residing at ingynbin^[1]

[8]  Back after an break away at nearby Shwebo, we return to see the pagoda spire shine clearly from a kilometre away, a citadel.

                         blue wispy moon
                         white ibises
                         alight, silence

[9]  Lemsip brings relief in the morning before sitting. Despite a head cold and running nose, there is surprising vitality in the body:

                         start again, the body
                         next the body 
                         concern neither

Through breakfast, the moon slides through the uppermost branches of the trees, illuminating ibises, as they shuffle before launching into the air. Their concerns are, like mine, largely their own, though the spectacle is quite marvelous:

                         morning
                         radiant ibises 
                         unlacing tamarinds

Meanwhile, the egrets hunch smaller bodies before propelling steadfastly upward and outward. We meditate like this, the dancer and the engineer.

[10]  I walk with Kwau Soe to the patipatti compound, where we are joined by An Yuan Shwe, swathed in three sweaters, complaining of the cold. His plan is to renovate the room in which U Ba Khin had resided when he was ordained under Webu: to establish a library, restore the wooden roof, and dedicate the entire building to Vipassana meditation practice. The dilapidated building at the rear, where a visiting Minister of Railways had stayed during regular short visits to serve the Sayadaw, is another structure An Shwe has an eye on. We walk to a two-storey building nearby and climb the stairs to where female students will stay during the upcoming commemoration meditation course. In the bare room, pieces of paper, sequentially numbered, are stuck on the floor where beds will be placed. Other signs, on which we read ‘Ariyo tuõi bhave’, are pinned to timber posts. The retreat is to be held in silence. It’s an admonition that means little to a lone pigeon trapped inside the room. Panicked, it crashes against the closed wooden shutter, seeking the same open spaces that the ibises and egrets discovered earlier in the morning. We open the shutter and it escapes.

[11]  From the crumbling pool ledge, Kwau Soe plucks a thumb-sized tortoise, head withdrawn — a mute reminder of the panicked pigeon. Returned to the murky water, its head juts and legs thrash, until the creature disappears under the surface. Its sky, its form of release. Walking further, we come across an old-style gnat altar set atop a pedestal (‘2005’ the inscription reads), arrayed with a couple of trays of faded foliage. Kwau Soe explains how, in arahant Webu’s day, the monks would sneak around at night and make their way to the nearby elevated wooden platform. There they would stand spellbound watching the meditating monk’s body hover for long periods above the platform, utterly composed. Certainly a feat beyond the tortoise’s — or the distraught pigeon’s — or our — capability!

Clearly also a feat beyond that of Sayadaw’s vehicle, a dilapidated old Valiant Plymouth, recently returned to the monastery for restoration. It had been used to transport him over the local roads, mostly dirt with occasional clusters of stone, though they proved impossible to negotiate in the rains. A devotee has had it towed back from neighbouring Kin-Oo village. It’s in poor shape: faded blue paint, rusted hubcaps, gashed tyres, no steering wheel, gutted inside,

[12]  On our approach, I am informed by my companions of recent break-ins, resulting in smashed and emptied donation boxes. However, to our surprise, inside we are greeted by a local woman who has arranged fresh smelling, colourful flowers in vases scattered around the main room:

                         entering the hallowed abode
                         wavy perfume—
                         an elderly devotee arranges flowers

Indeed, the story goes that one particular night, on hearing movement within his room, Webu rises and promptly removes the clock from the wall. Smiling, he offers it to the young intruder, who declines the clock and quietly leaves. Adorning the walls are numerous photographs of the much-loved Sayadaw, invariably attended to by a phalanx of monks and lay folk. He is depicted stepping over the loosened spread hair of women, who prostrate themselves before him as he walks, again imperturbable. Other photographs track him through his final living hours, sitting before an extravagant meal prepared by his devotees. After taking a final difficult walk to the toilet, on his return he collapses onto the floor. Supported — borne — to the wooden dais situated in the far corner of the room, where he usually sleeps, he loses consciousness, and passes away in the arms of the present onastery Sayadaw and another, equally composed, elderly monk.

