Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 F O R E W O R D 06mystically embedded in the earth and stones. I suspect it is because heunderstood how, for human beings, the memory of a person and whathe or she stood for is strangely enhanced by association with the physicalplaces where that person once moved. On numerous occasions I havefound that being in the places described in this book “earths” my senseof belonging to the tradition founded all those centuries ago by theBuddha. This earthing, however, takes place primarily in my own mind.Despite knowledge of a tradition’s history and devotion for itsfounder, the pilgrim is thrust into an unpredictable encounter withthose places in the present. Since Buddhism has long vanished from theland of its birth, one does not find many fellow pilgrims and only a fewtemples and shrines, most of which have been constructed or restoredin recent decades. Mostly one finds archaeological sites excavated duringthe past hundred and fifty years, first by British and more recentlyby Indian archaeologists. The people who live in the vicinity today arealmost entirely Hindus and Muslims, who have little if any awareness ofthe significance of these places for Buddhists. Consequently, to set outon a Buddhist pilgrimage today as an Englishman, particularly on foot(as the authors of this book have done), is to embark into the teemingchaos of modern India as an object of curiosity and incomprehensionfor the locals.The present, however, is precisely where the practices taught by theBuddha take place. In the act of seeking out the sacred sites of SiddhatthaGotama, one is challenged repeatedly to put into practice whathe taught. The foundations of a Gupta period temple might evoke apious memory of a distant community and teaching, but it is the insistentpleading of beggars, the taunts of teenage boys, the unpredictablebehaviour of a group of staring people who have suddenly swarmedaround from nowhere that call upon the pilgrim to maintain mindfulattention, to respond wisely and kindly, to be tolerant.In Rude Awakenings, Ajahn Sucitto, a senior monk in the Thai ForestTradition, and Nick Scott, his lay attendant and all-round sorter-outXII