At the base of Vulture Peak, the mountain where the Buddha gave many teachings, we began walking along a brick trail and passed ubiquitous pushy wallahs and some booths at which merchants also called out to us, much like wallahs. They sold things like malas, Buddha statues, incense, candles, travel books, and maps. We stopped before a merchant at the side of the path who was selling herbal medicines and porcupine needles, and Shantum explained that these medicines were used during the Buddha’s time, and a merchant like the guy in front of us could have been there while the Buddha was on Vulture Peak. A few members of our sangha purchased porcupine needles before we continued walking further and further uphill. On our right was the edge of the precipice, overlooking fields and other mountains, and on our left was the slope of the mountain that we were climbing.
We kept moving slowly up the red brick walk, not to be confused with the Yellow Brick Road. Some sections of the path are brick stairs, but mostly it’s a gradual incline. Shantum brought our attention to a cable car leading up a nearby tall mountain, Ratnagiri, for tourists who want to look at the birdlike profile of Vulture Peak, but I was glad we were climbing the historic mountain itself. I’ve seen photos of the view in question.
Short grass and shrubbery and small trees covered Vulture Peak, giving it a light green and dark yellow color scheme. That’s hardly surprising since it hasn’t rained for maybe six months, yet I haven’t experienced dehydration like I do in Kansas; the precipitation is so much during the monsoon that enough moisture remains for the rest of the year.
We passed beggars wrapped in wool shawls and squatting at the edge of the trail, and some of them repeated the same phrase over and over like a desperate mantra. Shantum told us that a beggar just ahead of us was a blind man. We passed him on our right, and indeed his eyes were closed. He squatted at the edge of the path, like the other beggars. He was wrapped up in a blanket or large striped shawl, his shoulder-length hair was dirty and matted, and he held out a metal bowl. It would be horrible enough to be blind, I think; I didn’t want to imagine what it would be like to live in extreme poverty, having nothing and begging all day, and also be blind. We passed him in silence, and Shantum told us that he and his wife were both blind and had had a little boy who could see. Last year Shantum asked the blind man how the boy was, and the father said the child had died. Some people get all the luck.
We kept walking and came to four monkeys. A merchant with a little booth on the left of the path threw nuts to the monkeys, and apparently the creatures were either tame or excessively hungry, because we could walk past without their freaking out. Eventually we saw a great many monkeys sitting on a plateau-like space to the right, by the edge of the mountainside, and some climbing in trees to our left. This was the first time I saw more than one monkey, so of course I took out my camera, but this time I didn’t march up to any of the cute furry animals. Monkeys climbed in trees at the side of the path and looked down at us, and a few of them even swung in the trees.
Gradually the path wound further and further away from the edge of the mountain, till boulders sat on our right as well as our left. We walked slowly higher, and the view of the mountains all around under the bright blue sky was breathtaking, as if I had the perspective of a soaring bird. Shantum stopped us for a moment to direct our gaze to the right, over the side of the mountain, and said that the Buddha looked on this same view. As Shantum reminded us, the Buddha had said, “A monk’s robes should be patched like the fields,” and we could see fields of various crops down below, in sundry tints of greens and yellows.
Looking up the dramatic slope, we encountered some bright and colorful Tibetan prayer flags strung extremely high up between boulders. We turned to the right and approached a small cave. A group of Thais, including yellow-clad monks, walked right behind us, and Shantum let them know it would take about five minutes, before we crowded into the little cave.
Shantum sat at the far interior next to an altar, which included many white Tibetan scarves, an unfortunately headless Buddha statue with a dried marigold lei wrapped around it, numerous burning candles, and smoky sticks of incense pointing at the cave’s roof. Shantum explained that the Buddha preached to his sangha in this cave. He said that Rikki would chant from the Heart Sutra, which the Buddha taught on Vulture Peak, perhaps in this same cave.
Rikki chanted the sutra in a clear, deep, and very serious, even stern, voice. As she chanted, her voice became more and more intense till she sobbed at the end, and she moved out of the little cave. I felt strangely nervous at her intensity without really knowing why, perhaps because I am so accustomed to negative and vicious people whose emotions are intense because they are really hostile and abusive. Rikki’s vibes were intense yet devoid of any hostility or anger.
