There is an Oedipus-like legend about the first builder of Phra Pathom. He killed his father without knowing it and was told to build a stupa as high as the wild pigeon flies. Phra Pathom was the retreat of King Rama VI, where he retired for the rainy seasons, trained the “Wild Tiger Volunteers,” and erected a statue of his favorite dog, with an epitaph.
Phra Pathom is called the “first chedi [pagoda, temple],” the oldest one. The interior parts, inside the present structure, were built in the second century B.C. (about the time of Ashoka in India), and it was restored in 1853. There are old dharma wheels and “Buddha footprints,” earlier than any statue and in many ways more handsome.
“The realizer does not stand outside the reality, but may be said to be at least a part of that reality. So I said that he is a self-manifestation of reality as such. This realization—that one is the self-manifestation of ultimate reality as such—is his realization.”11
“The Self is not attainable by the recitation of Veda, nor by an effort of intellectual penetration, nor by many Vedic studies. He whom the Self chooses (selects), he can attain it. The Self makes known to him its intimacy.””
October 19, 1968. Calcutta
Last night I had to rush to the Bangkok airport in a taxi to catch my Lufthansa plane. Along the road were kids and kids and kids, thousands, millions of schoolchildren, mostly in neat uniforms. (Bangkok is relatively prosperous, relatively well fed, with lots of cars, trucks, jeeps, and crazy three-wheeled jeep taxis.) Finally my taxi burst out of the traffic onto a highway across the marsh near the airport. Wind. Black clouds. Distant storms. More rushing through the usual idiot process, the stamping of passports and boarding passes. When I had paid the exit tax, I was nearly down to my last baht, with only three or four left to under-over tip the porter who had done noble work getting me through—and then an announcement that the Lufthansa plane is late!
12 Taken from Ramanuja’s commentary on the Brahma Sutra, this is Merton’s translation of Olivier Lacomhe’s French translation of that work.
I sit in the waiting room, sweating, with all the Germans and Swedes and Indians, the Air France crews and the SAS crews, the pretty Swedish girl, the crippled German lady, the Americans, the children, and outside the glass door, jeeps, airport buses, planes, the distant black storm, lightning, porters milling around, people rushing madly to the wrong gate and returning to the benches, people wandering around with soft drinks in paper cups—and I with a paper envelope of Buddhist novitiate instructions and incense presented by the abbot of Wat Bovoranives.
There is TV in the Bangkok airport. The announcements are made by a conventionally pretty Thai girl who makes all languages sound a like—incomprehensible. Her English might be her German, if any, and all of it might be Malayan. Then in between there is a movie, or rather a series of stills, extolling Thai boxing. FISTS. “M.S. flight for Kuala Lumpur delayed one hour.” KNEES. “Passengers on Air France Flight 205 please report for passport check.” FEET. Still picture of a Thai boxer getting his head kicked off. Picture of American woman tourist screaming as boxer’s head is kicked. EVERY PART OF THE BODY IS USED. Same American woman tourist seen from a different angle but in the same scream. EVERY PART OF THE BODY—Picture of a mix-up, maybe someone is getting a knee in the belly. FISTS. American lady tourist screams. Pnom-Penh with tourists for Angkor. FISTS. Flight now very late. KNEES. Air Vietnam lands late and will take off soon. Air Vietnam from Saigon just as if there were no war in the world. EVERY PART OF THE BODY IS USED. American tourist lady grabs husband’s arm with both hands and screams.
When we landed in Calcutta the customs gave two utterly lovely—and haughty—Indian girls in saris a rough time. I got through quite fast though with no rupees yet, and Susan Hyde, a secretary of Peter Dunne,13 was there to meet me with a garland of flowers: “Welcome to India.” V.I.P. treatment. I felt confused, trying to talk sense to Susan about religious affairs. The Indian darkness was full of people and cows. Rough roads on which cars sped toward each other head-on. It takes some time here to discover which side anyone is driving on—he may take either side, right or left. Then into the big, beat-up, hot, teeming, incredible city. People! People! People! campfires in the streets and squares. Movie posters—those Asian movie posters with the strange, enormous faces of violent or demented Western gods, the enormous gunners, surrounded by impossible writings. They are a crass, camp deification of the more obvious emotions: love, hate, desire, greed, revenge. Why not John Wayne with eight arms? Well, he has enough guns already. Or the Dance of Shiva14—with Sinatra?
