inside webu’s hut

[1]   The young Kin-U woman in the restaurant invites us to return should we require internet access, which isn’t available at the monastery. This will be an interesting month! Immediately a white car arrives, Sangha flag secured mid-bonnet. Inside is U Mandala, broadly smiling, welcoming us back. We are driven to the monastery along a dirt roads, 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. We are proudly shown a half-installed new toilet, attached to the main building, freshly painted in white green gold silver. Soon we are taken to the nearby monastery ‘lake’, a mere 25 metres in diameter, as well as the newly constructed white pagoda, situated on a man-made earth mound, above the water. Then onward to our ample accommodation, passing a mob of restive dogs. Relief comes in the form of having a private space to settle into and relative quiet. Of course, it doesn’t last:

                                     barking dogs
                                     night's ransack—
                                     strangely homely

At five we rise and prepare to meditate. Torchlight flickers outside the glass panels of the metal door, where Bhante removes his sandals and arranges them neatly at the doorstep. Part way through the meditation the temple bell clangs loudly in sets of three, calling monks to breakfast. It unleashes a crescendo of braking, with intermittent yelps.

After breakfast, we stop to watch the young monks competing at cane-ball using a makeshift net, their red robes draped over nearby branches or tucked round their middles as they cavort. Nimbly they 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

We continue along the dirt road that separates the pariyatti section from the patipatti monastery opposite, where we meditate. Again we approach Webu’s wooden meditation hut, elevated on poles. In the silence, we sit.

[2]   An hour later we depart. An elderly female resident, from the bamboo huts near the entrance gate, grins broadly, showing a few blackened teeth. Proffering fruit and cake, she points her finger daintily at Karen’s longyi—‘la-la, la-la’, she says. In the field adjacent, a stone duck mythological figure has been placed atop a concrete pillar that marks the outer extent of the entire area that once belonged to the monastery.

Slowly, through the afternoon, meditating, resting, meditating, some mental clarity emerges.

                                     following each
                                     moving (breath):
                                     uneasy bottom, top

Regular evening walks are our treat. We wander through the village lanes, stepping aside to avoid traipsing bullock carts on their return from the fields. Women and girls stream from the weaving factory, shining empty tiffins hanging from their extended fingers. Seeing us, they grasp each other and giggle:

                                     a line of bullocks
                                     homecoming bustle
                                     dust, workers' tiffins glint

Couples stand at their gates and smile. Others busy themselves at the threshing machine, tossing in bundles of rice stalks that come out 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 large woven baskets. When a basket is filled, a young woman hefts it onto her head and, with surprising elegance of movement, transports it to the storage shelter. We pass simple houses, yards filled with families, cattle, dogs, chickens, pigs, an occasional cat. One young woman, upon realising she is has been seen striking the family’s large feeding sow, grows suddenly abashed. Eyes lowered, hers and ours, we move on.

A mechanical harvester moves back and forth in the field. What takes it a few minutes minutes takes an entire day for the manual workers. It is daunting to imagine what future disruption will mean to this communal way of life.

As Karen and I return to our accommodation, we observe wave on wave of ibises high above us in flight, returning to roost in the trees at the far side of the lake, near the nuns’ quarters:

                                     skirting the green lake—
                                     coloured by the evening sun
                                     they spill upon the monastery

                                     until whitened
                                     bodies crowd the
                                     tamarind branches

[3]   Early next morning they depart, leaving smaller birds to wander on the dirt and over lake weed. The pagoda, on the east side, has a stainless-steel spire fixed onto a gold-painted base. It flares in the morning sun. At night it is lit up using electric display lights — another anachronism.

On the far bank the morning brings flurry. Shaven-headed bikkhunis, clad in pink-and-orange robes, grip makeshift bamboo brooms and vigorously sweep the bare earth around the kitchen and their sleeping quarters. We see trees coated in sparkling dust. An elderly monk, who dwells in a green cottage built by his children specially for him under an expansive tamarind tree, emerges to sweep the earth around his small abode:

                                     morning sun, thoughtless
                                     bright trees above—
                                     an elderly monk, sweeping

Meditation continues. I sit on the bare floor, shutters closed against the cool breeze. Stillness ensues.

                                     unseen leaves, birds, dogs,
                                     three, one!
                                     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 occupy the head table, other tables radiating outward, occupied by guests and the monastery’s junior occupants. The novices regard their plates with unchecked enthusiasm. Layfolk serve, some lingering near Karen’s and my table, astonished as we pile rice and vegetables, chosen from numerous dishes spread across our special round table, in what must seem to them great piles.

