“HUNGRY?”
“Not today, Bob. I’ll just eat air.”
I took my place next to Jim in the morning food line. Our bowls were set before us. At the head of the line, a villager offered the first basin of rice to the Ajahn. He received it silently, filled his enamel alms bowl, and passed it to Tan Bodhipalo sitting on his right. Bodhipalo passed it on down the row of ochre monks and novices seated on the platform. Since Richard had missed alms round, Mark was the last in the upper row. The Fan Man took the basin from him, and offered it to me, lead pakhao of the lower tier. He looked faintly surprised when I handed the basin straight on to Jim, taking nothing. Quickly he turned to the bowls of curries coming down the line, each of which was passed on in turn, untouched by either of the two pakhaos.
“Pineapple-tomato-tofu, Boomer?”
“No thanks, Bob.”
“Fish in sweet curry sauce? Bean sprouts and egg? Baby corn and peas? Diced squash? Fried noodles and chicken? Sausage roll? Mushroom and bamboo shoot soup? Boomer, you’re not taking anything. Mangos? You usually eat two or three. No? Rambutan? Pineapple slices? Sticky rice sweets? Coconut cream sweets? Pressed mango—holy pakhao, Jim, banana bread. Dukita baked banana bread this morning. I haven’t seen or tasted banana bread in over a year.”
“It smells delicious, Bob. We can fast any day.” He offered the tray of warm yellow bread back to me. “Why don’t you take just one piece?”
“Get thee behind me, bhante! No banana bread for this would-be bhikkhu. Lust of the belly begone!”
We sat through the meal in silence, watching the others feeding at their bowls, fully absorbed in their mastications. I had my regrets about the banana bread.
After the meal, the Ajahn declared another work day on the leaves would commence at noon. He also requested a few volunteers to come to his kuti for a special project at eleven. I decided to take the earlier job so I could sit uninterrupted through the last half of the day. On my way to the mid-morning assignment, I stopped to check on Jim at his hut and found him sitting on a bench on his porch, head held in one hand. He did not notice me approach.
“How’s your stomach?” I asked.
“Empty. I feel pretty light-headed too. I’m not so sure fasting was a good idea.”
“How’s the meditating?”
“Lousy. The last five days have been pure hell. As soon as I sit down I get these strong thoughts and desires about going home. All the old memories are dragged up from inside me. Maybe I’ve just been away too long. I’m ready to go back. I keep asking myself why I’m staying here. The more I do that, the more miserable I feel.”
“So are you just missing home or do you think it’s the effect of this place?”
“Both. You know how I feel about the hierarchy here. I can tolerate it, sure. Alone in my kuti it’s not so bad. But the Pali chanting is starting to drive me crazy. Do you know what we chant every day? I read the English translations beside the text. ‘Homage to the blessed one’s disciples who have practised faithfully, purely, steadfastly, worthily. . . .’ I can’t say that any more. My knees, they’ve had it too. They hurt so much I can’t even sit crosslegged in my kuti. I had to go and get this bench. I don’t think they can take another Wan Phra.”
“You sound really low. Five days? Are you sure it’s not just lack of food?”
“It’s lack of life. I wonder what I’m doing with these losers, just sitting and trying to watch my breath all day. I don’t see that it is doing me any good. I feel like I’m suffocating in a vacuum. It’s funny though, there were times at school when the pressure got so heavy I just longed for a place like this. It’s the perfect zero-stress environment. All basic needs taken care of, a nice little hut alone in the jungle. Yet I’m as depressed and miserable here as I ever was at school. Weird. I think it’s teaching me something about myself. In school I blamed the pressure—the assignments, the deadlines, the teachers, my classmates. But if I feel just as miserable here where there is no pressure, I can’t really blame the conditions back at college, can I?”
“Sounds like you are having an enlightening depression.”
