Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

A J A H N S U C I T T O^0 C Y C L E S 06Writing it all down helped to keep the events experienced within somewholeness, some continuum. Without something constant to refer to,we’d all go crazy. I suppose most people use their homes, relationships,or self-image as the stable reference point. In order to have some stablereference through the many changes of the pilgrimage, I tried to encompassevery effort, and every person involved, with a blessing. Every day,I would devote the effort of the walking to all the people that I had contactwith so that something in us would move together on this journeyfor a while. My way of engaging with the changing hosts would be totake them into my mind and heart and record a few images in the littleochre-silk-bound book. That act connected them to the circle of Sanghathat I was writing for. In a way it hardly mattered how accurately anyoneelse could receive those images; at least the cycle of watching andconnecting encouraged my heart.Here are a few fragments that still remain: “30. Meal with Naval,+nephew +dormouse. Saw Gandak. Bike mob. Devata Bakhra >Vaishali.”The day’s events hit us in different ways and brought up contraryresponses. I’d slow down and talk when Nick felt like speeding up and gettingaway, he’d sit and linger when I felt like moving on. We were like abike whose wheels were turned by different gears. But in the evenings thegears had stopped whirring—there was less happening and we were tiredout. The road had worn the two of us into a kind of dumb unity; again itwas just the darkness and the walking. Yes, the evenings: the feeling thatthe challenges of the day were nearing an end, and the possibility of findinga place to stop and re-centre ourselves. And this end-of-Novemberevening,asthepilgrimagecametowardanotherfullmoon,Vaishalihovedinto the reach of our fond expectations of peace and reason.Another man with a bike, a scooter this time, was waiting where theroad wound through the ruts, crumpled straw, and buffalo dung that1 4 7