Several people talked about the extreme poverty, beggars, and squalor. This topic brought tears to my eyes, and I couldn’t prevent some of the tears from falling, though I didn’t want to be seen crying. Feeling embarrassed, I hoped other people had the same reaction, but I didn’t notice. Gail expressed guilt over worrying about getting new camera batteries when we see so many people who have nothing, let alone a camera. In comparison to what others said, my comment was incredibly silly: “I’m getting sensory overload, I’m overwhelmed, and I’m mesmerized.” I wasn’t ready to say anything else.
Opinions on the extreme poverty have not sunk in with me. Although I’m a writer, I can’t find words for it. It is unfathomably disturbing that people live like this, and it’s shameful that I’m probably not strong enough to endure such a life. Witnessing so much poverty and squalor renders me inarticulate. I shouldn’t make political comments such as: “I live in a very wealthy country where conservatives want to control women’s bodies by taking away reproductive rights, including any kind of birth control, which would cause more Americans to live in poverty and beg on the streets, especially women and children.” I’m normally full of opinions, theories, and idealist solutions, but this poverty in India simply is, here and now. I am observing my surroundings without analyzing them as much as I customarily do. Here in India I have so much to observe that is utterly new and strange to me.
The Bamboo Groove
We met at ten in the morning, walked from the hotel, and passed a whitewashed stupa and a gateway where emaciated men in turbans stood on scaffolding made from sticks. While we stared at them, they stopped working to stare back at us. We mindfully walked through a field, the Lotus Grove, where a tiny girl carrying a baby walked up to us and mutely observed our silent and slow procession, and from where Shantum pointed out the Saptaparni Mountain ahead. It contains the cave where the Buddha gave his first big talk, the beginning of the Buddhadharma lecture series. Straight ahead we saw more mountains and the white dome of a stupa in front of them.
We followed a path and reached our destination, a Buddhist center called the Bamboo Grove. The Indian name for this grove is Vanuvara; vanu means bamboo, and vara means grove. It is the sight of an early monastery where the Buddha hung out. Now it looks like a park. I continually stopped to take pictures of animals: deer in a circular cage, guinea pigs in another circular cage, a stray dog looking out at a rectangular body of water with steps leading down to it. Shantum explained that this body of water was the Karanda Tank, where the Buddha bathed. Perhaps the dog was meditating.
I gawked and stopped to take so many pictures that I tagged along behind, with Dean and Valerie. When we arrived at the cage of deer, I gasped in astonishment. In the Midwest, deer are extremely timid wild animals that dash across fields and country roads. Cars sometimes kill them and hunters often do. Here they trotted up and sniffed at us through the cage’s bars, and I could stand close to them and stroke their downy heads. Valerie fed the deer dried figs and dried ginger. One of the deer licked my hand. A local guy picked up a round little pink fruit and gave it to Valerie, saying, “They like these.” She fed it to a deer that gobbled up the fruit.
Valerie, Dean, and I caught up with the rest of the group and we walked along a path, past an enormous white Japanese-looking Buddha shrine and to a gate on the outskirts of the Bamboo Grove. Shantum and the sangha passed through the gate and came to a pair of women wearing bright saris and carrying large straw baskets full of hay on top of their heads.
According to Shantum, the Buddha went to the Satadhara or Seven Hot Springs to relieve arthritis pain. I never would have thought of the Buddha having arthritis; that sounds so normal, but of course he was a mortal. On a footbridge crossing the springs, we stopped to watch men doing laundry, beating clothing on rocks along the banks of a stream. Large pieces of fabric lay flat on the grassy bank. A nimble, skinny little turbaned guy in front of the laundry dudes was climbing a palm tree. Shantum explained, “The fermented sap of palmyra palm trees is used for making toddy.”