[13]  An 83-year-old retired Indian nuclear physicist has arrived to be ordained. He sits down on a wooden seat alongside the trough used regularly by the young monks to wash their robes and themselves, one and the same. A remaining halo of thin grey hair is removed from the ‘novice’s’ head with short, deft, strokes of the razor. Lathered hair flicks off in clumps down onto the wet concrete. Next he is led to the dining room, where the novice ceremony (that precedes full ordination in the Sima hall) takes place. Pali is recited. Fresh robes are passed by two assistants to the preceptor, immediately returns them, to be donned by the old man — our fidgety manikin — with the help of the young assisting pair, showing themselves adept at handling harvests of cloth.

[14]  In the Sima hall delivering his ordination talk, an animated Sayadaw delights in comparing his age to that of the new novice and that of the parinibbana Buddha — all in their 80s. Pointing to his upper lip, he reiterates Webu’s exhortation for us to maintain attention here throughout each day… and night!

                         new old bhante-ji
                         head a coconut shell
                         awash in cloth—prostrates

An overeager musician from the village prematurely sounds up his instrument — and is quickly shushed. After the brief commotion, we foreign guests are requested to leave. Another 30 minutes pass before we hear the authentic sounds of clashing cymbals and a drum, awkwardly strapped around the drummer’s shoulders, somehow remnants of red chord have gotten entangled in his robes. Art Blakey blushes!

[15]  In the crumbling old teak quarters, Sayadaw sidles from his chair onto the floor to receive the relics, displayed on a plate under a glass dome. Set on top of the dome is a carved miniature pagoda, made of the same black wood used in the pedestal, which is studded with flecks of ivory. Inside the glass, a carved ivory lotus flower supports a small container within which are displayed, set out on a purple cloth, a dozen or so mustard seed sized bone fragments. Each petal of the lotus is individually carved, the one nearest the relics lavishly extended upward. One by one, each of us in attendance has a white cloth placed at the top of their head, while the relic-holder is another suspended over the head and cloth for a couple of minutes, during which time we all extend metta, loving-kindness. Following, Sayadaw invites requests. ‘Snow’ unscrews a couple of narrow metal tubes into which cotton wool is squeezed along with a single sliver of bone fragment, which she explains will accompany her back to Yangon. Oops, clumsy fingers—

                         miniscule relics—
                         Sayadaw scrambles
                         —cats, medicines, newspapers—scatter

Dauntless Sayadaw searches on all fours, fluster-free — infusing an element of comedy into the austere occasion — until, to all our relief, the relics are recovered. What would be the alternative?

[16]  Karen and I, walking out on another beautiful still evening, are greeted by a number of bright-faced girls at the end of their day’s work at the factory. Giggling, they wave their glinting tiffins. Children call out from their gates, eagerly gesticulating. Sunlight shines

through the dust stirred up by the lumbering oxcarts as they return from the fields, plus the zippy, impatient motorcyclists. Almost counter-intuitively, despite the hubbub, everything feels unfussy and whole — perhaps this is what community entails?

                         rust, fire
                         cart-spun dust; children 
                         awhirl, faces quickly lit

[17]  Rain begins to spatter as we stroll to breakfast. Yesterday’s flying dust becomes today’s mush. Meanwhile, Indian bhante-ji departs; seasonal routines reestablish:

                      Kauw Soe gathers berries
                      for kids to thread onto necklaces—
                      platform devas gaze

                      departing bhante-ji
                      —puppies abandoned—
                      notches in the bamboo—

                      a birth-marked face— 
                      one after one—uppermost branches snared—
                      green, small fruits—

Returning to the hut, I sit alone. I close the shutters against the morning chill. Outside, I hear a chanting voice that I recognise belongs to one of the pink-robed nuns as she wipes down the substantial Mahamuni statue in the nearby temple. I picture the figure’s large black pupils dancing menacingly in the whites of its eyes. Return, observe the breath, return again. Soon after, there’s another disturbance caused by a flurried brushing of the earth outside the hut and a pair of chattering voices. The diligent groundsmen are oblivious to the heartfelt endeavour of this one in the silent hut; I sigh:

                         a hundred strokes,
                         a thousand breaths
                         namarupa

Each day I am drawn back. From time to time the entire body scatters like the dust along the village lanes. One moment a myriad things the next not even a single one, such is ease. Single words roll loosely —

                         thousand
                         sweeping strokes
                         namarupa

Not to have self-urgency is relieving. The best serves, I reflect, right here in the hut, insensible to unmattering.

[18]  U Mandala arrives the following morning to take breakfast. Before touching his food, he lifts his head: ‘Burmese people — is very poor. It hurts in my heart’.

