John, a meditator from New Zealand, spends extended periods in Ingyinbin each year, the home of the revered Webu Sayadaw and with his friend Ashin Mandala. This winter, he has decided to keep a journal, which he has kindly offered to share with us. His journal alternates between observation and poetry, between meditation practice and commentary about Burmese Buddhist society, from his learnings and his questions. The full collection of his musings can be found here.
17 January
Sitting alone in the early morning, shutters closed due to the chill, I no longer hear the solitary pink-robed nun whose early chanting near the Mahamuni statue usually reverberates in the hut.
I sit with the breath flattening, as if it has lost its volume, only a thin intermittence half free of the body. More attention is given to the area of contact between the breath and the upper lip, something which until now I have given less attention because I have been intent on distinguishing (distracted by) the visual nimitta - usually for me a bright if rather broad light - and anyway the sensations that are felt on the upper lip and those that well unbidden within and through the entire body are quite distinct. In turn, the awareness of the breath becomes sharpened and clearer, until it reaches a stage where it breaks up almost into tiny irregular crumbly chunks.
Now too with the more deliberate focus at that place, the sensation fines to a needlepoint or roughens to one or two grains of dust. Outside someone is sweeping, short brusque strokes, pausing intermittently, resuming:
Endless brush strokes
sweeping through the mind,
settled on namarupa.
Sitting further, I become aware that the body is composed of innumerable, so many, individual flecks that appear insubstantial, unfixed; and while I remain aware of the body as a whole neither are these flickerings simply the same ones recurring.
1000 points
sweeping mind and body,
settled in namarupa.
On our evening walk through Ingyinbin village, again we are greeted with unguarded warmth by the local people, again the girls are just leaving the weaving factory. Looking back after them, I notice the dust clouds stirred up by the returning oxcarts and motorcycles: sunlight and fine dust particles hopelessly enmesh and the lightness of one and the heaviness of the other holds them together in suspension.
Rust-coloured, the late sun
bound in the dust of returning carts; gathered at their gates,
children dash towards us, smiling.
The following morning rain falls. Dust that last night wouldn’t settle will do so now for at least a day or two. Aum Pyee worries that the remaining unharvested rice will be ruined should the rain continue into a second day. Looking at the ground, I see particles of dust coagulate as they become absorbed into large misshapen droplets.
Cheerless hours, old Bhante-ji departed,
three young puppies with their motherscattered. Nearby the hut, a notched bamboo pole
extended, the elderly woman snares
thin uppermost branches, stripping
the tree of its small, plum-like fruits.
John, a meditator from New Zealand, spends extended periods in Ingyinbin each year, the home of the revered Webu Sayadaw and with his friend Ashin Mandala. This winter, he has decided to keep a journal, which he has kindly offered to share with us. His journal alternates between observation and poetry, between meditation practice and commentary about Burmese Buddhist society, from his learnings and his questions. The full collection of his musings can be found here.
1 January
After breakfast we are met by Aum Pyee who offers his assistance. The ibises appear to have left their roost, and the matting of weed that covers the lake allows smaller birds to land and walk about on its surface. The new pagoda is at the east side, its stainless steel and gold-finished spire still brightly lit by the display lights as well as the new rising sun, a combination that absorbs the surrounding scene with a mirrored clarity. On the farther bank the younger nuns, fresh-looking in pink and orange robes, sweep the bare earth around the kitchen and outside their own quarters with coarse bamboo brooms. The trees are drenched in dust and sunlight. Outside the green cottage that was constructed by his family, a solitary older monk, as on all other mornings, appears at first light and proceeds to sweep the ground around his accommodation, leaving here and there little piles of dust and debris.
The rising sun, disinterested,
lights the trees, the white pagoda, the near-empty compound
where the lone monk sweeps, clothed in sparkling dust.
Meanwhile sitting continues:
Leaves, birds, dogs,
one sound, three sounds:
I slog on in my hut!
Webu Sayadaw, the reputed arahant who trained as a novice in the paryatti (learning) monastery in which we are housed and for whom on his return to the area the extensive patipatti (meditation) monastery, including the hut where we meditate daily, was built.
The little brown puppy with the unusable rear quarters munches on the beans and rice that Karen places before him. On Uposata day (On each eighth day of the lunar cycle layfolk dedicate this day to their Buddhist practice, taking eight precepts, undertaking of moral behavior, and spending time at their local monastery, as well as contributing the meal shared with those at the monastery) a local engineer, recently returned from America, arrives with his extended family to give dana and a shared lunch. Outside one boy makes another boy cry. An older woman smokes a cheroot as she comforts another young child beside the lake. The novices take turns sliding down the angled stack of coloured roofing iron, lifting their robes and grinning as they do so. A photo with the dana family and foreigners and they’re away! We take food with the monks; the Sayadaw and senior monks sit at the head table, others in descending order of seniority down to the most junior, who pile their plates with rice and add a morsel of vegetables. Some adults serve while others stand near us, marvelling at our plates loaded with various vegetables taken from several of the seventeen dishes that crowd the round table. The nuns, who have spent the entire night in food preparation, take a table together in the rear near the entrance door. As we leave, the men working on the pagoda approach the dining room: the straggler carries a mortar board and sings near the top of his voice. Nearby,
half the length of its tail, the squirrels
campers along the aerial cable:
earth its mirror.
In the evening we visit the family of Aum Pyee: two families and three generations share a large compound. We are sat down and offered fruits and bread and a sweet tonic drink and local tea. Everyone talks gently and convivially and with sweetness. The compound houses white bullocks and a cow with its calf, dogs, pigs, piles of cut rice stalks (harvest is near-finished and what isn’t stored indoors is sold in the nearby towns), tamarind and other fine trees, and various accommodations, the latest a tidy brick house occupied by the elder brother with his wife and their two children, aged 7 and 12 and both quite shy. We are returned by Aum Pyee to the monastery near 6pm, the distant sky golden and near dissolution as the white birds home in to the lakeside trees to chatter and groan before sleep.
