The Lotuses of Kapilavastu

Our first stop today was the Kapilavastu archeology site that is probably the real Kapilavastu, unlike the one that’s in Nepal. Shantum said, “The beggars are particularly aggressive in this area,” shortly before we got off the bus.

The ruins we walked amid were the site of palatial buildings and the township of ancient Kapilavastu, capital of the Shakyas, the Buddha’s family. This is the kingdom where Siddhartha Gautama grew up. To my immediate right, after getting off the bus, stood the ruins of small rooms around a capacious central room or courtyard. Small rooms remind me of a dorm or monastery; perhaps that’s not the palace but rather a monastery. I recall that monasteries were built in Kapilavastu after the Buddha reached enlightenment: that explains the dorm-like set-up. These structures that we see now would not have been around during the Buddha’s youth, when the art of brick making was temporarily forgotten. But no doubt the people who built these brick buildings knew about the Buddha and admired him. They would not have built the brick monastic structures if this hadn’t been the Buddha’s home kingdom, and so these structures are connected to him.

I walked further to a tall red brick structure that other members of the sangha were climbing on, and I also climbed on it but with much caution. Beggar children hovered in the background in a pack, but I ignored them.

I rather suspect that India invented bricks. I’m ninety-nine percent sure of it, since they were using bricks a long time ago, before the Buddha’s time, and still make them from hand. Bricks are everywhere, in great numbers. I first noticed them in New Delhi, where we saw the piles of bricks, ruins of recent squatter’s homes. In ancient ruins, even bricks often have beautiful designs sculpted into them.

Our second stop was at some of the same kingdom of Kapilavastu, with more brick ruins. A huge stupa stands in the center. According to the archeological survey sign, we looked at the ruins of monasteries, stupas, shrines, votive stupas and a public hall. Sealings with the legend of Kapilavastu are in a monastery here, which perked up my curiosity; I wanted to see what these sealings looked like. “This complex represents the Buddhist establishment of ancient Kapilavastu,” according to a sign out front.

After I took a path and passed most of the ruins, I approached an excessively blue and sparkling pond sprinkled with bright pink blooming lotuses. My mouth formed a big O. This was the first time I saw lotuses in their natural environment, unless we saw some in the bamboo grove. In Bodh Gaya I had noticed some picked lotuses that wallahs walking on the street sold as offerings.

Most of the sangha had reached the pond before I did, and I wasn’t the only one who was struck by the beauty of the scenery and the great sense of peace. We were indeed close to the Buddha, and it isn’t difficult to picture him walking slowly around the pond and looking down at the flowers. People were already settled comfortably on the bank of the pond, seated or standing or wandering, even lying on mats, by the time I came within sight of the pond. Shantum said we’d sit in the Mango Grove, gesturing up a slight hill to a grouping of trees. Shantum preferred the grove because it’s shady, so I thought that was a good idea.

I followed the winding path up to the Mango Grove, took a picture of another ancient brick building’s foundations, and set foot into the mango grove. Indeed the grove was much shadier than the pond and consequently cooler. Although the lotus pond was certainly beautiful, the grove was also pleasing to the eye. It was a small forest, and I saw no mangoes whether or not they still grow in it, and the tall shady trees darkened it considerably.

The Mango Groove houses the most obnoxious, noisy, and greedy crows I’ve yet encountered. They fly around, squawk and caw away like they think they’re entitled to all the attention, and even walk fairly close to us. Natalie and I imitated their cawing. I’m better at turkey noises, and peacock sound effects are easy, since they sound so much like cats.

We all sat down on our straw mats, and Shantum began a talk in the Mango Groove at Kapilavastu. He told us about Nepal’s tourism relying on the other “Kapilavastu” there, and he spoke mostly about the archeology in the region before getting back to Buddha lore.

Under a tree to our right, a crow settled on our food and poked at the white plastic bags with its beak. The crow must be smarter than me, because I didn’t even know our food was there. The white plastic bags disguised it.

“Trying to beg is hard to do,” Shantum said at another point in the talk. He tried it in England at Victoria Station and was very uncomfortable with asking from strangers. Also he has begged with Thai monks: their method includes wearing robes and holding bowls, not saying anything. I think that would be much easier to do, and when I visited San Francisco as a tourist, I thought about what it would be like to be a panhandler on Powell Street. Who knows, I might resort to that someday, although I dread talking to strangers despite all my customer service experience.

Shantum told us about the Buddha’s return visit to his family in Kapilavastu. Ultimately he convinced many people here to become monastics, including his son Rahula. “He started out as a crow-chasing novice, in a place like this,” Shantum said.
“Caw, caw!” crows said in response.
“I think Mukesh is recruited as crow-chasing novice,” John said. Twice Mukesh chased crows off our lunch, before he and Jagdish resorted to taking the lunch packages away from the tree and keeping it next to them while they sat talking at the edge of the grove.

“The Buddha’s family enlarged from a small family to the universal family,” Shantum said. Mine too. That’s an aspect of interconnectedness: I feel more bound to the human family, the world family, than to alienating and contemptuous relatives. Although the Buddha got along much better with his relatives than I do with mine, and although he grew up in a loving and supportive community rather than a prejudiced and unsupportive community, I can see that he was bullied and threatened on occasion, such as by his bratty cousin who eventually tried to kill him. The Brahmins who were jealous of him could be seen as a bunch of bullies. I wonder if the Buddha ever felt depressed by this hostility, even though he obviously had a great deal of mental discipline. Encounters with vicious people are a very significant part of the path, and they test us. Unlike the Buddha, I keep failing the test.

