homeless - part 1
We are a good way into the ‘vassa’, the rains retreat, a three month period at the monastery where monastics stay on monastery grounds and focus in on meditation and study. On speaking to a fellow resident here, I was reminded of an experience that I had whilst here as an anagārika in my twenties, the first time I came to Bodhinyana. What follows is quite the story. I hope you enjoy it, ‘cos it’s a banger.
I’m twenty-eight, and I’m staying in a Buddhist monastery called ‘Bodhinyana’ in Serpentine, Western Australia, just south of Perth, for about six months now.
I’m ordained as an ‘anagārika’, or ‘homeless one’. An anagārika is a person that lives on temple grounds, and is training in what’s known as the ‘eight precepts’1. The precepts are designed to simplify life, and move us towards a more compassionate relationship to the beings around us. They encourage truth, kindness, and a clear mind – all good things that help meditation. The whole idea of being an anagārika is almost like playing a monk for a while, seeing how the lifestyle feels.
I ordained on my twenty-eighth birthday in fact, the day I was born into this world now marking the day I seek to escape from it. I intend to stay at Bodhinyana and become a monk, for a few years at least, and depending on how that goes, maybe the rest of my life. We’ll see. Herein the story begins.
We’re two months into the rains retreat. As anagārikas, we still have light duties to do, but we have more time to meditate, and like the monks, we’re given opportunity for private retreat for two weeks, where we’re alone with no duties, and all by ourselves in our room, to walk meditation, sit meditation, and study. I’d just come out of such a retreat, the first time I’d been in that kind of seclusion, and it was both beautiful and challenging.
I was straight back on kitchen duty after coming out, which meant I was rising pre-dawn to prepare the breakfast table.
One morning, I’m walking up the cemented path tracing from the anagārika residences to the kitchen refectory, and there is a young man, perhaps my age, maybe slightly older, sitting in full lotus on the hard slated stone paving under the patio next to our kitchen. He’s meditating. It’s spring, and warmer than the winter just passed, but before dawn the forest is thickened by moist forest air, and the earth is cold to the touch. This guy is just sitting there, silent and still, in nothing but a thin tshirt and shorts, no shoes, and a rucksack next to him.
We get all sorts of people passing through, so I let him be.
Sliding the kitchen door open, I walk to the kitchen bench and pull oats from the stores, pouring it into a large stainless steel pot, adding water, a little milk, and a smudge of butter, and start preparing the porridge, stewing apples on the side with cinnamon and sugar. The monks start emerging from the forest, and the anagārikas emerge from the dorm, coming up the path now from the dam which is adjacent to our lodgings, all filing to the refectory to eat. Some see that man, and they pass by, the monks with a slight smirk at best, the anagārikas stopping, only to continue, blinking and shaking heads, searching around them for meaning to this event. The man continues sitting, silent and unmoved.
“What’s with the dude?” says Michael, a fellow anagārika, after sliding the kitchen door open, hugging his body from the morning chill.
“No idea,” I say.
The anagārikas begin eating, sitting on thin square cushioned mats we place on the floor in an elliptical formation, facing each other, serving ourselves porridge, milk, tea and apples, muttering about whatever. The kitchen conversations are usually a heady mix of over-zealous musings on the spiritual life, and of places and people we’ve been in our search for meaning, or also just sombre silence, munching, staring vacantly as we slowly wake. Some supporters who come from time to time to stay for a few days talk of great men they’ve seen from Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka, and tell stories of the evolution of Bodhinyana, our temple, and I’m piecing together the history of the place from these vignettes of shared breath.
I rise from my mat, cross-legged, no hands, hands on bowl and my tin teacup. Glancing out the window after rising, and I see the guy is still sitting, back towards the kitchen, facing the forest, the forest framed by the railing and the apex roof of the broad patio next to our kitchen. He’s been there what? An hour and a half? Who knows how long before that. A supporter, an older, very gay, very British man, Sunny, who is my favourite for his toffee accent, walks in the door, sliding it open in regale.
“He’s back,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“Who is he?” I ask, as Sunny sits next to me, eyes flirting.
“I can’t remember his name… He’s been here before. He wanders around,” and with this his hand rests on my shoulder that moment too long, before he retires to the porridge.
I’m looking through the window towards the man, and the muscles of his upper back bulging his white, flecked, translucent shirt. I scoop some porridge into a porcelain bowl, lump some apples onto it, a splash of milk and sprinkle a few nuts and dried fruits, and a lap of honey for good measure, make some tea, and head out the door, to the patio.
Nearing him, I cough to signal my approach, then squat down to his right, placing the offering on the slate, careful not to clink the bowl and teacup. He slowly opens his eyes, rousing himself by squeezing his hands and flexing his fingers.
“Morning,” I say, smiling, uncertain. “Here,” I venture, offering him the tea and bowl, placing it next to him.
