Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 T H I R D M O O N 06and Ajahn Sumedho. One of the tour guides, concerned about mywounds, offered me some orange tincture. At least it made my foot lookpretty.Retreating to the roof, I could be at ease with tears and tatters, washmy robes and bandages and hang them out to dry, sit in the sun, and lookover at Nalanda in the distance. There, in the fifth century C.E., sponsoredand supported by the Gupta emperors, had arisen the mahavihara,a “great residence” comprising several Buddhist monasteries whose soleactivity was study. What was now just a heap of bricks had been one ofthe finest blossoms in the religion that had evolved out of the Buddha’steaching.Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy!...Here, OSariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptinessdoes not differ from form, nor does form differ from emptiness;whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that isform. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness...wherethere is emptiness there is neither form, nor feeling,nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness.The patronage of Ashoka was the prime condition that allowed theBuddha’s teachings to develop into a religion: earning it fabulousendowments, prestige—as well as the jealousy of the Brahmins. Anddespite occasional periods of persecution under succeeding monarchs,Buddhism and its many capable exponents filled a contemplative, philosophical,and devotional space with a vigour that the Vedas and theUpanishads could not provide. By the beginning of the Common Era,India was coming into a new age; trade routes connected it to the AsiaticGreeks with their philosophies, the growing Christian worldviewof Rome, as well as the evolved culture of China. Grecian-styledBuddha images were created for the sake of recollection and veneration.Some argued that the Buddha was of a different nature than themerely mortal—his real undying essence had manifested a “dream”2 0 4