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Published: November 8th 2012
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Old and New
The road leading to the ruins of Jetavana. Sravasti.In Sanskrit, it means City of Glory. And in the time of the Buddha, Sravasti was indeed one of the country’s most glorious cities. Situated in the fertile Gangetic plain, it was the capital of the kingdom of Kosala and home to over 180 million people – amongst them a wealthy merchant named Sudatta. While visiting his brother in the capital of the neighboring kingdom, Sudatta met the Buddha shortly after he had attained Enlightenment. He was so moved by the Buddha’s words that he immediately invited him to spend the rainy season in Sravasti as his guest. The Buddha accepted.
Sudatta returned to Sravasti to prepare a dwelling for the Buddha. He had found the ideal location in a wooded park that belonged to Prince Jeta, but the prince refused his offers to buy the land. Sudatta implored. Seeing his persistence, the prince finally agreed to a price he thought no man could pay – he would sell Sudatta the park if he could cover every inch of it in gold coins. Overjoyed, Sudatta immediately agreed.
The next morning Sudatta carefully began laying out the gold, covering the ground piece by piece. By afternoon, three-quarters of the land
Gandhakuti
Monks meditating outside the Buddha's dwelling in Jetavana. were sparkling under the reflection of 1.8 million golden coins. Prince Jeta was astounded by Sudatta’s devotion. He understood that the Buddha must truly be extraordinary to inspire such faithfulness and refused to allow Sudatta to lay a single golden coin more, gifting the rest of the land him. Sudatta renamed the park Jetavana in his honor and the monastery he built there was to become a place of great import for the growing community of Buddha’s monks. Before he passed away into parinirvana, the Buddha spent 25 years teaching the Dharma in the groves of Jetavana. Thus, Sravasti is the place where Buddha lived the longest amount of time, and it is the place where he gave the largest amount of discourses and instructions.
Looking at it today, you’d never know that people once gathered here from all over ancient India to listen to the Buddha speak. More monkeys visit the humble remnants of Jetavana’s temples, stupas and monasteries than people. Nothing else remains but a very, very small village. Even its name has disappeared from the map, having changed to Sahet Mahet. But this is how it goes. Things go on changing. Cities change into cemeteries; cemeteries
change into cities.
Arriving at the end of the monsoon season, I found Sravasti an impossibly green, incredibly peaceful paradise of rice paddies and lotus ponds. My plan for being there was to focus on my meditation practice before heading out on my pilgrimage. But plans seldom go as planned with me. Having no guesthouses, the only places to stay in Sravasti are the various temples established by foreign Buddhist countries – Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, etc. I stayed at the Korean Temple along with a group of elderly Koreans. The fact that they spoke no English in no way dissuaded them from talking to me. One woman in particular would search me out, motion me to sit at her side and then chatter away for half-hour stretches, at the very least. I’d smile and nod and watch as the crows attacked the ears of the water buffalo (I never did figure out what they were after).
For being such a small village, I found hundreds of things to occupy my time – and it wasn’t only for entertaining Korean grandmothers that my plan to practice all day began to dwindle to 6,5,4,3 hours a
day. Following the sounds of a Tibetan
puja one morning, I stumbled upon the neighboring Bhutanese monastery. Every morning after that, I’d go to teach English to the small group of adolescent monks studying there. Then I discovered the temple’s library. I’ve always had a weakness for libraries and their smell of old, thumbed pages. In the heat of the afternoons, I’d relax in a corner under a fan and devour various books on Buddhism. When it cooled off, I’d go back to the Bhutanese monastery to take their dogs for walks deep into the surrounding countryside. It was my first real encounter with rural India.
In the economic sense of the term, the villagers of Sravasti are poor. Lopsided huts of mud and straw huddle together in small settlements that house the members of an extended family. They have no electricity, no running water, no toilets. Baths are taken at a communal pump. The bather wraps a towel around his waist to provide a modicum of privacy and dumps buckets of water over his head. Twigs are used as toothbrushes. Feces lie everywhere – that which is produced by the buffaloes is flattened into cakes and dried to
be used as fuel, while the human variety is gobbled up by dogs or mashed into the road by the wheels of passing bicycles.
Toddlers wear faded, tattered shirts and no pants, their bums rashy and exposed to the elements, their eyes goopy and attracting flies. Adolescents cut grass with small, hand-held sickles, squatting on their haunches for endless hours under the hot sun. Old farmers plow the fields with a team of buffalo, riding on the back of a wooden plow as the falsetto voice of a woman singing in Hindi warbles through a transistor radio attached to its yoke. Young or old, male or female, no one is used to seeing outsiders. At best, they’re deeply shy, at worst, contemptuously distrustful.
One afternoon I went out for a bike ride. As usual, I had no particular destination and ended up losing myself in the pathways that run through the rice fields. At a pond, I stopped for a rest and a drink of water (from my bottle, not the brackish pond water). After a short time, an elderly gentleman approached me with a quick stride, hostile eyes, and a large stick. He’d wrapped a sweat-stained cloth
around his head, and buttoned an old button-down shirt only once at nipple-height. His shorts were so short that in another time and place, they would have gone by the name
hot pants and been the utmost of fashion. He stopped directly in front of me and brought the stick down with force into the ground.
WHACK! He glared, thumping his chest with his hand and pointing at the ground. The message was clear, “THIS IS MINE!”
Instead of fulfilling its intention of scaring me away, the charade made me smile. It made me think that if only the Buddha were here, he could teach this man the value of letting go of his attachments to possessions, of his attachment to anger. All I could do was smile and act out my own charade.
Oh this is yours! Very good! Bahut sundar! I pointed to all around me and shrugged. He softened a little and directed the way out.
After two weeks, change inevitability occurred. The deep green of the rice paddies transformed into golden and reddish hues. The villagers got used to seeing me and even greeted me. Groups of children began following me on my walks
One-Eyed Dog
This dog came at 7 every morning for the tea service. with the dogs; the most adventurous would approach, point at the beasts at my side, and proudly exclaim, “Dog!” As my departure date drew nearer, the thought of leaving saddened me. But this is how it goes. Nothing lasts forever.
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