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Deepal
Sooriyaarachchi visits a Buddhist forest monastery in West Virginia,
USA Nick, a devout
Buddhist was taking us to the Buddhist Forest Meditation Centre
(Aranya) in West Virginia - USA in his four-wheel jeep driving through
wide American highways. After travelling
for over three hours from Washington passing large farmlands, we
arrived at the Bhavana Society forest meditation retreat centre
located in a 42-acre forest. The place was
so silent we could hear our footsteps. No one was around as we slowly
entered the hall that houses the kitchen and the dining hall. Then
a young Afro-American appeared from the kitchen door and showed
us the notice which gave detailed instructions as to what visitors
should do during meals. We followed him and sat on the small benches
at the end of the dining hall after serving ourselves some vegetarian
food. An old Sri
Lankan monk who seemed to be the teacher took his seat in front,
followed by two western Bhikkhus. One was Yogavacara Rahula of "One
Night's Shelter" fame. There were about five others clad in
white with their eyes cast down. After chanting some stanzas they
began partaking the midday meal, and we followed suit. There was
absolute silence throughout the meal. Afterwards they washed their
bowls and retired to their rooms. Adjoining the
dining hall was a well-equipped library. Beyond that was the main
meditation hall, all made of timber. The roof was high and it looked
like a church. The stained glass window in the shape of a large
Bo leaf created a beautiful backdrop for the bronze Samadhi statue.
On one side was a greenhouse where a potted Bo tree which we later
learnt was a sapling from the Sri Maha Bodhi of Sri Lanka was growing
very well. This whole
complex had been built by the monks of the hermitage themselves.
Above the main hall was a boiler that provides the required heating
and this too has to be operated by the resident monks and lay people
of the centre. There were a number of small houses or Kutis in the
forest. We were keen
to meet the chief monk, Ven. Bhanthe Henepola Gunarathana Thero,
but as it was the day he observed total silence -a practice every
resident monk takes turns in following-we were not sure if it would
be possible. Nevertheless
to avoid disappointing us as we had come all the way from Sri Lanka,
this old but sturdy monk appeared in the garden wearing a brown
sun hat, carrying a tall walking stick and wearing a pair of walking
shoes with a bottle of water slung over his shoulders. He invited
us to join him on his short walk after lunch. I agreed, thinking
it would be a nice walk through the forest though the heat was still
increasing. However this short walk became a five-mile trek along
the road by the forest. The sun was
hot, yet walking with him was a treat. He told me how the forest
meditation centre came to be set up. " From the time I was
at the Washington Buddhist Vihara, I always wanted to have a forest
meditation centre in America," he said. "Once
I conceived the idea with a friend we travelled 5,000 miles raising
funds for the centre. At the end of the journey after deducting
all the expenses, we found that we had collected, exactly USD 5,000
. This I thought auspicious." They formed
the Bhanva Society and deposited the money in a bank. After some
time when the fund had grown to be USD 18,000 they began looking
for a suitable land. "We were asked to meet a real estate dealer
at a place in West Virginia where he would show us a suitable place.
"On the
date we went to the restaurant where we were supposed to meet but
the dealer didn't appear. Instead a visitor to the restaurant spoke
with us and it transpired he had a plot of land which was a kind
of forest that he was willing to sell." They looked
at the place and liked it at once. "Then we asked what the
price was. To our surprise he said it was USD 18,000,exactly the
amount of money we had in our fund. Since then we have built this
place with lot of hard work and voluntary donations, and today it
is a popular destination for many seekers of truth," said Ven.
Bhanthe Gunarathana Thero. Having been
ordained early in life and brought up as a traditional Theravada
monk, it was refreshing to see how very well he has adopted to the
modern world, an absolute pre-requisite if one is to engage in Dhamma
Dutha work in the developed West. The topic of
computers came up and this monk who is over 70, spoke of the benefits
of being computer literate and in fact invited me to come and see
his latest computer. As our discussion
moved to mindfulness in daily living, he related a moving real life
experience he once had. "If you
feel unsure of your motives, perhaps because greed and necessity
are mixed together, or because the desire is overwhelming, ask yourself:
'Can I walk away for now and come back next week? Can I ask the
clerk to hold this while I cool off and think about it? This kind
of reasoning makes skilful use of the good habits that we practise
in sitting meditation," he said. "Such
training will help us when we encounter more difficult challenges.
Once I had to use my practice of skilful thinking to overcome fear
in a situation of genuine danger." "I had
received word about my mother's illness and was flying back to Sri
Lanka from Washington D.C. I changed planes to a jumbo jet in Hawaii.
An hour or two after taking off from Hawaii, I looked out of my
window and noticed flames coming from the plane's engine. "Then
the pilot's voice came over the intercom, announcing that the engine
was on fire and that we were turning back. "The flight
attendant told us to sit quietly with our seat belts on. When we
landed, floor lights would lead us to the eight emergency doors.
The doors would open, and emergency chutes would come out. We were
to jump on to the chutes without hesitation, slide down and run
away from the plane. "I doubt
anybody understood much of the instructions. Everyone in the cabin
seemed to be seized with the fear of death. Some had started crossing
themselves, couples clung to each other and kissed, others wept
or looked tense and anxious. "I thought,
if this is my time to die, well I will die anyway, whether I am
afraid or not. Let me keep my mind clear. First I recalled my intellectual
understanding of what death is. I considered that death is inevitable,
and that this would be a good time for me to die for I had been
doing good deeds, and I had nothing to regret. "Then
I thought about the likely sequence of events. If the plane were
to fall quickly from a height of 39,000 feet we would be unconscious
before it hit the ocean. I do not know whether this is scientifically
true, but I exhorted myself, to keep my mind clear and pure before
I lost consciousness. "This
was the time to use my mindfulness to realize the inevitability
of death. "If I
die peacefully with a pure, clear state of mind my future life will
be bright. Perhaps I will attain a stage of enlightenment by seeing
the truth of impermanence. I must not block my mind with fear or
confusion. No matter how strong my attachment to life, I must let
go of that attachment now, I thought. "Thus
I made the effort to prevent any unwholesome states of mind and
encouraged wholesome states of mind. I felt no fear, but actually
enjoyed watching the flames coming out of the engine at 39,000 feet.
The flames were blue, yellow and red. Some times they were streaming
out; some times they were low. "They looked like fire works,
or the aurora borealis. Meanwhile I saw the agony other passengers
suffered at the very thought of death. I noticed however that the
little children did not seem affected. "They
kept laughing and playing as they had before the crisis. I thought,
let me put myself in their place, in a childlike mind. "We did
make it back to Hawaii and the plane made an emergency landing,
We went out of the emergency doors as instructed, sliding down the
chutes. Going down the chute was an entirely new experience for
me. Perhaps everyone else on the plane had at least gone down a
play ground slide in their childhood, but I had never done such
a thing in the poor village where I grew up." His frankness
and simplicity illustrated vividly the profile of a person who lives
by the Dhamma. Ven. Bhanthe
Henepola Gunarathana Thero is the author of Mindfulness in Plain
English , a book that is popular among students of Buddhism in Europe.
It is the same candid frankness and penetrating insights one can
experience reading his latest book Eight Mindfulness Steps to Happiness.
In this book through examples not only from the texts but also from
modern life, he explains how the Noble Eight-fold Path can be practised
as a way of life. At the end of each chapter he gives key points
as to how each aspect can be linked to life. |
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