The situation of the tourist becomes ludicrous and impossible in a place like Calcutta. How does one take pictures of these streets with the faces, the eyes, of such people, and the cows roaming among them on the sidewalks and buzzards by the score circling over the main streets in the “best” section? Yet the people are beautiful. But the routine of the beggars is heart-rending. The little girl who suddenly appeared at the window of my taxi, the utterly lovely smile with which she stretched out her hand, and then the extinguishing of the light when she drew it back empty. I had no Indian money yet. She fell away from the taxi as if she were sinking in water and drowning, and I wanted to die. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Yet when you give money to one, a dozen half kill themselves running after your cab. This morning one little kid hung on to the door and ran whining beside the cab in the traffic while the driver turned around and made gestures as if to beat him away. Sure, there is a well-practiced routine, an art, a theatre, but a starkly necessary art of dramatizing one’s despair and awful emptiness. Then there was the woman who followed me three blocks sweetly murmuring something like “Daddy, Daddy, I am very poor” until I finally gave her a rupee. OK, a contest, too. But she is very poor. And I have come from the West, a Rich Daddy.
Meditation on the body (satipatthana): “investigating the parts of the body with wisdom.” This must be seen and experienced in terms of anicca, dukkha, anatta.
Vipassana: the insight arising out of samadhi.
“The negation of desires of all beings…is the nature of this body,” says my bhikkhu, Acarya Maha Boowa Nanasampanno, in a cryptic, condensed explanation of anatta. And so: purification; defilements cannot arise when this “wise investigation” is done. “Wisdom is proclaiming the truth and making the heart listen, and when it is doing this all the time where can the heart go to oppose the truth that comes from wisdom?”
Clearly seeing the “Body City” makes one a lokavidu: “one who knows the worlds.” One who has investigated all the realms of existence. So, too, the antitourism of the external city—the true city, the city out of control, whether it be Los Angeles or Calcutta. Whether it be the trace of new cars on superhighways or of old cars on bad highways, or of blood, mucus, fecal matter in the passages of the body. Calcutta, smiling, fecal, detached, tired, inexhaustible, young-old, full of young people who seem old, is the unmasked city. It is the subculture of poverty and overpopulation.
Calcutta is shocking because it is all of a sudden a totally different kind of madness, the reverse of that other madness, the mad rationality of affluence and overpopulation. America seems to make sense, and is hung up in its madness, now really exploding. Calcutta has the lucidity of despair, of absolute confusion, of vitality helpless to cope with itself. Yet undefeatable, expanding without and beyond reason but with nowhere to go. An infinite crowd of men and women camping everywhere as if waiting for someone to lead them in an ultimate exodus into reasonableness, into a world that works, yet knowing already beyond contradiction that in the end nothing really works, and that life is all anicca, dukkha, anatta, that each self is the denial of the desires of all the others—and yet somehow a sign to others of some inscrutable hope. And the thing that haunts me: Gandhiji led all these people, exemplified the sense they might make out of their life, for a moment, and then, with him, that sense was extinguished again.
A sign in Calcutta: “Are you worried? Refresh yourself with cigars.”
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br /> “Masters of the 7th arm, unless you destroy Mandrake at once, you will be destroyed.”
(Mandrake the Magician)
Literature on Theravada available from the Buddhist Publication Society, Box 61, Kandy, Ceylon.
October 20, 1968
I have been reading the poetry of Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogi, who was born in 1052. “Repa”—“clad in one piece of cotton.” (Because of his heat meditations?) He stands at the head of the Kagyudpa tradition. The “whispered transmission,”15 i.e., esoteric. But he was not a bhikkhu, and his master, Marpa, was a layman.
“In order to perfect any practice, seemingly useless experience must be undergone. Any disciple who has entered any kind of practice must begin with seemingly unnecessary, futile things. But of course these things are a part of the discipline. Without such seemingly trifling things there can be no perfecting of the practice.”16
“Apart from the daily experience, there is no religious life, so satori is an occurrence of daily life with its joys and sorrows…. The reason why the lowest can be at once the highest is difficult to say, but it is the ultimate reality of religious experience. And only from that awareness can the religious sense of blessedness—arigatai in Japanese—be explained.”