Next Mairgret crawled toward the altar, lit a candle, and chanted in Dutch, while I watched the flame and calmed down, focusing on the flame and on my breath. Erika had bought a box of narrow little white candles for offerings, and she held the box out to everyone within reach. I slid a candle out of the box and smiled my thanks.
I visualized the Buddha in his yellow robes seated cross-legged where Shantum sat, in the deepest part of the tiny cave, and surrounded by his disciples seated where the rest of us were and also seated in front of some of us, because more people would likely have been crowded into the cave. In the visualization, they all wore yellow robes, and there I was, sitting cross-legged and facing the Buddha. I became someone else, one of the members of the Buddha’s sangha. This vivid sense moved me greatly, and I found myself shaking and felt the beginning of tears stinging my eyes.
The prayers or chants that members of our sangha said as they lit a candle and placed it on the altar were also intense. I was glad that a few other people didn’t say anything when they lit their candles; I was trying not to cry, but failing, and I felt a little nervous at the prospect of my turn at the shrine. While I lit the candle, I mentally recited a Tibetan saying about happiness and suffering (Kunsang, p. 156). It reminded me of the begging women and children and so many people living in extreme poverty that I’ve seen in India. I wasn’t sobbing while I sat before the altar with those words going through my head and the candle in my hand. But after I crawled back to my seat closer to the cave entrance, I really did have tears running down my cheeks, as I did in the meeting last night, when the topic of poverty came up.
We left the first cave and trekked further up the rocky mountain, past a boulder on which sat offerings in the form of little piles of rocks, and we soon arrived at another small cave on our right. Thai monks sat cross-legged inside, and an older one in a bright orange robe chanted into a microphone. Small square flecks of gold adorned the rock walls and ceiling, as in the cave we had occupied, and people were putting gold leaf on the stone; it’s apparently a Thai Buddhist tradition to place little square pieces of gold leaf on structures as an offering.
I continued walking up and took many photos of Tibetan prayer flags strung between and above rocks and trees. The bright and colorful square flags were a charming and happy sight, high up in the sky and strung between trees and rocks. The further up I walked, the more prayer flags I saw, in the colors red, yellow, white, blue, green, and occasionally turquoise. The flags are printed with prayers in Tibetan, and as they blow in the wind, they send the prayers into the air.
I reached Vulture Peak’s summit, where countless people stood, and an Indian guy in a dhoti asked me to take off my shoes. I looked down at the tidy rows of many shoes alongside a boulder and slipped out of my blue canvas sneakers, which I placed in the row that had an empty space. I then turned to the left, where members of our sangha sat on a high boulder; I was almost the last one to reach the top.
Peter, one of the English members of our sangha, took Jagdish’s hand and climbed up. When it was my turn, I first handed Jagdish my mirrorwork bag, and then he held out his hand and said,” Take my hand.” So I put my left hand on the rock and my right hand in his and climbed up easily. There wasn’t much room for anyone else, so I stood while everyone else was seated or leaning against rock. I didn’t mind in the least, because I stood at almost the highest point of Vulture Peak and looked down and watched a Thai ceremony at the front of the cliff. The bright orange sun sat in the sky between two mountain peaks straight ahead, as though Vulture Peak deliberately pointed at the sunset. I must have been too fascinated by my surroundings to let my fear of heights get the better of me.
Meanwhile, John reached the summit and stood behind our boulder, where he spoke with a white monk in yellow Thai robes who I thought had a British accent, and John pointed out Mairgret to him, so I rather thought he must be Dutch. He was very tall and had a long face with high cheekbones, and I rather thought that if he had hair it would be blonde. Like many of the Thai monks, he wore a yellow stocking cap.
The Thai monks sat cross-legged inside a low, brick, three-sided wall around the edge of the cliff. It was the foundations of a really old and apparently very small temple or monastery. Within it stood another three-sided wall of stone, and the wall that faced outward, toward the sunset, was draped with white Tibetan scarves, marigold leis, and Buddha figures. Centered before the wall sat a big metal pot containing sand with protruding incense sticks. In front of the smaller set of walls sat two rows of yellow-clad Thai monks, chanting. Behind them sat Thai laypeople, most of whom were women, I suspect the monks’ moms.
