BUDDHISM W HERE A RE Y OU G OIN G “This is the crystallization of a unique journey to the Buddhist holy places of India, a trek of a thousand miles made on foot, by two religious seekers. A Pilgrimage on Foot to the Buddhist Holy Places As the reader accompanies them along the dusty trail of their juxtaposed accounts—of the glories and horrors of teeming pungent cities, somno- lent villages, ancient sanctuaries and tiger-haunted forests—the reading Part 2 too becomes something of a pilgrimage. And just as this pair of travelers Great Patient One were challenged, inspired, and transformed by their journey, we find our- selves similarly changed.” Great Patient One —Ajahn Amaro, abbot of Abhayagiri Monastery “Armchair pilgrims take note! This book will provide blisters, backaches, frights, absurd laughter, and all-night meditations. Result? Exhaustion tinged with grace. In the age of the pop-epiphany this 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, co-author of Circling the Sacred Mountain h AJAHN SUCITTO, a Theravadan Buddhist monk in the Thai forest tradition for over thirty years, is Abbot of Chithurst Monastery in England. He is a popular teacher of meditation who teaches and Zahorsky Ingmar : conducts retreats around the PHOTO world. COVER Sucitto and Scott DR. NICK SCOTT is a botanist and ecologist who has worked most of his life in conservation. He lives in Ireland, where he now teaches meditation. Ajahn Sucitto and Nick Scott FOR FREE DISTRIBUTION Great Patient One Where Are You Going A Pilgrimage on Foot to the Buddhist Holy Places Part 2: Great Patient One 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. Cover photo: Swayambhunath, Kathmandu, Nepal, courtesy of Ingmar Zahorsky. Interior design: Gopa and Ted2. Typeset by DK. Set in Dante MT 11/15.5 and Cochin Dedicated to Mah Poi Nu and Lee Toh Mooi Mah Khing Yow Mah Chin Hin and Mah Chin Chuan Maha Khanti, the “Great Patient One.” Drawing by Ajahn Sucitto. Contents Prologue xi Map: The Ganges Plain xiv The Fourth Moon: Bodh Gaya to Varanasi Map: Southern Bihar and Uttar Pradesh 2 15. Home Again 5 16. Saints, Monks, and Sages 27 17. The Forest Tradition 47 18. A Matter of Survival 77 19. Like a River Flowing 101 The Fifth Moon: Varanasi to Lumbini Map: Mid Uttar Pradesh 128 20. The Family Business 131 21. The Universal Duty 155 22. Action and Stillness 179 23. The First Goodbye 203 The Sixth Moon: Lumbini to Kathmandu Map: The Himalayan Foothills 226 24. Coming Up for Light 229 25. Once Upon a Time 253 26. The Last Stretch 277 i i ^0 contents 06 The Seenth Moon: The Mountains Map: The Kathmandu Valley and North to Tibet 298 27. Bringing It All Back Home 299 28. Up, Down, Over, and Out 327 Chapter Notes 351 Glossary 357 Characters 369 Recommended Reading 375 Bibliography 377 About the Authors 383 Acknowledgements Where Are You Going was originally photocopied and passed around the Western Ajahn Chah monasteries in the early 2000s. Several years later Wisdom Publications published the first part as Rude Awakenings Two Englishmen on Foot in Buddhism’s Holy Land, which is still available. Now at last, thanks to the very generous sponsorship of Sian Mah, who wanted to read the second part and offered to publish it, we can satisfy the many other requests to see it. He has also kindly offered to release the first half as a companion volume for free distribution under the title Where Are You Going: A Pilgrimage on Foot to the Buddhist Holy Places. Part 1: Rude Awakenings In Rude Awakenings we thanked all those who had helped us with Where Are You Going, so here we need only repeat our thanks to David Kittelstrom, our excellent and patient editor at Wisdom who edited and laid out this volume in his own time, and Bhikkhu Chandako and Bhik- khu Hiriko, who kindly and very diligently proofread it. i x Through the goodness that arises from my practice, May my spiritual teachers and guides of great virtue, My mother, my father and my relatives The sun and the moon, and all virtuous leaders of the world May the highest gods and evil forces; Celestial beings, guardian spirits of the Earth and the Lord of Death; May those who are friendly, indifferent