We walked further into the Bamboo Grove and sat in front of a path, with Shantum seated cross-legged and facing us from the other side of the path. We faced not only him but also the tank where the Buddha bathed and where now ducks, quacking future Buddhas, bathed. I heard countless birds twittering, the swish-swish of a broom, occasional distant car horns, and voices in the background. I looked away from the trees and the tank long enough to notice Shantum’s sandals worn over two-toed socks, reminding me of a Japanese slipper pattern I have.
It was story time, and Shantum told us about the Buddha’s life and this Bamboo Grove. King Bimbisara gave the Bamboo Grove to the Buddha and his sangha, and someone donated six hundred huts, so the Buddha and the monks and nuns stayed here during the monsoon season. Normally they wandered and begged and had no homes, but that wasn’t a practical lifestyle during the wet and muddy months. This grove was, in other words, the Buddha’s first monastery.
Shantum paused in his talk as a group of Japanese pilgrims, including priests and nuns, walked by and bowed to our group. Oddly, a couple of soldiers followed behind them. Maybe they suspected the harmless-looking Japanese pilgrims of being terrorists. They seemed calm and pleasant and smiling, I thought. Shantum explained that soldiers with guns strut around in the Grove because bandits lurk in this area. He said, “The soldiers are a nuisance, hanging around for tips. They are home guards with real bullets.” This was a brief interlude, before Shantum again took us back twenty-five hundred years.
He told us a story that the Buddha told, that demonstrates how sometimes “knowledge” is false knowledge. I think another way of putting it is that you have to be open-minded if you are a seeker of truth. I also think that wisdom and imagination are more important than knowledge. So much of what passes off as knowledge consists of closed-minded, willfully ignorant assumptions. When I read in Buddhist books about how we’re not supposed to cling to our beliefs rather than jam them down other people’s throats, it reminds me of my relatives imposing their warped view of the world on me and assuming their delusions are the only reality. I shall try to be careful not to fall into similar habits and to remain quiet and equanimous when I’m tempted to get preachy.
Shantum told us about the Buddha explaining that you should look beyond outer, physical beauty to the beauty within. This seems to me like common sense, but I’m reminded that it’s otherwise if I pay attention to pop culture and to how misogynist males react to my appearance, as though it were the only thing about me that mattered. To my way of thinking, my appearance is extremely trivial and what’s going on inside my brain and mind is infinitely more important.
During Shantum’s talk, we saw Tibetan monks standing at the bottom of the steps leading to the tank and tossing food to the ducks. Later, I took a picture of the monks in their vivid red robes as they walked past us, on a higher path. That sounds so symbolic. I meant literally that the path they walked on was on a slope a few feet above us. They’re the first Tibetans I’ve seen on the pilgrimage.
Shantum said we’d have lunch under the banyan tree, and he described a particular corner of the park where the tree was located.
We ate lunch off plates made from dark green leaves. Shantum said, “The Buddha and his sangha ate more or less the same food from leaf plates like this, under the same kind of tree. He was also born under a tree and died under a tree.” Locals gathered around us and sat just outside our circle to watch these strange foreigners eating like the Buddha. Shantum joked, “Oh, look, our sangha has new followers!”
Some of the people around us were trying to sell stuff, such as malas and saris. After lunch, Elly explained that you have to ignore pushy salespeople, or at least be very firm and say something like, “Bye-bye!” and they’ll give up. Or you can simply hold up your hand and firmly say, “No!” She pointed out that if you don’t put your foot down, you could end up buying a whole bunch of things you don’t need or want.
Dealing with pushy salespeople isn’t a comfortable situation to me, though of course it’s not as painful as seeing the begging children who approached us as soon as we went through the gate out of the Bamboo Grove, to see the hot spring that morning. The kids were very ragged and pathetic and kept repeating the same thing, but I didn’t understand what they said because it wasn’t in English. I did have just one orange in my bag, but that’s not enough for seven or so children.
After lunch, we had a little free time in the Bamboo Grove, or “Bamboo Groove” as Natalie called it. I walked a short distance up the path from the banyan tree, to a little Thai shrine, where a group of Thais, including yellow-robed monks in the front row, sat doing a ceremony with much chanting. I listened to the soothing chant. Some of our sangha joined me, and Elly chanted along, with her palms pressed together.