“It’s so wonderful I could cry. There’s one other thing. All those desires for home I’m feeling, I know they aren’t real. They are just a reaction to the wat. It’s not sensible desires about home that come up in me, it’s strange isolated things, like for a McDermitt’s pinwheel pizza, or shopping for a new pair of ski boots. These cravings spring up whenever I settle down to meditate. When I look at them, I know I don’t really want them. They are useless to me here and now. Once I do that they go away. If the same desires come up again, all I have to do is say, ‘ha, you again,’ and they disappear. They lose their power over me.”
“Maybe you should fast more often. It sounds like productive interior work.”
“It feels like diarrhoea of the mind. It just keeps coming out like there’s no end to it. It’s exhausting. Thanks for listening.”
“Dump on me any time, Boomer.”
I left Jim to evacuate his brains in peace.
The Ajahn had marked out a section of jungle directly behind his kuti which he wanted cleared of all plants and leaves, all but a few saplings. He had plans to level the area and turn it into an extension of the marble patio beneath his quarters so he could receive larger groups of visitors. Nimalo and Tan Casipo were already raking the plot clear of leaves. Herbie hacked at the plants with a small machete. The monks, of course, could not cut them, according to the Vinaya. The Ajahn gave me a hoe and led me through the site. It was against his precepts to actually tell me “cut this down,” so he couched his instructions in direct hints. “In that whole area, nothing needs to stay. Just leave the bush over here. Go over that section one more time with the hoe.” It seemed like a tight loophole. The Ajahn was using a lot of grease. I slashed at the brush in frustration. Nimalo and Tan Casipo loaded the debris into a pushcart. They hauled the cart down the trail to dump it. Herbie’s face was black as he hacked away at a thick root. “We don’t need that stump,” the Ajahn had told him. Some well-dressed Thai visitors arrived, and the teacher was called away to greet them. I worked my way closer to the teenage layman and spoke to him.
“So you don’t like it either?” I asked Herbie in a prison whisper.
“I’ve done too much killing for monks in the past four months,” he said scowling. “The Ajahn before this one was worse. He was always clearing spaces and cutting the jungle. This is supposed to be a forest wat. Soon there won’t be any forest left. Monks are supposed to live in harmony with their environment, not kill it to make courtyards. I’ve koppied more plants since I came here than I’ve ever had to kill in all my life. Next time someone asks me to destroy a tree or bush or even a flower for him I’ll tell him to find another assassin.” Herbie threw his machete into the ground and walked off towards the sala, back rigid and tense. It was the first time he had spoken his mind to me. It was the first time I began to suspect him.
“Where’s Herbie?” said Tan Casipo when he and the Australian novice returned with the empty cart.
“Gone,” I said, picking up the fallen machete.
“I see,” said the monk. He began loading the cart again with freshly slaughtered plants, but stopped to watch me swing the blade through the air.
“You were fasting today, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I told him. “So was Jim.”
“You didn’t tell anybody.”
“No.”
“I thought you went on alms round.”
“We did.”
“And you stayed through meal.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Jim and I talked about it. We decided we had both developed a lot of bad food habits since we came to the wat. We wanted to break them. To skip the meal itself wouldn’t have broken anything.”
“I can’t fast,” said the monk. “I get weak and go to pieces by the afternoon.”
The Ajahn returned from his audience with the Thais. Tan Casipo turned to him.
“Tim and Jim were fasting today,” he said.
“I thought I saw them in the sala.”
“They were there but they didn’t eat. Tim says it’s for discipline in their food habits.”
“I practised discipline in my food habits today too,” said the teacher. “I forced myself to eat two big pieces of Dukita’s banana bread. I’m still suffering for it. We had a Thai monk here once, a special disciple of Ajahn Chah’s. Do you know what he did for food discipline when he fasted? He sat in line and filled his bowl with food. Then he brought the first spoonful right up to his lips, opened his mouth and put the spoonful aside. He did that for every mouthful of the whole meal until his bowl was empty. He sent his discarded food back to the kitchen. That was good discipline, all right. I think maybe that back section could still use a little more work, Tim. Where’s Herbie?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
“He didn’t say. I think he’s trying to wash the sap off his hands.”