I stood up high listening to the hypnotic chanting, taking photos, and absorbing the beautiful and peaceful setting. The sun was descending between the mountains and above the monks. Mountains surrounded us on every side, but they were mostly below the blue, gold, and pink sky and us, as though we were on top of the world. An extremely tall cliff to the right housed a white stupa, and that one did loom above us, from quite a distance. If I turned around to look behind, I’d see more people and Tibetan prayer flags. The scenery was wonderful and the air brimmed with happiness and positive energy. I watched as the sun sank further and further down between the peaks, and the sky darkened to dusk.
When the ceremony ended and the monks started getting up, Peter climbed down carefully, and then I sat down on the ledge that we had climbed up. I didn’t want to fall twice in one day. Erika stood slightly to my right, and to explain why I was moving so stiffly and slowly, I said, “I have acrophobia and I’ve already fallen today.”
Erika said, “Oh yeah, I guess I’d better help you,” and rushed to take my bag.
I smiled and said, “Thanks!” and slid a fraction further down while clenching my teeth. A round-faced Thai monk to my left handed me his walking stick. I grinned at him and said, “Thanks!” again, and he smiled and bowed. I held the stick against the earth with my left hand and slid down; it wasn’t so difficult to get down from the boulder after all. I smiled and thanked the monk again when I handed him the walking stick, and we each pressed our palms together and bowed.
Instead of heading down the mountain so soon, I walked further up, toward the location of the Thai ceremony, and at the front of the highest rock I saw Shantum and other members of our sangha just behind where the Thais had been seated. The head Thai monk, Govinda, who had been chanting into a microphone, stood facing them and talking, and a younger and, um, muscular monk stood just beyond him. At the “Strucks” meeting tonight, I learned that Govinda had been saying things that reminded Shantum of the Beatles song “Can’t Buy Me Love.” The monk said things like, “You can buy a bed, but you can’t buy sleep.”
While I stood there on Vulture Peak, he and Shantum talked about his monastery at Kushinagar. Shantum told him we’d be there in a few days, and Govinda invited us to visit at the Thai temple. After we parted with the abbot, Shantum pointed out that it was very kind of him to talk with us and that he really didn’t have to do that or invite us to his temple; it was “a great privilege for us.”
As people headed down, I spotted the crescent moon directly above the sunset. The sun itself had by now disappeared between two mountains, and the sky was a deepening grey. I took a picture of the thin crescent, the sky tinged purple by sunset, and the mountains. It was such a breathtaking view. “Did you get the tiny crescent?” one of the Canadians, Yvette, asked me, and I gave her a big smile and nodded before taking one last look at the moon and turning to climb back down.
I walked down the mountain with Yvette, and we both found it much easier going down; indeed, it was easy to go too fast. The monkeys were no longer in sight, which reminds me that during the ceremony, from way up high, I saw a monkey swinging in a tree. By the time we almost reached the bottom of the mountain, it was so dark we could barely see the brick steps and were looking down, carefully watching our feet.
Jagdish sneaked up behind Yvette and gave her a hug; she was startled and jumped. We all laughed, and he said that she was so concentrated on the steps in front of her. “That’s mindful walking!” I explained. I’d taken a great liking to the walking meditations we’ve been doing.
I climbed aboard the bus after the descent from Vulture Peak and have been writing in my journal. Mairgret, the Dutch member of our sangha, just got on the bus and said that she walked all the way down talking with the Dutch monk from Thailand. During our wait on the bus for the rest of our group, I overheard Yvette say, “Only a heart has wings to fly.”
One of the images I have from today is my view out the bus window of a small, dirty, raggedy child carrying a smaller, dirtier, and raggedy child with dark brown hair sticking up in all directions, and their looking up at me and pleading for food. Sights like that are so painful, and I don’t know what to do.