Ann asked what time it was, and I pulled my watch out of my pocket to discover it was almost time to meet up again. We went to the meeting place at the top of the steps leading down to the Karanda Tank. We arrived at the top of the tank and saw a monkey under a tree next to the steps. This was my first monkey in India! I exclaimed, “A monkey!” and speeded up my pace. A local guy acknowledged calmly, “Yes, a monkey.” Yes, a crazy tourist. I marched right up to the pink-bottomed monkey, which sat by a Shiva linga behind a tree. The monkey opened its mouth in a threatening manner, and Elly said, “Be careful! He’s in attack position.” I backed off a little and used the zoom on my camera; I had learned how to use the zoom primarily so that I could take pictures of monkeys without being attacked, and here was the perfect opportunity.
We followed a path and reached our destination, a Buddhist center called the Bamboo Grove. The Indian name for this grove is Vanuvara; vanu means bamboo, and vara means grove. It is the sight of an early monastery where the Buddha hung out. Now it looks like a park. I continually stopped to take pictures of animals: deer in a circular cage, guinea pigs in another circular cage, a stray dog looking out at a rectangular body of water with steps leading down to it. Shantum explained that this body of water was the Karanda Tank, where the Buddha bathed. Perhaps the dog was meditating.
I gawked and stopped to take so many pictures that I tagged along behind, with Dean and Valerie. When we arrived at the cage of deer, I gasped in astonishment. In the Midwest, deer are extremely timid wild animals that dash across fields and country roads. Cars sometimes kill them and hunters often do. Here they trotted up and sniffed at us through the cage’s bars, and I could stand close to them and stroke their downy heads. Valerie fed the deer dried figs and dried ginger. One of the deer licked my hand. A local guy picked up a round little pink fruit and gave it to Valerie, saying, “They like these.” She fed it to a deer that gobbled up the fruit.
Valerie, Dean, and I caught up with the rest of the group and we walked along a path, past an enormous white Japanese-looking Buddha shrine and to a gate on the outskirts of the Bamboo Grove. Shantum and the sangha passed through the gate and came to a pair of women wearing bright saris and carrying large straw baskets full of hay on top of their heads.
According to Shantum, the Buddha went to the Satadhara or Seven Hot Springs to relieve arthritis pain. I never would have thought of the Buddha having arthritis; that sounds so normal, but of course he was a mortal. On a footbridge crossing the springs, we stopped to watch men doing laundry, beating clothing on rocks along the banks of a stream. Large pieces of fabric lay flat on the grassy bank. A nimble, skinny little turbaned guy in front of the laundry dudes was climbing a palm tree. Shantum explained, “The fermented sap of palmyra palm trees is used for making toddy.”
We walked further into the Bamboo Grove and sat in front of a path, with Shantum seated cross-legged and facing us from the other side of the path. We faced not only him but also the tank where the Buddha bathed and where now ducks, quacking future Buddhas, bathed. I heard countless birds twittering, the swish-swish of a broom, occasional distant car horns, and voices in the background. I looked away from the trees and the tank long enough to notice Shantum’s sandals worn over two-toed socks, reminding me of a Japanese slipper pattern I have.
It was story time, and Shantum told us about the Buddha’s life and this Bamboo Grove. King Bimbisara gave the Bamboo Grove to the Buddha and his sangha, and someone donated six hundred huts, so the Buddha and the monks and nuns stayed here during the monsoon season. Normally they wandered and begged and had no homes, but that wasn’t a practical lifestyle during the wet and muddy months. This grove was, in other words, the Buddha’s first monastery.