Shantum told us how the Buddha’s mother and other women insisted on becoming the first nuns. “In Plum Village, nuns are fully ordained,” Shantum said, referring to a meditation center that is Thich Nhat Hanh’s main residence and where he does most of his teaching. “Nuns are fully ordained in the West but not accepted in Thailand or Burma currently,” thanks to power-tripping misogynists in charge. It’s one of those situations in which old men in power don’t want to let go of their power.

Ann asked, “Who has the authority to change the precepts for nuns?”
Shantum said, “According to the Buddha you should change things, such as the precepts, to fit modern times. Unfortunately, there are traditionalists in the way.” Gail pressed him, asking if there was some central authority like the Pope, but there isn’t. She mentioned the Dalai Lama, and Shantum pointed out, “The Dalai Lama approves of nuns being fully ordained.”

Crazy crows are hovering around at lunch. Someone tossed a little food and a bunch of them swooped down disconcertingly close to my head. I ducked and could feel the wind from the wings and was unfortunately reminded of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I walked a few feet away before tossing food for the obnoxious black birds, and numerous crows swooped down in that part of the woods. All that for one little piece of bread.

Shantum had warned us that the child beggars are “more aggressive” around here. I had no problem at the first Kapilavastu stop and wondered what he could possibly mean, and until we returned to the bus I had no problem here. As I stepped up to the bus and ignored the kids, one of them tapped me on the arm, and after I got to my seat, I looked out the window and noticed down below one of the kids giving me a nasty look. I’m thinking that must be what Shantum meant by “more aggressive.” I had been inclined to believe he was referring to the crows, not the children.

2
After we rode the bus several hours, the sun was a giant crimson polka dot in the pale grey-blue sky. It was dark out shortly before seven in the evening, and now the long bus ride is complete. We have arrived at the Lotus Nikko Hotel in the village of Sravasti. Hurray! The lobby includes, in the center, a spiral staircase made of marble. Or maybe it’s not so much spiral as curving a little out of kilter. While we waited in the lobby, and just before staff members served us little glasses of a carbonated beverage rather than my much preferred choice of mango juice, Valerie and Dean sung Beatles songs, and by now I’m accustomed to members of our sangha acting a bit giddy when we arrive at our next hotel after a long drive. I’m invariably one of the giddy ones.

This is the third Lotus Nikko Hotel for us. The first was the early one with the totally tubular temple containing a big black Buddha, and the second was our home right before the Maharaja’s lodge. The Lotus Nikko Hotels are nice rather than obnoxiously posh like the Radisson. The most scenic thing about my current nondescript room is that the window is in the front façade of the hotel and therefore looks out on the roses and the road that passes through the village.

After we acquired our room keys, we had approximately half an hour in our rooms before the 7:30 dinner, located in an enormous dining room on the second floor, just down the hall from my room. After dinner Shantum talked about the rest of the pilgrimage. The sangha will be splitting up in about three days. The topic of the trip coming to an end is not a pleasant one for me, and I somewhat melodramatically said, “Oh no! I don’t want the pilgrimage to end! I want it to go on forever and ever!”

3
This morning, Sunday the fourth, as I descended the staircase to meet up for meditation, I saw six yellow-swathed Thai monks seated on the carved wood, velvet-upholstered sofas. Boxes and bags of supplies were piled next to the entrance doors, and one of the boxes contained strange nuts or seeds in it: they were like gigantic peanuts, two in the shell, three inches long; but they had a smooth medium brown shell instead of a bumpy dark yellow shell.

Members of our sangha started showing up in the lobby, and I went upstairs to get my shawl and tissues, since I had forgotten them. Not of course that I’m absent-minded. By the time I returned to the lobby downstairs, the Thai monks were no longer hanging out and instead members of our sangha were seated on the sofas. When I heard chanting coming from the downstairs restaurant, I crossed the lobby and stood by the glass door and the glass windows that flank it. Sure enough the Thai monks were chanting and filled a long table at one end of the restaurant, and Thai laypeople sat at another table.

I returned to the sofa at which the monks had sat recently, and an unusual conversation was in progress, one in which monks would probably not have participated. Someone explained to Mairgret that “booty” is an American slang word for “butt.”
“It’s too early in the morning to talk about booties,” Gail said.
“Boobies?” Mairgret said.
“’Booby’ means ‘breast,’” Gail said. “It’s way too early in the morning to talk about boobies.”
“How about bodhis?” Val said. “As in the Bodhi Tree.”
“This is when you should be writing in your journal,” Dean said to me. I laughed and pulled out my journal.

I’m currently waiting amid rose bushes and trees on the hotel grounds. Today we’re supposed to meet up again at about ten thirty in the morning and head for the Jetta Grove, which is within walking distance. I don’t remember reading about the Jetta Grove before, but I guess that’s not as dramatic as the Buddha’s footprints leaving lotuses behind him or as his encounter with Mara trying to distract him with demons and all. Besides, my poor memory for names extends to place names, not only people’s names.

On this road, it’s not unusual to see oxen pulling carts piled high with hay. At this very moment, in fact, a cart is going by, full of hay, topped by two guys in turbans, and led by oxen. This is a rather common sight in India, especially here. Yesterday we passed what I thought of as an Indian rodeo: a flat area at the side of the road, occupied by many oxen-drawn carts full of hay. Numerous men were there, perhaps in the process of loading the carts. And here comes another cart.

It has weirded me out how typical it is in India to see many men, at work or on the streets, and very few women. Members of our sangha have of course commented on this, and Liz said the women are behind the scenes, in the homes. They are hidden. We on the other hand are visible, gallivanting around on the other side of the world, boldly going where I suspect no Kansan or Hoosier has wandered before. Escaping Kansas and the mundane existence of everyday life gives me a sense of freedom, even if freedom is a rarity for women who live in the country to which I have escaped.