Letter 2.63

In two days there will begin a meditation retreat at the Burmese temple here in Bodh Gaya, which I expect to join. Listening to some of the Burmese monks chanting Pali, the lilt and cadence struck me as oddly familiar. Finally it dawned on me: the abbot of the Buddhist temple in Calcutta, Ven, Dhammapala, who ordained me, and taught me my first Pali chants, was originally from a village near Cox's Bazaar, not far from the Burmese border, and his teacher, the monk who ordained him, was a much-revered Burmese bhikkhu who lived alone in the jungle near his village. Ergo, I guess I have a bit of a Burmese accent -- in Pali.

As for the persons joining the retreat -- which lasts ten days -- most appear to be young Westerners: some are earnest, others are looking simply for what they think of as 'far out', others are curious, a few, monks and laymen, have extensive previous practice. A very mixed bag -- but all quite friendly, and -- even though many of those involved have strong Hindu leanings -- there is a very different atmosphere to the whole thing than I've met in the Hindu groups -- somehow it seems less frivolous. The freaky gesture, the wild eyes, the zennish talk ('everything is one; nothing really exists; it's all the same,' etc.) -- when g these are seen they stand out as something foreign to the atmosphere, rather than part of it, as in the Hindu sessions, and there seems a clearer sense of direction -- and calmness -- here. Even the Hinou-oriented have noted this. One, a follower of Baba Ram Das (Alpert), who wears his hair in a topknot, was, he said, amazed to find a place where people actually mean what they say and do.

Bodh Gaya itself helps. None of the English-country-estate lawns and gardens of Sarnath. The mud huts of the village extend everywhere, almost up to 5 the doorsteps of the pilgrimage places, but the area is dominated not by the village with its fields of rice, and bustle of life from people, dogs, wild (or atleast loose) pigs, sheep, goats, cows, and buffalo, but by the Maha Bodhi temple, a very high and unusual temple behind the tree under which the Buddha sat at the time he attained Enlightenment. (The original tree is no longer there: it was accidentally? destroyed by the British when they were doing excavations, and has been replaced with a shoot from the tree at Anuradhapura, which is itself a shoot from the original tree.) The temple is a gorgeous structure unlike any I've ever seen; a sort of synthesis of architectural styles of all the Buddhist countries and the ancient Buddhist stupas or monuments of India (such as at Sanchi); very elegant: a bell-shaped dome is topped by what resembles a Papal cross of stone -- with three crossbars -- surrounded by three smaller domes; every inch of the building is sculpted with ornate designs, and, perhaps, more than any single features its many meditative niches and corners give it its distinctive character.

Life centers around this temple for the devotees, especially the Tibetans, many of whom measure the circumference of the area surrounding the temple with their bodies, prostrating themselves endlessly as they slowly work their way around the grounds. Inside the temple one room echoes constantly to the chanting of the pious as they read from their sacred books -- books made of sheets of paper unbound, about two and a half feet long and perhaps six inches high, with Tibetan script (put, they say, Sanskrit language) -- about seven lines to the page. The sound struck me as not unlike that heard inside an orthodox shul, but the Tibetans, in their purple and yellow dresses, dark faces with sharply pronounced features and high cheekbones and long hair, often in braids or topknot, hardly look like East European Jews. (My impression -- just passing -- is that probably 25% of the Westerners here are of Jewish background. I remember reading somewhere that something of the same percentage of Jews were involved in the San Francisco scenes of the 60's.) The large contingent of Tibetans about is due partly to the presence of the Dalai Lama, who is staying (for the winter, I think, before returning to his usual home, Dharamsala, about 100 miles west of Almora) at the beautiful Tibetan Rest House.

It's cold still -- though I've enough warm robes -- in the mornings even colder than Almora. Here the air is heavy and the sun rises and sets as a dull cold orange ball giving off insufficient heat to penetrate the heavy air. But once warm it stays warm for a while after sunset, and shadows are not cold. In a quiet, unadorned way the place is rather enchanting.

I look forward to the retreat.

Letter 2.62

(On the day I finished a 40 day fast by Elk Lake, on southern Vancouver Island, I received the last aerogramme from Almora. On the inside of it was painted in water-color-thanka-style -- an emaciated sadhu reminiscent of Siddharta Gautama sitting cross-legged at the root of the bo tree on the verge of becoming the Buddha; only he, with green halo, was seated on a green lotus in a black void -- Hūm)

How's dis for mountains, hey?

Will I arrive at Mahasamuddra and cross over, by possibly monsoon, to find out about Siamese rain and other such romances? Or will it be back to the land of coconuts, and all those undiscovered vitamins, stringhoppers, rabbit holes, mad tea parties, and whatnot?

What's going on? Something coming off?

V.

Letter 2.61

I'm happy to know my small paintings arrived safely and have afforded you some pleasure. Yes, they took many hours each, the detail work -- one of the distinctive features of thankas -- being a very slow and careful job. The original designs were taken from a series of prints from which I selected figures I liked and copied them onto blank paper in outline, then painted the outlines, restoring the original detail as much as I could. I used water-color, a very fine brush, an concentration. I began with a box of school-children's type water-colors, but eventually wound up with bottles and tubes of all sorts.

