wisdom in unknowing

Posted on January 10, 2013 by tiramit

Chiang Mai: Street-side, noodle shop, low headroom under wide umbrellas placed at an angle to create shade. I duck my head and squeeze through into this place, aware of obstructions and watching for uneven surfaces at ground level I could trip on; feet in rubber slippers appear below me, first left then right, then left… ask the noodle shop man if he has what I want, find an empty place, sit down and look around. Thai language like birdsong and traffic sounds, a bell rings, cooking pots collide, somebody’s ring tone… ‘hello?’ All kinds of noises, smells and the fragrance of jasmine with faint odour of a sewer nearby – not unpleasant. The mind has to discern which is which according to likes and dislikes. And the high-activity level of it all more or less insists on mindfulness. Head spinning around to register environmental activity; this curious reality of receiving sensory input by means of sense organs situated mostly around the head and face, has that effect of the whole head seeming to enter into an ‘outside’ world.

Attention moves from one thing to the next. Loud sounds take priority over quieter sounds, the whole sequence adjusts to allow for it, then continues as it was before. In the same way, a chain of thought waits to be completed as soon as there is a gap in the flow of other thoughts. It’s the traffic of thinking about things; the mechanism engaged in its functionality, never any peace. I find some stability in the constructed self and hold on to that – that’s what it’s there for.

Focus on a particular sound, or sensory object and logic says if that’s out ‘there’, then I must be in ‘here’ – subject-object link activated by default. The world enters through eye, ear, nose, mouth, body feeling, mind, and creates consciousness: ‘I’ am born and the ‘world’ is out there. Being a ‘self’ is a little trick I learned when I was a child, it’s not real. It only appears to be a personal experience, because if there’s a sound that’s not demanding my attention, there’s only a neutral awareness, no reaction, nobody at home; the sound is there but there’s just the receiving of it and our shared world. Sensory input enters and there’s no ‘self’ to really notice it’s there, so I imagine it just buffets around for a while like the wind from the fan above my head disturbs the papers on my table and then it’s quiet again.

Conscious awareness is the sixth sense. It knows the other five senses, and knows itself as a ‘self’ then attachment to that dissolves away; the ‘self’ aspect is gone – seeing the events without the story. Deconstruct everything, carefully disassemble it to see how it all fits together, like a mechanic breaks down a car engine into its parts. And this is such a phenomenal thing to do, putting it back together again doesn’t seem worthwhile.

‘Self-realisation can know itself within complete ignorance, so self-realisation is possible for someone who’s had no education and it can also be possible for a king. There are no preconditions to self-realisation. Self-realisation isn’t just for those who’ve undergone years of spiritual practice….’ [David Bingham, Conscious TV]

Can’t be ‘complete ignorance’, let’s call it ‘unknowing’. Just another mind state. I can look into my own ‘unknowing’ and it’s as if there’s a small seed of wisdom in there, buried deep in the layers of unknowing, that’s saying, come on, wake up! I could call it the Noble Truth of Waking Up (numbered 2a and it comes between Tanha and Nirodha). This is how it looks to me now; there’s the focus on Anatta and freedom from suffering and the Non-Duality ‘no-thing-ness’ takes on a whole different meaning.

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a movement in time

Posted on January 6, 2013 by tiramit

Chiang Mai: Walking back from the market carrying bags of vegetables through groups of slow-moving people in brightly coloured clothing; noise, heat, bright sunshine, large, coloured umbrellas and dense dark shadow. All kinds of obstacles on the pavement, sidewalk – more like walking on the edge of the road, sharing the space with the traffic, things being as they are, in this densely populated place where the sidewalk is often needed for other civic requirements. Maybe a phone box takes up the whole area. Or there’s a tree in the way, uneven paving stones due to ongoing repairs, or a raised concrete lid over a drain, fallen in, and one corner sticks up at an angle so you step down to street level because it’s easier. Then there’s a parked car in the way and you have to get around that; mindfulness of moving traffic coming in all directions. There’s an alertness that just automatically locks in place, obstructions and dangers above and below and on all sides like this, the infrastructure intrudes, but always there’s just enough room, squeezing through a sort of tunnel of directional force that extends in front, takes me along out from the space I’m in here now, along the way through this urban clutter and busy-ness of objects.