[19]  And passing the school on our afternoon walk, Karen and I notice the corpse of a dog that has been dumped into the ditch beside the main path:

                         bluebottles?
                         eyes & mouth, hind legs 
                         sag robe-bound

Gazing up, again in the sky we see a formation of ibises. Trailing birds move from one vector to the other, the group realigning as it flies. The children, paused at top-spinning in the schoolyard, gape upward, mouths automatically reciting.

[20]  The green weed spreads over the lake, due to cooler weather. Lilies appear. A black drongo lands on the same branch of the bodhi tree that it had landed on yesterday, skimming the water surface to get there. Swallows zag and swoop in idolatrous silence —

                         smooth stone dropped
                         in water
                         —clup

A couple of workmen chisel bark clumps from the piquant thanakha, felled earlier by our meditator friend Jamie in order to prepare a view from the new pagoda across the diminutive lake. Evening exposes a patchwork of cut logs with luminescent yellow woodgrain with a sweet scent.^[21] 

Another evening stroll, this time a few kilometres as far as the bridge and crossroads, where three women collect donations for a monastic project (one of several in the vicinity). They rattle tin trays filled with stones at the motorcycles and vehicles as they speed through, dispersing clouds of dust. In the roadside shack, with an open book of suttas on the rough sawn table where he sits, an elder village Burman, eyes set wide on a face that converges to a narrow point at his chin, intones into a dangling microphone. The voice ricochets through nearby speakers, riven with static. Despite a lack of teeth, his recital lifts and subsides unfalteringly. From time to time, a male companion leans across and strikes a small bronze gong, hanging from an overhead rafter. Our modestdana to the women elicits in return a handful of hardboiled sweets: in this community, to give is to safeguard and enrich one’s own future — both literally and spiritually!

[22]  Andrew departs and Humbert arrives. Nervously settling in, he tells us he will take robes. Next day, shorn hair drops, as did bhante-ji’s, onto the washing trough concrete:

                         lake weed
                         recedes, scalp hair—Agganana—
                         lathered clumps, tumble

[23]  Shortly after, the annual novice ceremony sees the entire village dress up, men in white jackets and fresh lungyis, young women in especially colourful makeup, eyelashes looping attractively, in gold or pink outfits. In the fairground, a makeshift palace façade adorns a newly-erected stage on which the band performs. Among the children, some boys brandish plastic toys or guns, other children sip enthusiastically from plastic cups through straws, or lick at ice-creams. A girl beside me shows off a wristwatch: 9:27 shines out.

Under a profuse red flowering trees, older novices gather to witness the long procession slowly perambulating on the far side of the harvest field. One cheeky lad fills his hand with the pulp of a fallen flower and throws it at his fellows. Shoving, back-slapping, uproarious laughter, they form quite a company.

[24] Om Pyee delivers a hammer and saw. I nail mosquito nets in place at the bathroom windows. At the edge of the lake, three crouching children clutch small plastic containers and beside them they place a broken bowl of crockery. From the bowl they transfer tiny black objects (less than ½ cm in diameter) into one of the containers. Coming closer, I see the small black objects are snails, asymmetrically writhing. One child lifts a hand to high-five. They are immediately reabsorbed and I continue on my way.

At dusk the ibises cluck and groan, weighing on the branches until gradually everything falls silent. Come morning, they rouse themselves and peel off, singly or in groups, arching over their own bodies as they lurch away. They fall into the strength of their own wings, quickly stabilise, and continue westward. A bitten arrives lakeside, where it remains poised motionless for what seems forever, until some small unsuspecting creature is snapped up, and the disciplined predator moves on.

Outside, the same two workmen, one wearing a brimmed hat, continue to chip away at the thanakha bark. Chips fall (mostly) on the prepared sacking and, on completion, the debris, including straggly upper branches, is removed from the water. Meanwhile, the lake responds with increasing water surface under diminishing weed cover:

                         half lake, inside my body
                         sparkling—
                         chipping thanakha

Sitting is this, without insisting to pull everything together, gathering, holding, relinquishing.

note

[1] This is the third and final part of a sequence of reflections upon a one month residence in 2016 at Ingynbin Monastery, written while residing in the pariyatti side of the property and meditating across the road at the patipatti side. The photographs are Karen’s.