Yesterday I visited the Indian Museum, a bewildering big building, now yellow and shabby, with the universal dilapidation of all Calcutta. It has nice things in it if you can find them. And a lot of dull stuff, too. You look for Gupta17 statues and end in geology or bows and arrows. I found a lot of it tedious, but there were a few sudden joys: Buddha footprints with lovely symbols lightly engraved in them; a room full of musical instruments, string and percussion, of marvelous sophisticated shapes; some Burmese pots, excellent even though 19th century.
This morning, Sunday, I went to the Jesuit Sacred Heart Church to say the Mass of the XXth Sunday after Pentecost. A bewildered sacristan set me up on a dowdy side altar—no problem!—with a very ancient missal. He filled the water cruet from an old tap at the washbasin, and sure enough I got diarrhea from the bad water. (Later, I took an Entero-Vioform pill and stopped it.) A brisk young German Jesuit shook hands with me in the sacristy.
Last night I was invited to dinner at Lois Flanagan’s, a pleasant house on Ballygunge Circular Road. Among the guests were P. Lal and his wife. 18 Lal, who is charming and articulate, is working on an English translation of the Mahabharata.19
I am tired of late hours, like 11:30. Tonight I want to get to bed at 8 or 8:30, hoping I can get away with it and not be hauled out for something. But things seem quiet.
Yesterday, quite by chance, I met Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his secretary, a nice young Englishman whose Tibetan name is Kunga. Today I had lunch with them and talked about going to Bhutan. But the important thing is that we are people who have been waiting to meet for a long time. Chogyam Trungpa is a completely marvelous person. Young, natural, without front or artifice, deep, awake, wise. I am sure we will be seeing a lot more of each other, whether around northern India and Sikkim or in Scotland, where I am now determined to go to see his Tibetan monastery if I can. He is a promising poet. His stuff in Tibetan is probably excellent; in English it is a little flat, but full of substance. He is also a genuine spiritual master. His place in Scotland seems to have become an instant success and I think he has something very good under way. I am certainly interested in it. The newsletter he puts out is good. His own meditations and talks, from what I have seen, are extraordinary. He has the same problems we have with “progressive” monks whose idea of modernization is to go noncontemplative, to be “productive” and academic. These are the types I will evidently find around the Dalai Lama. They showed me a small photo of a lovely shrine on a cliff in Bhutan (Tagtsang) and recommended it as a place for retreat.
Later in the afternoon I piled into a jeep with Trungpa and his secretary, Kunga, and two Australian girls and a driver. The jeep belongs to the Bhutan government. We went roaring off to a market full of things for Divali, the feast of lights, which is tomorrow. Millions of little shapeless statues of Kali, Lakshmi, Parvati, and other beings—soldiers, God knows what, sahibs, foods, sugars, paper garlands, lights, light-holders, incense. Trungpa bought a firecracker from a small, very black, bright-eyed crouching little boy.
I wrote to Dom Flavian, Dom James, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and the Qut:en of Bhutan.
Octavio Paz has resigned as Mexican Ambassador to India over the treatment of Mexican students by the police. Jackie Kennedy remarried today on a Greek island.
October 22, 1968
I’ve had the idea of editing a collection of pieces by various Buddhists on meditation, etc., with an introduction of my own. Perhaps two collections, one entirely by Tibetans (I must talk to Chogyam Trungpa about this today) or with representatives from Tibetan Buddhism—from Theravada in Ceylon, Burma, Thailand (Khantipalo). And one from Mahayana in China and Japan. Two very interesting possibilities.
Yesterday, I drove with Amiya Chakravarty and his friend, Naresh Guha, to the home of the painter Jamini Roy.20 Walking barefoot on the cool tiles, through low quiet rooms filled with canvasses of unutterable beauty: simple, formalized little icons with a marvelous sort of folk and Coptic quality, absolutely alive and full of charm, many Christian themes, the most lovely modern treatment of Christian subjects I have ever seen—and also of course Hindu subjects from the Ramayana21 and the Mahabharata. Amiya bought a Christ which he will take to the nuns at Redwoods. I wish I could afford to buy a dozen canvasses; they are very cheap, $35 or $40. But money gets away from me like water on all sides and I have to watch it. Some things in the hotel are extremely expensive, others not.