Then something happens that’s completely unexpected. There’s a green cloth sheet that obscures a construction site on my left side; three or four floors up, scaffolding, ropes and there’s a tied-up bundle of concrete blocks being lowered down above my head – it’s coming too quickly, I can see it in the corner of my vision. This lowering bundle strikes a sticking-out platform on the way down and a large board catapaults out, spins in the air and lands just behind me CRASH! There it is, a long heavy scaffolding board held by the green cloth sheet, now ripped, and the board caught there in a small cloud of dusty air. If it had been one second earlier…. People stop and look up, call to the workers in the building. They lean over, wide-brimmed straw hats, observe the scene. There’s some shouting and I don’t want to get involved in this; continue down the path to the apartment, nearly there. Open the door and the air conditioning hits me, up in the elevator, unlock door and into my quiet rooms.

I’m trembling, – there’s an elation too, can’t decide if I’m happy or scared out of my wits. Can’t get over how near I was to being injured by that falling board. The important thing is that it missed me and maybe that’s the way to go with this – no matter how near it was, it didn’t happen. Something is telling me I need to let go of the holding-on thing here; just calm down and watch the breath for a bit. Open the laptop, start-up, find the page I was looking at yesterday, Sangeeta’s ‘Serene Reflection’ and her Inner Landscapes page:

http://serenereflection.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/inner-landscapes/

‘I meander along the babbling brook – all the while realizing that its song comes from the obstructions it surmounts.’ It all fits together. There may be obstructions in the babbling brook but the water passes through them all anyway. We hear the sound of it: a river of small collisions. The near accident is telling me the World is all of this and more; the obstacles and that which encounters the obstacles. Sometimes I can look for an understanding of it everywhere and not find anything because I am part of what I’m looking for; that which is looking for itself, not finding it and seeing that this is what is taking place. This is what it is really but I can’t see it. Or you can say there’s nothing to find anyway because, always, it’s the World revealing itself, and ‘my’ seeking it isn’t actually doing anything. It’s simply a movement in time. This thought is enough to see the event as part of a very much larger all-inclusive whole…. And I can abide in that restful awareness.

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Photos: Bang Pah In (upper) & Khaosan* Road (lower) by Peter and Elaine Henderson*

a handle to hold on to

Posted on January 4, 2013 by tiramit

Chiang Mai: Going to the airport in a tuktuk through a network of small streets. It’s probably a shortcut, but all these speed bumps? I’m feeling a bit queezy, seasickness must be like this. Or is it just that I’m surprised to be rolling up and over joyful little mountains. First the front wheel then the back wheels (three-wheeled vehicle), again and again; overkill on speed bumps. Sure enough it makes you feel giddy, all the ups and downs and I don’t ‘like’ it much but my wanting it to not be like this is making it into an issue. It’s a control thing, it’s about the so-called ‘me’. ‘I’ am the problem because, in fact, there’s nothing here; a body-mind mechanism that can process and transform data, the Five Khandas, that’s all. Nobody at home, no ‘self’ anatta, no-thingness. Only namarupa responses, natural processes and the feeling of ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’ arises due to the curious nature of sensory experience – this game of hide-and-seek, and the flip-side of concealment is revelation?

Maybe so but first things first, at this point in time I’m having an acute bout of speed-bump nausea and the small discomfort of it is in the centre of consciousness. Some basic sense informs me it’s a mistake to try to reject it or think it shouldn’t be there, I’d be better to get around to accepting it; the 1st Noble Truth, a deep acceptance that causes the ‘holding’ to ease off and there’s definitely something about this teaching; if you can understand it, the suffering disappears. The first time I came to see it, all kinds of habitual ‘holding’ that had bothered me for years just fell away. Gratitude to the Ajahns in Thailand for their guidance. It seems to me now though, there’s still something I’m not getting here? I’d been thinking that all the Theravadin masters are teaching, in their tremendous intensity and detail, is mindfulness about what you’re doing and the skill of letting-go. Beyond that there’s nothing said except the reference to it as the ‘deathless’.

