Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 T H E L AW 06the surrounding trees, and there were views all around. A slight breezerustled the tree tops, the sun was about to set in the west, and the slantinglight picked out a pair of nesting storks in the tree opposite. It wasthe half moon, and I reckoned this was going to be a great place to situp until midnight—I wouldn’t fall asleep here!A J A H N S U C I T T O“Namo Buddhaya, Namo Dhammaya, Namo Sanghaya.” Circumambulatingthe stupa, the syllables of the mantra of homage chiming inwith each footstep, the still point reestablished itself in my heart; I feltgrateful and refreshed as the bodily sensation and the mental giddinessceased. Here, where the mantra turns, is the stupa, the sacred axis thatis both the beginning and the end of the world, and the indicator of thepath beyond. Around this axis three times the mantra led us; three timesaround the blackened brick mountain, and then into meditation on oneof its terraces.The stupa was higher than a large house, and must once have beenhigher to judge from the width of the base. Currently the grass that hadcovered it for centuries was being gradually picked off by workers fromthe Archaeological Survey of India. From the round summit that wasthe present peak of the stupa, I could see over the surrounding flatexpanse of fields. India looked golden and benevolent; a slight breezeadded to the softness of the late afternoon sun. The Ashokan pillar, amile away, with the fair spread around it, looked like a set of toys abandonedby a child after play.Why create monuments? Why drag fifty tons of pillar through twohundred miles of forest and erect it here? But why also the massivestupa—who built this here, some six or seven hundred years afterAshoka? Why the massive temples of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, orMesoamerica, why the colossal stone Buddha images of China andAfghanistan?1 2 7