boosters. To account oneself purposeful in a purposeless world was to be deceived. To seek past motives for present acts was to renounce present responsibility, and my responsibility to myself was to not be deceived.
But the people who would be asking me, like my friend, why I was disrobing would hardly be satisfied with an airy and indefinite "Why not?" in exchange for their substantial and positive "Why?" Where others saw a universe of positive content I saw one of negative emptiness. People were always exchanging reassurances. I envied such certitude, but was unable to share it. Where others saw exclamation points I saw question marks. It wasn't that we marched to the beat of different drummers, but rather that we typed to the punctuation of different keys.
I still felt uneasy about the decision. I was apprehensive about being a layman again: I'd have to make my way in an uncertain world without the special privileges of the robes. I'd be just another traveler. What unforeseen difficulties might await me? How would I survive?
I didn't like being scared, but even more so I disliked being scared off, so my fear acted to reinforce my decision to disrobe, rather than to weaken it. It was okay to be afraid of a known danger, but I didn't want to make my choices from fear of the unknown. The choice I saw was between the security of the robes and the freedom of being on my own again, unencumbered by privilege. But also, beside the solid reality of the decision itself such reasoning seemed to me insubstantial, and I reminded myself of my conviction that anything done to complicate my life should be examined carefully to make sure I wasn't trying to hide something from myself.
I was close enough to Swayambu to see the golden spire rising from the centra1 stupa. Supporting it, and resting on the mound of the stupa, was a square tower. On each wall of this tower was painted an exotic pair of eyes, brows long and dangerous. The temple buildings belonged to the Tibetans now, but they had once belonged to the monkeys, and were still known as the Monkey Temple. Bands of monkeys still lived on the hill.
When the devas had had their war with the asuras they had been aided at a critical juncture of battle by Hanuman, the monkey-god. As reward the devas proclaimed Swayambu a preserve for all monkeys. In those days Swayambu was an island rising from a lake hemmed in by mountains. But one day Manjusri, who bears the sword of wisdom, decided to visit Swayambu and found his way across the lake barred by serpents. With his sword Manjusri cut a cleft in the southern mountains from which the lake drained, leaving Katmandu valley exposed to the sun. Since then Swayambu has been a place of pilgrimage, and the monkeys have had to share their hill with people.
The Theravada temple was on the back side of the hill. I could walk around it in less time than I could walk over it, but the experience on top was always worthwhile, so I decided to take the steep path that went over the hill and down the other side.
As I climbed I saw ahead of me, just off the path, a young monkey sitting alone on the ground. He carefully watched me approach. I looked down at the ground directly ahead of me and walked as mindfully as I could, attending only to the walking. I allowed awareness of the monkey to be no more important than awareness of the trees and the hillside.
As I came near the monkey he looked up at me curiously, showing no apprehension. I noticed him as I noticed the shrubbery, peripheral and non-significant. As I passed I lightly placed my hand on his head with no more thought to it than I would if I'd touched a tree branch. The monkey accepted my touch as he might accept the touch of the wind. I continued walking another thirty feet, deliberately keeping awareness of the monkey on the farthest periphery of my attention. Then I stopped, turned around, and, making no hostile moves, stared hard at him. After a moment his expression changed in a double-take from nonchalance to alarm, and in another moment he had disappeared among the trees.
* * * * *
The Himalayas were always unexpected. They rose unexpectedly high above the horizon, they stood unexpectedly alone, and they glistened unexpectedly sharp against the deep sky of early Spring. I was always surprised, looking at those blue-white crests, at how insignificant everything else seemed. I felt that in those mountains there could be subtlety but not deceit.
I sat on a perimeter wall of the Monkey Temple atop the hill of Swayambu. An auburn-haired monkey sat on a piece of statuary and looked at me impassively. From here I could hear the wail of conch and flageolet running up and down impossible scales, supported by the resonance of leather drums: the Tibetans were holding their noon pirith. The loudness of their music shifted suddenly as the wind gusted, now distant, now immediate.
A few refugees circled the main stupa, with its all-seeing eyes. They spun prayer wheels and intoned the sacred syllable, Om. They wore many layers of tattered purple clothing.