Shantum paused in his talk as a group of Japanese pilgrims, including priests and nuns, walked by and bowed to our group. Oddly, a couple of soldiers followed behind them. Maybe they suspected the harmless-looking Japanese pilgrims of being terrorists. They seemed calm and pleasant and smiling, I thought. Shantum explained that soldiers with guns strut around in the Grove because bandits lurk in this area. He said, “The soldiers are a nuisance, hanging around for tips. They are home guards with real bullets.” This was a brief interlude, before Shantum again took us back twenty-five hundred years.
He told us a story that the Buddha told, that demonstrates how sometimes “knowledge” is false knowledge. I think another way of putting it is that you have to be open-minded if you are a seeker of truth. I also think that wisdom and imagination are more important than knowledge. So much of what passes off as knowledge consists of closed-minded, willfully ignorant assumptions. When I read in Buddhist books about how we’re not supposed to cling to our beliefs rather than jam them down other people’s throats, it reminds me of my relatives imposing their warped view of the world on me and assuming their delusions are the only reality. I shall try to be careful not to fall into similar habits and to remain quiet and equanimous when I’m tempted to get preachy.
Shantum told us about the Buddha explaining that you should look beyond outer, physical beauty to the beauty within. This seems to me like common sense, but I’m reminded that it’s otherwise if I pay attention to pop culture and to how misogynist males react to my appearance, as though it were the only thing about me that mattered. To my way of thinking, my appearance is extremely trivial and what’s going on inside my brain and mind is infinitely more important.
During Shantum’s talk, we saw Tibetan monks standing at the bottom of the steps leading to the tank and tossing food to the ducks. Later, I took a picture of the monks in their vivid red robes as they walked past us, on a higher path. That sounds so symbolic. I meant literally that the path they walked on was on a slope a few feet above us. They’re the first Tibetans I’ve seen on the pilgrimage.
Shantum said we’d have lunch under the banyan tree, and he described a particular corner of the park where the tree was located.
We ate lunch off plates made from dark green leaves. Shantum said, “The Buddha and his sangha ate more or less the same food from leaf plates like this, under the same kind of tree. He was also born under a tree and died under a tree.” Locals gathered around us and sat just outside our circle to watch these strange foreigners eating like the Buddha. Shantum joked, “Oh, look, our sangha has new followers!”
Some of the people around us were trying to sell stuff, such as malas and saris. After lunch, Elly explained that you have to ignore pushy salespeople, or at least be very firm and say something like, “Bye-bye!” and they’ll give up. Or you can simply hold up your hand and firmly say, “No!” She pointed out that if you don’t put your foot down, you could end up buying a whole bunch of things you don’t need or want.
Dealing with pushy salespeople isn’t a comfortable situation to me, though of course it’s not as painful as seeing the begging children who approached us as soon as we went through the gate out of the Bamboo Grove, to see the hot spring that morning. The kids were very ragged and pathetic and kept repeating the same thing, but I didn’t understand what they said because it wasn’t in English. I did have just one orange in my bag, but that’s not enough for seven or so children.
After lunch, we had a little free time in the Bamboo Grove, or “Bamboo Groove” as Natalie called it. I walked a short distance up the path from the banyan tree, to a little Thai shrine, where a group of Thais, including yellow-robed monks in the front row, sat doing a ceremony with much chanting. I listened to the soothing chant. Some of our sangha joined me, and Elly chanted along, with her palms pressed together.
Ann asked what time it was, and I pulled my watch out of my pocket to discover it was almost time to meet up again. We went to the meeting place at the top of the steps leading down to the Karanda Tank. We arrived at the top of the tank and saw a monkey under a tree next to the steps. This was my first monkey in India! I exclaimed, “A monkey!” and speeded up my pace. A local guy acknowledged calmly, “Yes, a monkey.” Yes, a crazy tourist. I marched right up to the pink-bottomed monkey, which sat by a Shiva linga behind a tree. The monkey opened its mouth in a threatening manner, and Elly said, “Be careful! He’s in attack position.” I backed off a little and used the zoom on my camera; I had learned how to use the zoom primarily so that I could take pictures of monkeys without being attacked, and here was the perfect opportunity.
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