Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998ful to behold. Like a marriage, an ordination is a mixture of love and loss – manytears from the mother who is losing her beloved baby but glad to see him fulfillinghis own dream. The most touching of moments came when the ordination wasdone and his family came up to him, one by one, on their knees, and each offeredhim a red rose – rare, rare in the world is there such beauty, and such noble bearingof pain interwoven.After all the festivities of the ordination and the Dhamma talk we held a candlelitcircumambulation of the meditation hall. Lights, flowers and incense heldin our folded palms as we recalled the ancient sacredness of that day: two monthsafter the Buddha had realized enlightenment he had met up with his five formercompanions, in the deer park outside of Varanasi, and had conveyed to them theinsight that he had awakened to. This was again the Dhammacakka-pavattana Sutta,the turning of the Wheel. About 32,000 full moons ago, as the deer browsed by themidsummer moonlight, the lean and rag-robed, 35-year-old Buddha explained theprinciples of the Middle Way and the Four Noble Truths to his old ascetic friends.It is said that the earth shook as the first of them understood and – in a way – thereverberations of that primal shock of wisdom’s power are still rippling aroundthe world, 2,586 years later, to bless us all with its guiding light. It is something tocelebrate.After planting our candles and incense before the Buddha shrine on the hill,we came in and settled down for the rest of the evening – numbers of folks headedhome or to their hotels at this time, the residents continued on.I had been highly charged by the Dhamma-chanda of the evening but, by midnight,I was happy to follow Ajahn Pasanno’s encouragement to retire – it hadbeen a long three months. Some of the brave spirits – Ñānamuni, Karunadhammo,Sudanto, et al. – headed up the mountain after midnight tea to spend the rest ofthe vigil communing with the moon and the wilds. Even though the bear and themountain lion populations have escalated recently, they met none, in fact – “Theworst of the wild creatures we had to deal with were the mosquitoes.”“Yeah, they were BAD.”Evam.112