Lumbini: A Place of Peace

It is a Sila day…I used to build pillow forts with my best friend when I was little.  We would gather every pillow in the house, dismantle the couches (which I think our parents were none too happy about)…and then we’d run to the other’s house, since it was only 5 houses down, and bring in those resources as well, to create an indestructible (and quite comfy) fortress of down and cotton and thread and different printed fabrics…and there we would hide away…eating veggies or PB n J or whatever one of our mothers or babysitters brought around…reading scary stories with a flashlight.  There was a feeling of safety, being surrounded and away from worldly affairs, from the illusions masquerading as reality, which, even from the single digits, relentlessly condition our minds and fill our daily lives…there was a feeling of peace, a kind of freedom. 

I mention this memory because it was long buried until I stood in the peace park of the Maya Devi Temple in Lumbini, Nepal, where the Buddha was born, and I felt embraced, enveloped, swaddle by the hundreds of strings of prayer flags (“wind horse” translated literally from the Tibetan)…thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of white, red, green, yellow and blue sheets of cloth, and the wind blowing mantras of peace, compassion and liberation in all directions...tied from Bodhi Tree to bodhi tree to palm to lamp post to sapling and back to Bodhi Tree.  In the early morning, they sail in serenity and make a subtle sound that one has to listen to hear...sometimes in the afternoon they clap with the swift southern wind.  Sometimes the park is almost empty, sometimes monks from different orders are leading chants and meditation, sometimes there are groups of students on field trips, sometimes there are 30 monkeys jumping and hanging all over the flags in the south-east corner of the park…but no matter who is here, time on the grass in the park beneath the colorful cloth is always a special experience…

I wrote most of the above just before a long sit opposite the temple in the park.  I had finally given up after numerous days of trying to make something happen, to, though not consciously, have a sit worthy of the place in which I was sitting (whatever that means)…trying, unsuccessfully, to superimpose some complicated notions onto the flawless simplicity of the present moment, trying to correct that which needs no correction.  I believe it was on my last afternoon in Lumbini that I finally let go enough to just sit and breathe and feel and be.  When I opened my eyes after the hour plus session and looked around, I saw, about 10 yards to the right and 25 to the left of the little grass bump I was on, two different groups of sitters in monastic robes that had not been there when I first closed my eyes.  To my right were about 50 of the “novitiates” from the Aloka Foundation that I had spent time with in Kusinara accompanied by their teacher (with whom I had a few words before leaving the park…I mention it because he invited me to come to the dharma talk he was giving later that evening in the Korean Monastery, which I attended), and to my left was a group of, what looked from a distance to be, 15 or so Thai monks and as many all-in-white pilgrims.  I couldn’t help thinking that we had all combined efforts or at least picked up on each others vibrations that afternoon…I had felt supported…or maybe assisted is a better word during sections of my sit…its nice when you can sit with a few thousand years of combined meditative experience, especially when it is being amplified by a place that has absorbed and radiates the spirit of total awakening.

The Lumbini Peace Park is a ten square km rectangle on about a 1:4 ratio filled with trees, temples and pagodas.  The middle couple kilometers of the park is divided long-ways by a manmade creek (currently running dry due to construction) carved down the center, separating the park into two districts:West (where the Therevada temples of Thailand, Sri Lanka, Burma, Mahabodhi Society, Gautami Nunnery, etc. are built) and East (the Mahayana/Vajrayana district which holds the temples Japan, China, Korea, Austria, Germany, Nepal, Vietnam, and on and on).  Countries from around the world build temples in this community as a sign of solidarity and peace. The circular southern section of the park holds the above mentioned Maya Devi Temple and is surrounded by a manmade body of water, while the northern end is home to the massive Japanese Stupa for World Peace (where I spent a good chunk of time one afternoon). Between these two, at the southern end of the now empty creek, is a modest flame of peace, burning day and night.  I stayed my first two or three nights at the Mahabodhi Society of India, which is where I met a very wise and kind Sri Lankan monk whose name means “Victory of the Generations.” 

I had been studying some Pali chants when the power went out in Lumbini (as it did for a couple of hours every night), and so I decided to continue my studies by candlelight in the common area.  After an hour or so I had amassed many a question when by walks a middle aged, bald, dark skinned man in saffron robes…how convenient.  I asked him if I could borrow him for a few questions and he acquiesced, I think it was just out of curiosity initially.  We started with some clarifications of vocabulary and translations (the differences between sukkha and somanassa, dukkha and domanassa among other things) and gradually made our way to the philosophical end of the spectrum (Four Noble Truths, causality, the three marks of existence, etc.).  I hadn’t planned on keeping him long but we both seemed to be enjoying each other’s company and I was happy to have the resource as the breadth of his knowledge became more apparent…and I thought we did a fairly good job bridging the language barrier of Sinhalese to English with some Pali/Sanskrit fillers.  He invited me to come back (I was moving to the Gautami Nunnery down the way the following afternoon, which is where I slept until my departure from Lumbini) the next night to continue the discussion.  I returned the following evening and we talked by a single candle’s light, each sitting on one of the ten vacant beds in the room, unable to clearly see each other’s faces from a few feet away, shifting our postures as needed…we spent a good deal of time/until the assistant head monk in charge broke it up discussing the Twelve Steps of Dependent Origination (a subject that has always been a little alien and difficult for me) in terms of the transition/birth, death and rebirth that we all undergo from moment to moment rather than from lifetime to lifetime (an interpretation revolving around reincarnation would have been a “literal” read of the text). Avijja paccaya sankhara (Ignorance conditions mental fabrications [mental fabrications arise dependent on the condition of ignorance]), sankhara paccaya vinyanam (mental fabrications condition consciousness), vinyana paccaya namarupam (consciousness conditions the mind-matter process)…is all we were able to get through that night.  He told me that some of the questions I asked were questions that, according to the Pali cannon, were put to the Buddha in his lifetime.  He told me how the Buddha addressed the issues and then told me what he himself had been taught and thought about the various topics himself.  In the time we spent together that night, he also told me about his monastery in a small Sri Lankan town (in which he is the only monk), invited me to come and meditate there under his guidance, and gave me his information.  (It is something I am considering working into the time I have left but I think it would stretch both time and money at this point…perhaps for the next trip.)

