Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 S E C O N D M O O N 06found so distasteful outside Siswal. We moved past him dismissively,descended the temple steps—which were flanked with signs prohibitingand warning about beggars—and drifted back past the ruins ofBuddhism to the vihara.Back at the vihara my impressions continue to flounder: the mealtime with the Indian bhikkhus (the Burmese ate somewhere else) waslike a works canteen, devoid of the contemplative silence and composurethat is the acknowledged standard. There were only a few bhikkhushanging around the shady dining room, and they were not botheredabout refinement. The lodgings bhikkhu skidded in late and slid behindthe table wolfing down food and coming out with highspeed incomprehensiblesentences through mouthfuls of rice and dhal. When he finishedeating I asked him about the Patimokkha recitation: he’d nevereven heard of it. There was an old Indian bhikkhu there too, sour-facedand monosyllabic, who spent most of the day sitting in a chair. The holylife didn’t seem to be bringing him much joy.One ray of light was the Nepalese nun. Small and slight with largespectacles propped on her tiny nose and long ears, swathed in the pinkrobe of a ten-precept Burmese nun, she knocked on our door late in thatfirst afternoon while we lay down still recuperating from the walking.She bore a large thermos of tea. The next morning she was at the dooragain, tea and biscuits this time; and in the afternoon, when Nick wasaway rambling around the sites, there she was at the end of my walkingmeditation path, with her giant flask, her quietness, her matter-of-factadoption of the pair of us. In other respects my Sangha refuge was goingto have to be an internal affair.8 8