or hostile; May all beings receive the blessings of my life. May they soon attain the threefold bliss and realise the Deathless. Through the goodness that arises from my practice, And through this act of sharing, May all desires and attachments quickly cease And all harmful states of mind. Until I realise Nibbana, In every kind of birth, may I have an upright mind With mindfulness and wisdom, austerity and vigour. May the forces of delusion not take hold nor weaken my resolve. The Buddha is my excellent refuge, Unsurpassed is the protection of the Dhamma, The solitary Buddha is my noble Lord, The Sangha is my supreme support. Through the supreme power of all these, May darkness and delusion be dispelled. Prologue This book is a sequel. The first half, published asRude Awakenings, began the account of a six-month epic journey by two Englishmen, a monk and layman, to the Buddhist holy places in India. On this seven-hundred- mile pilgrimage on foot across one of the most overcrowded places on the planet, we supported ourselves by going for alms—just as Buddhist monks had done in times gone by—and slept under the stars. Rude Awak- enings was a great adventure story. While the second part of the jour- ney still had its share of adventure, and some amazing encounters with wildlife, the novelty of the endeavour had worn off, and we came face to face with both our own and the other’s deeper humanity. Thus this sequel is, to us, the more valuable of the two accounts. You needn’t have read Rude Awakenings to enjoy and share our tri- als, joys, and lessons here, but some scene setting may make the story clearer. Ajahn Sucitto was neither the abbot of Chithurst Buddhist Mon- astery nor the well-known teacher he is today when his teacher, Ajahn Sumedho, chose him in response to Nick’s invitation to take a Buddhist monk on pilgrimage, and Nick was still a wildlife warden. The walk began appropriately at Lumbini, the Buddha’s birthplace just inside the border of Nepal. From there we crossed into the Indian state of Bihar, now the poorest, most crowded, and most backward of India’s states but once the heart of Indian civilisation and the site of many of the events from the Buddha’s life. In the autumn of 1990, when our pilgrimage began, the days were x i ^0 prologue 06 still searing hot, and almost everywhere we rested, throngs of inquisi- tive people would instantaneously appear. We would often trudge on until nightfall just to find somewhere we could be left alone, setting up a small shrine for chanting and feeble attempts at meditation before fall- ing asleep dog-tired. After another puja and meditation just after dawn, we might get a few miles in before the heat began. Towards the end of each morning we’d enter a village, sit down somewhere, and wait for an invitation to eat—which, amazingly enough, nearly always came. Ini- tially, Ajahn Sucitto wanted to eat just once a day, but slowly the ardu- ousness of what we were trying to do led to a small plate of chickpeas or some biscuits with the morning stop at a chai stall. The support and generosity we received seemed almost magical—only three days did we go hungry. At first the dominant challenge was the physical strain—walking in the heat day after day sustained by inadequate nutrition and run down by bouts of dysentery. Small cuts festered, Ajahn Sucitto developed a foot injury, and protein deficiency kept us from even thinking straight. Then the differences in our personalities began to exact a toll: Nick pur- sued the remnants of wildlife left amidst all that humanity, whereas Ajahn Sucitto with his commitment to transcendence wasn’t interested in scenery. He just wanted to go inwards. At Rajgir, a favourite resort of the Buddha, we hit bottom. In the first real forest we had come to, we were attacked and robbed by bandits who appeared from the woods, machetes in hand. Nearly everything was lost: money, passports, camping gear, camera, even most of our clothes. However, as is so often the case with India, disaster had a benign side: having been stripped almost bare, we were lifted up and penetrated more deeply by the generosity and kindness of others.