Later, while raking the far end of the area to be cleared I uncovered a baby snake, no bigger than a worm. It writhed and jerked as if in agony. I thought perhaps I had hurt it. I called the Ajahn. He came over and crouched over the wiggling little creature. We watched it together for a few minutes.
“It’s too small to bite,” he said. Then he gently picked it up in one hand and placed it back further in the jungle, outside the work area. He bent down to watch the relocated snake. I returned to my raking, soon disturbing a colony of big black ants. They scattered in all directions, carrying white translucent eggs in their mouths.
“He’s fine now,” said the Ajahn. “All he needed was some leaves around him. I suppose he didn’t know what happened when suddenly his leaf-cover was removed. I put him down and he just slithered happily off into the jungle.” The teacher smiled at me.
Once a week we had a sauna. It was a small brick room with a wood fire stoked on the outside that had been built next to the wash pump. Inside, a dozen people could sit on wooden benches in the darkness, and sweat. The monks liked the temperature hot. They poured water from a bucket onto the hot rocks piled above the heat of the fire. It steamed and hissed and perspiration rolled down our wet and skinny bodies. Our skulls glistened. Salty sweat filled our eyes. Half baked, half blind, we would push our way through the heavy curtain back to the sunlight, dousing ourselves with cool water from the great washing cisterns. On sauna days there was no evening chanting. The heat left us drained yet relaxed as day turned suddenly into dusk.
“Jim’s roof creature attacked my kuti last night,” Richard told me one day in the sauna’s gloom.
“Aha,” said Jim’s voice in the darkness.
“I even saw it, sort of,” said the Texan. “I got it with a flashlight. It had green eyes.”
“Sounds like a peepah. Or a hungry ghost. Did it have an English accent?” I said, still an unbeliever.
“It had a bushy tail and a sharp black nose. Stripes, I think.”
“It sounds like a chivvy cat,” a fourth voice spoke gently out of the gloom. It was Ruk.
“A cat?” said Jim.
“It’s not a real cat,” said the German. “It’s a tree badger. You have something like them in North America. They have black circles around their eyes.”
“Raccoons?” said Jim. “In Thailand?”
Less than a week later Jim, Richard and I caught our first glimpse of a chivvy cat in daylight. Three villagers brought one to our wat. They placed it in a wire cage which they hung from a tree branch behind the sala, near the bowl washing area. The chivvy cat hid on the cross piece of the cage roof, terrified. The villagers said it had a bad paw. It looked more like a cross between a large monkey and a rat than a cat, with a long body like a weasel, too skinny to be a relative of the American coon. Are even our animals overweight? It cried out for hours in a high-pitched wail.
Nimalo took it upon himself to clean the cage every day. He fed the little animal with scraps from our morning meal. The right hind leg was always kept close to the body as the chivvy cat hopped about his cage. Sometimes the other back leg seemed weak as well and after several days there was some concern that the creature might never recover well enough to be set free. Fearing perhaps the damaged leg was infected, Mark and Nimalo decided to give it a check-up. The rest of us looked on while our bowls dried in the morning sun. The Australian novice put on a pair of stiff rubber gloves, then a pair of industrial rubber mitts on top of them. When he reached into the cage, the patient screamed like a child. It bit through both layers of Nimalo’s protection. The novice cried out but he held tight and removed the animal from the cage. Mark covered it with a cloth, then gently pulled the wounded leg out to examine it. He looked it over like a loving physician.
“It’s broken, but healing without infection,” said Doctor Mark, loud enough for the rest of us to hear. “But it’s crooked. I guess he won’t get much use out of that leg. He should be able to survive without it though. He hops around well enough in the cage. The other one was cut, but seems to be recovering.”
