ingynbin (oct 2015)[i]

[1]   We arrive at the end of the rainy season. It is extremely humid, and the journey is uncomfortable: twenty miles or more on the back of small motorcycle taxis, backpacks between the knees, along potted, dirt roads, scattered trees:

                         towards Ingynbin, a train
                         passes—
                         buffalos bellow

Bhante U Mandala, a senior monk who speaks some English and deals with foreigners, had received our letter and expects us, but he has a new phone and so we couldn’t confirm our time of arrival. His disarming smile. We settle into the same room in which we spent two nights last year. It’s pleasing to be back – although, as I say, the first week requires making several adjustments. Aside from the weather, there’s no running water in the accommodation and we must carry buckets filled at the nearby bore-fed tank in order to flush the toilet and to wash ourselves – even then nothing feels particularly clean. Occasionally John douses and soaps himself at the tank.

                        skin prickling,
                        bones uneasy, sweat—
                        no turn in the weather

The first night brings a crashing storm and the roof leaks, large drips just missing our makeshift mattresses. Awake anyway. Whereas locals manage to sleep restfully on wooden boards, maybe with a rattan mat and bed sheet if they are lucky, we are provided with thin square foam meditation mats, which we place in a line of three held together with a towelling sheet. Sleep’s intermittent in the first days, accompanying restlessness:

                        movements of thought
                        trudged underfoot—
                        comfortless—

                        on the monastery path
                        searching out dead things—
                        agitated mind!

[2]   Apart from encountering a few snakes, unthreatening in themselves, more troubling is the gang of unneutered, mostly male temple dogs who immediately sense our foreignness and snarl or bark in crescendo. U Mandala relates how some months ago he had tripped over late one night and ended up staying a week in hospital with the bite wound that’s still causing him problems. The dogs are cared for by the monks, yet they are not pets by any stretch, perpetually bickering – the older they are the more scarred, especially around the face.[ii] Leftovers are spread for them to scrap over on a concrete platform under a roof on which rice is occasionally scattered for the crows.

Also, probably due to the heat and the difficulties in washing properly, we start to notice rashes and blisters forming on our legs. We smear them with papaya cream and they start to heal, leaving only purple stains. I come down with a heavy cold and fever, bones aching from the hard bed. There is a bamboo chair in the room, designed for people of local height, which hardly fits us. The mind continues a slow settling into its unfamiliar surroundings, obstacles acknowledged:

                        sitting proves difficult.
                        Attention wafts, throat dry,
                        want’s grip

We develop a meditation schedule – five or six hours each day – and read books by U Jotika and an enterprising Journey into Burmese Silence by Marie B Byles; after a long break I can get back into my Pali studies. Daily meals (breakfast and lunch) are eaten with U Mandala in two different halls (in the first disordered days: On the table / a dozen fresh dishes: / wanting pleasure),[iii] and starting regularly at four there’s an hour’s English lesson, followed by an extended evening walk together alongside the luminous fields of rice and occasional tree-sheltered villages, acknowledging women walking homeward with emptied earthen pots balanced on their heads, lumbering oxen drawing the carts, unexpected sights and sounds in the dusk:

                        across the water lilies
                        moonlight belongs to the sky
                        to the water—

                        frogs 
                        brass-voiced, knowing
                        moonlight is ownerless

We are encouraged to sit in the small meditation hut used by the enlightened Webu Sayadaw, a master who died near his home Ingynbin village in 1977, cared for by the current abbot.

                        inside Webu’s hut
                        what moves up straightaway
                        moves down, a dog's bark

[3]   During our stay there are festival days marking the dana (donation) time of year for the lay folk at the end of the rainy season, and we are fortunate to be able to attend the ordination of a thick-set young resident from the Shan states. Om Pyee serves as our chaperone, taking an occasional photograph on his smartphone and moving around fidgetily. He was ordained some years ago but found monastic discipline tough and now works the fields for his father, the village medical man, who stands with a stern disposition nearby. When the monks leave the ordination hall, following the pātimokka recitation, the local village folk rush forward and fill the proffered robes with dana, fruits, soap, cans of drink, gaining merit. The entire culture is imbued with the virtue of genuine kindness. A new young monk blinks in the sunshine:

                        sweet the mind—
                        such—the fruit
                        of renunciation—

Village men bashing cymbals, a small bronze temple gong, and a cylindrical drum lead the procession, children out front, dogs chased aside, to a celebratory lunch.

During the post-rains holiday, most of the young monks and nuns are off visiting their family homes, the Pali classes are suspended and the monastery, a major teaching center, remains largely quiet. U Mandala usually teaches three Pali and Abhidhamma classes each day, so now has more time to study English. Our class remains a satisfying challenge. Bhante is irrepressibly confident! He wants to be able to welcome foreigners in English and to introduce them to the Webu heritage, including reciting the Sayadaw’s translated talks.