Here’s something odd about my thoughts: sometimes when I meant to think “Gandhi” or “The Buddha,” I think “The Dalai Lama” instead. I don’t think it’s just a matter of my poor grasp of names; I think they are the same in spirit. I’ve seen Gandhiji everywhere. His last home, on the money, in my glasses—and I’ve seen skinny old Indian men, with glasses, who look similar to Gandhi. His presence is still in India, in spirit, and in the world.
We kept moving slowly up the red brick walk, not to be confused with the Yellow Brick Road. Some sections of the path are brick stairs, but mostly it’s a gradual incline. Shantum brought our attention to a cable car leading up a nearby tall mountain, Ratnagiri, for tourists who want to look at the birdlike profile of Vulture Peak, but I was glad we were climbing the historic mountain itself. I’ve seen photos of the view in question.
Short grass and shrubbery and small trees covered Vulture Peak, giving it a light green and dark yellow color scheme. That’s hardly surprising since it hasn’t rained for maybe six months, yet I haven’t experienced dehydration like I do in Kansas; the precipitation is so much during the monsoon that enough moisture remains for the rest of the year.
We passed beggars wrapped in wool shawls and squatting at the edge of the trail, and some of them repeated the same phrase over and over like a desperate mantra. Shantum told us that a beggar just ahead of us was a blind man. We passed him on our right, and indeed his eyes were closed. He squatted at the edge of the path, like the other beggars. He was wrapped up in a blanket or large striped shawl, his shoulder-length hair was dirty and matted, and he held out a metal bowl. It would be horrible enough to be blind, I think; I didn’t want to imagine what it would be like to live in extreme poverty, having nothing and begging all day, and also be blind. We passed him in silence, and Shantum told us that he and his wife were both blind and had had a little boy who could see. Last year Shantum asked the blind man how the boy was, and the father said the child had died. Some people get all the luck.
We kept walking and came to four monkeys. A merchant with a little booth on the left of the path threw nuts to the monkeys, and apparently the creatures were either tame or excessively hungry, because we could walk past without their freaking out. Eventually we saw a great many monkeys sitting on a plateau-like space to the right, by the edge of the mountainside, and some climbing in trees to our left. This was the first time I saw more than one monkey, so of course I took out my camera, but this time I didn’t march up to any of the cute furry animals. Monkeys climbed in trees at the side of the path and looked down at us, and a few of them even swung in the trees.
Gradually the path wound further and further away from the edge of the mountain, till boulders sat on our right as well as our left. We walked slowly higher, and the view of the mountains all around under the bright blue sky was breathtaking, as if I had the perspective of a soaring bird. Shantum stopped us for a moment to direct our gaze to the right, over the side of the mountain, and said that the Buddha looked on this same view. As Shantum reminded us, the Buddha had said, “A monk’s robes should be patched like the fields,” and we could see fields of various crops down below, in sundry tints of greens and yellows.
Looking up the dramatic slope, we encountered some bright and colorful Tibetan prayer flags strung extremely high up between boulders. We turned to the right and approached a small cave. A group of Thais, including yellow-clad monks, walked right behind us, and Shantum let them know it would take about five minutes, before we crowded into the little cave.
Shantum sat at the far interior next to an altar, which included many white Tibetan scarves, an unfortunately headless Buddha statue with a dried marigold lei wrapped around it, numerous burning candles, and smoky sticks of incense pointing at the cave’s roof. Shantum explained that the Buddha preached to his sangha in this cave. He said that Rikki would chant from the Heart Sutra, which the Buddha taught on Vulture Peak, perhaps in this same cave.
Rikki chanted the sutra in a clear, deep, and very serious, even stern, voice. As she chanted, her voice became more and more intense till she sobbed at the end, and she moved out of the little cave. I felt strangely nervous at her intensity without really knowing why, perhaps because I am so accustomed to negative and vicious people whose emotions are intense because they are really hostile and abusive. Rikki’s vibes were intense yet devoid of any hostility or anger.
Next Mairgret crawled toward the altar, lit a candle, and chanted in Dutch, while I watched the flame and calmed down, focusing on the flame and on my breath. Erika had bought a box of narrow little white candles for offerings, and she held the box out to everyone within reach. I slid a candle out of the box and smiled my thanks.
