One Final Fabrication: Kushinagar

Arise, pass away
The nature of all things born
Take refuge in change

After the Buddha had announced his imminent passing, he set off for Kushinagar with Ananda, his brother-cousin and right hand man for 25 years, and the Sangha.  He stopped in numerous villages giving the same comprehensive teaching, emphasizing the three ingredients of the path to awakening (the eight points of the Noble Eightfold Path are divided into these categories...maybe more on that another time).

This is sila (moral virtue), this is samadhi (meditative concentration), this is panna (purifying insight/wisdom...there is supposed to be an tilde over the n's in panna but I don't know how to do that on this computer).  Samadhi imbued with sila brings great benefits.  Panna imbued with samadhi brings great benefits.  The mind imbued with panna becomes totally free from the defilements of (craving for and clinging to) sense pleasures, becoming, false views, and ignorance.

To make a long story short he ate some bad food offered to him by a silversmith or blacksmith and got very sick.  As the Buddha lay dying, Ananda, at the head of the Sangha, asked who would be their teacher after the Buddha passed:

Therefore, Ananda
Be a lamp unto yourself (alt. trans: Be an island unto yourself...pali ain't easy)
Be a refuge unto yourself.
Take for yourself no external refuge.
Hold fast to the Dhamma as a lamp, (In this context Dhamma is often translated as "truth")
Hold fast to the Dhamma as a refuge.
Look not for a refuge in anyone besides yourself.
And those Ananda, who either now or after I am dead,
Shall be lamps unto themselves...
And holding fast to the Dhamma as their refuge...
It is they who shall reach the highest goal. 

-Mahaparinibbana Sutta

His last words to his followers were:

Decay is inherent in all compounded things.  Strive with diligence to understand this.

Kushinagar is ten or so temples/monasteries, three "upscale" hotels, the stupa which marks the spot where the Buddha was cremated (Ramambar Stupa), the stupa which marks his passage into parinibbana (bodily death and final cessation of bhava [becoming]), the Bodhi Tree (ficus religiosa) that marks the spot where the Buddha's relics were distributed to the eight kingdoms, one cafe, a handful of chai/sweets shop, some dhabas (street restaurants built of sheet metal, tarp and some wood posts that generally serve a fixed menu),
the straw shacks in which the inhabitants of the town lived (if they didn't just sleep in their open shops), and then its just farmland for miles around. 

I stayed in a dinge-pot the first night, but after twelve hours of traveling from Sarnath into Varanasi proper to Gorakhpur to Kushinagar, it already being dark in an unfamiliar place, I was happy to have a bed.  I moved the next day to the Korean Monastery and stayed there for the next three nights.  I liked it there very much.  There was only one monk present while I was there, a young Indian.  I'm told the senior monk, who is in fact Korean, is only present for a month out of the year.  In his absence, an Indian man named Shushil manages the place and decides who stays in the three rooms.  One was occupied by a very interesting Korean gentleman, a meditator and pretty goofy guy all around...in a good way, one by a young Japanese man named "Kaytch" (I have no idea how to spell it) who only knew how to play songs from video games on my guitar) and an Indian man who I didn't get the chance to know very well, and then there was the room which served as my home for the duration of my stay in town.  I liked it very much despite the fact that it was just being used for storage until a bed was moved in for me.  The rooms occupied the bottom floor of the structure, while the temple occupied the top.  I sat in there a couple of times and did my tai chi on the roof behind it looking out over the fields.  There was a healthy lotus pond (where I played my guitar one afternoon), a big green lawn, and a very modest stupa in front of the temple structure and before the gate to the street.  It was generally very quiet and relaxing within the walls of the monastery. 

When I get back, ask me about the Raj Yoga studio that I visited out of curiousity, was invited to and ate dinner at, listened to an "Introduction to Raj Yoga"/meditation CD....was asked to return when an "english speaking" teacher could explain the practice to me (/reread me the book I had already read) in the evening... came back, got creeped out, left and immediately fell into a five foot ditch, but was fortunate enough to fall in the one place filled with leaves to break my fall right as an "Inidian Security" officer was walking by, who then escorted me back to the monastery clutching my arm the whole way as though I might keel over, excited and proud that he had something to do story...and I'll tell you all about it.  That fall ended up assisting me in my decision to stay in Kushinagar an extra day. 

There was also the time I went to Ramambar stupa and after three circumambulations and a lot of staring, I was surrounded by a hundred or so Indian junior high students asking me every question they could remember from class.  One rather forward girl asked if I was engaged and when I told her I wasn't, she said I was "smart" and asked why not. Their teacher eventually jumped in...not to break it up mind you...but to demonstrate his linguistic abilities as well.  Then we all got to take part in the photoshoot before they asked me to sign their journals, bits of paper, or hands in many cases.  I can't imagine what it would have been like had I actually been famous. 