Nimalo the zookeeper smiled and agreed. He gently placed the creature back into its cage. The two novices grinned at each other as if they had just performed successful surgery. Nimalo took off his gloves and examined the marks on his hands.
“No blood. His teeth were too small to break through the skin. Lucky I had two pairs of gloves. Poor fellow, you must have been really frightened. Sorry little one.”
Compassion towards all living things is karuna, one of the four great Buddhist virtues. Seeing Mark’s tenderness and Nimalo’s steadfastness in caring for the chivvy cat, I was gladdened. Buddhism is not navel-gazing. Inherent in it is concern for all living things, a willingness to ease whatever suffering lies before one. Yet watching this scene left a sickening feeling in my stomach, just as I had felt when I saw the Ajahn with the baby snake. The image arose of a rich woman feeding candies to a fat, ugly dog. She loves her precious one, but ignores the poverty at her door. Secluded away in the jungle, these two men in the prime of life lavished attention on a sick coon. It developed their karuna and benefited the coon, no doubt. But outside our jungle was a world that suffers. It seemed they had fled from that. Perhaps, as Tan Sumeno argued, the outside is incurably insane. Perhaps healing this chivvy cat was the best and most productive thing these two would ever do in their lives. But in coming here, they placed themselves on the other side of a wall built to keep most of the suffering out. When that wall is erected within us as a safe place to hide from the misery of others, we become imprisoned in delusion just as surely as those bound by suffering in the outside world. In the tranquillity and safety of Pah Nanachat there seemed to be a separation from reality, karuna performed for the sake of discipline. Refusing to feed a beggar unless he wears an arahant’s robes. Yet the chivvy cat gets better.
“I’m going back to the wat where I was ordained,” said Richard.
“What about the gay monk?” I asked as we sloshed through the flooded muck of a rice paddy during alms round.
“I have to take my chances. He should still be in the south. I won’t stick around there for long anyway.”
“Then where will you go? Back to Sri Lanka?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll go to New Zealand and join the Ananda Margi group. They send supplies to Africa for famine relief. I know they can use all the help they can get.”
“So you’ll disrobe and put on the turban?”
“Disrobe, yes. But no turban. I’ve been wearing too many costumes lately. Knowing me, a turban would be even more trouble than these robes.” The novice’s outer garment was again slipping loose around his neck and trailing into the water. “I may even go back to the States for a while first and work until I save enough money to stay in India a long time. I didn’t see much of it the first time.”
Poor Richard. I knew everyone would be relieved to see him leave Pah Nanachat. He did not fit his robes, did not suit his niche in the hierarchy. He knew it too. That at least was good. We had not spoken much on alms round in recent days. I had been downright rude to him. I told him I didn’t want to talk while I walked. I just wanted to stay in line and keep up with Ruk, who was always well ahead of us. When he asked me why, I told him it made my feet sore to walk slowly. Since then we had not spoken.
Most likely he will travel, I thought. Richard could spend his life roaming India. He’s not a devotee. He’s a wanderer, still searching for a conceptual framework for his dreams and drug trips, his fascination with the mystical and the compassion which is genuine inside him.
I found Percy scratching at the leaves with his broom all alone by the back entrance of the sala. Although there were four other laymen and two guests staying at the wat, he was the only one following the morning sweeping rule. He looked discouraged. His sweeping seemed particularly futile. The section he had just passed over was littered with leaves and berries.
Giving me his courage-in-the-face-of-the-insurmountable smile, he said, “I suppose that’s enough sweeping for today, isn’t it?”
“There are still leaves all over the compound,” I said.
“A few. I like to let them pile up a bit, then clear them all at once.”
“Actually, the reason sweeping is done every day is to prevent them from piling up. Centipedes and scorpions often hide under the leaves. If the paths aren’t swept daily we’ll be stepping in them. The nasties don’t like an open path so much and a black scorpion is easier to spot on the sand than beneath a dead leaf. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, I can see that,” he said looking around at the debris. “It’s quite reasonable. Don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. We wouldn’t want to all go around stepping on scorpions every day. I can see that, yes.”
