Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 DA R K A N G E L 06It happens to everything eventually, it all must be trampled underfoot. Whether it is Tibetan culture being destroyed by the red cadres ofthe Cultural Revolution, British institutions being demolished by MargaretThatcher’s handbag, or Buddhism being wiped from India by theTurkic invasions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Kali in hermany manifestations will take them all. The good things just seem tolast longer, but they too have to go, their goodness corrupted fromwithin; sometimes they can be like old trees—still outwardly impressivebut with rotting centres, waiting to fall with the next storm. The Buddhasaid that although his teachings would last five thousand years, they toowould eventually completely disappear.A J A H N S U C I T T OAt Nalanda I felt most attuned to Maechee Ahlee. Brief conversationsthat we had when she wasn’t attending to visitors or rushing aroundshouting at the attendants or the dogs (or both) revealed a sharp mindand a sincere heart. She had come here ten years ago to study at the newUniversity of Nalanda (an academy adjacent to the wat). In fact she hadgained a doctorate in Abhidhamma. But those days had gone; now shewasn’t even that interested in learning meditation. “Don’t want to studyanything new, Bhante. Don’t have time to read. Just like to sit in the sunand do nothing sometime. Sometime I’d like to live in a forest ... that’dbe nice. Maybe next year I go back to Thailand, visit my mum. She keepwriting to me—when I gonna come home? Been here ten years, Bhante... long time, Bhante. Like to see my mum again. She gonna die soon.”I wondered how my mother was getting on. I’d written a couple oftimes to her and also to my brother who lived close by. Although I wasn’texpecting a reply, the memory of her frailty nagged me. Perhaps I shouldhave stayed in England to look after her; the last time I was overseas, livingin Thailand, my father died. They’d brought me a letter from himand a telegram at the same time. In the letter he said that he hadn’t been2 1 3