Because we only got through the first four steps of the chain, he invited me to come back the following morning to continue…and so it continued at eight the following morning, in the Mahabodhi Society courtyard, under the gaze of many visiting children, passersby and fellow monks (including the assistant monk in charge).  We finished the chain that morning: namarupam paccaya salayatanam (the mind-matter process conditions the six sense gates), salayata paccaya phasso (the six sense gates condition sense impressions), phassa paccaya vedana (sense impressions condition sensation/feeling), vedana paccaya tanha (feelings condition craving), tanha paccaya upadanam (craving conditions clinging), upadana paccaya bhavo (clinging conditions becoming), bhava paccaya jati (becoming conditions birth), jati paccaya jaramanam, soka, paridevadukkha, domanassupayasa sambhavanti (birth conditions old age, death, grief, lamentation, pain, depression and despair)…Evametassa kevalassa dukkhakkhandassa samudayo hoti (Thus the entire mass of suffering arises).  He gave me a related analytical practice (though I have had little success with it due to some specific troubles with application) and we had time to discuss a few other aspects of the nature of mind, etc.  It was all a pretty awesome experience from which I learned a good deal. I have so many more questions, but I know that all the thinking and intellectual curiosity in the world isn’t going to help me to implement what I’ve learned so that I can make positive changes within myself, nor will it reveal the subtler reality behind the words…these truths are in the realm of practice, not theory.

The road trip from Kusinagar to Gorakhpur, Gorakhpur to the Sonauli border crossing (specifically this section), the border to Lumbini, was an adventure and a rather severe experience that left me reeling for a couple days after I arrived in Lumbini (I am still feeling the effects to some extent now).  I awoke that first morning in the Mahabodhi Society to some tears and the familiar weight of depression and the shame of inaction…it took me quite a while to move myself up and out of bed. I’m not going to get into it all now but you can ask me about the drive to the border at some later date.  When my hunger finally raised me up and out of bed, I worked my way toward the entrance (though at that point I didn’t really have any idea where the entrance was since I had arrived late the night before in the dark) and ended up meeting a nice Israeli couple with whom I spent the morning walking around the park and seeing the various temples.  They were coming from Kathmandu on their way to India and since I was doing the opposite, we decided to trade stories and information and get some lunch together.  We traded info and Lior, the male, invited me to come and visit and spend some time on his Kibutz since I showed interest.  Hearing them talk about trekking in Nepal really made me consider working it into my time here but once again, time and money…and its pretty cold up there in February…we’ll see if an opportunity presents itself. 

Before this goes on too much longer…other notable experiences were wandering about the elaborate German temple with all its cool murals and little displays of the Buddha’s life on the grass in the courtyard; going to (what I believe was) a consecration ceremony at the Austrian temple at which I watched some type of oraculation, had my first Tibetan butter tea (you know when you used to make kraft macaroni and cheese and there was extra milk mixed with that fake powder cheese stuff at the bottom…that’s what it tasted like…yes, I finished it, all by myself); visiting the Korean temple with its intricate and beautifully carved podium (on which the Bhante of the Aloka Foundation sat when he gave his dharma talk on my last evening in Lumbini); the time I spent at the Japanese Peace stupa with my cycle rickshaw driver at the northern end of the park; seeing the ceremonial pool adjacent the Maya Devi Temple lit brightly in the dark night by a thousand candles; a pleasant exchange with an elderly Burmese monk inside the temple, next to the stone which is supposed to mark the spot where the Buddha was born…and all the other little bits and pieces that made my time there so special that there are no words for. 

Present time from Mirge: The kids’ exams are over today…and thank goodness for that.  If I never have to be a testmaster again it’ll be soon enough… “eyes on your own paper” “stop talking” “turn around” and all that other fascist nonsense…I’ve had enough of it.  I’m gonna go talk to Jack some more this afternoon and try and finish laundry since I am running out of clothes, maybe watch part of a movie if I can get to it before the kids finish. I am feeling a little better and hope you are all healthy and warm.  I think talking about where I was at with my practice and health, writing about Lumbini and working on the Kathmandu entry helped me gain some perspective and transfer some energy into samma vayamo (right effort).  Since I feel that I have moved past (or don’t feel so lost in) some of the anger/negativity from recent days and weeks, I was considering scrapping the next entry…but it occurred to me that, not only is coming face to face with unpleasantness inside oneself an inescapable part of the path, but also that the way I respond to and work through great blockages and obstacles like the negativity I have been experiencing recently is at least as important as the way I work in more congenial circumstances.  It is so easy to pay lip service to positive change within oneself and the world (which is what I have been doing most of my life), but to actually engage the world, to investigate one’s own mind…I ask for humility, patience, tolerance and a clear view of the nature of reality…and they don’t come in a box with a ribbon…they come by the peeling off of old layers of conditioning, by the carving out of deep rooted afflictions and ignorance…it is not a pleasant process at times…but there is nothing I have found to be more worthy of my attention and lifeblood.  Be good and be well.  And of course…a haiku for the road…

Lonely, not alone

A small shift in the mind’s eye

Alone, not lonely