Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 G I F T S 06where he had eventually become a monk. These courses were his firstexperience of Theravadan Buddhism.It was Stephen, now a meditation teacher and writer, who introducedme to Katie when he heard about the pilgrimage. They bothlived near Totnes in Devon, a centre for all things alternative, and aplace where lots of Buddhists reside. The candidate for the Green Partythen, a Buddhist, got the highest vote of any Green candidate in Britain.He too was a teacher and was coming out to Bodh Gaya in a few weeksto teach two retreats, for which Katie was to be one of the organizers.His name was Christopher Titmuss, the Theravadan monk who hadbeen with me on that meditation course in Rajgir the year before I metStephen. The Buddhist world in the West can be a small one.Each morning while we were at the vihara we had breakfast withKatie and the others who had been running the Buddhist course. Thosebreakfasts were very pleasant affairs. We would sit around drinking coffeeand munching on toast, marmalade, and other delights that the twoof us had not seen for months. The coffee would fuel long conversationsabout Buddhism, practise, and the world. Our hosts had also becomeinterested in Buddhism in India in the seventies. Now they were hereteaching it to another generation.Now that the course was over, they were packing everything away.They had a library of all manner of books on Buddhism and related subjectswhich, to our frustration, we only got to see the day it was beingput into cases. The locals who had been doing the cooking had to be paidand arrangements made for next year. Then the organizers began toleave, most of them off to do some travelling before returning home.Katie was the first to go. Each year she would spend a week on the beachin Puri, the nearest India gets to a seaside resort, before returning to startorganising the Christopher Titmuss retreat. It was sad to see her go. Weboth felt a lot of gratitude toward her, but she was very English, andsomehow, what with us being English too, we never seemed to get thechance to express it.2 7 9