I looked at the foothills, stunted at a mere 10,000 feet, but couldn't decide which one I'd been on. Unlike the snowy trans-Himalaya, they were shapeless, indefinite, and dusky with pine.
It was only just past noon, I judged: too early to go yet to the vihara. It was considered impolite by some monks to come visiting so soon after the noon meal, a time when they often attended to personal chores or took rest. I decided to wait a while before going down to the temple. There was no reason to approach at an improper time; there was no hurry. I'd been in robes five years; another hour wouldn't matter.
I sat quietly, looking at the horizon, for a while. Then thoughts of things-to-do began and I understood: I'd had enough of inactivity for now. I dug into my bag and found paper and pen. Using the bowl cover as a desk, I held the paper's edges against the light curling breeze.
Dear bhante, I wrote, and then looked out at the mountains again and recalled how it had been when I'd paid my last visit to the Mahathera at the Hermitage and had formally asked permission to go to India and Thailand. He'd set his jaw tight, given me a very stern look, and by his silence indicated to me that at least he didn't refuse. This was going to be a difficult letter.
Dear bhante,
It's been too long since I last wrote; please accept my apologies as well as my respect and hopes for your health.
I've been on a tour of the four holy places, as planned. In particular, Bodh Gaya was meaningful for me, and I stayed there a month. One person I met there said it was the spiritual center of the Universe, and I wouldn't dispute him.
I used to have doubts as to the value of such a tour. No longer. Also outstanding was seeing Rajgir, ancient Rajagaha. Here, as you know, was the capital of the Kosalan Kingdom. Today there's only a small town, but the ruins of the ancient city still stand, including parts of a defensive wall forty miles around, made of massive stone blocks that fit together perfectly without cement.
Outside of town is Vulture's Peak, where the Buddha spent much time teaching and meditating. I wonder how many hundred of the Suttas were actually spoken there? It's a lovely hill (part of a ring of hills circling the valley, providing natural fortification), and I can see why the Buddha chose to spend so much time there. Today, however, there is a chairlift to the top (built by the Japanese, who have also built a hotel on the slopes of Mt. Everest) and an elaborate stupa as well, so it is no longer a place of seclusion. In particular I found myself singled out for attention: a busload of Japanese tourists happened to be there at the same time as me, and I think every one of them wanted to take my picture.
Where can seclusion be found in today's world? The Hermitage, of course, is one place. But perhaps there are others. I expect I shall find out soon enough.
Bhante, impermanence is a truth we have to live with, and it is applicable on all levels. Today I'm having another lesson in this truth. If it were only things, material objects, that were impermanent, what a fine world it would be. But more fundamentally, alas!, intentions, projections, ideas, and even identities chase after each other in unending succession, and thus do our lives become fragmented. Another fragment of my life comes to an unexpected (though, perhaps, not untimely) end today, for today is the day of my disrobing. This letter is, in part, to inform you that today I renounce the monk's obligations and return to the lay life. The other part, of course, is to express my gratitude to you for the support you've given me both during the years I lived at the Hermitage and afterwards. For that I shall always be grateful.
Although I shall no longer sign myself as Ņanasuci (may he rest in peace) the question of how much or how little I still feel like him has yet to be answered. It may be that I will quickly be disenchanted with the lay life and, discovering disrobing to have been a mistake, decide to ask again for ordination. In that case, I'm sure you would agree to re-ordain me. In the meantime I will try to live the lay life in the manner prescribed by the Buddha. Perhaps this is necessary to prepare myself for a more effective monastic life, should I choose at some future date to seek that.
Again, my respect and gratitude.
I would have to sign the letter Robert, but decided to postpone that until after I'd disrobed, when I would be Ņanasuci no longer. Until then I was still a monk. I put the letter into an envelope and left it unsealed.
I listened to the pirith music rise to an ululating crescendo and then cease; the Tibetan monks would be taking a tea break. They would drink several small cups of spiced tea heavily laced with salted (and sometimes rancid) yak butter before resuming their pirith. From what I'd seen of their customs and practices they still seemed to me as exotic as when I'd first heard them, before I'd become a monk.
"Still in robes, are you?"
I turned around; it was Ganesh. "I figured, why walk around Swayambu? It's so fine up here, why go out of my way to miss it? Then when I got here I thought I'd sit for a while and enjoy it."
