10


What the Buddha
Never Taught

I WENT EARLY to the wash pump, still a little shy around the others for skipping yesterday’s work duty. Already I had heard one or two indirect remarks about it. I didn’t like it when others skived off, yet my own irresponsibility led me to my best sit of the season. I felt justified in following the spirit—but not the law—of the wat. I am here to meditate, not rake leaves, I thought, mindful of my disobedience.

My robes were grey and sweaty from the trip to market. I added a little bleach to the wash bucket and began to scrub. I remembered Richard on his way back north. He had left quietly that morning before alms round. I was sad the monks could not accept him for what he was. Not pleasant to see anyone pecked off the roost, especially in a Buddhist coop. True, without his enticing conversation, I would have peace on bindabat. Our bizarre discussions would no longer reverberate in my skull whenever I sat down to meditate. Richard had found in me a source of support, a sounding board for his need to vocalize. But I was only half a friend and he knew it. Our talks were always painful to me, an addiction I couldn’t resist, until I told him I didn’t want to talk.

Richard may have resented my intimacy with Jim. Every word with my twin was to me an insight shared, an experience enriched by our complementary perspectives. Jim kept me exposed to a view of the wat which was often negative, but definitely valid.

The tall pakhao arrived with his own laundry while I was thinking nice thoughts about him. I watched with fondness as he pumped a bucket full of water, added suds and crouched down next to me. His skull was beginning to grow a little fuzz on top. We had shaved each other’s heads last week. I cut him so closely he said I must have taken the roots off. He doubted his hair would ever grow back. It was an act of mutual trust. A little blood had been shed between us but the ritual made us bald brothers.

“I’m glad your hair’s coming back now, Jim,” I said affectionately.

“It’s at the velcro stage. I can’t get my undershirt off without it sticking.”

“I know. My head keeps getting stuck on the mosquito net. That first millimetre of hair clings to everything. Would you like me to sandpaper you down smooth again?”

We laughed. I felt light-hearted to be able to share these little things in an environment which could have been so isolating. Suddenly Jim stopped. He looked away from my eyes and into his soaking laundry. When he looked back again his smile was gone.

“I’ve decided to leave,” he said.

“Before you attain perfection? Give it a few more years.”

He held my gaze. He was serious.

“When?” I asked softly.

“In a week. Maybe two if I stay for Buddhamas. Don’t get quiet on me, Bob.”

“So you’ll be staying barely a month instead of three?”

“It’s this system. I can’t put up with it any longer, all the bowing, the hierarchy, the exploitation of the villagers. I see them working in their fields when we set out on alms round each morning. It’s not for me to live on their backs. You know I’ve been miserable here. It’s no reflection on you. I know you are getting a lot out of it. That’s fine. I finally realized I just don’t want to be a part of this. I realized I can go home any time I want. Suddenly all the desires that had tormented me left. My miserableness just dropped away. I don’t feel bad anymore. It wasn’t missing home that was the problem, it was being stuck here, suffocating where I don’t belong. Now that I’ve made the decision to leave, being here doesn’t bother me. Do you know what was keeping me in Pah Nanachat?”

“What?” I asked dully.

“The thought, ‘What will I tell my friends in America and the people I lived with in Chiang Mai? Everyone will be disappointed with me.’ It’s the same old ego trap, worrying about what other people think. It’s ridiculous. There’s no sense in staying if I’m unhappy, so I’m going home. I feel it from the gut. This is the right decision for me.”

I stared into the grey water of my laundry pail. “I really want to argue with you, Boomer, to convince you to stick out the next two months with me. But I know the only real reason for it is that I’ll miss you when you go. That’s not something to argue about.”

I grabbed my wet sabong from the bucket and vigorously scrubbed a splattering of red mud on the hem.

Richard gone, Jim going. They were the ones on either side of me in the hierarchy. Pretty soon there will be nothing left for me but to sit in my kuti all day and meditate. If Jim does leave, I will try ten days of solitude. Herbie can bring me scraps from the kitchen. I’ll sneak out to the washing place mid-mornings when deserted. I will empty my kuti of books, the bowl, the lantern, throw all the junk accumulated in my homeless life out of the door, live without tools, strip the psyche bare and pry that crack in the ego open so wide that the whole ghost disintegrates back into dust. . . .

