6.2 DEVELOPING DHARMA

NEPAL, Kathmandu

SWOYAMBHU NATH STUPA

DURBAR SQUARE

These are the two places that we most frequented in Kathmandu. These photos were taken well before our visit, but as we saw them is closer to these than the way they are today after the Western invasion.

We were fairly naïve and had no idea what other wonderful sites were available to be explored.

Now it is too late, for their old charm and beauty has gone together with their original spirit.

Westerners were present, but their minds and hearts were different. We bought almost all our treasures for Ibiza in Durbar Square, where there was abundant trading and for luxury treats we favored first the Mellow Pie Shop, then the Hungry Eye and Eden Hash.

One experience which for Ninette made a lasting impression was the Kumari Temple. The building has intricately carved wooden balconies and window screens. It is here that the Goddess Kumari resided. She acknowledged greetings from her balcony window. Tourists today love it I suppose, for it is considered by agencies today as one of the more fascinating tourist attractions of Kathmandu. Yet to see a young child imprisoned with the parents consent in such a role was not pleasant. One must accept the culture of others, I suppose, and for the parents it is a great honor.

Then again, looking through Ninette's eyes, as a teacher of children, "Who isn't really imprisoned in this world by their parents and society?"

The SWOYAMBHU NATH STUPA was interesting and more curious than wonderful, although today's images which sell "four sets of eyes" have not the subtlety or meaning of those painted on the stupa originally.

However, the Stupa did generate our curiosity and as a result we attended a Tibetan Buddhist teaching.

For Ninette it was interesting and intriguing. For me it was filled with hollow reverence, superstition and rites which I had already cast out as "opium". Nonetheless we were not sold on the message given that reeked of the same clergical "pablum" of compassion and benevolence. We thought that there must be more.

We had seen the Hindus and Sikhs and now the Tibetan systems. For the first time we became spiritually curious and began looking more seriously for evidence of the conceptual "non-existence" within the Dharma. In Nepal they were on another track completely. Sure, it was only a first glance and we made no clear rejection, but decided that we must look for a better base. Sri Lanka and the Theravadins were our target.

What did we really know about Buddhism? Well, we had read the Govinda text and our friend Roger Day was a convinced Buddhist who had actually worked helping prisoners with Buddhism. He had given us a few basic ideas, but they were still intellectual rather than real for us.

What was going on in Ninette's mind at that time is difficult to judge, for she had a combination of her mother's romanticism and her father's sense of righteousness and correctness. There are few who were ever as noble in mindfulness of duty as David. As an example, after he had married Violet they began their honeymoon trip by train and he rejected a sleeping compartment for them declaring that it was "a sacrifice in memory of the young men dying in the war in Europe". Ninette had, through his example of personal principles, personal sacrifice and honor and developed also later a refined sense of an other-directedness. I believe that she was touched by the conceptual compassion but repulsed by the theatrical front.

We went south to Sri Lanka by train and encountered a young fellow who was part of a selection committee preparing a special conference to commemorate the birth of a great Saint of the area known for his great compassion and sense of natural justice. On hearing of my academic background and its similarity to Buddhist philosophy we were invited to attend and I was to speak to the assembly with other invited guests of different transcendental disciplines. We accepted and decided to attend at the specific date from Sri Lanka. That meeting was to be another important landmark for Ninette.

SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka was an important turning point for both of us, for it was there that we encountered the base and the fulcrum for our future paths of transcendental separation that would eventually lead to a full transcendental union.

We went from Rameshwaram to Talaimannar by a ferry, which was suspended in the early 80's and then from there to Colombo by train.

We sett¡led in and we decided that we had to meet one of the great Theravada teachers, Narada Maha Thera. In the Theravada tradition there is no such idea as lineage. The truth is simply understood by study and application or it is not. This cuts away the stifling hierarchy that one finds in most Buddhist paths. With the Theravadins the Truth is obtained through three collective means which support each other: Teachings, Meditation and Daily Application.