‘When meditators practise correctly and have the discernment to see that quality (of deathlessness) as it really is, the result is that they can withdraw their attachments from all things — including their attachment to the discernment which enters in to see the quality as it really is. The practice of all things good and noble is to reach this very point.’ (Ajahn Thet)

Non-duality teachers talk about pure consciousness in the sense of something tangible; they’re saying there’s something ‘there’. The ‘I’ that is arising is the ‘I’ of everything. Theravadin Buddhists, on the other hand, are saying it can’t be like that; it’s emptiness – if you think there’s something there, it’s a handle to hold on to and the whole thing is about letting go, not holding on. So, today I’m thinking it’s helpful to have the stability of that ‘thing’ and I’m holding on; I want there to be something in that space, a sense of familiarity, it’s a known place and the sick feeling can be happening in an awareness that’s much larger than the confines of the cramped ‘self’. No little ‘me’ having to cope with it, the speed-bump nausea is not ‘mine’, no ownership, it’s not personal.’ It’s about learning how to be a totally open presence, aware of the way the ‘self’ perpetuates itself – on all levels and not buying into that.

A short while after that, thankfully, we get out of the narrow streets, small intersections, and onto the open space of a smooth, flat, easy highway in one long straight route across to the airport….

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the conditioned realm

Posted on December 29, 2012 by tiramit

Chiang Mai Airport: Waiting in departures to board the delayed flight to Bangkok. Three flights leaving around the same time, very crowded and all seats near the gate are taken. It’s the peak tourist season, young Caucasians sprawled around on the floor, everywhere. Long legs, pointed elbows sticking out – This Is Our Way – a sea of brightly coloured T-shirts, shorts, rubber slippers. And no room in the small coffee shop either; a forest of exposed limbs, tattooed legs, bosoms, identity obscured behind dark glasses, headphones, peaked caps and hunched over iPhones and digital devices, sucking up drinks through a plastic straw and I’m thinking of the tubular proboscis of a large alien insectoid. This is how the Gap Year looks. Like they’re sensory-experience junkies, got to have that input by way of the sense gates ayatana – closed to the world and the thought of emptiness is a seriously bad dream.

They do have that intense look, though, that says they know the ego of the West is a self-sustaining concept running out of battery and most likely to fizzle out quite soon; you could say impermanence, annican there’s no substance to it, same with all things. There’s the Christian God of the West everyone is trying to distance themselves from; the one-and-only-God, elite club that disincludes two thirds of the world’s population because they’re not Christian. It’s like a right wing supremacist movement, same as the so-called Muslim extremist groups – spot the difference – pretty ugly; there’s a war and both sides pray to God to win. God gets confused and there’s another war, and another…. So they can’t be talking about God, the Ultimate Reality, what they’re talking about is one of the gods of the conditioned realm. The logic of this is inescapable – how could God be something that one religion has and another doesn’t have? But there’s a kind of nobody-at-home look on the faces of my Christian friends when it seems like I’m going to want to try to discuss this point further.

These young people are all ordinary, well-intentioned folk and, just on this level, doing what they believe is the right thing, believe in the naiivity; subject to their conditioning in the West, their peers, parents, school, government. Maybe they’ve come here as part of a response to the human wake-up call – the built-in awakening opportunity that exists in mystical religions, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and others. It’s there too in the postmodern world; deconstructing, breaking it all down until there’s absolutely nothing left and the wake-up call is activated. Some people wake up, but some just don’t wake up at all.