Ganesh nodded. "It's a good thing for us procrastinators that there's such a thing as rebirth, or we'd never get anything done."
He regarded the cluster of white buildings surrounding the central stupa. Colored prayer flags fluttered; the wind carried away the prayers.
"I like watching the monkeys wander around free."
"I like the pirith. I've just come from there. It blows my mind every time. When they start climbing the scales it takes me up there with them."
"I remember the first time I ever heard that pirith, before I was a monk. It impressed me so much that I remember saying afterwards that I'd become a monk if they'd let me play that flageolet."
"Did you?"
"Play it? No, never."
"Suppose they told you that you could play it if you stayed a monk. Would you?"
"Stay a monk?" I laughed. "I've heard some strange reasons for staying in robes, but nothing that far out. No, I think it was just a chance remark, and that it's just chance I happen to remember it."
"You remember what matters to you. Sometimes a chance remark makes other ideas possible. It can open doors."
"I don't say the pirith music couldn't have been a reason. It was only a few weeks after I left Katmandu that I was ordained. But ... reasons; looking for reasons is like trying to catch sunbeams in a basket. The result of action is one of those things that the Buddha said wasn't to be speculated about, because to do so would drive one to madness and distraction. Still, there's something poetic about the idea that pirith music played a role in my ordination. The idea is attractive because one thing I learned as a Theravada monk was that music is in that vast category of things not worth chasing after."
"That's your hard-line Theravada renunciation streak."
"Maybe. But I find myself constantly surprised by how large a category it is, and sometimes it's even exhilarating."
"And the exhilaration? Is that also in the category of things not worth chasing after?"
"Whether or not it is, it's all the same."
"That sounds cryptic."
"Actually, I think it partakes of the absurd."
"And you still say you're not a mystic?"
"Ganesh, there's a big difference between something being absurd and it being mystical. Asking questions about selfhood is absurd; answering them is mystical."
"Perceiving the world as a duality is absurd. Realizing its unity partakes of the mystical."
"To perceive it as a unity is just as contrived as to perceive it as a duality."
"To perceive it as absurd is also a contrivance."
"No, life is absurd. It's only mystical if you make it so, it's only happy or sad if you choose happiness or sadness, but it's absurd without doing anything about it. There's a contradiction in existence because being is a striving, never a resting. All other attitudes depend on how we perceive the absurdity. Absurdity is the oil that lubricates the machinery of life."
"I don't understand, V, what Theravadins do. What's the purpose of all your renunciation if not to get beyond the idea of 'us' and 'them'?"
"Maybe it's to understand that the difference between 'me' and 'them' isn't the same as the difference between, say, 'black' and 'white' or between 'night' and 'day.'"
"Now you're really trying to be mystical."
"No, just happy. Even exhilarated."
"Do you feel that way about disrobing?"
"It's hard to distinguish between exhilaration and apprehension, you know. But I remember when I got ordained, how I had this strong feeling of having arrived somewhere, and it got me high. And what I have now is a strong feeling of leaving somewhere, and that also gets me high. It was on this hill that I first spoke of putting aside the lay life. Maybe that was only a joke, or maybe I only thought it was. I wonder if I'll get into a manic by disrobing?"
"Full circle, eh?"
"Maybe it's them." I indicated the mountains, massive beyond the foothills.
"They're magic."
We both fell silent for a while, and watched an eagle hover overhead. Lost in thought, I didn't answer.
"You sure made a sudden decision."
"To disrobe? I don't really know when the decision was made, but the first I heard about it was yesterday."
"It surprised me to hear it."
"It surprised me, too."
"You just got back from that trip into the mountains yesterday, didn't you? Did something happen up there? Some sort of mystical revelation?"
"Mystical revelation?" I was amused. "I'm not really given to revelations, mystical or otherwise. And it wasn't much of a trip, either; just an overnighter."
"A lot can happen in one night."
"I only went up into the foothills. A little while ago I was trying to figure out which one it was; but they all look the same. I'm not even sure you can see it from here, anyway. But it's the hill where you can see Everest, you know?"
"There's a lot of those hills."
"It was one of them. Anyway, I went up there because I wanted to have more time in the mountains. I didn't think I had time to go trekking, so I took an overnighter."
