Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 F R I E N D S H I P 06The rivers snake across the plain, ever shifting their position, erodingone bank and depositing sediment elsewhere. When the monsooncomes, the rivers rise and spill out over the land, depositing silt overeverything. This fertilizes the land but also causes a lot of destruction—and it slowly buries the history of the people who live there. That is whyall the Buddhist archaeological remains have been buried, covered withup to four metres of silt. That is just the last two thousand years’ worth.In places the silt is as deep as four thousand metres. Looking out overthe Great Gandak laden with silt like some vast, flowing mud bath,makes you realize how integral the rivers are to the plain. It’s no wonderthe Indians worship them.A J A H N S U C I T T ONight by the Gandak letting the day end. It was good to look up intothe huge sky and see Orion, an old companion from Britain, standingoverhead. The great hunter was refreshingly silent. At the end of theday, I just wanted to sit with the Buddha and let the rest of it pass over.It was strange spending so much time with Nick but hardly having aconversation. To my mind, his bounding spontaneous style seemedinsensitive. Or maybe not being able to do things my way was the problem.Well that was my friend: loyal, generous, exasperating Nick. Icould feel myself getting moody toward the end of each day, what withthe blisters, the heat, the fatigue, the grime, and the jangle of India; andI realised that I was probably irritating him in return. We were probablyhelping each other through all kinds of attachments if we couldonly realise it!At the end of a day, Nick would be looking for “a good spot to spendthe night,” a concept that meant little to me. So we would stumblearound in the darkness until we sank down somewhere as “not goodenough” as anywhere else. So it was beside the Gandak—how can onestretch of sand be better than another? Well why argue, especially as it1 1 1