The war seems to be over -- so I'm told. Probably you were better informed on what was going on than I was (or am). Still, it affected re more seriously than I'd expected, since it created a kerosene shortage and for a while it looked like we would have to use candles at night (a more expensive proposition). But then we scored a 4-gallon tin, which is a month's supply. Also, I've had a one-year extension of my visa, so there's no concern -- there never was -- of being evacuated. (Even evacuation would be alright with me: it would probably mean a free trip to Nepal.) However, since the government will not evacuate me due to the heat of the war, I'm now obliged to evacuate myself due to the cold of winter and in about a week I'll be leaving for Bodh Gaya, the place (in the plains, to the east of Benares), where the Buddha attained enlightenment.

Already departed from the scene are an elderly American, Henry, formerly a Vedantic monk for five years and a psychiatrist, who is trying to buy an estate up here to settle on (Henry has given up his practice, having, presumably, made a bundle); Jennifer, a plump young Canadian girl (her father was an American who fled to Canada during the Korean war to evade the draft) who, having been nurtured on LSD ('acid baby' is, I think, the term used), no longer has much interest in freak scenes and has a cool collected head -- she's joining her brother in an ashram near Bombay; Gary, an American, who has a hashish-smuggling racket, and his girlfriend Judy, English, formerly a Tibetan nun, both to take a meditation course from an elderly Burmese gentleman in Bombay; Sally and Win Chamberlain, who are under-(or over)-ground New York film-makers; Tensing, a Harvard graduate student on a foreign study fellowship doing Tibetan studies (he's the former monk from the New Jersey Tibetan monastery) and his Swedish wife, who was formerly the wife of Richard Leary (Timothy Alpert?) -- with whom(s?) both Henry and Win also had connections -- and various hippies, heads, and other types too probable and improbable to describe.

Still around are such people as Nick and his Swedish wife Eva, who have just returned from a three month trip to Tibet (a small part of which, nearly inaccessible is held by the Nepal government -- they tell of 21,000 feet passes, seeing people washes away crossing rivers, etc., and have some excellent photographs of the journey -- Nick speaks fluent Tibetan); Sunnyata, an 84 year old Danish Hindu sadhu; and Pat, a middle-aged American following Hindu ascetic practices (she vas formerlv a successful artist, and gave me some basic advice on the thankas); Carol, an English girl who practices witchcraft; and a host of others. Names keep changing, but the typos don't.

It’s been an amusing 6 months, watching it from the outside. But I couldn't imagine being more than a spectator, and so Bodh Gaya seems the inevitable conclusion to Almora.

Letter 2.60

Mountain villages, unlike plains villages, are spread out with fields between the houses, so there are no houses 'next door' -- the nearest is several fields away, and not on the same level either. Plains villages, on the other hand, often have the narrowest passages between houses, and sometimes share common walls like apartment buildings. (The plains villages are also sometimes enclosed by defense walls.) In Ceylon the opposite pattern is found: in the plains the houses are spread out with fields between them (Ceylon never had the invasions, etc., that require defensive village works), but in the hills the villages are built by the tea estate owners for the tea pickers, and are as close as possible to each other to allow for more tea bushes. (No tea is grown in Kumaon, which is the dry side of the Himalayas, but Darjeeling tea is highly valued.)

You'll notice that refugee relief taxes now apply to postage, as well as a lot of other things. When I was in Delhi recently there were several mock air raids -- mock in every sense, since they were looked upon generally as a nuisance to be cooperated with as little as possible. The Delhi papers are full of Bangladesh Freedom Fighter Victory Reports -- which have an air of vague plausibility and cars have bumper and windshield stickers: LIBERATE BANGLADESH; PUNISH YAHYA; CRUSH PAKISTAN. The only concern we have in Almora is that if a war does start (no one really knows if it will) they may try to evacuate us, since we're close to restricted border territory, as I'm told happened in '65, when they got everyone into evacuation centers ready to ship them out of the country, but the war ended before anyone got sent out (as it almost certainly would again), and so everyone was released again. War in these parts has something to be said for it. My only brush with belligerents so far was in Delhi: a troop of Hari Krishna freaks from California besieged the city, trying to convert the blasé Indians to the True Faith -- talk about selling ice-boxes to the Eskimos! -- I was first mistaken for one (a Krishna freak not an Eskimo), then spiritually propositioned by one (a Krishna Eskimo for all I know) -- and would have -- preferred, I think, a Moslem invasion by the Pakistan Army.

Far from that madness, the fields are green with winter wheat. The cherry trees are in blossom (yes, I know it's late November; nevertheless the cherry trees are in blossom); leaves glisten in the bright sunlight, which each morning illuminates the dew gathered in thousands of spider webs. The nine forests waver green and silver through wafting fog.