“Is nobody helping you today? Where are all the new laymen? Where’s Herbie?”
“I don’t know. I’m all alone. But never mind.”
“Perhaps the new ones just don’t know this is their responsibility. Nobody gets told anything directly around here. I’ll mention it to Julian and the others. Meanwhile, I’ll get a rake and join you.”
I had an ulterior motive. Fetching the largest, best bristled broom in the pile, I began sweeping close to the Englishman.
“Percy, don’t be offended, but why don’t you try this broom for a change? Look how well it sweeps.”
“Actually, I always use this broom,” he said.
“I noticed that. But such a little broom isn’t the most efficient tool for such a big job. If you use a bigger broom and broader sweeping strokes the broom creates a wind, like this. That blows the leaves right off the path. Here, you try it.”
We traded brooms. Percy took a couple of practice sweeps. Leaves fluttered in all directions. He looked as if he would topple over and fall.
“It’s a bit heavy,” he told me, biting his lip.
“But see the difference it makes. With those big strokes you’ll be able to sweep up twice as much in half the time. I’ll go and trade in your model for another big broom for myself. You keep practising. Remember to be mindful.”
When I returned with another, Percy was leaning on his broom handle, talking with the Malaysian monk, Yenaviro.
“Yenaviro has just given me a new pair of white trousers to wear, Tim. The ones I’m wearing have a hole, you know.”
The monk gave me a smile, then disappeared back into the sala.
“I suppose I had better go now and try them on,” said Percy.
“Why now? They’ll be the same size when we finish sweeping.”
“That’s subtly put.”
“Subtlety is my specialty.”
We raked for a while in silence.
“So Percy, how long do you think you’ll be staying on at Pah Nanachat?” I decided to check my litmus test.
“Maybe two more months. I quite like it here. My breathing is coming along quite well although I still wish I could get more teaching. I’m frightfully keen on the tapes.”
“How’s the congested chakra?”
“I think it’s getting better. Hard to tell. Certainly I feel much less sinful being here.”
“So when will you be ordained as a monk?”
“I don’t think I could do that!”
“Why not?”
“To be honest with you, man to man—there’s a girlfriend involved.”
“Ah. She’d be heart-broken if you turned bhikkhu on her?”
“Definitely. Perhaps she misses me already.”
“Do you think about her a lot?”
“That’s a rather personal question.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. I was asking for the sake of your chakra. It’s a difficult choice, having to choose between women and the holy life.”
“Was it difficult for you?”
“No.”
“Yenaviro, why do Thai women kneel or crouch down whenever the monks pass by?” I asked the Malaysian one afternoon while water hauling with him.
“It’s so we won’t be tempted by the shape of their figures.”
“You get tempted by the old women in Bung Wai village? How long have you been a monk?”
“It’s easy for you to laugh. You haven’t even been in for a month. Just try it for a few years. There’s a saying an old monk used to tell his disciples. He said, ‘I can give you charms and mantras to ward off all enemies who would do you harm, but there is nothing I can give you to protect you from the creature with soft horns on its breast.’”
“The creature with soft horns on its breast? That makes me want to disrobe right here. Don’t say it again.”
“Imagine it after two years.”
“I admit, I can’t resist temptation. Soft horns. Okay. Hide them when we pass.”
“It’s really not so bad. After all, it’s the first pair a man loves the most.”
“Yenaviro! That’s quite a remark for a young monk to make!”
“Be honest about it. It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Let me try to remember . . .”
“You can’t remember. But there’s no comparison. The first pair fed you, didn’t they?”
“You, Yenaviro, are a trickier monk than I thought.”
