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Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

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4The ObserverA J A H N S U C I T T OIn the months before we left Britain, people asked us to keep a diary andto take a camera. To bring the impressions back home. Neither of uswere keen. Nick didn’t want to be looking at everything in photographicterms, and I didn’t want to spend hours each day writing things down.Why not let it come and go without a trace? Personal history is a deadweight.But as the months went by, and so many people became part of thepilgrimage, the perspectives broadened. A fellow bhikkhu sent a smalllightweight alms bowl from Thailand; another gave me a homemadelantern that squashed down to a disk but popped up to contain a candlewhen needed. There was the water filter. A director of the CambodiaTrust loaned me a pocket-size wooden Buddha image; it was two hundredyears old and came from Laos. Part of his aspiration to help Cambodiathen came along with me. Sick bhikkhus who couldn’t walk farthemselves came along to the holy places—one via a set of mala beadsthat he made from box wood and another in the pouch he made to fiton my waistband. Another bhikkhu applied himself to fixing new rubberto the worn soles of my sandals. It went on. I wanted to bring themsomething back. So when one of the nuns gave me a diary that she had6 1

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