I visualized the Buddha in his yellow robes seated cross-legged where Shantum sat, in the deepest part of the tiny cave, and surrounded by his disciples seated where the rest of us were and also seated in front of some of us, because more people would likely have been crowded into the cave. In the visualization, they all wore yellow robes, and there I was, sitting cross-legged and facing the Buddha. I became someone else, one of the members of the Buddha’s sangha. This vivid sense moved me greatly, and I found myself shaking and felt the beginning of tears stinging my eyes.
The prayers or chants that members of our sangha said as they lit a candle and placed it on the altar were also intense. I was glad that a few other people didn’t say anything when they lit their candles; I was trying not to cry, but failing, and I felt a little nervous at the prospect of my turn at the shrine. While I lit the candle, I mentally recited a Tibetan saying about happiness and suffering (Kunsang, p. 156). It reminded me of the begging women and children and so many people living in extreme poverty that I’ve seen in India. I wasn’t sobbing while I sat before the altar with those words going through my head and the candle in my hand. But after I crawled back to my seat closer to the cave entrance, I really did have tears running down my cheeks, as I did in the meeting last night, when the topic of poverty came up.
We left the first cave and trekked further up the rocky mountain, past a boulder on which sat offerings in the form of little piles of rocks, and we soon arrived at another small cave on our right. Thai monks sat cross-legged inside, and an older one in a bright orange robe chanted into a microphone. Small square flecks of gold adorned the rock walls and ceiling, as in the cave we had occupied, and people were putting gold leaf on the stone; it’s apparently a Thai Buddhist tradition to place little square pieces of gold leaf on structures as an offering.
I continued walking up and took many photos of Tibetan prayer flags strung between and above rocks and trees. The bright and colorful square flags were a charming and happy sight, high up in the sky and strung between trees and rocks. The further up I walked, the more prayer flags I saw, in the colors red, yellow, white, blue, green, and occasionally turquoise. The flags are printed with prayers in Tibetan, and as they blow in the wind, they send the prayers into the air.
I reached Vulture Peak’s summit, where countless people stood, and an Indian guy in a dhoti asked me to take off my shoes. I looked down at the tidy rows of many shoes alongside a boulder and slipped out of my blue canvas sneakers, which I placed in the row that had an empty space. I then turned to the left, where members of our sangha sat on a high boulder; I was almost the last one to reach the top.
Peter, one of the English members of our sangha, took Jagdish’s hand and climbed up. When it was my turn, I first handed Jagdish my mirrorwork bag, and then he held out his hand and said,” Take my hand.” So I put my left hand on the rock and my right hand in his and climbed up easily. There wasn’t much room for anyone else, so I stood while everyone else was seated or leaning against rock. I didn’t mind in the least, because I stood at almost the highest point of Vulture Peak and looked down and watched a Thai ceremony at the front of the cliff. The bright orange sun sat in the sky between two mountain peaks straight ahead, as though Vulture Peak deliberately pointed at the sunset. I must have been too fascinated by my surroundings to let my fear of heights get the better of me.
Meanwhile, John reached the summit and stood behind our boulder, where he spoke with a white monk in yellow Thai robes who I thought had a British accent, and John pointed out Mairgret to him, so I rather thought he must be Dutch. He was very tall and had a long face with high cheekbones, and I rather thought that if he had hair it would be blonde. Like many of the Thai monks, he wore a yellow stocking cap.
The Thai monks sat cross-legged inside a low, brick, three-sided wall around the edge of the cliff. It was the foundations of a really old and apparently very small temple or monastery. Within it stood another three-sided wall of stone, and the wall that faced outward, toward the sunset, was draped with white Tibetan scarves, marigold leis, and Buddha figures. Centered before the wall sat a big metal pot containing sand with protruding incense sticks. In front of the smaller set of walls sat two rows of yellow-clad Thai monks, chanting. Behind them sat Thai laypeople, most of whom were women, I suspect the monks’ moms.