“I had a dream. I was running from a horrible monster,” Richard told me on his last day at Pah Nanachat. We were on bindabat. I was glad he had broken the silence between us that had existed since I told him walking slowly made my feet sore. There was a light drizzle in the air. We had not brought our umbrellas. Our robes clung to us with a warm dampness. “He was like a great gorilla with a hideous face like a devil. Suddenly I realized it was only a dream. I was making it all up. Even the creature chasing me was just part of my mind. I turned around and started running towards the monster. I jumped right into its hairy arms that reached out to grab me. I hugged it close. I wanted to kiss it full in the face. But the face changed. It wasn’t hideous any more. It was my own face staring back at me. I realized this creature was just me. I woke up loving everything. Everywhere I looked I saw only my own face. I was happy for days. I knew that everything in the world was perfect just as it was.”
“So you do believe in the Hindu form of pantheism?”
“Of course. But it’s Buddhist, too. It’s all one, all perfect . . .”
“No. Buddhists don’t say all is perfect. There’s suffering.”
“But suffering is just illusion.”
“It still hurts, so the world isn’t perfect.”
“It’s perfect all right. You just don’t realize it.”
“I know what is and isn’t perfect, and I don’t buy the logic of perfection in a world full of pain.”
“Maybe I’m not explaining it too well. Love means accepting everything.”
“Love means accepting everyone. And responding to that actively.”
“You don’t seem to understand what I’m trying to say.” Richard was getting frustrated. We reached the tiger gates of our wat and walked on barely noticing the wet, hard gravel beneath our feet. We argued about the negative side of kamma, or karma in Hindu Sanskrit, the doctrine that a being’s present suffering is caused by evil actions committed in a past life.
“The law of karma means a being is free to do evil, but it will always be done back to him eventually. This keeps nature in a perfect balance,” said Richard.
“If karma is a law, then I want to violate it every chance I get,” I said in a rage. “It’s an excuse for the fortunate to ignore the suffering of the unfortunate and then live with an easy conscience in the face of a need which God, if you bother to believe in him, created us to meet.”
We reached the footbath in front of the sala. Richard stepped in and I followed him. It was a small pool. We were forced to stand unintentionally close.
“What I hear you saying, over and over again, Tim, is that you are right and I am wrong.”
We looked into each other’s eyes, inches apart. I dropped my gaze to the mud on my feet. “At least you understand me clearly,” I said, stepping back out of the pool and drying my uncleaned toes on the mat.
“It’s okay,” said Richard. “I feel a lot of love coming from you sometimes.”
“I hope that makes up for some of my words.”
“I’m glad I found a guy here who wasn’t so into his own trip he noticed that some of us need to talk. Nobody else ever really spoke with me here.”
“Good luck, Richard, in your cave up north. Or New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Texas, whatever.”
“I’ll come back and visit you sometime.”
“Here at the wat? Richard, don’t take me for a lifer!”
I needed to send a telegram to my parents. In some other world, their wedding anniversary was about to take place. Julian the layman asked if he could come to town with me since he needed to cash some travellers cheques. After drink time I asked the Ajahn for permission for the two of us to make the trip in to Ampher Warin on the following day. But the Ajahn first wanted to speak with Mark. I remained at the back of the marble patio while the two men in ochre conferred. It seemed the teacher had a stomach ulcer. He told Mark he was in considerable pain. Perhaps this accounted for his tight-lipped manner and the worn expression on his face. He spoke as if the novice were a doctor. After receiving permission for my trip, I found Mark and asked him about his training.
“I just finished my internship this past year,” said the New Zealander.
“And you want to set up a practice in a Thai wat?”
“Not at all,” Mark grinned. He was the most emaciated member of the community. His head seemed large and bulb-like, accented by small eyes and teeth. His complexion seemed to be turning grey. “I was really in a mess when I finished my internship. I was completely disillusioned with the whole medical system, depressed about it all. I became a doctor to help people, but I didn’t feel I was doing anybody any good. All I was doing was patching up bodies. Inside, most of my patients were still emotional wrecks when I sent them out. I couldn’t do anything for them. It was worse with the ones I couldn’t send home. Hospitals don’t know anything about dying people. Doctors keep up this game of saving lives. We don’t like to admit it, even to ourselves, when a patient is going to die. There’s no real support for dying people in a hospital. I didn’t know anything about death and here were people dying right in front of me. It depressed me so badly I had to get away until I found some answers to help me deal with it. That’s really why I am here. I wanted to find some answers about death so I can work with dying people. If I want to do it as a doctor, I need to understand it myself first.”
