Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 S E C O N D M O O N 06When I contemplated the urge to keep going and questioned it, all thereasons and needs came down to one point: I want to escape being vulnerable.Let me find a place where I can close a door.But on the open road of a pilgrimage, all the doors are open, and theydo not open onto shrines and sunsets and peaceful places, only on moredoors that gape as vacant as the stares and questions that you passthrough. “Kaha ja ra hai?” “Where are you going?” The question penetrates.So you keep walking. Maybe the night will hide you.The pivot of the day for us was the alms round, commenced by theritual of adjusting my robes and slowing the pace. Alms faring makesyou completely vulnerable to the unknown scene around you; it is timefor realising humanity in a way that few people can. There was a kind ofdignity in the humility of the lifestyle that the Buddha espoused.They do not brood over the past,They do not hanker after the future,They live upon whatever they receiveTherefore they are radiant.More than at any other time, on alms round I tried to walk the balancebetween the palpable agitation of Nick behind me and the uncertainattention of the village ahead. I centred on the bhikkhus’ rules foralms gathering:I shall go well restrained in inhabited areas, this is a trainingto be done...I shall go with downcast eyes, this is a training to be done...I shall go with little sound in inhabited areas, this is a trainingto be done...Sometimes we would leave the village only to be called back; sometimesthe movement would naturally take us to a centre point beneatha tree or beside a shrine and leave us there. Sometimes the movementturned into chanting before it left us sitting in stillness. It could take a1 3 2