In daily meditation my mind wanders through the same familiar fantasies. I travel through China to Tibet. I return to university in Canada, teach courses and write a brilliant book. Always dwelling in a non-existent future, again and again I struggle to bring my mind back to the simple present, to walking and breathing, away from the voice which cries in my head, “I, I, I.” I know I can survive here alone despite my distractions. Richard has left. Jim will leave. I came here to live alone. “I can put up with hierarchy, with complacency, with exploitation. As long as they give me a chance to meditate,” I say to the bird on my branch, “and let me breathe through the little crack opened through that first touch of samadhi.”

At morning meal Jim told me that he would leave in just a few more days.

“I thought you said you were staying two more weeks, at least until Buddhamas.” Buddhamas was the name Ajahn Chah gave to a major festival held each summer in honour of the Buddha’s birth, death and enlightenment. It was a time of great excitement at the wat.

“I thought I would too, then today on bindabat I realized that would be spending two weeks waiting for something I didn’t really care about. I have better things to do with my life. I could be home in less than a week if I want. I could leave by Monday. I don’t have any reason not to leave by Monday. That’s four more days. I decided I’ll go to Bangkok, change my air ticket, then travel to Chiang Mai to say goodbye to the family I lived with. They will be disappointed, but it doesn’t bother me. I’m going home. I’ll spend my last few days back in Bangkok with a stewardess friend of mine who works for Thai International Airlines.”

“So it’s a stewardess that makes you so eager to chuck your vows!”

“Don’t worry about me, Bob. I don’t have any plans to break that third precept until I’m back in America. It could cause too much trouble in Thailand. A lot of women want to marry a passport—another reason for me to get out of the country. I’ve been a good boy for over ten months—don’t look so surprised. Remember, I’m just a tender sophomore, not a hardened world traveller.”

“What a waste of dedication for you to throw up the robes. Ten months? That’s renunciation. I’ve been thinking, if you go, there’s no one left for me. It’s a chance for me to try isolation meditation. I want to do it for about ten days, just staying in my kuti, not seeing or talking to anyone.”

“That’s heavy stuff. Are you sure? You don’t want to go any crazier.”

“What’s the difference? Once you leave, I’ll have no reason to talk to anybody. I’m here to meditate, not follow the rules. Don’t worry, I spent five days in a cave in the Himalayas. I’ve wanted to do a longer spell for some time. Besides, my alternative is to spend my life sweeping leaves with Percy in a wat full of work days.”

The Malaysian monk, Yenaviro, would often sit at the robe-dyeing shed near the wash pump and whittle long thin sticks into strands like wicker. He would be there most days when I came early to do my washing. I liked to avoid the late afternoon rush. Intent on his work, his brown face would concentrate on smoothing the sticks into delicate wooden tubes. Often the two of us would be alone. We talked while he worked and I scrubbed at my stains.

“Being a monk is not easy,” he told me.

“It seems easy to me,” I said. “You don’t have any work, you don’t have any responsibilities, any causes to fight for or enemies to fight against. All you have is your little monk duties and meditation to fill up your day and give you some self-esteem. The homeless life seems pretty cushy to me.”

“You’re just a pakhao. It is an easy life for you. Don’t assume you know what it’s like for us. There’s no pressure on you. If you break a precept it doesn’t matter. You can do as you please. If a monk makes a mistake he can really suffer for it. In a community this small, everybody knows everything. You don’t keep many secrets. The smallest things make you miserable for weeks. There’s no escape. Sometimes the other monks make you want to quit. If you break a rule they look down on you. It can drive you crazy.”

“I guess you bhikkhus don’t even have anything strenuous to work off the anger on.”

“It’s an offence even to get angry! We have to respect each other. Harsh words are forbidden.”

“I worked on an oil rig once, Yenaviro, and there we had only two kinds of relationship between members of a crew. You tolerated each other or hated each other.”

“We can’t hate. We can’t even think bad thoughts about somebody else. If I do, I feel terrible.”