I stood up high listening to the hypnotic chanting, taking photos, and absorbing the beautiful and peaceful setting. The sun was descending between the mountains and above the monks. Mountains surrounded us on every side, but they were mostly below the blue, gold, and pink sky and us, as though we were on top of the world. An extremely tall cliff to the right housed a white stupa, and that one did loom above us, from quite a distance. If I turned around to look behind, I’d see more people and Tibetan prayer flags. The scenery was wonderful and the air brimmed with happiness and positive energy. I watched as the sun sank further and further down between the peaks, and the sky darkened to dusk.
When the ceremony ended and the monks started getting up, Peter climbed down carefully, and then I sat down on the ledge that we had climbed up. I didn’t want to fall twice in one day. Erika stood slightly to my right, and to explain why I was moving so stiffly and slowly, I said, “I have acrophobia and I’ve already fallen today.”
Erika said, “Oh yeah, I guess I’d better help you,” and rushed to take my bag.
I smiled and said, “Thanks!” and slid a fraction further down while clenching my teeth. A round-faced Thai monk to my left handed me his walking stick. I grinned at him and said, “Thanks!” again, and he smiled and bowed. I held the stick against the earth with my left hand and slid down; it wasn’t so difficult to get down from the boulder after all. I smiled and thanked the monk again when I handed him the walking stick, and we each pressed our palms together and bowed.
Instead of heading down the mountain so soon, I walked further up, toward the location of the Thai ceremony, and at the front of the highest rock I saw Shantum and other members of our sangha just behind where the Thais had been seated. The head Thai monk, Govinda, who had been chanting into a microphone, stood facing them and talking, and a younger and, um, muscular monk stood just beyond him. At the “Strucks” meeting tonight, I learned that Govinda had been saying things that reminded Shantum of the Beatles song “Can’t Buy Me Love.” The monk said things like, “You can buy a bed, but you can’t buy sleep.”
While I stood there on Vulture Peak, he and Shantum talked about his monastery at Kushinagar. Shantum told him we’d be there in a few days, and Govinda invited us to visit at the Thai temple. After we parted with the abbot, Shantum pointed out that it was very kind of him to talk with us and that he really didn’t have to do that or invite us to his temple; it was “a great privilege for us.”
As people headed down, I spotted the crescent moon directly above the sunset. The sun itself had by now disappeared between two mountains, and the sky was a deepening grey. I took a picture of the thin crescent, the sky tinged purple by sunset, and the mountains. It was such a breathtaking view. “Did you get the tiny crescent?” one of the Canadians, Yvette, asked me, and I gave her a big smile and nodded before taking one last look at the moon and turning to climb back down.
I walked down the mountain with Yvette, and we both found it much easier going down; indeed, it was easy to go too fast. The monkeys were no longer in sight, which reminds me that during the ceremony, from way up high, I saw a monkey swinging in a tree. By the time we almost reached the bottom of the mountain, it was so dark we could barely see the brick steps and were looking down, carefully watching our feet.
Jagdish sneaked up behind Yvette and gave her a hug; she was startled and jumped. We all laughed, and he said that she was so concentrated on the steps in front of her. “That’s mindful walking!” I explained. I’d taken a great liking to the walking meditations we’ve been doing.
I climbed aboard the bus after the descent from Vulture Peak and have been writing in my journal. Mairgret, the Dutch member of our sangha, just got on the bus and said that she walked all the way down talking with the Dutch monk from Thailand. During our wait on the bus for the rest of our group, I overheard Yvette say, “Only a heart has wings to fly.”
One of the images I have from today is my view out the bus window of a small, dirty, raggedy child carrying a smaller, dirtier, and raggedy child with dark brown hair sticking up in all directions, and their looking up at me and pleading for food. Sights like that are so painful, and I don’t know what to do.
Here’s something odd about my thoughts: sometimes when I meant to think “Gandhi” or “The Buddha,” I think “The Dalai Lama” instead. I don’t think it’s just a matter of my poor grasp of names; I think they are the same in spirit. I’ve seen Gandhiji everywhere. His last home, on the money, in my glasses—and I’ve seen skinny old Indian men, with glasses, who look similar to Gandhi. His presence is still in India, in spirit, and in the world.
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