Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998affair – it should be required viewing for all who aspire to follow the Path to itsend.May 18 thThe next few days were built around continued visits to Bhante Dhammavāra andhis move back to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas; enjoyment of the warm,bright weather and the flood of spring flowers; and the interviews I had withTricycle editor Mary Talbot on Monday and with Kamala Tiyavanich, author ofForest Recollections on Tuesday.Mary came with New York City sun tan, husband and pretty new baby in tow.After the meal we went for a hike through the forest (baby came too) and she wasentranced by the woods, the kutīs and the sublime landscape spread around us.There’s a feeling of something between pride and muditā as one shows new visitorsall the different aspects of the land and the way we live – a mother’s guilelessflush as she displays her baby to the world.They (Tricycle) were doing a feature on forest monasticism and its importancein Buddhist practice, so we were up on the list of places to be seen. The forestwas in full glory – as if it knew it was on show that day – the air just stirredenough to cool our brows and the land around us was thick with fresh grasses andspring flowers – we moved as if half-dreaming through the patches of sunlightand shadow, talking all the while of different dimensions of our lifestyle and thehistory of our community. She regretted that she had not even a note pad on her aswe walked but it was probably for the best – this way she could at least be more intouch with the living framework of our lives.As it turned out, when we got back to the house, we filled a couple of cassettetapes with dialogue on all the various issues she had touched. It will be interestingto see how it all shakes down in print.It was the half-moon night and I realized how long it had been since that lastall-night sitting I had done – probably somewhere in the middle of March. It wasgood to be holding the torch of vigilance once again.May 19 thTuesday was the interview with Kamala and the subject of forest monastic life inrecent Thai history. She had written her book Forest Recollections on the subject ofAjahn Mun and his disciples and, more uniquely, on the effects of the religiousreforms of the 19 th Century in Thailand. She described how they had served towipe out numerous local traditions and styles of practice, mostly to the detrimentof the people. It was her contention that, in their efforts to centralize and purify thereligion, the reformers had unwittingly sterilized the Buddha-Dhamma and lostits essence. This was however, fortuitously and ironically, an effect which also catalyzedthe arising of Ajahn Mun’s forest lineage.The book had so impressed Jack Kornfield that he had asked her if she wouldbe prepared to be interviewed by Inquiring Mind, the journal of his Vipassanā med-75