“So you can’t take a swing at a brother even if he needs to be kept in line? A fight’s not always a bad thing. It helps to let off steam.”

“It’s a serious offence for a monk to hit another monk.”

“What if he provokes you?”

“To provoke a monk is also a serious offence.”

“Sometimes these rules make sense. I admit, I feel the pressure inside myself already. Not that I’ll hit anybody.”

“Try it for three years. We’re not even supposed to feel resentment. We’re supposed to cultivate shame. We’re taught to be sensitive to what others think about us. That’s why the rules were laid down, to develop our shame.”

“It would drive me crazy. Shame just keeps you tied to your past bad acts. How is that a virtue?”

“It will prevent you from repeating them. But shame isn’t the worst part of a monk’s life. The worst part is the boredom. You can’t meditate all the time. Year after year, the same thing every day. Nothing new, nothing new, sometimes it makes me want to scream. For the first few years you can learn the chants. It’s all kind of fresh and exciting. Well, maybe not exciting . . .”

“If you feel this way, why be a monk? Doesn’t it seem like you’re wasting your life?”

The monk put aside his sticks and spoke directly to me. “Out there in the world it’s even worse than here. Everyone runs around trying to make money, trying to buy happiness. They only end up miserable and in debt. Running and running; after a while you’re not even running for happiness anymore. You end up running to pay the bills. At least here, when you are bored, that’s all there is to it. Boredom is just boredom. You live with it. You don’t run around trying to change it into happiness.”

“What did you do before you became a monk?”

“I was an accountant.” Yenaviro turned again to his bundle of sticks. One by one he held them up to his eye, checking the length for straightness.

“Yenaviro, can I ask you a personal question?”

“I suppose so. But don’t pick on me any more.”

“Pick on you? I wasn’t picking on you.”

“What about the easy life you said we monks lead?”

“It’s just the way I talk. I’m glad I mentioned it. You showed me how difficult it really is.”

“You can ask.”

“What are you doing with all those little sticks of wood? I think you are doing a fine job on them, getting them all round and smooth. I notice you’ve been doing it for a long time.”

“This is my second batch. I made the first batch too thin. Last week I had to start all over again.”

“You wouldn’t want them too thin. I can understand that. Too bad.”

“Not really.”

“So what are they for?”

“A bowl stand. I’m building my own bowl stand.”

“But you have a bowl stand.”

“Not one I’ve built for myself.”

While we were talking, Ruk came out of the jungle with Sun Tin. They were pulling a cart loaded with deadwood. Ruk was soaked with perspiration. Sun Tin’s crooked grin stretched wide across his face. They placed the larger logs on two sawhorses and began to cut the wood with a two man saw, stacking it at the woodpile under the tin roof of the dyeing shed. The Thai and the German breathed heavily. Sunlight glistened off the sweat on their bodies. When they had finished, Ruk came over to sit with us. Sun Tin cooled off under the water pump.

“Ruk, what does a monk do while waiting for his five pansa to pass?” I asked.

“There’s plenty to do,” he said with a smile. He wiped his glasses with his drenched ochre sash.

“But what do you do most of the time?”

“Watch boredom arise.”

In my kuti I had fallen prey to sleep again, lulled into it by a false sense of confidence. I had been wrong. Samadhi did not return with ease. It was as fleeting as ever. I awoke when the bell called for evening chanting, the thrum of the elephant bugs already fading into the night. I rushed through the dense jungle air, arriving late. Dark forms had already filled the sala. I joined the silent walking back and forth, trying to concentrate on the touch of the cool tile floor on my bare feet. I tried in vain to attune myself to the wavelength of bliss which had been so calming. Something inside me felt heavy like an undigested lump of sticky rice. The dull dread of separation. Jim could go. I would survive. I could learn to watch boredom arise. Yet there was more than that. I walked out of the hall and stared at the waxing moon through the tree tops.

The silent voice questioned me.

“Why so sad?”

“I feel bad about Jim leaving.”

“Separation from the liked is suffering.”