The more I learned about the monks and novices in Wat Pah Nanachat, the more I tended to reject Jim’s assumption that they were all losers. Mark’s motives for coming to the monastery were probably the most noble I had heard. Certainly they were better than Jim’s or mine. He was a doctor and intended to return to the hospital after some tough personal questions were resolved. Yet he was the one easiest to dismiss as a failure on the basis of his bumpy skull, skinny frame and little chin. These things tended to fade when I looked at the steadiness of his eyes.
Julian and I walked out of the jungle into the mid-morning sun. I had forgotten how hot it was in Thailand in June. Until this day, I had ventured out of the cool shelter of our jungle at dawn. The sun seared our bare heads as we walked towards the highway. We waited in the shade of a wooden bus shelter until a small red truck with two rows of seats along the inside of the back picked us up. We climbed into this local bus and took our seats among half a dozen fat village women on their way to market in Ampher Warin. They grinned and chuckled to each other over the two farang passengers, Julian in his white shirt and trousers, me in my robe. Our clumsy pale bodies must have seemed incongruous in Thai religious costumes, especially mine, since the white robe is normally worn only by women.
“Tell me, Julian, what did you think of the Ajahn’s Wan Phra Dhamma talk?” I asked, curious about the layman’s response. “Do you agree that the practice is enlightenment?”
“I don’t have much faith yet. I need more faith for my meditation to progress.”
“Did the Dhamma talk give you faith?”
“A little.”
“It didn’t give me any faith at all. Do you believe that if you just follow the rules you have nibbana?”
“If you do it purely, I suppose.”
“The Buddha said the Dhamma was a raft, a vehicle to carry you to enlightenment. But like a raft on a river, once you have crossed over to the other side, you are finished with it. You don’t carry it on your back. An enlightened person isn’t bound by the teachings, according to Buddha, so how can rules and enlightenment be the same thing?”
“It was quite clear to me that the Ajahn was right. If you can be completely mindful of the rules, distracted by nothing, then that’s enlightenment, isn’t it?”
“It would be perfect concentration. But wouldn’t you develop the same thing no matter what you were following so long as you were doing it mindfully? Mindfulness, not obedience, is the key.” I had to speak loudly to make Julian hear me. The truck roared and the wind battered against the canvas roof. The women were delighted with the show. They hugged baskets full of produce to their bosoms. “Going to town can be just as much an occasion for mindfulness as following the rules in a wat. Everything is a means. You just have to use it with skill. If you use the rules poorly, you can sit in your kuti and never break your vows, but you will only get fat and lazy unless you are also striving for meditation.”
Julian put his face to my ear. “I don’t think so,” he yelled.
The truck arrived in town more quickly than I had anticipated. We jumped down at a busy intersection, went first to the post office and then to a bank. It was my first sight of civilization since entering the monastery. Buses and cars honked and screeched in the streets. A blind beggar, crouched in a corner, played a bamboo hand organ. We each put a baht coin in his cup. The tellers in the bank stared at us, but they offered iced tea and smiles. I was glad to see city women again, ones who did not crouch when we passed by them on the pavement.