While in town, I also had the privelege of receiving a private tour of the beautiful Thai monastic complex, which was otherwise closed to the public due to a section of it being under construction.  Most of the complexes in Kushinagar consist of a building with some residential rooms, a temple or pagoda or both and some land around...but the Thai complex was an entire community of thin waterways, gardens, beautiful structures in that uniquely Thai style of multiple roofs with little crowns on everything, and a great glass structure which held the relics of the Buddha and the current Thai king (which was a little odd to me, but they are super into their king) stood in the center.  My tour guide, Langsan Bhante (the monk in charge of "foreign relations" and a very nice guy) lead me around explaining some things to me, and invited me back that night for walking meditation around the reliquary and said that I was welcome to sit in the structure and come for the chanting as well.  I returned that night and did all of the above and afterwards, we had tea and...remember that insanely hot thing I ate in Berlin, the green papaya salad?...ya, he gave me that too.  This one wasn't quite as bad, but it was still intense.  He said I could come the following day to look around again but I decided against it as I wasn't feeling well and had to get stuff together for my departure.  Sorry, there won't be more than one picture of the Thai monastery up on FB...I only got one shot and it was at night and not very good.  Oh, and I don't think I'll be able to get anything up on there for the next couple months since I have crossed the border into Nepal and my phone no longer has working email and internet. 

I had a few very important sits (in my experience, no sit is more or less important than any other as long as you are making an effort to be in the present moment and have a genuine desire to attain liberation...what I mean to say here is that there was a noticeable event in namarupa [the mind-body process] or shift, the breaking down of a previous conditioning...ehh i may try to put it into words some other time haha...just go sit and watch your breath) beneath the bodhi tree which is supposed to mark the spot where the Buddha's relics were distributed after his cremation. The distribution is an event I don't know much about, nor do I find it particularly significant, but there is a power in that tree I tell you.  It's root system, marked by a bunch of little 1" x 1" gold squares left by pilgrims (also all over the Dhammek Stupa in Sarnath), is something to behold (I think there are pictures on facebook).  It sits in the middle of a few small fields, off of a dirt path, a hundred yards or so behind the Thai monastery...a very modest housing for such an impressive organism and a very peaceful spot for meditation (aside from some local kids that like to come and make noise...yet another story...four of them were great teachers in patience and tolerance one afternoon).  I did battle with some of the violence within myself beneath that tree...with some of my resentment of pain and discomfort...and there were small victories.  I sat alone there sometimes...those were powerful experiences.  And one time I sat with numerous female "novitiates" (another bit I'm not going to include right now in its entirety...but they were members of a group of Malaysians, Sri Lankans, Australians and maybe a couple other countries that came to Kushinagar to participate in a program through the Aloka Foundation, where you can take robes and the monastic vows for 15 days, and I actually spent some time with them in Lumbini as well...the women were dressed in all white beneath the tree and they created, collectively in meditation, a very powerful vibration [...I think there are a couple pictures of that scene up on facebook as well...and the four Indian boys you see standing behind the group are the four teachers mentioned above]) and that sit was also very profound.  I originally wanted to include a great deal about my time beneath the tree but I don't think beating my head against a wall trying to find the right words would be beneficial right now.  There was some other cool stuff: walking with bear feet through the 108 ft. high pagoda at the Burmese temple and examining the tasteful and enlightening paintings of the Buddha's life inside, spending time chanting and doing metta with the novitiates and learning about this new center in Malaysia that I would love to visit one day, going to the Parinibbana stupa and park mobbed with little students in uniforms and being followed around there as well...oh and the Chinese monastery that looked a little like downtown disney...I think there are some pictures of that up as well...anyways, more for when I get back.

Present time, from Mirge: Alright, I'm gonna head back downstairs and rest.  I am feeling a little under the weather today and since there is a festival in the village, which means there is no school, I am going to do some reading and relaxing.  As the halfway point of this trip (which I think will be New Year's...and I am going to friggin miss Adam's annual bash rrr...well, certain sacrifices had to be made haha) approaches, I reflect on how worthwhile this experience has been...and continues to be.  Thank you to all those who have supported me on this trip, emotionally, morally, spiritually, financially, in the past and in the present...on into infinity.  Thank you.  I send Metta out in all directions.  And now...you guessed it...another haiku...

This self eternal
Gone in the blink of an eye
Who is really here?

Oh, and I saw this in the Japan-Sri Lanka Center and had thought it was interesting:

"The religion in the future will be a cosmic religion.  It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogma and theology.  Covering both the natural and spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.  Buddhism answers this description."

-Albert Einstein