We found a place to stay in Colombo and wandered down every day to study. We met at first, of course, Narada Mahathera.

    NARADA MAHATHERA

We started with our common point of reference Psychology of Perception and the Psychology of Abhidhamma.  Ninette found the going too tedious and rather academic, but I was thrilled with a new awareness of Dharma possibilites as a true practical psychology. After one of our sessions, Narada Thera declared that I knew well how the human perception works and how it is characterized in the Abhidhamma text, but that now since I could teach Theravada's practical Abhidhamma Psychology, the Theravadin system of Meditation could teach me if I applied it how it actually works at the level of meditational experiences.

Before we left Sri Lanka and I had practiced application within meditation, Narada took my hand and said that now I must teach. He went inside his chambers and brought out his own bound version of A Manual of Abhidhamma, published in 1956.  Abhidhamma is said to expound the quintessence of Buddha's profound doctrine.

It now sits before me as a treasury of knowledge.

While I absorbed it Ninette found it dry as it was presented, but accepted the raw data as truth, hoping that somewhere she might find something more "people-friendly".  She found this years latter with Theravadin Vipassana Jivitindriya.

We moved up to Kandy on the bus, a journey through spectacular scenery; from hot and humid Colombo to the more Mediterranean climate of Kandy. We had learned one lesson in India that became just a small thing but important to us: all foreigners were given the special privilege of being first on every bus without queuing. Every Sri Lankan urged us forward, but we refused and I explained our position of equality of human beings. It took a long while, but finally they accepted that we would be among the last on the bus.

The lesson was to see how easily a state can mind wash its people to accept an inequality with illogical explanations.

Kandy is situated a little more than a hundred miles away from Colombo. It was ancient Sri Lanka’s first capital founded about the 4th century BC, and when we reached there we found a place to stay in a bungalow with a family working a tea plantation on the hills.

This allowed us the opportunity to meet another great Theravadin teacher, the Venerable Nyanaponika Thera.  We walked through the jungle path to the forest hermitage and enjoyed the sometimes pressing interest of the macaque monkeys that lived in and around the area.

  NYANAPONIKA MAHATHERA

In 1951 Ven. Nyanatiloka, Nayanaponika's teacher, had moved from the Island Hermitage, Dodanduwa, to a cottage in Udawattekele Forest Reserve. This came to be known as the Forest Hermitage. In 1954 Nyanaponika joined him. Just a few years before we arrived Nyanatiloka Mahathera died (1975).

Nyanaponika was already as a scholar well versed in the discipline of Mindfulness and it was this during our conversations that made a lasting impression on both of us, but particularly upon Ninette, who saw this as more closely touching the needs for delivery from life's folly.

Nyanaponika was kind, but still steeped with the German seriousness that was quite different from the relaxed ways of Narada Mahathera.

So while at that point I became immersed with Abhidhamma, Ninette became attracted to Mindfulness. This was the first real entry into the Dharma with a wholehearted seriousness.

Yet one other important happening occurred during our stay in Kandy which presented Dharma as more real that we had hitherto encountered in India and Nepal. It was our visit to Anuradhapura. That visit solidified our position.

There is there the great Buddhist temple area.

At that time it was in ruins and magnificent white surviving temples were scattered within the area among the old temple ruins.

It was not as yet not an attraction for tourists, it was just a great area of ruined Buddhist temples. We strode around all day and what was remarkable was the fact that one repeatedly could find parts of carved stone, that today would be stolen and sold for a price. But there when the ordinary people of Sri Lanka at that time came were left where they lay as sacred objects.

Then as a semi-jungle setting it was magnificent to walk the ruins. No modern commercial restoration could generate the sensations that the ruins could impart when unattended by commerce. Now it a protected area, perhaps too late with too much.

It was here in this large overlooked area where, among ruins, Buddha's message lived more than at the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya. We could feel the presence of thousands of sincere monks of Buddha's time walking the ruins. It was for both of us the first true Dharma Call of sensory experience that put all books and words to shame.

