A great tiredness is upon me; I’ve spent the last week visiting people and receiving people here, having to repeat the same story, trying to keep the tale to the minimum. Ever since returning from Colombo it’s been difficult to regain momentum, too much to organise, too much chasing around to get back into the rhythm of the place. A depletion of mental energy has a physical effect too, the body feeling weak.
Yesterday afternoon a small friend of mine payed a visit and brought me a bunch of uprooted wildflowers, which later on I planted along the meditation path, where I have some others. These particular flowers are so obscure that even the locals don’t have a name for them, but they are very beautiful, a startlingly bright red bud showing on an otherwise undistinguished plant.
At the meditation centre at dawn: the moon is just about to set, and I am walking away from the buildings, out, over, and down through the newly pruned tea fields that are being scourged by a sharp easterly wind. A low scrub grass covers the hills opposite, with a few sparse firs making the sight beautiful but desolate. The dark greens of the trees pick out the contours of the hill, and above, draping the top, heavy, pregnant rain-clouds pass by. From the trees in the estate comes the unfamiliar twittering of munias, flower-peckers, and sunbirds – the soundscape is very different at this altitude, as is the atmosphere, with its cool, refreshing air.
Early in the morning, long after the moon has gone down, before the sun has risen: it is very dark walking the path, with the stars overhead shining through the coconut fronds, or else the bowl of the sky revealing the constellations. Fireflies, like wandering stars, continue their play. From the other side of the paddy the stream is heard making its way, bringing life to the fields in all innocence. It is Sunday and the houses are quiet, only a solitary light in the jungle opposite illumines a few trees and bushes.
In the last few days I’m pleased to say that our little community of friends has been enhanced by the arrival of a wood dove. When he first arrived it was difficult to believe in his reality, he looked just like he’d stepped off an engraver’s block, so perfect and precise was he in colour and marking. He’s a very quiet bird, and sticks to the ground while eating, I’ve never even seen him atop the basket where the main food is placed, instead he picks at what has been thrown down by the clumsy babblers – one couldn’t imagine a dove being so scruffy and careless, in fact the way it picks at its food one feels it is quite meticulous in its manners. Each species of bird has a definite character of its own, and getting to know them better...
I’ve just spent a week in traveling to and from the cities, with the blaring of horns, the crowds pressing against each other in the heat, the filth of pollution, the stupidity of office turmoil, the inexplicable laws and regulations of man. Is it surprising that in such an environment all mystery is lost? The mystery of life that can be known but not named has no place where everything must have an identity, where domination is the keynote. The contrast between the sanity of a quiet timeless existence, and the noise and rush of the city is quite shocking both physically and mentally. When you are in the midst of it, it is hard to see what it is actually doing to one, but when seen against a background of inner tranquility the full...
When I first came to this place there was no lock on the inside of the door, and for a while I worried that, being a foreigner in an isolated and open kutir might be an invitation to trouble. After a while a lock was fixed – but I must confess that the first time that anyone knocked on the door in the middle of the night, I just got straight up from bed and opened it! Before me stood a small middle-aged man, ruffled but neatly dressed, whose English was poor, and whose speech was slurred. I invited him in and he sat on the bed as I, half dressed, sat at my desk, we communicated as well as we could. It turned out that he was father to a couple of children who are regular visitors here: the elder, a girl of eleven, very pretty and...
On a number of occasions recently I have had intense sensory perception, usually at, or following, evening walking meditation, which I do as a concentration exercise, the only one of the day. Sometimes I have been overwhelmed at seeing every stone in the gravel path clearly and at the same time; or to hear the sounds of the night each distinctly and interwoven; to see the tonal range in the jungle around, or the colour of the earth. At times I am alone here for days on end, and with prolonged periods spent in meditation. I think that at such times there is a stillness that comes upon one, where thought is no longer clouding out reality, and then the fullness of life floods in. Usually we filter out sensory information or are caught...
he came because of depression ‘coming in cycles it has come again I am worthless, I fear for the morrow’ we talked but were getting nowhere