inside webu’s hut

[1]   The young Kin-U woman in the restaurant invites our return should we require internet access, which isn’t available at the monastery. This will be an interesting month! Minutes later a white car arrives, Sangha flag secured mid-bonnet. Inside U Mandala, broadly smiling, welcomes us back. We are driven along a dirt road, fields of rice on the left and right, cracked earth, stubble:

                                     nearing Ingynbin
                                     egrets atop buffaloes
                                     coming going

Following prostrations, we present Bhante with a National Geographic Atlas, which will form the basis for our English lessons, and other small gifts that are, for him, treasures. There is a half-installed new toilet, attached to the main building, freshly painted in white green gold & silver. Soon we are taken to see the nearby monastery ‘lake’, a mere 25 metres across, as well as the newly constructed white pagoda, situated on a man-made earth mound, overlooking the water. Then on to our ample accommodation, passing a mob of restive dogs. Relief comes with having our own private space to settle into and silence re-established. Of course, it doesn’t last:

                                     barking dogs
                                     all night ransack—
                                     homely

At five we rise and prepare to sit. Torchlight flickers outside the glass panels of the metal door, where Bhante removes his sandals and places them neatly at the doorstep. Part way through the meditation, settled enough with those present, the temple bell suddenly clangs out in sets of three, calling monks to breakfast, and incidentally unleashing a crescendo of barks and yelps.

After breakfast, we stop to watch the young monks competing at cane-ball over a makeshift net, their red robes draped on nearby branches or tucked round their bellies as they cavort. They nimbly kick the ball backwards over their heads or head it with precision to a teammate:

                                     cane ball crosses the net
                                     dextrous monks!
                                     cane ball mind

Then we take ourselves around the perimeter dirt road that separates our pariyatti monastery from the adjoining practice or patipatti monastery, where once more we have been invited to use Webu’s small meditation hut, elevated on poles. We feel a thrill as we enter. We sit without a whisper.

[2]   On departing after an hour’s sitting, we are accosted near the bamboo huts at the entrance gate by an elderly woman with only a few blackened teeth left in her mouth, brandishing the friendliest of smiles. Proffering fruit and cake, she daintily points her finger at Karen’s longyi—‘la-la, la-la’, she opines. Outside the walls, in the field adjacent, we notice the figure of a mythological stone duck atop a concrete pillar that marks the outer extent of the land that once belonged to the monastery.

Slowly, through the afternoon, sitting again, resting, sitting, the breath settles and some mental clarity starts to establish. Topsy-turvy is an apt descriptor –

                                     following each
                                     moving (breath):
                                     no easy bottom, top

Our regular evening walks are varied. Now we wander through the village lanes, stepping aside for the traipsing bullock carts as they return from the fields. From the weaving factory women and girls stream out, with empty shining tiffins dangling from their extended fingers. Seeing us, they grasp each other and giggle:

                                     a line of bullocks
                                     returning bustle
                                     spilling dust, tiffins glint

Couples stand at their gates, smiling. A small group works at a threshing machine, tossing in bundles of rice stalks that on exit are automatically separated into lots. One lot forms a mound of stalks that require further chopping before being fed to the cattle. The other, husked rice (paddy), tumbles into prepared large woven baskets. When one is filled, a young woman hefts it onto her head and carries it with surprising elegance to the storage shelter. Our walk leads past simple houses, yards filled with families, cattle, dogs, chickens, pigs, an occasional cat. One young woman, on realising that she has been observed striking the family’s large feeding sow, is suddenly abashed. Our eyes drop and we move on.

Alongside several villagers, we watch the mechanical harvester moving back and forth in the adjoining field. What takes minutes for this machine takes an entire day for the manual workers. It is daunting to imagine what the future might bring to this traditional communal way of life.

As Karen and I return to the monastery, we look up and observe several waves of ibises in flight, returning to take roost in the large trees round the lakeside:

                                     skirting the green lake—
                                     masters of the evening sun
                                     spill upon the monastery

                                     whitening 
                                     re-shaping bodies fill
                                     tamarinds, neighbouring branches

[3]   Early next morning they vacate their roosts, while smaller birds wander about on the lake weed. The pagoda, east side, has a stainless-steel spire fixed on a gold-painted base, flaring brightly in the rising sun while muted after dusk when lit with electric display lights, another anachronism. Occasionally we will sit together inside the pagoda with bhante and visiting meditators. On the far bank, clad in pink-and-orange robes, several shaven-headed bikkhunis grip coarse bamboo brooms and vigorously sweep the bare earth around the kitchen and their quarters. Trees inundate in sparkling dust. An elderly solitary monk, who dwells in the green cottage built for him by his children beneath a huge tamarind tree, emerges a short time later to sweep around his own small abode:

                                     morning sun, without care
                                     illumines trees, empty compound—
                                     an elderly monk, 3-D sparkles

Meditation continues. To occupy the secluded hut with bare wooden floor and shutters continues to invigorate me internally, mentally. Momentarily thought is relinquished:

                                     leaves, birds, dogs,
                                     three, one, mere sounds!
                                     wafting in Webu’s hut

(4)   Uposata Day. An aggressive boy causes his young companion to cry. An elderly woman smokes a cheroot as she comforts another child beside the lake. Several novices take turns sliding down an angled stack of coloured roofing iron, lifting their robes and descending with sudden shrieks. Sayadaw, the head monk, and other senior monks take occupancy at the head table, from which tables radiate outward to the most junior inhabitants of the monastery. They regard their plates with active enthusiasm. Layfolk serve, some lingering near Karen’s and my table, astonished at the spectacle as we pile up rice and vegetables chosen from the numerous dishes that crowd our special round table.