It gets complicated and that’s why the Buddha was saying life is difficult enough as it is so let’s not get engaged with the God concept, okay? Attachment to the idea of it becomes a desire in itself and that’s what’s causing the problem. Ultimate reality is so fragile and subtle you can never be absolutely sure you’re not still setting it up so you’re seeing it the way you want it to be, still in the conditioned realm and far from the Truth. The best thing to do is not call it anything, cultivate mindfulness, clear comprehension, discerning awareness and take care; see how that goes.…

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‘… the illusory world is through attachment. We think we all live in the same world as personalities, but every one of us lives in a world of our own creation. We have certain things in common but so much of our life is personal and unique to ourselves. That world we create is not the objective world we believe we’re living in, we’re living in a world of our own creation. That’s why it’s so difficult relating to each other, isn’t it? We’re coming from different worlds – you feel, sometimes, you’re living with a bunch of aliens!’ [Ajahn Sumedho, ‘In Awareness There is No Dukkha’]

Photo: Louk Vreeswijk

habituality of former lives

Posted on December 25, 2012 by tiramit

Chiang Mai: 07.00 hours, alarm rings…. It takes a moment and then I remember I’m in the Chiang Mai apartment, arrived from Delhi last night. Heavy curtains over the window; a darkness I’m not used to. It’s quiet here, the sound of monks chanting anumodana on the edge of hearing… takbat. A motorbike whizzes by in the distance; nothing else. Senses are alert, listening, feeling, searching for a way to ‘become’ something that will establish ‘me’ in this place, at this point in time and all the clutter and stuff that’s associated with that. But I can’t fall into habitualities right now, I’m distracted by these new surroundings and keep returning to the minimalism of no thought. There’s an opportunity to leave it all in the impersonal state of not becoming.

I go to the window to see the monks, through the empty rooms as yet uninhabited; space/time occupied with the moving of its integral parts – chapters from a book about tenants moving into a new apartment, the ending hasn’t been written yet and the beginning is a continuation of what happened before. Future time slides into present time, tomorrow becomes today, and ‘now’ becomes yesterday – here we are in the awareness of this moment, the means by which we arrive at this point in time remains a mystery. More chanting, open the curtain and all the windows. Three monks in orange robes and a small group of kneeling Thai tourists from the hotel opposite. Ah yes, many people are on holiday today and it’s quiet like this because it’s Christmas day 2012, I’d forgotten about that – here in a Buddhist country where, really, Christmas is just an ordinary day.

Jesus and all the other great teachers in history were really saying the same thing. In the peace and quiet emptiness of the moment there is no hungry ‘self’, no driving ‘urge’ and it’s possible to see that this world of suffering is a self-created delusion. We are continually re-born into this state due to the habituality of former lives; trying to get what we want or to get rid of what we don’t want, thinking that this is how to get it right. But still caught in attachment upadana; the desired state belongs to ‘me,’ the act of possessing it requires that there has to be an ‘I.’ Everything I have, everything I want, all of this is ‘mine.’ Even that which I consider to be ‘my’ enemy, this is also ‘mine.’ Thus creating a self that is incomplete, unfulfilled, I’m searching for the truth in this and fail to see that it’s the searching that maintains the state of being lost.

In the same way belief in an external creator creates attachment and unthinking devotion to this returns me to the same point of entry, again and again. It’s not about taking refuge in the Jesus or Buddha of the mind. It’s about sila, samadhi, pannya: virtue/ mindfulness of present time/ and the applied intelligence that goes with it. Slowly waking up to this awareness of reality….

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‘If those who lead you say to you, “See, the kingdom is in the sky,” then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, “It is in the sea,” then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.’ [Selected Sayings of Jesus from Gospel of Thomas, Nag Hammadi manuscripts]

Photo: Elaine Henderson

everything that arises…

Posted on December 11, 2012 by tiramit

New Delhi: Flocks of chattering green parrots in the trees and birds of prey slowly circling around in the upper sky. I watch them from our place on the roof terrace. There’s a table, chairs, an extension cable for electric kettle and all kinds of plants in the sunshine; bougainvilleas and chrysanthemums. If you have ‘chrysanthemums’, why can’t you have ‘chrysanthedads?’ I ask Jiab who is reading the Matichon (Thai) newspaper with great scrutiny. But this doesn’t seem to be worthy of comment right now… and after a period of silence, I get busy with shifting these heavy flowerpots full of earth into a beam of sunlight. Much huffing and puffing, when I’m finished with that and sitting on my chair, looking at what I’ve done, Jiab says to me: ‘… happy now?’ And I suppose I am.

