Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998other. This is just the kind of networking and active application of the Teachingsthat we had hoped to engender as we started this program up.The tide of greetings and smiles swells as we reach the evening and the timefor the Visākhā Pūjā observance – it’s the day before the full moon but, since somany are already gathered here we decided to hold it on this night. Ajahn Pasannogave a talk outlining the principles of the festival: the birth of the Bodhisattva, theenlightenment and the Parinibbāna – the final passing away – of the Buddha. Therewere 48 of us in the line of light circumambulating the Dhamma Hall and, for thefirst time, we had to stretch the procession out across the car park.After a breezy day the night air had grown still; candles glowed peacefully inour hands, illuminating the flowers and fragrant incense that we held in honor ofour great guide and teacher – the Buddha. Each lap of the shrine is dedicated tothe recollection of one of the Three Jewels, with the offerings being finally placedin censers at the foot of the stairway up to the Buddha on the hill. Cool and clear,our freshly shaven heads painted silver with the light, the beauty and fragrance ofdevotion to the Path and to the Beyond to which it leads.The night was completed by the taped recital of the first two books of Touchingthe Earth, an epic length poem by Grevel Lindop, recounting the life of the Buddha,in that now oh-so-rare form iambic pentameter, complete with rhyming couplets.It is a stately and wondrous piece of writing, all the more precious insofar as it wascomposed by a meditator and so has a reflective, contemplative edge that othersimilar pieces, despite manifold other virtues, have lacked (e.g. The Light of Asia bySir Edwin Arnold).Always there have been some who exploredThe octaves of the universe, and pouredThe mind’s energies into contemplation,Refinement of the heart, bright penetrationOf the one to the One; hunting in the mazesOf world and mind for the well-hidden placesWhere peace is found, to touch or pass through the circleOf living light that binds in the conceivable.One such was Asita. How he had comeTo the bare rocky cleft that was his homeNobody knows; but as a hermit there,A bright-eyed wrinkled sage with matted hair,He lived, poor as a bushman, owning a thinCotton robe, a foodbowl, antelope-skinRug for a seat, a wooden staff, no more.Fed by the villagers downhill, who were in aweOf his piercing gaze and gift of prophecy(And begged at times the herbal lore which heDispensed only at moments of real need),He lived a life from which both fear and greed63