Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 T R E A S U R E 06of Emperor Akbar’s sword, here Napoleon III’s bed, here George V’sdining set—matching plates, bowls, saucers—and so on ... carved chesspieces, old manuscripts ... the Prajnaparamita Sutra in Devanagari script... time’s fragments. And really now there wasn’t time to see it all; variousdaytime duties, school, work, and so on, were dawning. Outside thehouse we said goodbye ... “And we have an old Daimler from before thewar ... but the servant lost the keys so we can’t get in it anymore.”Slimy lanes seethed around the stump of the wealthy estate; theyhad deposited contemptuous mounds of refuse—human, animal,and vegetable—against its grand ageing walls. Patna was weary andunder curfew—too many deprived people in the city. Ayodhya wasstill simmering.N I C KThe next day was to be our final one in Patna, and we had set the afternoonaside for our planned visit to Patna museum and the attempt tosee the Buddha’s ashes. I had been for going earlier, but Ajahn Sucittohad insisted that we were to make just the one attempt to see the ashes.Ajahn Sucitto approaches the material world with an expectation of disappointment.He rationalized that we were unlikely to succeed andtherefore would be causing ourselves unnecessary suffering if we triedtoo much. I had been for making a campaign of it.We went into New Patna, crammed in the back of a three-wheeledtaxi. The museum was one of the grand Victorian buildings left by theRaj. They were all together on several wide tree-lined avenues that hadonce been the British part of Patna but that had since been colonized byIndia. Now there were stalls along the pavements, little tea shacks builtaround the trees, beggars propped up against walls, the odd cow meanderingdown the road, and people bustling about everywhere.If you looked above this sea of India, the frontage of the museum,rising out of it all, still looked imposing. Inside, however, it was obvious1 8 5