The bhikkunis, having all night prepared food using only rudimentary equipment, gather near the entrance door, their faces strangely radiant. Outside the doorway, movement:

                                     half its tail length, a squirrel
                                     scampers along the cable:
                                     earth flip reversal

It leaps from the sagging cable onto a nearby tree, two metres away. A meditator dexterity!

Later, at the family compound of Aum Pyee, two households of three generations are gathered to meet us, offering fruit and bread, a sweet local tea. White bullocks, mother with calf, dogs, pigs, mounds of cut rice (waiting to be threshed and sold or stored indoors for family use), various trees, several buildings including a new brick house occupied by an older brother, his wife, and two children aged 7 and 12, conspicuously shy .

                                     the body
                                     somewhere,
                                     somewhere else

On board a bullock cart, with a bamboo floor and encasing metal rail, we catch a ride with a mother, her young child and an infant, whose eyes peek from under the safety of their sibling’s arm, intently scrutinising these pale strangers. With a switch the mother wields, the lumbering white bullocks are struck repeatedly, until a final jerk on the reins brings everything to an abrupt halt. Sore, clutching our tender buttocks, we disembark… less than 500 metres along the road!

Cartloads of husked rice in baskets are delivered in the evening. The baskets are emptied into a raised storage shed, shielded against the rats.

[5]   We sit for a couple of hours, quietly, until the patipatti gong is struck, a thickened hollow wood sound, followed by a distant metal clang, then another. Across the road the pariyatti bell strikes three more times. Dogs bark, howl, whimper — it’s their lunchtime too!

                                     clamouring birds
                                     howling dogs; pounded wood—
                                     air—sentient

We see a puppy with its legs covered in rank sores dragging itself along. Karen prepares a blanket, placing water and soft food ready. The mother, who till now has kept a distance, emits a small whine and comes to be petted. Another white dog rolls onto its back asking to be rubbed, its hind legs scratching at air.

[6]   Headed to breakfast we tread over dust that is daily swept back and forth, leaving a rippled network of broom scorings. Birds abandon the overarching trees singly or in small groups. A monk is reclined on a bamboo chair, reciting. Nearby a gladioli stalk has been dropped, its white petals trail in the dust.

                                     monk intones
                                     U Jotika's citakisas
                                     glassy sun

Schoolchildren respond to my greeting, offering high-fives. Near the gate entrance, a couple of ox-carts piled high with hay, drivers perched 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 play with spinning tops in the school yard. One sits in the area in front of the classroom and uses a piece of brick to hammer a 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. It soon flips over, spinning on the nail end. When it starts to slow and wobble, it is regathered by looping the thread round the nail again and flipping the top up to a catchable height. Then the process repeats. The children switch between being participants and overjoyed audience.

Time changes within the confines of the hut:

[7]   Woken at 4am by music emanating from nearby loudspeakers, we recognise another donors’ day. A lavish breakfast, hindering meditation, is irresistible. Lunch, moreso: beans, mint, salad, bamboo and other roots, ground nuts, white rice, biryani (sultanas included), grapes, apples, small oranges, a nutty banana cake. A delegation of teachers from Kin-Oo has banded together to give dana, understanding the benefits of giving for the giver, the ease it brings them. First the monks are served, then the visitors.

In the afternoon we walk to our 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 ascend the few concrete steps onto the porch of the hut and pass through the low wooden gate with a wire latch. We settle onto cushions after gently closing the shutters both sides.

Settling further, extraneous half images and half thoughts arise and dissipate, like specks of dust that catch and disappear in sunlight along the village lanes. There is a feeling of internal ease.

                           breathing—			               glass—	
                           discernment—			       narrow—	
                           yet—                                           finger—

Listening to a Pa Auk recording in the evening reminds of a modest place in the expansive order of things. Or talking briefly with the old Sayadaw, the impish one, who, despite the walking stick,

                                     at 81, jaunty, housed in soiled
                                     robe, calloused feet, once
                                     held dying Webu’s head.[i]

note

[i] Webu’s sick-bed is still seen inside his accommodation, next door to the renovated meditation hut where we meditate. Beyond a devotional exercise, which is present, the journal explores an underlying feeling of strangeness that isn’t altogether strange—including gratitude.