"I didn't think you were in a rush to get out of here."
"I had a visa problem."
"You had trouble getting an extension? That's surprising. They've been liberal at the Ministry lately, and you being a monk and all ..."
"No, it wasn't the Nepali visa that was the problem. Now that I'm staying I'm sure I'll be able to get extensions. The problem was with my Thai visa. And it wasn't that I couldn't get it; it was because I got it too easily."
"Visas!"
I shook my head at the absurd complications they'd introduced into my life, and of the surprising changes they'd initiated. My failure to get a visa for East Pakistan had been involved in my immediate reasons for seeking ordination in the first place, and now my success in obtaining one for Thailand was involved in my disrobing.
"I remember all the hassles I had in Ceylon trying to get a residence visa. Incredible red tape, and I had to stay in Colombo while it got unraveled. I wouldn't want to get stuck in Bangkok like that. So what I did was apply for a residence visa through the Thai Embassy here, figuring it would take maybe three or four months to be processed and I could spend that time up here in the Himalayas. Then, when the visa was ready, I'd be ready too."
"It didn't work out that way?"
"Not only has the visa already come, but it's got a deadline on it. If I don't get to Thailand within a week the visa self-destructs. And not only that, but the consul at the Embassy said that they made special efforts to speed things up for me, on account of I'm a monk, and that if I don't use the visa it'll set up a mammoth roadblock against getting any residence visa from Bangkok, all these papers already being authorized and everything."
"Changed your head around, did it?"
"I'd been counting on a few more months. If I go to Thailand I might never see the Himalayas again. So when they told me I had ten days I packed and split to the mountains the next morning. Spent the day up there, and the night, too.
I fell silent, and was glad Ganesh didn't coax me. After a while I continued.
"Yesterday morning, I got up before first light and sat down beneath a pine tree and watched the dawn from the top of one of those hills. It was cold. I had all my robes wrapped around me, and the wind blew on my cheeks and invigorated me. Below me the valley was buried in clouds. But I was in air so clear the mountains sparkled at dawn. And hilltops rose like islands above the clouds. And as the sun rose it touched the peaks, first the ones far in the East, like Everest, then the ones to the West, one after another, and it was like a fire, blinding in its clarity."
"'Blinding in its clarity'? And you tell me you're not a mystic?"
"Maybe just a bit of a poet."
This time he prodded me. "What happened, then, at dawn?"
I didn't answer right away, and when I did I only said, "I was just thinking that I really don't feel any different about this panorama, right here. I've never felt awe before anything else. And every time I see them I'm impressed all over again. So when I sat there yesterday at dawn I thought of how much I regretted not having as much time here as I'd wanted, and how absurd it was to have to leave so soon because of a stamp on a piece of paper."
I didn't tell Ganesh the thought that had come to me with the dawn: But you can't stay here. Not as a monk.
That had been the decisive thought: not as a monk. From it had been born further thoughts, and looking at the mountains now I re-created those thoughts and feelings. Why, necessarily, did I have to live as a monk anywhere? Since when had being a monk become a necessity? But if I stayed here not as a monk how would I survive? Against the icy purity of the mountains my dark thought stood out like a shadow, and I saw a fear that to be without the robes was to be without identity. I saw the robes in which I huddled as being used not only for protection against the elements but as a general security blanket. I held to it, fearful of change: the one fear certain to be realized. And with that feeling came the perception that if I went on to Thailand only for the sake of holding on to that identity that I would be going not because the Himalayas weren't worth it but because I wasn't. And I didn't like that.
I didn't know how much of this Ganesh discerned from my brief comments, but I didn't feel like explaining any of it, and was glad he didn't ask.
"So you decided to do away with the absurdity by staying? And you still say you're not a practicing mystic?"
"We're all practicing mystics in the sense that we keep ourselves mystified. The purpose of the Buddha was to de-mystify us. You're right, in that sense. I'm still a practicing mystic. But I wouldn't be, if I knew how."
"That's right. Neither of us can talk of enlightenment from personal experience. So I guess it's the end of that topic."
"It's the end of the conversation. It's time to make my move."
"You like me to go down there with you?"
"No, I'll be okay. I won't get lost. Don't need to have my hand held. I'll see you back at the house."