Happy, yes – except of course for that lingering sense that things are not right; not as I’d want them to be. But I’m happy enough, yes. Why? Because all these things that I think are not as good as they could be or should be (even worse); all these things are just there – then they’re not there, I’ve forgotten about them. That’s how it is, I’m not holding on to them. The dark cloud of unhappiness is not hanging over me today up here on the roof terrace with flowering plants in the sunshine. No, it’s a clear blue sky and I can see there is suffering dukkha in the world, yes, but that’s because we’re holding it there, unknowingly. Let it go and there’s no suffering – can it be as easy as that? Maybe it needs sustained effort, over a long period of time. But even so, that’s the idea of it. One can feel inspired, motivated knowing there is an end to it. And I suggest this possibility to Jiab, who now inclines towards me thinking maybe I seem to be making a more intelligent remark this time.

And we talk about that for a while. It’s always interesting for me to hear what she says because like most Thais she knows the Pali terms in the buddhasassana, having learned the chanting by heart in elementary school. Jiab is also fortunate because her Dad was a monk for a couple of years and was able to explain the dhamma to his children: that life is permeated with suffering caused by desire, that suffering ceases when desire ceases and that enlightenment obtained through sila, samadhi, panya (right conduct, meditation and wisdom) releases one from desire, suffering, and rebirth.

What it comes down to in the end, is the basic truth that everything that arises passes away and the Venerable Assaji statement: “Of things that proceed from a cause – their cause the Tathagata has told. And also their cessation — Thus teaches the Great Ascetic.” [Venerable Assaji answers the question of Śāriputra the Wanderer], and how Śāriputra was totally blown away by that and people were getting enlightened on the spot as a result of the Venerable Assaji statement. In this context I’m thinking it means if you can see and are aware of suffering caused by tanha, the attachment to things you love and hate, that’s all there is to it; you see it, you know it, ignorance is gone and no matter how much it is held or the tenacity of the habit to hold on, suffering will pass away of its own accord: “Whatever is subject to origination is also subject to cessation.” And there’s a sudden burst of noise from the green parrots in the trees opposite, so we go and take a look at what’s going on over there, but it’s not anything.

Photos: bougainvilleas and chrysanthemums

things left undone

Posted on December 7, 2012 by tiramit

New Delhi: 05.00 hours. Jiab’s got a cold, she’s been coughing all night, I’m sitting in the front room, hunched over an electric fire, feeling the heat and staring at the glowing bars, I have to blink, even the surface of the eyeball feels hot. It triggers a childhood memory about sitting at the fireside during the long winters in Scotland. Not as cold here, I have to take Jiab to the doctor at 10.30. And considering now, Ajahn Chah’s expression: mai neh (Thai), ‘not sure’, uncertainty: and how, at this time of year in Scotland, ‘uncertainty’ means that if the heating should fail, we’ll all be in sub-zero conditions. Things are just that bit more vital in these circumstances, closer to the edge. Mindfulness is a requirement.

And it feels like I’m just filling in time here, pondering over some future event. It arrives in present time, finds I’m not here, still thinking about it in its future context, far away in a hypothetical state beyond the ‘now’ where all the other schemes, plans and things are left undone. I have a mind to put an end to this, abandon all of it. Half-formed entities without reality that I’ve cherished for years, give them their liberty, let them escape; knowingly release the attachment to all them. Let them go.

Light is coming up. There’s a curious bird perched on the branch outside the window, lively and alert. I’d like to go nearer to see it, but it’s too cold over there so I watch it from my place by the heater. At the point where the eye and the object meet, phassa, a conscious sensory event takes place; a moment of contact between the subjective state and the outer world. It mirrors a similar moment of cognition in the inner being. This basic truth holds my attention for a while and when I look again the bird has flown away.