“But there’s something else. His reasons for leaving are sound, but a good reason isn’t always a true answer. I sense he’s not being honest with me or himself. He told me he thought Pah Nanachat was the ideal no-stress environment he had always dreamed about whenever he was miserable at school. He said his present misery he couldn’t blame on the conditions here. Yet now he says he’s leaving because he isn’t happy. He says the system repulses him. Is the system in America any less exploitative? Where will he go to find a perfect system? He won’t be happy at home either and he knows it. Then why run away? I think life here is depressing Jim because he can’t do anything. He can’t even build a bowl stand. There’s nothing to distract him from the fact that he’s suffering and he can’t stand knowing that there is no external cause for it. It’s not environment, it’s him. He’s running away from something wrong in himself. I feel I should tell him so, force him to accept that it won’t be any better in the States. Wherever he is, he’ll suffer.”

“And you?”

“I’ll still be here.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“Will you still be suffering?”

“Me? Suffering?”

“You, suffering.”

“Because Jim is leaving?”

“Because with nothing to distract you, you will know . . .”

“I’m not suffering. Not like Jim. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Then where is your samadhi?”

“Distraction is natural.”

“What happens when you sit to meditate? Your mind runs from one fantasy to another. You forsake the present by travelling in the future. You busily write books about that which you have yet to experience. You cannot keep still. Do you have peace?”

“Some.”

“From whom do you run?”

“It’s not wrong to dream a little.”

“Did you come here to dream? You trade reality for that which does not exist. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Because, because, damn it, I can’t stay alone with my breath. My mind runs wild, out of control. I panic. Is this what you want to hear? Alone with my breath, I suffer.”

“Then what will you tell Jim?”

“That he—that I—that we are running. Does everyone run from himself?”

“All is suffering.”

“When I was in Nepal, I dreamed about India; when I was in India I wondered about Bangladesh. In Bangladesh I longed for Burma; in Burma I yearned for Thailand. Always running. The present never satisfies me, never gives me what I want . . .”

“The present is just your environment.”

“And there is nothing wrong with the environment. It’s me. There is something wrong with me.”

“Who are you?”

“Illusion.”

“Bob? That you?” Jim’s voice whispered behind me in the dark. Moonlight cast our shadows back through the doorway into the sala. He looked like a great white peepah, his robes glowing dimly. I grabbed him by the sash and pulled him around the outside corner of the temple to the place we had sat and talked last Wan Phra eve. He seemed wary of my vehemence.

“Listen until I finish,” I said. “You say you are leaving because you’re unhappy here. But you are not suffering because of the place. You are suffering because of you. Here you just can’t hide from it. It’s true for me too. In my meditation time, I run from the present and live in my fantasies. All our complaining about Pah Nanachat just distracts us from the real problem: our dissatisfaction is on the inside.”

He grabbed my clenched fist which still held his sash. His hand was like ice. “That’s exactly what I came to tell you,” he said to me.

We released each other and slumped back in a daze against the outer wall of the sala. Neither of us moved. Inside the hall, chanting had begun. The clouds began to smother the moon, dimming the pale light. Fireflies zigzagged through the trees and danced beside the metal water tank.

“You came to tell me the same thing?” I said to my twin.

“It’s not the place I wanted to run from. It’s me. I was even going to warn you, if I had the nerve. I think you are running too.”

“So all samsara is suffering? Every one of us suffers. Wherever we go, whatever we do, we are running to avoid the suffering that sits inside us.”

“Even living in a monastery is suffering,” Jim said.

“Living in America is suffering,” I said.

“Living in Thailand is suffering.”

“Living is suffering.”

“If it’s all suffering, Bob, what do we do?”

“I don’t know. It’s depressing to think about it.”

“Do we kill ourselves?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we just get reincarnated if we try. It solves nothing, just adds more bad kamma. Life rebounds at you.”

“I don’t believe in rebirth.”

“Me neither. Maybe the concept was invented to keep all Asia from self-destruction.”

“Death is a great pain reliever.”

“But suicide can’t make suffering any better if there’s no one left to feel relieved.”

“You feel relief knowing you’re about to die, knowing there will be an end.”

“We’re all going to die anyway. That should provide relief enough.”

“Suicide makes it shorter.”

