Rude Awakenings by Ajahn Sucitto & Nick Scott

Author:Ajahn Sucitto & Nick Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Buddhism
ISBN: 978-1-870205-54-2
Publisher: Amaravati Publications
Published: 2012-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

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The Third Moon:

Vaishali to Bodh Gaya

Mid-Bihar

10. Treasure House

Ajahn Sucitto

Onward to Hajipur. “Hajipur, Hajipur!” Some crazy man was jabbering at us, and I threw the words at him as a desperate offering. He wasn’t the only one accosting us of course. “Kaha ja ra hai?” they asked. “Hajipur!” That dumbfounded them for a while. My Hindi wasn’t that good, but probably the next question meant “Why on earth are you going to Hajipur?” We just grinned: that’s where the bridge over the Ganges began...maybe. Nick couldn’t get the maps to tally.

Onward our path narrowed in the darkness as it wriggled between baked mud walls—the walls that defend the backyards of villagers’ houses against thieves and wild animals. And still we crept onward, feeling like fugitives because of those walls (beyond them evening oil lamps and smoky smells mingling with cooking and burning dung), looking for somewhere to lie down in the darkness. Funny the details that stick: we both remember the cycads where we unrolled our bedding: “How do you call them again, Nick?” “Cycads, Bhante. Cycads [pronounced sigh cads]. A very primitive form of plant. Them, or something pretty like them, would have been around with the dinosaurs.” “Really! Cycads. Cycads.”

I think I was starting to crack up. Fixing all these details in my memory seemed important: it gave a brief mooring to an attention that is losing its customary bearings. Like my mother. In my last anxious visits before leaving England, her mind was deteriorating: “What time is it?” was her constant refrain, repeated every minute or two. Age is brutal at exposing our instinctive need to hold reality in a mesh of words. “It doesn’t matter, mum.” But it did. Each time would be carefully written down, relating to nothing but the need to keep track.

Younger minds can put a little more flesh on the bones of our insecurity. They can go onward to the next memory.

Nick

It was forty-eight kilometres to Patna from Vaishali, and we had reckoned on getting there in time for the meal the next day. We walked south on a minor road heading for Hajipur. It was a pleasant enough road with little traffic and trees to shade us, but we soon found it hard going. By the afternoon we were feeling as tired as we had upon reaching Vaishali. Our stop there had obviously done little to alleviate our rundown state. The fatigue gradually closed in, numbing the mind and reducing my awareness to little more than the road stretching ahead.

We were no longer trying to do the puja and meditation late in the afternoon, leaving it for after dark when we could be alone. Every evening at about six I would start to yearn for a place to stop for the night. But I was plagued with the need to find somewhere nice. I still had associations from other walking trips, of pleasant evenings by campfires out in the wilds, finishing the day in time to enjoy sitting in meditation under the stars.

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