Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998to know that no thing ever changes… “In this moment there is nothing whichcomes to be…” as it says in an ancient Zen text.May 17 thSunday afternoon we loaded up the van and took ourselves down to Green GulchFarm Zen Center to participate in Ayya Khema’s memorial ceremony. This hadbeen one of the last venues at which she had taught in the USA, before her deathfrom cancer earlier in the year. As she had been one of the great pioneer figuresin the Western Theravāda monastic scene, I felt strongly that we should give hera good send-off. It seemed that she had made some strong connections with theSangha at Green Gulch for they were also very keen to give her full honors for herfarewell.We met beforehand with Norman Fischer (the abbot), Sabine Volchek andLeigh Brasington (her senior students here) to finalize the details of the ceremony.Ajahn Vajiro and Ven. Kataññuto were already there, along with Don Sperry,having come down from Abhayagiri a day or so early to take the opportunity tomake a little tour of the city.The Zen community framed the ceremony with a procession of the Sangha intothe hall, led by Norman, the ponderous thump of the pewter staff, and his openingstatement of appreciation and farewell. They also closed it with a similar verse ofdedication and sharing of blessings and a solemn procession out of the hall onceagain. In between these parentheses, in the grand, dark-brown space of their zendoand to the accompaniment of nesting swallows, we gave the Refuges and Preceptsand then spoke in turn of our appreciation and recollections of her life.She had touched many hearts over the years: there were tales of living withher on the Nuns’ Island in Sri Lanka, of her visits to teach in the USA, of hersupreme clarity in expounding the Dhamma and of her fondness for ice creamand spy novels. She had lived her life to the full, had chosen a courageous andnoble path, had said and done all she needed to, and – at Buddha-haus in Bavaria,her own forest Monastery – had breathed her last with no regrets on a fine, brightmorning.After the ceremony we drank tea and schmoozed on the lawn. Several familiarfolks were there from the Zen Center community: Meg and Jeremy Levy hadcome up from Tassajara and we met the newly ordained Eva and Rick. I invitedNorman and the others up to Abhayagiri for the forthcoming Ten Precept ordinationceremony of their friend and former Zen Center resident Michael Dietzel – hehad declined the opportunity to come on this visit to Green Gulch as he had beenbusy sewing his robes.The rest of the Abhayagiri team having wandered down through the gardensto the ocean, I went with Norman and the students of Ayya Khema to see a videoof an interview which had been done with her in 1994 on the subject of death. Itwas a telling and poignant discourse on the fragility and unsatisfactoriness of thebody, and the ease with which one who has trained themselves faces the prospectof death: she was clear, cheerful and disarmingly unsentimental about the whole74