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PHOTO: CANDLE FLOATING ON THE RIVER GANGES

the thinking thing

Posted on December 5, 2012 by tiramit

New Delhi: It’s the middle of the night, it’s cold, I’m in bed and covered with a mountain of bedcovers. Can’t sleep, just lying here thinking about things in the darkness. All the stories of my life come and go, click the channel-changer and there’s another one. I remember this, yes… so, he said that… and I said this… and then what happened? Click the channel-changer again and I’m somewhere else. It’s the thinking thing, continually pondering over this and that and when I ask myself how to stop thinking the mind starts to look for a solution, drawing conclusions from known facts ad infinitum and I’m thinking again. It’s my Western cultural inheritance – separate from God, we are created by Him – studying the ‘object’ and logical, applied, deductive reasoning. Here in the Eastern context it’s more like a gradually accumulating lake of inductive reasoning; the ‘whole’ is a pre-existing pattern composed of its parts. I can ‘feel’ my way into it and see where that takes me.

So I stop thinking. There’s an awareness of the cold air on my face, sensory response vedanā; the mind engaged with the other senses tuned to reception from the outer world like satellite dishes search for a signal. When there’s no thinking, there’s an empty space where the thoughts used to be. I’m aware of the desire to be actively thinking, I see the invitation to be engaged with thinking – same as other forms of ‘wanting’ and mindfulness kicks in. But it occurs to me this is the Buddha’s teaching about the origination of the world: ‘Dependent on the eye & forms there arises eye-consciousness. The meeting of the three is contact….’ (phassa) and I’m back into thinking again.

There’s something obvious about this, the mind is one of the six senses and functions like a receptor in the same way as the others do, except that it also has the purpose of ‘guarding’ the entry point; sense object activates the chain of events and mind has an intuitive, cognitive function; it is capable of discerning the object, like a security system. The exact nature of the cognitive mind holds my attention. I experience the absolutely empty space of no-thinking and either there’s not any sensory input the mind needs to be engaged with, or the apparent emptiness is caused by the mind’s awareness of being aware. There’s more of this empty space. Thoughts come in and go out again and the mind is watching the whole process. Sometimes I’m here as an observer, watching from behind the curtain. Other times the observer disappears, and it seems like only the mind itself is left there. That disappears too and in its place, a sequence of momentary mental events, each one linking with the next as if it were electronic activity. It’s like a small fireworks display, arising and falling away. Some time later sleep comes and the world disappears.

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the end of the line

Posted on December 3, 2012 by tiramit

Safdurjung station: Welcoming committee, red carpets and flower petals strewn around the platform, it’s the end of the line; the end of the trip. It’s where the train stops and we get off, but not really the end of the line. The line goes on from here and connects up with other lines in the network and links up with neighbouring countries then ultimately with the network that stretches out over the whole planet. It doesn’t start anywhere and it doesn’t end. There’s an interesting reference to this in the Hermann Hesse novel, ‘Siddhartha’, saying that time doesn’t exist in a flowing river, it’s everywhere at the same time, only the present exists, no past, no future….

There’s something about being on a train that imposes a kind of inevitability of circumstances on everything. There’s no deviation from the direction the train is moving in. The thought sequence, following an ongoing linking, travels along of its own volition, and takes shape as it goes; episodes from an anthology of short stories. It stops sometimes but that’s not the end; the stopping/starting of it is a characteristic of the story’s unfolding.

A particular event occurs somewhere in the process that suggests how the beginning might have taken place. Later this goes into ‘refresh’ and there’s a new possible beginning. Then another one after that and again, then it’s not important anymore. Mind links it all up or associates random parts of it in some barely satisfactory way and this is how the whole thing seems to sustain itself from moment to moment. It’s samsara; driven by some kind of underlying seeking-for-something that can never be found; there’s only the ‘seeking’. A slightly suffocating, enclosed feeling about it all – it can’t be “held” beyond a certain limit, and eventually I wake up. Everything still quite clear in the memory for a while then completely forgotten.