We wandered from the business centre into the crowded produce market, where familiar foods mixed with strange Thai delicacies. Well known to us now were the spiny rambutan, the sweet segments of yellow jackfruit, red lichees, purple-skinned mangosteens, the rough green scales of custard apples and the spike-like armour concealing the stench of the once-dreaded durian which I had come to love. I sniffed its delicate garbagey odour above the rest. The fruits were heaped on tables and piled high in pyramids. They overflowed from bamboo baskets. Further into the market we saw bowls crawling with beetles (cockroaches, I maintained). There were pots full of wiggling black eels, a dozen different kinds of fish, wet and flapping, dried squid, shrimp, unidentifiable shrivelled sea creatures coloured pink and green. The next few stalls contained bushels of black-shelled clams and mussels. Hundreds of live baby crabs struggled to scale the smooth walls of their boxes. Larger crabs lay sedately on top of one another, claws bound tight with twine. Nearby were bowls of baby frogs—a Thai specialty, peeled and deep fried whole. Larger relatives hopped futilely in baskets, keeping their legs in good tone, since these were their selling point. In another section we found chickens, fresh and clucking, legs bound together. Satisfied buyers carried their birds by the feet. The hens hung upside down, staring with patient equanimity. For a quick meal they could be bought split and roasted on wooden spits. We watched a child gnaw a deep-fried rooster head on a stick. A popular snack. Deeper into the meat section blood and sausage and piles of grey-green animal organs surrounded us. Pig heads for sale, sheep eyes, buffalo tongue, liver, kidneys, hooves and jowls. Steel cleavers sliced thin strips of fatty bacon and dirty hands cut to order pieces of flesh for the customers. This was a food market full of the reality of life and death, both for sale this morning. Behind us, radios blared from a dozen noodle shops and rice stalls wedged up against the side of the market. Mekong whiskey and Singha beer were both displayed on every counter for shoppers with a thirst. We rushed through to the vegetable section at the far end. It was a blaze of colour. Corn, cabbage, green geodesic whatnots, horn-like purple bamboo shoots, fiery red chillies, ginger fingers like leprous hands, lettuce heads, a dozen varieties of leaves, carrots, cucumbers, wrinkled green pumpkins, squashes, gourds and baskets of sweet baby corn. We squeezed out of the other side of the market dizzy with smells and kaleidoscoping colours, the petty struggles for life left behind us.
We retreated to a quiet restaurant. Julian ordered a Sprite. I wanted a glass of Mekong whiskey, but drank orange juice instead. The bottle was full of chemical additives. In Thailand, where everything is available fresh, they don’t need sweeteners, colourings, preservatives or artificial flavourers. But that’s not what the consumer wants. He wants it in a plastic bottle with plenty of additives added. If it’s fresh squeezed, nobody will buy. The markets will soon be replaced by supermarkets. They will wrap all this ugly life up in plastic and freeze it.
Julian and I returned to Pah Nanachat in time for a cup of tea at the end of community drink. We arrived to hear the Ajahn announce that the rest of the afternoon would be another work day on the leaves. I went back to my kuti to drop off my white pakhao handbag and some new thongs I had bought. I felt frustrated that a whole day would pass without time for a concentrated sit.
“Piss on it,” I reflected quietly. I sat down under the cover of my mosquito net and promptly fell into the second jhana. Whatever it is that clicks, suddenly clicked. My breath came through clearly, easily. It sustained itself with a perfect concentration never before achieved. Thoughts arose from time to time, but they could not intrude. I was aware only of balance, of ease, and of the steady flow of air through my nose. It seemed odd to locate that sensation in an external place. It was a surprisingly active state of mind, neither automatic nor trance-like. Only moment by moment concentration could sustain it. It required energy but produced no stress. When my knees began to ache, I noted the feeling without the usual temptation to shift and relieve the pressure. I knew that to move would end the samadhi and I had no desire to do that. I felt I could sustain the state indefinitely. Still, for the sake of my knees, after forty-five minutes I returned and opened my eyes. I hadn’t expected it would come so quickly. Yet it was the reason for which I had been sitting and trying to focus for near to a month. Perhaps something was grasped, or something shaken free by the marketplace. I did not know. What I cherished was the feeling of ease. I thought I could recall it at will.