Tranquillity and Ruin by Danyl McLauchlan

Author:Danyl McLauchlan [McLauchlan, Danyl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General
ISBN: 9781776564118
Google: k-EQzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Victoria University of Wellington Press
Published: 2021-02-11T23:31:50.508184+00:00

The Hunger and the Rain

I have to change buses at the mall. The next bus—the bus to the monastery—doesn’t leave for another thirty minutes and although it’s a sunny day it’s windy and cold at the bus stop, so I wait inside the Westfield Queensgate shopping centre. Which is fine. I actually like malls. It’s fashionable to hate them, and denounce them as symbols of civilisational decline, so I defend them on contrarian grounds. But I also just like them simply and unironically. I like the steady, unnatural light, the seasonless warmth. I find it relaxing to walk between the shops and happy shoppers, drifting about while waves of white noise from the chatter and air conditioning and background music wash over me. The escalators crowded with young families remind me of Larkin’s vision of modernity as an uncomplicated utopia, with ‘Everyone young going down the long slide / To happiness, endlessly’.

But today I am tired. I haven’t been sleeping well: it’s been a busy and stressful few months. The interior of the mall is bright, the music is too loud. The crowds of happy shoppers manifest as dark and ominous shapes, spectral, shimmering like migraine auras.

I need to eat, so I go to the food court on the mezzanine and order a Happy Meal, but while I’m waiting for it I lean on the balcony and sink into a fantasy about the mall of the post-apocalyptic future. The ground floor below me is flooded. The skylights in the roof have caved in. The heat is unbearable, and the air is thick with poisonous insects. The escalator has collapsed. It lies on its side, half submerged, covered in vines. The water is discoloured with algal blooms and coated with a shimmering chemical film. The shops are inhabited by monstrous crocodiles: they slumber in the drowned aisles of the supermarket and breed in the warm darkness of the derelict lingerie store.

I feel better once I’ve eaten, better still when I’m out of the mall and back on the bus, and I’m almost cheerful by the time I arrive at the monastery. Bodhinyanarama (‘The Garden of Enlightened Knowing’) is situated on the edge of Stokes Valley, a low-to-middle income commuter suburb in the Hutt Valley. It’s only a minute’s walk from the bus stop, but once you pass through the gate it feels very remote.

I walk up the driveway to the main building. This is a modern, two-storey, steel, concrete, wood and glass structure. I knock on the door, which is open, and offer a few ‘Hello?’s into the silence, incrementally increasing my volume until I’m as loud as I think I can get, but there’s no one around. Eventually I notice a card with my name on it lying on the kitchen counter. It welcomes me to Bodhinyanarama and reads, ‘Turn this card around for a map of the monastery. Turn your attention around to discover your mind.’

I turn the card. The map shows me the way to my kuti, a Thai word meaning meditation hut.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.