Jamini Roy himself, a warm, saintly old man, saying: “Everyone who comes to my house brings God into it.” The warmth and reality of his hand as you shake it or hold it. The luminous handsomeness of his bearded son, who is, I suppose, about my age. Marvelous features. All the faces glowing with humanity and peace. Great religious artists. It was a great experience.
October 24, 1968
A visit to the Narendrapur-Ramakrishna Mission Ashram. College, agricultural school, poultry farm, school for the blind, and orphanage. Ponds, palms, a water tower in a curious style, a monastic building, and guesthouse. Small tomato and cucumber sandwiches, flowers, tea. We drove around in a dark green Scout. Villages. Three big, blue buffaloes lying in a patch of purple, eating the flowers. Communists arguing under a shelter. Bengali inscriptions on every wall; they have an extraordinary visual quality. Large and small cows. Goats, calves, millions of children.
The Temple of Understanding Conference has been well organized considering the problems which developed. It could not be held in Darjeeling, as planned, because of the floods. Instead it has been put on at the Birla Academy in South Calcutta. It is more than half finished now. I spoke yesterday morning, but did not actually follow my prepared text. There were good papers by two rabbis, one from New York and one from Jerusalem, and by Dr. Wei Tat,22 a Chinese scholar from Taiwan, on the I Ching. Also by Sufis, Jains, and others.
The warmth of the Ramakrishna monks, alert and quiet. Especially Swami Lokesvarananda whom I like very much. They invited me back. And I was invited to Israel by Dr. Ezra Spicehandler.23 And invited tonight to supper at the house of the Birlas, supporters of the Temple of Understanding. In the jeep I had a fine conversation with Judith Hollister,24 warm, lovely, simple, sincere.
I did not go to a committee meeting today; went back to Narendrapur instead. Much talking yesterday. Tomorrow Life magazine is to take our pictures “worshipping” under the banyan tree in the botanical gardens.
Vatsala Amin, the young Jain laywoman from Bombay who presented the Jain message at the Temple of Understanding Conference, is an extremely beautiful and spiritual person. I was very impressed by her talk, and this evening had a long and good conversation with her at the Birla party. We talked about meditation, and her master, Munishri Chitrabhanu,25 whom I would like to see if I can get to Bombay. And about her
desire to live in solitude in the Himalayas, and her project of doing so. Sitting on the floor listening to sitar music was a lovely experience.
Vatsala Amin: great, soft, intelligent, dark eyes. A white sari. Vivacity and seriousness, warmth, spiritual fervor. She meditates on a picture of her guru, preferring the one in which his skull and chin are shaved. Jain gurus shave once a year. “If he can be so perfect, so can I,” she reflects. Today she left for Bombay. I on my part am impressed by her purity and perfection. She gave me a garland, like a lei, made of sandalwood, because I was her special friend. She gave another to Sister Barbara Mitchell from Manhattanville.
A telegram from Tenzin Geshe, the Dalai Lama’s secretary. My interview is tentatively arranged for 10 a.m. on November 4th. I am supposed to fly to Delhi at 6 a.m., Monday, October 28th. Probably the best thing would be to go to Dharamsala November 1st or 2nd, by night train and then bus.
October 26, 1968
Rain. A cyclone is moving up from South India, threatening once again all the places in North Bengal that were ruined by floods two weeks ago. Tall coconut palms against the stormy sky. Men and women on the balconies of the apartment houses in the cool wind. Cows wandering amid the traffic. We drive with the Birlas to see the schools, the hospital, the very elegant theater they have built. And the Birla Planetarium. They were friends and patrons of Gandhiji.
In the museum at the Birla Academy there are fine Indian and Mogul paintings, folk art of the Calcutta Kalighat school and Nepalese and Tibetan tankas. In Huston Smith’s,26 Tibetan movie the slow dance of a monk in a devil-like mask of fearsome divinity with great red sleeves. The booming, solemn, voice-splitting chant of the monks, each singing a chord by himself.
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