Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998flashes on the running stream – “I am going...” – warms the early morning rocksand smooth shores of the creek-side. We crouch by the water, sharing each other’scompany and imbibing the celestial ichor of the spring. Does life get any betterthan this?The road winds on ahead of us, weaving its way through the spread of crumpledhills until it reaches Willits; stray lanes branch here and there, roaming toremote canyons yet this is the old stagecoach road that ran from San Francisco toEureka – yes, this was the Highway 101 of the 19 th Century – and it lumbers alongthrough nine more creek beds, like some curmudgeonly old-timer from the hills,unbothered by hardship after so many years of rough treatment weathering theseasons. The road reels on ahead, but we leave it to its stillness – for the road actuallygoes nowhere, it’s only us humans that do the to-ing and fro-ing, the road isperfectly still: it goes “I am, now, here…”Come the evening I decide to stay up and write the piece for the newsletter onthe ordination ceremony – first keystroke at 9:45, shut down at 3:30 am, still notdone but the beast is three-quarters born. I breathe out.May 22 ndAjahn Vajiro takes his leave after the morning pūjā and is taken off to San Franciscoby David De Young. After breakfast at Paul and Lili Breiter’s (incidentally theyare out here almost every evening for the pūjā and meditation) we gear up for theinstallation of the four 5000-gallon water tanks and, with the help of Dave Rupe,our local Water God, and ten other pairs of hands, we manage to position them allin a couple of hours. No mean feat as they weigh approximately 900 lbs. each, are9’ in diameter and about 12’ high. We even managed it without any bones beingbroken – only one stumble into the bushes (on tank Number One) when it rolledand knocked Eden Kark off his balance.By the time all was done we had all four 5000-gallon black beauties linedup straight and level on a flat bed of sand. They looked like a bank of formlessBuddhas, or at least guardian deities, arranged in their precise and stately ranks.It will be through these humble black spaces that all the water from the land ofAbhayagiri will pass, to be transformed into our bodies, to wash our clothes, toquell our fires and feed our flower gardens. Quiet undemonstrative sentinels buttotally necessary for survival, like the Vinaya rules that contain and guide ourenergies – they don’t look very glorious, but without their presence, and beingwell-placed and cared for, we would have no Monastery and no way to be here.Having been up all night typing, my involvement in the tank-moving is mellowand detached, blurred a little by the stumbling and blinking of tired senses – but itis delightful nonetheless. After the meal Eden, being an old friend from the earlydays of Amaravati Monastery in England, wants to talk and so, for a while, weengage in the colorful labyrinths of this bright young being’s spiritual progress. By1:30 p.m. I call a halt and go to rest.77