The Gridkhuta

From India Journal, Chapter Sixteen

 

 

... I suppose I should add to this account of my time at the temple on the mountain that, although time had a different feeling tone to it, I did spend a lot of time just reading while Nabatame-shonin drummed (boom! boom! boom!) and chanted. In the little bookcase I found three books to read which had real significance for me - Elsie Mitchell's personal account of her pursuit of Japanese Buddhism - Sun Buddhas, Moon Buddhas; Evans-Wentz's The Tibetan Book of Self-Liberation (especially the very long introduction by Carl Jung); and Aldous Huxley's Island, one of his last, written a year before he died. I had a very real sense that what I was reading was in some inexplicable way a part of the reason I had come to Rajgir. It will take some time to integrate this experience, but I think that in a strange but very real way, the entire experience - including the reading - brought about a kind of inner shift which needs to become, will become, a part of my life, over time. ... I surmise that this openness to new information/experience is actually a part of the earth energy in that place.

 

That evening Nabatame-shonin invited me to join him on his rounds the next morning at four and come with him to the Gridkhuta - the Vulture Peak - a lower peak than ours that could be seen from the edge of the graveled area looking down and to one side. It was here tradition has it that the Buddha lived and preached for eight years toward the end of his life and most particularly, where he delivered the teaching of the Lotus Sutra. Of course I wanted to go. This sutra is central to all variants of Nichiren Buddhism, and Na mu myo ho ren ge kyo, literally translated from medieval Japanese, means, "I dedicate myself to the glorious law of the Lotus Sutra!"

 

Wednesday, May 17. I found myself awake by a quarter of four, and stepping out of my room just as Nabatame-shonin emerged, drum in hand, to begin his rounds. I scurried after him as he passed through the double doors leading to the sidewalk which led out to the pagoda area, only to realize that I was very likely to stumble and fall down one of the steps in the dark. Nabatame-shonin noticed, and sent me back for my little flashlight, waiting till my return - then off we set at a quick pace, measured by his long legs, which I managed to keep up with, only stumbling occasionally. We went out and down the walkway, past the pagoda area and out through the cattle gate and down to the chair-lift, turning aside and to the left just before we got there to another walkway which led down the mountain, zig-zagging its way to the place where Pagoda Peak and the base of the Gridkhuta met, then ascending along the side of the peak to a set of wide stone steps leading up, initially, to a large cave.

 

Here we removed our shoes and walked up to the entrance to the cave. Nabatame-shonin lit a stick of incense, and we knelt and bowed, saying the Odaimoku (Na mu myo ho ren ge kyo) and drumming for fifteen minutes or so, then went on again, now ascending a set of stone steps leading upward again, passing through great rocks which towered on both sides of us in the glimmer of coming dawn, and arriving finally at a kind of plateau at the top (or one top) of the peak, on which a building had once stood, only its blackened foundations now being extant.

 

Here Nabatame-shonin again lit incense, and we prayed for half an hour or so, to the accompaniment of the drum, kneeling before the little ruined building. Part way through this prayer period I glanced down at the stone just in front of where we were kneeling and beheld an amazing sight: a trail of tiny ants was crossing the area, filing one at a time from a lower place invisible to me, from where I was sitting and disappearing somewhere equally invisible among the rocks out of sight to our left. This trail of tiny creatures went on passing in front of us for the entire half-hour! - single minded, unafraid, deviating but little from the apparent spoor laid down by those ahead, they kept coming and coming, passing in review as it were. Occasionally, one bore a great burden that looked like a grain of rice, ten times its bulk. Once one bore an apparently disabled ant. It seemed like the migration of an entire colony.