ENTRANCE TO THE TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH

There is a small incident here that shows the differences that time brings. Ninette was off on her personal discovery while I rested on an internal wall of the Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple, next to the Forest Hermitage. I sat a while and then decided to meditate. When I completed my session I found four or five monks surrounding me carefully watching. They approached, curious at the fact that a Westerner was present and even more that he appeared to be meditating.

The usual questions: Where was I from? What was I doing? I told them that I was British and that I was doing a Kasina meditation. They had no idea what that was so I explained it to a most attentive audience. Appreciative when I had finished, one told me that this was known as the Temple of the Buddha's Tooth and explained its history. Then he asked if I would like to see it. Ninette was not in sight so I accepted. He led me forward and opened the doors securing the case with the tooth inside.

It was just a tooth, and the question un-asked and un-answerable was "Is this really the Buddha's tooth?" It was followed by "What difference does it make, anyway?" It took many years to discover the correct answer to both questions.

The Conference at Trivandrum 

TRIVANDRUM UNIVERSITY

We returned to Colombo, made our farewells, after buying the root text of Theravadin Dharma, which is the Visuddhi Magga, "The Path to Purification", and then returned by ferry to India moving on by train to our new destination, the Conference at Trivandrum University College, one of the oldest in Kerala State, which had a history of academic excellence.

The Conference marked the death of Sree Narayana Guru, who was a great saint, prophet and social reformer from Kerala. This conference was special because it commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of his death for millions of his followers.

We arrived little prepared and were met and ushered into a great marquee that had been erected and learned that the other conference speakers were to be the Christian Archbishop, a renowned Indian Saint and a leading Japanese Zen Buddhist proponent. I was to represent the link of science with Buddhism.

Now you must first be aware what Sree Narayana stood for Gurudevan, as he was fondly known to his followers, led a strong reform movement  in Kerala, revolted against the caste system and worked on propagating new values of freedom in spirituality and thus the simple life with social equality. He transformed Kerala and was  adored as a prophet throughout India.

The first surprise was to see the great marquee surrounded, completely packed with commercial sellers. Spirituality with mutual respect and solidarity and simplicity has its price, we supposed.

The speakers and other guests met and we had an absolutely fabulous meal and after a rest were led to the staging area.

I was seated on the elevated stage with Ninette at the right end next to the Japanese. Below were scores of photographers and reporters from all over India. No surprise there, but it was a surprise to see that the rows of seats were divided so that the rich and wealthy could sit in front while the very poorest were far away at the back. We supposed that being poor had its price too.

The crowd was immense, several thousand supporters of Gurudevan, we supposed. The curtain was drawn back and we were received by thunderous applause. Then the Archbishop was introduced and spoke.

He finished his speech and behold as he finished all the Christians in the throng left. So did he with a nod to those remaining. Important business. Next came the Saint. He spoke and of course, you guessed correctly, the wealthy "saint followers" got up and left with him. Next came the Zen Buddhist and when he finished few left. I imagine there were few Zen followers in India.

It seemed that the spiritual oneness of all religious groups really meant little after all. It was good press that was important even for the Indian Saint.

I spoke finally and when I had finished to my surprise everyone stayed.

I should not have been for following our speeches there was to be a great display on the stage of Indian Dancers. We sat in the audience and appreciated the greatness of professional Indian music and dance and then leaving after receiving great thanks were led to our paid lodgings.

So much for organized religion of any type, and I believe that only Theravadin Mahatheras would have had the dignity to stay to the end.

So much for Kerala. We went by rail to Delhi and after exploring the city, buying what we required at good prices in the many shops, for we were after all sellers in Ibiza, returned to Spain.

It was an amazing trip in which we saw and learned a great deal more than has been spoken of here, for the object is to show Ninette's experiences beside me and the seeds which were nurtured within her.