The bhikkunis, who have spent the night in food preparation with rudimentary equipment, sit as a group near the entrance door, their faces radiant. Outside the doorway,

                                     half its tail length, the squirrel
                                     scampers along the cable:
                                     earth mirror

It leaps from the slung cable onto a nearby tree, a good two metres away. A meditator’s dexterity!

At the family compound of Aum Pyee, two households of three generations, we are seated and offered fruit and bread, a sweet local tea that’s delicious and refreshing. White bullocks, mother with calf, dogs, pigs, heaps of cut rice (waiting to be threshed and sold or stored indoors for family use), assorted trees, a range of accommodations including a new brick house occupied by an older brother his wife and their two children, conspicuously shy, aged 7 and 12.

                                     the body
                                     somewhere
                                     the body, breathing

On board a bullock cart, with a bamboo floor and encasing rail, we join a mother driver with her small child and infant, whose eyes peek ruefully from under the safety of their sibling’s arm to scrutinise these pale strangers. The lumbering white bullocks are struck, repeatedly, with a switch the mother wields, until a final hard pull on the reins brings everything to an abrupt halt. We disembark, jumbled, sore, rubbing our bottoms… after less than 500 metres travelled!

Evening brings a delivery of three cartloads of husked rice in baskets. Labourers carry and empty them into a raised-on-poles storage shed, shielding against the rats.

[5]   We sit for a couple of hours, engrossed, until the patipatti gong is struck, a thick hollowed wood sound, followed by a metal clang, then another. Across the road the pariyatti bell strikes three times. Dogs bark howl whimper—their lunchtime too!

                                     clamouring birds
                                     howling dogs; pounded wood—
                                     air—sentient

We see a lone puppy with legs covered in rank sores as it drags itself around. Karen prepares a blanket, placing water and soft food ready for it to eat. To our surprise, the mother, who has kept a distance, emits a small whine and comes to us to be petted. Another white dog rolls onto its back to be tickled, its hind leg scratching at thin air.

[6]   Going to breakfast each morning we tread over dust that is endlessly swept back and forth, leaving a rippled network of broom scorings. Birds depart from the overarching trees singly or in pairs or threes, headed to chosen airy places for the day.

A monk reclines on a bamboo chair, reciting. Someone has dropped a gladioli stalk on the ground, leaving a trail of single white petals in the dust.

                                     monk intoning
                                     U Jotika citakisas
                                     glass sunlight

Schoolchildren respond to my greeting, offering high-fives. Near the gate entrance, a couple of ox-carts piled with hay, drivers perched high above, have stopped. A grey-brown bird, firm beak, russet upper breast, saunters by.

                                     children’s hands outstretched
                                     ‘thank you, whats name?’
                                     soon gone

On the way to Webu’s hut I notice several pairs of children’s jandels discarded at the monastery gate. They are playing with spinning tops in the school yard next door. One sits in the area in front of the classroom and uses a piece of brick to hammer a bent finger-length rusted nail into a nut that will serve as his top. A string is wound round the nail and top and pulled until the top is released. Soon it flips spinning onto its nail end and, as it threatens to tumble, it is regathered by the novice looping his thread round the nail again and flipping the top up to a catchable height. Then start again. The children switch between being participants and an impressed, avid audience.

Emotions have a similar way of spinning, subsiding, repairing.

[7]   Woken at 4am by music emanating from nearby loudspeakers, we recognise another donors’ day. A lavish breakfast, which hinders comfortable sitting, nonetheless irresistible, delicious. Lunch moreso: beans, mint, salad, bamboo and other roots, ground nuts, white rice, biryani (sultanas included), grapes, apples, small oranges, nutted banana cake. A delegation of teachers from Kin-Oo has banded together to give dana, understanding the benefit of giving richly their own; with delight and bright ease; disregarding thanks, they serve the monks, then visitors.

In the afternoon we walk to our meditation hut in positive anticipation. We cajole three young puppies, who continue to refuse to be petted, as much as they obviously want to be. Then we ascend the few concrete steps up to the porch of the hut and pass through the low wooden gate with a wire latch – and, having removed our footwear, we enter. We settle onto our cushions after gently closing the shutters both sides, due to the cold, which Karen especially feels.

Body and thought commence an intent self-examination, neither leaning overmuch towards distractions nor over anxious to resist them. Settling further, extraneous half images or half thoughts consolidate less, like specks of dust appearing and disappearing in sunlight along the village roadways. Starting at the head and moving slowly through sections of the body, until everything has taken internal flight.

                           breathing			               glass—	
                           discernible			               narrow brim—	
                           yet—commotion?	               finger's tip—

Listening to a recorded talk by Pa Auk in the evening is a reminder of our altogether modest place in the expansive order of things, ineluctable possibilities. Or talking briefly with the old Sayadaw, the impish one, who, despite the walking stick he uses –

                                     at 81, jaunty, soiled
                                     robe calloused feet, who
                                     held Webu’s head

– in death.

note

[i] I think of Webu’s sick-bed inside his dwelling, the renovated meditation hut next door that we were free to share. Beyond a devotional exercise, which is undoubtedly present, the following explores an underlying feeling of strangeness, or perhaps it’s unfamiliarity that doesn’t feel strange. And reaches in gratitude.