Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

5Looking for PurityA J A H N S U C I T T ODazed and in darkness, we came to the town of Kasia. At the time of theBuddha this was Kusinara, such a dump then that Venerable Ananda hadbegged the Buddha not to die in it. But at the end of a long day’s walking,dying is of less importance than getting off the numbing road. Herewas a good enough place to stop; getting up again was purely hypothetical.Slumped in a chai shop, my vacant stare rested on the old movieposters that revealed in their tears even older movie posters underneath.The effect was like a collage with the supposed present wrapped in, andpatched up by, the supposed past. Events in India are just like that—never completely forgotten, just washed over by the next; never merelyof the present either, but moulded by the apparent past, which jutsthrough it like resistant bedrock.Kushinagar—a settlement that had sprung up around the excavatedruins of the site of the Buddha’s final decease—was a couple of kilometreseastalongthemaintrunkroadtoGorakhpur.Bytheclockitwassometime after seven when we hobbled past the welcoming Buddha image atthe crossroads, but in the darkness of India, time is set free—it can be justlike midday, with noisy markets under streamers of lights, and cobblersfixing shoes by paraffin lanterns, or it could be purgatorial night. People7 9