“But if you know it will end eventually, you can endure.”

“Why endure? Why not simply die, or run away and hide, keep up the fantasy, keep busy, keep high, stay stoned, lie to yourself that you’re happy and hope to God you burn out fast.”

“Stay pretty, die young, you mean? It’s illusion, Jim. You still know you are lying to yourself.”

“Do you suffer any less with knowledge?”

“A reckless life hurts others too.”

“They suffer anyway,” said Jim, falling silent beside me.

The question of suicide had become deadly serious. My mind probed possible refutations to Jim’s logic. But this was no longer strictly philosophical. The clouds had fully blotted out the moon. I could see only the dark outline of Jim’s face. A firefly landed on the hem of his robe, creating a small green-white glow. Gently he brushed it off.

“Tell me one thing,” I asked. “Why didn’t you load a second cartridge?” The question hung in silence.

“I don’t know.” Jim rested the black shape of his head on his knee. “It’s something you build up to. When it was a dud, out of all the cartridges made in the USA, that fact shocked me. I couldn’t do it again.”

“How did you feel? You were deprived of relief. Why not simply say, ‘even bullets don’t work for me in this life,’ and load up again?”

“It’s difficult. There was a moment when I was ready to do it. Afterwards—same thing the second time with the train. It was twenty minutes late. But I was still there when it came. I stood on the bridge and watched it pass. Something changed. I couldn’t do it any more.”

“Why not? What in you wanted to live?”

“Nothing. It just felt futile. There was no purpose to it. I suppose suicide is the supremely egoistic act. You judge yourself worthy of death and appoint yourself as executioner. It’s a self-righteous fantasy. I never thought of it like that before. At the time I just wanted to get it over with.”

“So you’re alive because it was futile to try and die?”

“It doesn’t make me feel any better. Sisyphus just rolls the rock, but he’s not happy.”

“Why Sisyphus? Why not Buddha or Jesus? What about your professor-guru and my meat exporter? Maybe they suffer too. Still they make their lives worth living. I have more to learn from them before I say suicide is better. Maybe that’s what faith is, hanging on to the belief that the arahants, saints and bodhisattvas have found something genuine. We just don’t know it.”

“You’re telling me to hang on faith?”

“Faith is just patience. Jesus and Buddha, I think they actually did advocate suicide. They said die to yourself. The thought ‘I am’ is to be eradicated. It’s the ego, the self, the monkey-mind that does the suffering. What wants happiness? Not the body. The ego wants happiness. But what the Buddha taught was that ego was an illusion.”

“I sure believe in it.”

“So do I. We’ve all created an illusion, a thing we want to believe in so much we let it torment us all life long.”

“It causes a lot of suffering for something that’s not real. Is suffering illusion?”

“Suffering is real. But it’s caused by wanting something that’s not real. We want a stable sense of self, but the world doesn’t support it. That’s what suffering is. Do you remember the story Buddha told about the mangy dog? Buddha saw this mangy jackal running from place to place, into the bushes, then into the field, then over some rocks. It lay down, stood up, ran around, stopped again. Everywhere it went it was suffering horribly from mange. But the poor dog thought the itching was caused by its position, so it ran round and round trying to escape its suffering. It was senseless. The jackal’s problem wasn’t the environment; it was the mange. He carried it with him.”

“So we’ve got the mange? Is that why we shave our heads?”

“We’ve got mange as long as we’ve got ego.”

“Then how do we kill it?”

“I don’t know. Meditation? Samadhi-suicide? My stomach hurts. If I could kill my ego right now by putting a gun to it, without hurting my body or whatever lives besides the ‘I am,’ I couldn’t do it. When I became a Christian I thought I died to my old self so I could be born again. I still believe in that, but the old self still isn’t dead. It doesn’t want to die, either. It just became a Christian-type self.”

“So you still suffered? It seems kind of pointless.”

“Pointless, pointless,” I mumbled. “No, there was a point. I really wanted to become Christian. Maybe that was the problem. I wanted to become something. The ego lives by pointing into the future, and making its points stick. This is how we shore up the illusion that the self is real. We try to make something solid out of the points we make in life—even through the self-righteous judgement of suicide.”

