Until the World Shatters by Daniel Combs

Author:Daniel Combs [Combs, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2021-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

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sri ksetra gold leaf excerpt no. 7:

Prosperity!

He who has crossed the ocean of passions, with them who have crossed, the released one with the released, the Blessed one, gold-colored like an ornament of Singī gold has entered Rājagaha. He who is wise, entirely self-controlled, the unrivaled Buddha, the Arahat, the most happy upon Earth; his attendant am I.

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The symbol of the wheel features prominently in Buddhist art and philosophy. The Buddha’s teachings of Nirvana to his followers were considered the first turning of the wheel of dhamma. The rolling wheel of nature symbolizes the sanctity of the cosmic order. And the cakkavattin—the wheel-turning emperor—is the benevolent leader able to cut through worldly impediments as he spreads the teachings of the Buddha.

At Kelasa’s monastery, there was a large image of a wheel wrought into the iron fence. The perfectly round circle, he told me, represented the perfection inherent in the dhamma. The wheel’s rim symbolized the mental acuity that maintains an individual’s practice, and the spokes stood for rigidity and discipline.

Every morning, Kelasa left his slippers on the wooden staircase and walked barefoot out onto the road, carrying his large black lacquered alms bowl. Monks in Myanmar still survive by begging in public, and for an hour Kelasa walked through the city’s busy commercial heart, collecting food for the monastery. Anyone that wished could come out and meet him on the sidewalk to give a donation of cooked rice or vegetables. He also sometimes accepted donations of money, a practice that some monks in Myanmar condemn. But Kelasa told me that young monks like him did not really have a choice. It wasn’t a matter of discipline, he insisted, just a fact of life. Only monks that lived in well-funded monasteries could afford not to take money, he said. “I have to travel back and forth from school. No one pays for that. I still need money, even though I am a monk.”

When he received a donation, Kelasa would give a blessing. He held up a circular fan decorated with a wheel and complicated Pali inscriptions, and said a prayer for the donor. These daily interactions between monks and laypeople are a central part of the social fabric in Myanmar’s Buddhist society. By donating to the monk, patrons receive kamma, or personal merit. (The word is often translated in English as “karma.”) But contrary to the perception of poor beggaring, Kelasa and the other monks and nuns that walk through the street are in fact providing a social service. Religious Buddhists search for ways to raise their own personal merit, to better themselves in an effort to ensure good luck in a future life. Giving to the monks is one of the foundational ways of building merit. Burning incense in front of a Buddha image, chanting verses from the Pali Canon, and working at a monastery could also raise someone’s kamma. Some rural monasteries were completely self-sufficient—they grew their own food, had small armies of

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