"Right. Hey, my money didn't come yet. Can you let me have something for a few days?"
"You spent that twenty already?"
"I picked up some coral." He showed me the string of beads he bought. "Good buy. Only fifteen rupees. Now I'm broke again."
I handed him some more money. "It's all transitory anyway. But why work so hard at helping it along?"
"I'll pay it back, you know."
"I know."
"If you're short I can ask someone else."
"I can spare it."
"Have you thought yet about how you're going to make your living, without an almsbowl?"
"Vaguely. Something'll turn up. I'll manage."
"Are you still interested in the Dhamma?"
"Of course. I'm not giving up the quest. Just the privileged robes of the quester. The Dhamma has nothing to do with shorn heads and robes; it has nothing to do with Buddhist or Hindu or Mahayana or Theravada. It has to do only with me."
"You should write a book. That would be an easy way to make money. Tell people what the monk's life is all about. Get rich."
"I could call it A Farewell to Alms or Of Human Vagabondage. But what could I possibly say to anybody, except to repeat the Buddha's last words?"
"Which are?"
"To disappear is the nature of conditions. Strive on unremittingly."
The Tibetan pirith music started again as I turned and headed down the hill.
* * * * *
Ven. Ņanavira hadn't disrobed. He'd preferred suicide. Why should I disrobe, then, rather than kill myself? Was it simply that I wasn't willing to go that far in following his example? Or rather that, unlike him, my purpose was not to rid myself of a disordered body?
But if, in this Dhamma, returning to the lower life was death, then disrobing was, in a sense, suicide. Considerably easier, I had to admit, than killing the body (... it is not as easy as one might think to reach the point of making the attempt in earnest, and even then there remains the practical difficulty of actually killing oneself ...), but perhaps more to the point for me. There was a little ego within the fabric of the robes that I wanted dead. I wanted the security, the identity, of the robes, true, but I declined the attachment that was inseparable from that security and identity.
If this was a suicide that I was on my way to, at least it was a well-timed one, by Ņanavira's standards: "If one is going to commit suicide -- not that I advocate it for anyone -- it is a great mistake to do it when one is feeling at one's most suicidal. The business should be carefully planned so that one is in the best possible frame of mind -- calm, unmoved, serene -- when one does it."
The woods on this side of the hill were denser, and as I descended to my death I found the path following a fold of hill where the sun was hidden behind tall trees. There was a damp chill in the air. I put my attention on the walking and cultivated, as best I could, calmness and serenity.
For years Ven. Ņanavira had fought his bleak fight against satyriasis, continuing "to live from day to day by force of habit" while the idea of suicide became "more definite and more frequent." When he saw that in his circumstances he could not hope to make further progress in the Dhamma he chose to alter his circumstances: he took a new body. "It is necessary," he'd found, "to accept limitations imposed on one with a good grace."
I didn't have satyriasis, but I had limitations. "To rid myself of one big attachment to my security robe," I'd explained my disrobing. But unrelieved sexual needs (as well as his unrelieved intestinal ailments) had been involved in Ņanavira's suicide. That it was also involved in my disrobing I accepted. (I could prove otherwise if I cared to: I could maintain a vow of celibacy as a layman. But I didn't care to prove otherwise.) I was still bound by passion, bound by anger, and bound -- I assumed -- by delusion. I'd learned to accept the difficulties and torments that restraint could bring, but that didn't make them less difficult or painful. Like Ņanavira, I was sometimes "invaded by lustful thoughts" with "neither the inclination nor the energy to resist," and like him, I could "manage only so much and no more." How, then, was my disrobing anything other than a response to that passion?
Rather than gloss over my needs I accepted them. My decision to disrobe received its impetus from sensuality, from irritation, from isolation, as did all action. But my task now was not to choke off that desire through inaction; it was to direct the energy so that, low-born though it might be, it might also be used for higher ends. For those ends I didn't need the special status and privileges of the monk, nor the pride of feeling worthy of those privileges, nor the discomfort of feeling unworthy. I needed neither robes nor razor. I needed only myself, for it was only I, I'd seen in Bodh Gaya, who was totally and unarguably responsible for both the mode and the act of my being. To involve anyone else was to shirk responsibility to myself.
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