Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 L E T T I N G G O 06there with no time to spare, we were turned away. It was a similar storyon the second day when we tried to visit the Sattapanni Cave somewhereup on the side of the nearest of the hills. For Ajahn Sucitto this cave wasimportant because it was there, three months after the death of theBuddha, that the elders of the bhikkhu Sangha met to agree on theteachings and the monastic rules. That is known as the First SanghaCouncil, a very important event in the Theravadan tradition, as supposedlythe teachings and rules they follow to this day were all agreedupon then. For myself, I wanted to visit the Sattapanni Cave to find outif it was the cave I had visited eighteen years previously at the end of theGoenka retreat. I remember wandering across the fields with three othersto climb up to a lonely black dot on the hillside. They told me it hadbeen lived in by the Buddha, and we sat there together in silence. Then,when the others had left, I bowed for the first time, to a small Buddharupa, in gratitude for what I had received.So Ajahn Sucitto and I set off in the morning for the Sattapanni Cavewith what we assumed was plenty of time. We climbed the flights ofstairs that started just beyond the Lakshmi Narian Temple, a giant pinkbuilding that looked as if it had been turned out of an ornate jelly mould.As we got higher we could see down into the temple, its hot baths heavingwith fleshy humanity. The baths are fed by a hot spring. At the timeof the Buddha it ran into a secluded natural pool that he and his disciplesused. It was popular then, but now it was so popular that one sightof all those people made me drop the idea of a visit. It was difficult climbingin the heat, and we made slow going. We stopped regularly to restby the path and once in a small Hindu temple, where a priest demandedmoney as soon as we entered. Eventually we got high enough that thebare stony ground gave way to a scrub of low coppiced trees and spinyshrubs. Amidst it was a group of women cutting firewood, hacking atany regrown branches with long wide knives. Their saris were old,worn, and grubby, and they had cheap plastic bangles on their arms, thebright colours contrasting with their dusty dark skin. They called to2 2 7