“Then if we stop trying to make points, we cut off the ego.” Jim spoke slowly, working over each word before speaking. “That would force us to stay in the present, kill our fantasies. Law school is pointless, going home is pointless, meditating is pointless. . . .” Jim’s voice droned in unison with the monotone chanting of the monks which floated out from the temple.

“Writing books is pointless, travelling is pointless,” I took up the new litany.

“Living in Pah Nanachat is really pointless.” Jim giggled in the darkness.

“You’re pointless, Boomer.”

“You’re pointless, Bob. That’s all we’ve got to remember. There’s no point in making points. It sounds too easy. But I feel something changing just knowing there’s no need to struggle for what I can’t have.”

“I still feel sick. It’s depressing. What’s the point of being pointless if you don’t make any points at all?”

“Don’t repeat that.”

“If I don’t make any points in life, then my ego will wither and die. But then there will be no one to take satisfaction in how good a job I’m doing, or even to enjoy not suffering. If you act without ego, then there is no payoff. You just do it. You don’t get any points for not making points. There’s no reward. There’s no happiness because it’s the ego that gets happiness. If I stop making points, no more suffering and no more happiness. I could give up happiness if I thought I was getting something from it, even something mystical beyond words. But giving up making points means even if there is something beyond, the ego which is me can’t benefit from it. It is pointless.”

“How do we practise pointlessness?”

“Sit in a wat for five years. Isn’t that what these monks are doing? They just sit around bored, watching youth and career and marriage pass them by. You said yourself you feel suffocated here. That’s their goal. Suffocation of the ego. They bore their selves to death. Here there’s no place to run. They give up all distracting activity. The ego stops breathing, like a shark caught in a net. That’s why our minds get so frantic and restless. They are struggling for air, struggling for a point to make. That’s why we are just supposed to passively accept the rules. Even our attempts to follow the spirit of the precepts are just our egos asserting themselves. They are desperate. Look at your misery, look at my fantasy—our egos want out where they can breathe.”

“But these farang monks, Tim, they aren’t suffocating. They just use the monastery and the rules to make points. They call themselves blessed disciples and allow the Thais to bow down to them. All I see here is ego. They think they’re holy. Do you think they believe they are here to be bored into enlightenment?”

“Some, yes.”

“This place is full of ego. I go to the Buddha, I go to the Dhamma, I go to the Sangha. I’m a novice, I’m a bhikkhu, I’m part of a tradition that’s twenty-five hundred years old and comes straight from the Buddha. I follow the precepts, so I’m a noble being. Can you think of a better way to make points than by coming to a wat so that your little ego can get itself enlightened?” He started laughing and I thought he might disturb the monks inside. He didn’t seem to care.

“You’re so hard on the poor monks. They don’t want to be worshipped.”

“You are wrong. You remember the Thai schoolgirls who interviewed us? I never told you, but often Thai visitors would start talking to me because I could speak their language. They would ask me what I thought of Pah Nanachat. You know how I feel. I don’t like to lie, but I couldn’t just tell them I think the place is full of complacent losers. I went to the Ajahn to ask how I should deal with visitors according to the rules. I said it was a distraction. ‘The best response is to maintain a noble silence,’ he told me. ‘If the monks talk to the lay people too much and get too friendly, then respect will begin to disintegrate. We should preserve a proper distance. Otherwise there will soon be joking. They will stop bowing to us. Things will start to break down.’ Do you believe this from a man who teaches impermanence? ‘Things will start to break down.’ Our teacher is mighty concerned that the villagers may someday stop worshipping him and the sangha. The sangha here is all ego, dedicated to making points along the noble path.

“Do you know what is craziest about my bad feelings towards Pah Nanachat? I can only see complacency and manipulation here, and I hate it. But I think it will change my life. No matter what happens now, if I get depressed, I can’t blame it on the conditions. I know I can’t escape. Even suicide is just ego. There’s no way out. If I can accept that, maybe I’ll stop trying to run. It won’t make me happy. Happy or unhappy doesn’t seem to make a difference any more.”