 

I guess my chief reaction, aside from my wonder at the amazing sense of purpose these ants were exhibiting, was to feel as though there were something about this phenomenon in keeping with the spirit of the Gridkhuta. It's very hard for me to specify the exact sense I had of this spirit, except to say that it was one of "thisness" - not emotional, yet not affectively flat either, just a kind of feeling of the rightness of everything - almost, of inevitability. We completed our prayers at just about the same time that the ant trail finally came also to an end. Nabatame-shonin set out again, this time leaving the path and climbing up a series of tumbled rocks to a narrow ledge facing the rising sun and the valley below. Looking like an eastern version of a Native American medicine man, he greeted the sun, then turned and went past me back down to the path again. We descended the steps to the concrete walkway - below the cave. "You go back," he told me in his deep voice. "I go where you cannot follow." He was right! It was difficult keeping up with him even on the walkway, and he was headed in the opposite direction - so I headed back the way we had come. But first I went back to a place near the cave to try dowsing. The pendulum gyrated widely and rapidly in the clockwise direction! So this was an earth energy spot, of the "male" energy variety!

 

During breakfast, Nabatame-shonin spent a considerable time tearing chapatis to tiny pieces, making two piles of the crumbled bits. One he scattered for the birds, going up onto the porch to feed them. The other pile went to feed the goldfish who lived in a free-form pool about eight feet long and three wide which had been built deep under the temple among the great foundation rock on which the temple rested.

 

Except for mealtime, I was alone during the day, ignored by the serving men, with Nabatame-shonin fully engaged in his ritual tasks and with greeting the tourists. I read my books, did laundry, wrote my journal, meditated under a tree at the edge of the grounds overlooking the valley far below, quite happy. I was very impressed by the evident popularity of the site, which is supported as a tourist attraction by the Indian government, and was visited by groups of twenty or more at a time throughout the day.

 

Shortly before supper Nabatame-shonin came into the dining area where I was sitting at one of the tables and told me to look over the railing and down the slope below. I did so, and saw several monkeys squatting in the branches of a low tree near a pool of water quite far below. "You watch. They all come drink," he said - and sure enough, for about half an hour, a whole troupe of monkeys put on quite a performance, moving cautiously from tree to tree, galloping finally to the pool and up-ending to drink at great length. There was evidently a well-established pecking order among them, and each one knew which monkeys he should chase away and which to give way to, so there was a constant kind of dance of coming and going, always with much waiting and glancing around, then sudden rushes to the water, precipitous galloping to safety at the approach of another monkey.

 

At supper, we actually engaged in a short conversation about the monkeys, and about the birds and fish Nabatame-shonin was in the habit of feeding after breakfast every morning. I told him he made me think of St. Francis, and he acknowledged that Francis was one of his great heroes. After supper he presented me with a string of prayer beads and asked me if I could carry a present of more prayer beads home to Jun-san. Since I had carried a fairly heavy bag of jars of peanut butter from Jun-san to Katsu-san and Nakamura-shonin, it seemed only fair to agree to bring back this package for him, so I did. He brought it out and handed it to me, and we said good night. I packed up my things, and stacked my bags near the door, so as to be ready to leave in the morning.

 

Thursday, May 18. I said goodbye to Nabatame-shonin after breakfast, feeling close to tears, gave him an envelope with R. 300 in it and another with R. 100 to one of the serving men, smiling and gesturing in a circular manner to suggest he share it with the others, then shouldered my bag, picked up the other two and marched up the steps and out through the blue gate and onto the grounds, across the pagoda area, saying my farewells to the three golden Buddhas ensconced in their niches, passed through the cattle guard and down the concrete walk to the top of the lift. I was early, and had a wait of nearly half an hour before a cross little man who spoke no English appeared and motioned me to give him my ticket. When I produced the stub of the ticket I had come up with in the first place, he waved it away, shaking his head scornfully. I finally got the message - a round-trip ticket is good only for one day, and mine was three days old. So I bought a new one-way ticket, just as the lift mechanism jolted into motion and the party-colored chairs began popping up into view, one after another. The man helped me - after a fashion - onto one of them with my load stacked in my lap, and down I swung, an old pro now at this mode of transportation. Halfway down, I met a long line of Indian tourists on their way up, and we exchanged bows and smiles, one after another, all the rest of the way to the bottom. ...

 

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