Rude Awakenings Documents an Unusual Pilgrimage
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BUDDHISM Rude Awakenings W HERE A RE Y OU G OING A Pilgrimage on Foot to the Buddhist Holy Places alf raucous adventure and half inspirational memoir, Rude Awakenings documents an unusual pilgrimage. Two very Part 1 Hdifferent men—life-loving naturalist Nick Scott and austere Buddhist monk Ajahn Sucitto—together spend six months retracing the Buddha’s footsteps through India. Told alternately by Sucitto and Rude Awakenings Scott in their distinctive voices, this story blends self-effacing humor, philosophical explorations, drama, travel observations, and the occa- sional giant fruit bat. Rude Awakenings is a heady record of survival and spirituality set against the dramatic backdrop of one of India’s most lawless regions. “Armchair pilgrims take note! This book will provide blisters, backaches, frights, absurd laughter, and all-night meditation. Result? Exhaustion tinged with grace. In the age of the pop-epiphany, Rude Awakenings is a throwback to what began it all: the slow road to enlightenment. It’s also a badminton in play between the Odd Couple of Spirituality, and one lovely read.” Tad Wise, author of Blessings on the Wind and co-author (with Robert Thurman) of Circling the Sacred Mountain Sucitto and Scott “As the clarity and candor of the writing draw us into this remarkable journey, we soon experience an inner landscape of two extraordinary hearts and minds. This is a wonderful book.” Joseph Goldstein, author of One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism Ajahn Sucitto and Nick Scott For Free Distribution NoonewalksaroundtheBuddhistholyland.Nottoday.Theygobybusbetween the holy sites. And with good reason. The Buddha’s homeland is now one of the mostdesperatelyovercrowdedandpoverty-riddenplacesontheplanet.Itisalso very dangerous. But wildlife ecologist Nick Scott and Buddhist monk Ajahn Sucitto decide to do just that: to walk for six months and for over one thousand miles, sleeping out at night and living on alms food, just as the Buddha would have done. More Praise for Rude Awakenings “Utterly delightful and filled with insight. With a moving earnestness and sincerity of heart, this book has much to teach about expectations and humility.” —N L G, guiding teacher, Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, and author of When Singing, Just Sing: Life As Meditation “Adelightful, amusing, and sometimes harrowing journey across a surprising landscape of Buddhist history,with a pair of honest and endearing travel guides. Ajahn Sucitto and Nick Scott prove that enlightenment can be found anywhere, even on a dusty back road.” —D W.M, author of The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still “This is the written crystallization of a unique journey to the Buddhist holy places of India, a trek of 1000 miles made on foot, by two religious seekers. As the reader accompanies them along the dusty trail of their juxtaposed accounts—of the glories and horrors of teeming pungent cities, somnolent villages, ancient sanctuaries and tiger-haunted forests—the reading too becomes something of a pilgrimage. And just as this pair of travelers were challenged, inspired and transformed by their journey,we too find ourselves similarly changed.” —A A, abbot of Abhayagiri Monastery R A Where Are You Going A Pilgrimage on Foot to the Buddhist Holy Places Part 1: Rude Awakenings Ajahn Sucitto and Nick Scott FOR FREE DISTRIBUTION © 2010 Ajahn Sucitto & Nick Scott Cittaviveka Monastery Chithurst, Petersfield West Sussex, GU31 5EU England All rights reserved. This book is intended for free distribution. It has been made available through the faith, effort, and generosity of people who wish to share the understanding it contains with whomever is interested. This act of freely offering is itself a part of what makes this a “Dhamma publication,” a book based on spiritual values. Please do not sell this book. If you no longer need it, pass it on to an interested person. If you wish to help such publications to continue to be made freely available, you can make a donation, however small, or sponsor a whole printing at “Publications” on www.forestsangha.org. This book is also available for free download at www.cittaviveka.org and www.forestsangha.org. We are indebted to Wisdom Publications for generously allowing us to produce these free editions while their edition is still available for sale. It can be purchased at www.wisdompubs.org. Cover design: Patrick O’Brien. Interior design: Gopa & Ted2, Inc. Set in Dante MT 11/15.5pt. The mindful exert themselves; they are not attached to any home. Like swans that abandon the lake, they leave home after home behind. Dhammapada Dedicated to our teacher, Luang Por Sumedho, and to our parents: Charlie, Win, Bert, and Dot. Contents Foreword by Stephen Batchelor xi Preface