With mindfulness of papañca (mental proliferation), the process of conceptualising is just a process – no person there doing it. The application of mindfulness, which puts an end to belief in the fictional ‘self’, is also just a process – no person there doing it. It sort of does it itself. As long as there is an intuitive notion of “wholesomeness”, the recognition that what I’m doing is ethically correct sila, then there’s an opportunity to sense if something is right, or it’s the right way to go about it and the process of mindfulness runs by itself. No self, anatta, nobody at home; just an operating system, Windows 8, MacOS Lion, and beyond. A determined and purposeful search to find out exactly where this ‘no self’ exists will yield nothing, of course, because ‘no self’ doesn’t exist. Follow this reasoning to its obvious conclusion and it’s a way of saying nothing exists. So, if there is no ‘self’, who or what ‘sees’ there is no ‘self’ and I asked Ajahn about it: ‘If everything without exception is “not self” including the “I” that’s investigating this – then where does it all lead?’ Without hesitation, Ajahn said “enlightenment” and looked at me with these grey eyes, waiting for the next question ….

Many thanks to Khun Witit Rachatatanun for the photos in this series of posts

the journey to get there

Posted on November 27, 2012 by tiramit

Nepal/India border: Trying to find a wet-wipe in my pocket to remove a food stain on my white T-shirt here in the hotel dining room (on the way to Lumbini). If you’re on the road, you have to carry all your possessions in your pockets and it ends up like you’re a walking bathroom cabinet, laden down with personal effects and bits and pieces from the journey. I start to unload things, a toothbrush, a shaver, a wrapper from a holy piece of gold leaf, a ticket stub that allows entry to Bodh Gaya shrine, a pack of tissues, a wad of 10 Rupee notes (US$0.18) for giving away to beggars and all kinds of coins in small denominations; heavy bulging pockets but no wet wipe, so I go to the bathroom to get some water to wash the stain out.

Step inside and the floor is covered in water of dubious origin, splish splash across to the sink. Wash stain off T-shirt and I just know that if I start thinking, I don’t want it to be like this, I’m going to make it worse than it is already: ‘Feelings of pleasure and pain, like and dislike, arise from sense-contact…’ [Ajahn Chah, Timeless Teachings] So I focus, mindfully, on the task right now and, splish, splash, splish out into the sunshine. I suppose it’s just a different way of looking at priorities. There’s a whole lot of things going on here I just don’t know anything about – some of it is difficult to accept, all of it is richly vibrant. Another instance of it was when we entered the hotel dining room, white linen table cloths and silverware, and there was this absolutely deathlike chemical smell. Somebody said afterwards it was the disinfectant that’s used here. It was like something volcanic. The sensory cognition mechanism gets hold of something it hasn’t experienced before and attempts to identify it by retrieving files from the data bank. What gets conjured up is a series of exotic possibilities. After a while, it became less noticeable, then it seemed like it was completely gone – maybe it was still there but we just didn’t notice anymore.

I’m inclined to think visiting the Buddhist historical sites is mostly about the journey to get there; if you’ve done it, you’ll know what I mean. There are extraordinary and wonderful stories about this journey, some can be found in Ajahn Sucitto’s two volumes: ‘Rude Awakenings’ and ‘Great Patient One’. And I’m wondering how things were during the Buddha’s time, less people and pre-industrial, but was this vibrant energy, that’s here now, present then? Could this have been, in some way, the context that played a part in and inspired the effort to find a way out of suffering?

All kinds of stuff going on. Some time later in the day, I passed a cow eating cardboard packaging from a wastepaper bin. It raised it’s head from the bin and there was a long strip of torn cardboard dangling from the mouth, chomp, chomp chomp. Then later I saw another cow tearing off a piece of paper poster stuck on a wall, using it’s long grey tongue with front teeth to trap the small paper scrap quite skillfully. It must be the paper saturated in paste made from some kind of ingredient like flour and the cellulose in cardboard is edible. Just snacking; they looked like healthy animals. In the time of the Buddha they wouldn’t have been eating cardboard, they’d have been eating other things but allowed to roam around freely, same as they are now. And here I’m looking at things that are not much different. The centuries pass, industrialization arrives, and the cows wander into the 2nd Millenium AD in a rural environmnet that’s pretty much the same as it was in those ancient times.