“You mean it’s pointless? I always feared there would come a time in my travels when suddenly it would all be futile, when I’d understand there was no purpose to the journey. Then I’d just go home. Now there is no purpose. Do I go home?”

“Dummy. You don’t have to go home. You can still go to China, still write your books. Or you can go back to Canada and maybe write better books about ice and snow than you could about Asia. Either way is pointless. It doesn’t make a difference, and it won’t do you any good. That’s all we have to remember: nothing will do us any good. There are no points to make along any path you choose.”

“Boomer, do you suppose this is enlightenment?”

“What difference does it make?” He laughed.

“My ego wants a structure to hang this on. It wants some defined goals for a pointless life. It wants to score points out of pointlessness. My ego still wants to think it’s getting enlightened.”

“You don’t ‘get’ enlightened.”

“The light comes in when the ego goes out. Nobody’s left to get it.”

“What’s the point in making it into philosophy?”

“No point. No difference. It just feels empty inside, like a hole’s being carved out of my stomach. Will you still go?”

“It doesn’t make any difference. No point in leaving. I’ll leave. Monday. You?”

“No point in staying. I’ll stay. No point in missing you.”

The chanting stopped. Dark robed forms shone beams of light out into the trees. Carrying their flashlights to ward off scorpions, the monks glided out of the sala. We sat in silence until the last of the lights disappeared into the jungle. Jim rose to return to his kuti. I walked into the dark and empty temple.

Two altar lights had been left on low, causing the Buddha images to shine with a tarnished glow. I took my place on the mat and gazed at the giant serene forms, their lips closed in the all-knowing smile. I had come to Pah Nanachat prepared to root out that which separated me from the knowledge behind this smile. I was prepared to right a balance in my psyche, as long as the gain was worth the sacrifice. But when the ego is given up, there is no gain, no satisfaction even in knowledge. From where I could see, only darkness.

“I go to the Buddha for refuge.” What teaching can induce one to enter darkness? You cannot teach a bird to fly, only how to let go his branch and begin to fall. The night felt awful and empty inside. “Trust only your own experience.” It seemed safe enough. Sacrifice yourself, and gain nothing. You never taught us that.

The vacant hall suddenly fills with a loud and penetrating thrum, the thundering swell of an elephant bug somewhere in the sala. It decrescendos. I hear the creature fly from place to place. In flight it buzzes like a two-cylinder engine. I stare around in the dimness, trying to follow its path. Startled, I see a black human figure crouching near the monk’s platform. It has been in the sala with me all along. Prickles rise on the back of my neck.

“Hello?” I call.

The bug thrums again, deafening. A flashlight clicks on. The dark figure scans the wall with the beam, following the hum. By the light he casts, I see it is Sun Tin, the Thai monk with the crazy smile. His light catches the insect. It flies. He tracks its lumbering flight with the torch until it lands on the floor of the sala. He creeps toward the bug as silently as a cat. I want to scream, but I move from my mat to squat beside him. Sun Tin gives me his crooked grin, accepting that I am a little strange to be sitting here in the dark after everyone else has gone. He points to the insect and utters incomprehensible syllables. I nod. The elephant bug struggles to free its front pair of legs from several strands of gossamer spider web. The sticky webbing covers its head and feelers as well, perhaps explaining its unusual late night activity. For the first time I see one close up. It is the size of a mouse, shaped like a beetle, with a hard silvery green metallic cover for its wings. Sun Tin grabs it by the ridge of this cover between his thumb and forefinger. He turns the insect over and gently begins tugging the gluey strands from its kicking legs. His face grows serious and intent while he works. The smile disappears. When he finishes he grins at me again and places the bug back on the floor.

“Dee-ma,” he says to me, the bug and himself. That’s better. The bug seems to agree. As soon as the monk lets go, the silvery green covering opens and the wings spread. We hear the engine-like roar as the elephant bug flies straight up between us, through an open window and out into the night. Sun Tin looks at me with a smile I think will crack his face. Then he shrugs, tilts his head in a way that means “I’m going now” and leaves me alone in the empty temple.

“He knows, doesn’t he?” I say.

But the Buddha tells me nothing.