xv T F M: T M L 1 Map of the Ganges Plain 2 Chapter 1. Pilgrim’s Way 3 Chapter 2. Over the Border 23 Chapter 3. Leaving Home 41 T S M: L V 59 Map of the River Gandak (Part 1) 60 Chapter 4. The Observer 61 Chapter 5. Looking for Purity 79 Map of the River Gandak (Part 2) 100 Chapter 6. Spiritual Friendship 101 Chapter 7. The Kingdom of the Law 115 Chapter 8. Cycles 131 Chapter 9. The Deathless Drum 149 T T M: V B G 169 Map of Mid-Bihar 170 Chapter 10. The Treasure House 171 Chapter 11. Dark Angel 193 Chapter 12. Letting Go 219 Chapter 13. Landing Place 243 Chapter 14. The Time of Gifts 263 Epilogue 287 Notes 289 Glossary 295 Bibliography 305 Recommended Reading 311 Index 313 About the Authors 318 Foreword This is a book about a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage to those places in India where the Buddha, Siddhattha Gotama, lived, taught, sat, and walked some two and a half thousand years ago. To be a pilgrim is to put yourself in those places on earth where the presence of a long-departed but revered person is allowed to resonate anew in the mind. This exercise involves a certain ambiguity. For one thing, when you stand in such a site, no trace of the revered person sur- vives. In the case of the Buddha, even artifacts from his time are scant. The few shards of pottery,clay receptacles, and relics excavated from his period are all housed in museums. Moreover, even the ground upon which the pilgrim reverentially treads is now several feet above the ground on which the Buddha and his disciples would have walked. The Buddha was deeply aware of how all things—himself and his teaching included—arise and pass away.More pertinently,he knew that no place or object could in any true sense be identified with his “self.” So why,shortly before his death, did he encourage his followers to visit the places where he was born, attained enlightenment, “turned the wheel of Dharma,” and passed away? “Any who die while making a pil- grimage to these shrines with a devout heart,” he added, “will, at the breaking-up of the body after death, be reborn in a heavenly world” (Digha Nikaya 16:5.8). I very much doubt that he thought these places were somehow imbuedwithspecial“vibrations”or“resonances”of hispersonthatwere ^0 06 mystically embedded in the earth and stones. I suspect it is because he understood how, for human beings, the memory of a person and what he or she stood for is strangely enhanced by association with the physi- cal places where that person once moved. On numerous occasions I have found that being in the places described in this book “earths” my sense of belonging to the tradition founded all those centuries ago by the Buddha. This earthing, however, takes place primarily in my own mind. Despite knowledge of a tradition’s history and devotion for its founder, the pilgrim is thrust into an unpredictable encounter with those places in the present. Since Buddhism has long vanished from the land of its birth, one does not find many fellow pilgrims and only a few temples and shrines, most of which have been constructed or restored in recent decades. Mostly one finds archaeological sites excavated dur- ing the past hundred and fifty years, first by British and more recently by Indian archaeologists. The people who live in the vicinity today are almost entirely Hindus and Muslims, who have little if any awareness of the significance of these places for Buddhists. Consequently, to set out on a Buddhist pilgrimage today as an Englishman, particularly on foot (as the authors of this book have done), is to embark into the teeming chaos of modern India as an object of curiosity and incomprehension for the locals. The present, however, is precisely where the practices taught by the Buddha take place. In the act of seeking out the sacred sites of Sid- dhattha Gotama, one is challenged repeatedly to put into practice what he taught. The foundations of a Gupta period temple might evoke a pious memory of a distant community and teaching, but it is the insis- tent pleading of beggars, the taunts of teenage boys, the unpredictable behaviour of a group of staring people who have suddenly swarmed around from nowhere that call upon the pilgrim to maintain mindful attention, to respond wisely and kindly,to be tolerant. In Rude Awakenings, Ajahn Sucitto, a senior monk in the Thai Forest Tradition, and Nick Scott, his lay attendant and all-round sorter-out ^0 06 of problems, recount just such a pilgrimage. Their journey takes us fromtheplaceof theBuddha’sbirthinLumbinitothesiteof hisenlight- enment in Bodh Gaya. But to say where they went says little about the core of their experience of pilgrimage. For theirs is a journey into the heart of the human condition, a condition displayed in all its beauty and horror, compassion and violence, simplicity and complexity in the impoverished parts of India and Nepal through which they lead us.