We have been given a simple room, by local standards more than ample, and served a range of delicious foods twice a day – everyone looks out for how to better help us. The village living standards are at most rudimentary. They have electricity (U Mandala says he went to see the Prime Minister in Yangon some twenty years ago and insisted that the government provide electricity to the monastery of such a famous monk as Webu!). Otherwise, life continues to look much as it must have done for hundreds of years, complete with rats running through the Dhamma Hall and rain coming through the roof or quickly causing the ground outside to turn completely to mush. The precious oxen are well-cared for and their coats are shining as they settle for the night in the earth yards. One farmer is using a foot-driven chopper to cut fresh feed for his beasts. Others return from the fields:

                        pacing the rice paddies
                        where Om Pyee labours each day,
                        we understand neediness

The village area is settled and agreeable:

                       evening walk together
                       through the palm village:
                       cattle bowed, girls laughing

Young village children arrive at our door with bottled water and sweets:

                        children at the door,
                        bright-eyed—
                        iced water!

[4]   Tomorrow is the last full day and there will be a change of schedule. After breakfast at six, while it is still cool, we are going to head out for a longer walk through the countryside.

The dusty tracks wind through kilometres of fields, and everywhere we see birds, dragonflies, frogs, farm animals in yoke, lads in longyis carrying farm implements. In the east we can see the outlines of the closest of the Shan hills. We need to be back at mid-morning. A significant local donor family has arranged a special lunch at the neighbouring monastery, and they have invited the senior monks from here; we are also special invitees. The sprightly father is in his eighties and speaks reasonable English; his son is an engineer in Singapore. Later we will clean up and U Mandala insists that tomorrow he’ll drive us the seven miles to the nearest bus stop in Kin-U. Meantime the novices are starting to return from their rainy-season break:

                        Karen goes snake hunting.
                        Robed novices are about the place,
                        doors, windows thrown open

We are driven in the monastery car with U Mandala and the second-in-charge, the monk U Tiloka, to a nearby village where they are building a new main hall to replace the extremely rickety 100-year-old wooden one (the floor undulates and we see through to the earth beneath). Our Ingynbin monk, the aged 80-plus Sayadaw, delivers a severe Dhamma lecture in the outside tent that ricochets through loudspeakers. We meet a Burmese friend (Kyaw Soe who we met on our last visit) and his wife and young son. A separate table is prepared in advance for us with just vegetarian food, and a further table full of fruits and dessert sweets.

[5]   After eating, we pay respects to the local abbot before being whisked back to spend a while with Kyaw Soe and his wife, cleaning up this room. Kyaw Soe also helps us do the rounds of people to whom we want to say thank you, and who speak no English, including two ancient ladies who kept giving us cake and bananas when we entered the meditation compound, and the ever-busy pink-robed nun who prepares the breakfasts. Their bearing is regal.[iv]

Back in Mandalay. Bhante said he had some things he had to do in the city so he has accompanied us by bus, making sure that we arrive in one piece. It is strange to be back in the city. We take a hot shower and lie under the air con and watch Al Jazeera news. Not much changes. Outside the night is bright and passes slowly. The sky floods with moonlight:

                        outside the late moon
                        a tipping glass
                        soaks everything

Before departing, U Mandala suggests that we come and live in the monastery for the rest of our lives and bring the family to live in the village. He appreciates that being technologically more advanced and having better infrastructure is no guarantee of happiness in life.

                        not yet morning—
                        over Mandalay
                        new sky stretches

notes

[i] The text is adapted from Karen Weston’s travel journal. Hers are the photographs are and the verses are John’s.

[ii] Face marked with scars, one old mutt is uncharacteristically motionless, slack around the mouth. I point out the unmoving stomach to Karen. Later in the day, re-entering the monastery, we see drag marks of some 50 metre along the dusty earth alongside the buildings and the weed-covered pond.

                         ‘seven years’—Bhante’s                        
                         curt despatch, old battler                        
                         the monks drag away to burial                        

[iii] Typically each day, in addition to the usual rice and soup, there are up to a dozen side dishes of local vegetables, beans and a sort of tofu, chili-fried. Fruits and cakes, some Western cookies – best of all the local sweets, milk sweets, pan fried rice cakes, sticky rice cakes flavoured with jaggery and coconut wrapped in banana leaf, alongside fresh fruit, apples, bananas, papaya.

[iv] Last afternoon in Webu’s hut.

                         outside a small white bird with a long tail                        
                         sharp cry                        
                         —simplify                        

At times, long periods sometimes, there is an awareness of a pervasive uneasiness in the mind, or the body’s discomfort. Other times, there is much zest in the body and mind, the surroundings, the monasteries, the company of others who have practiced here.

                         days spent in pursuit                        
                         breath/breath,                        
                         something unsought