“Thanks,’ he says, with eyes glazed, still entering back into the way of things.
I sit next to him in a nearby chair. He stares, blinking at the food.
“Aren’t you hungry?” I ask.
He smiles. “It needs to be offered,” he says.
I don’t know what this means. My mind is scanning his face, and then I get it.
“Like the monks, maybe?” I wonder.
“You want me to offer it to you?” I ask, and he nods.
This is weird, but I do it anyway, placing the bowl in his hands, and he accepts the food and tea. I watch him eat in silence, listening to the squelch of the porridge between his teeth. He takes slow, deliberate portions and scoops them into himself, eyes gazing ahead, into the forest. He takes a sip of the tea, and smiles, before placing it down onto the ground, at a distance.
“Condensed milk,” he says, stirring the tea.
“Yeah, there’s a bit in there.” And with this, a slight nod from him.
We sit.
I let him eat.
There’s a stillness to this guy, something different.
As he’s almost done, and I can’t resist, “What’s your story, man?” I ask.
He gazes up at me, and I realise he really is homeless. His skin is flaked and weathered, he must sleep outdoors I think, for the etched lines in his face tell a story different from mine. He’s a broad man, so he can probably shoulder it, but even still, it must hurt, especially this time of year. The glazed look in his eyes speaks of an endurance to the elements I’m not sure I could bear, and have rarely seen in others, including the monks. His eyes are steady, and there is a stare I’m not familiar with. I pull my body back, inhaling into my chest, holding my breath.
“Thanks for the food,” he says, rising, and hands the bowl to me, tea untouched on the ground.
He walks away, his body gleaning the earth, an extension of the ground, and he’s walking away down the path, head arcing upwards towards the canopy, and a nest of cockatoos taking root, chewing on gum nuts which fall, gnarled, to the paving below.
I watch him, walking away, then, gathering the tin cup, walk back to the kitchen.
There is work to be done.
Most of the anagārikas were stationed in a kind of communal hut. We had separate rooms, closed off from one another, spiralling out from one main structure by walking paths that aligned the single entrance to our dwelling. However, the monastery was struggling for space to house the new guests that were coming into the monastery to stay for the rains, so I was given the privilege of staying by myself in the forest in a stand-alone dwelling called a ‘kuti’.
I loved it. No longer would my meditation by shifted by a muffled fart from an adjoining room, or would I wake to over-zealous early-morning chanting. Most importantly of all, I could finally sleep without waking to the monotonous thunderclap of intermittent snoring.
It was the morning. I was off kitchen duty, and was chilling in my new abode. I’d finished the last day of kitchen duty the day before yesterday and the vague memory of that odd man I’d met was playing on my mind, but was largely forgotten, my new kuti and the peace it contained taking up most of my mental space. I’m walking meditation on my meditation path, and so grateful for the space I’ve skipped breakfast which I’m not meant to, but hey, and I’ve been going at it for who knows how long, in a flow. I’m flowing, and time doesn’t mean anything to me right now.
Whilst walking towards one end of the path, towards the brick wall which frames the enclosed timber slating of the walking path, I hear a rustling in the scrub, and it’s a sound I don’t recognise, adjacent to my right. As is the custom of the practice, I note it, as my mind is searching towards it, trying to make sense of the unintelligible sound, but I keep my mind steadied, my head cast down and a few paces in front of me. I watch my mind as I walk, skipping steps, trying to make sense of the sound, pencilling in possibilities. I’d grown accustomed to the sounds of the forest. This slow, crunching sound didn’t sound like anything I’d heard before though, and it didn’t speak of a human gait either, not animal, not human. I turn to the left, always to the left, and as I turn and come around, I see in my periphery the outline of a figure. I know immediately who it is. It’s the homeless man, and I break my tread, eyes hypnotic from sustained practice, darting up and towards him.
He’s not meant to be in this area. People who visit the monastery are invited to move in certain sections, namely the kitchen area, meditation hall open for the public, and the anagārika block, should they want to see how the young men wishing to ordain live. The rest of the monastery is marked with signs saying ‘No visitors beyond this point - Meditation area’.
I knew this guy knew what he was doing. I feel my body clench, the streaming fluidity of the old body now all angles and flinch. He had not only walked past the paths signposted, but had come right up to my hut, and must have done so quietly, since I only heard him at the last minute.
He is a big guy now, I see, bigger than I remember. Bigger than me, sleight at the best of times, let alone on one meal a day, as we ate here.
My mind is flickering and I remember a story a young Serbian monk had told me when I first came here, the time a prisoner had broken out of the minimum security prison not five kilometres from our temple, down the road. Desperate, wandering the open forest, he had stumbled into the monastery grounds and into the kutis. Looking for valuables that he could gather to barter for a new life, he’d wandered from hut to hut, ransacking them, as we left our doors unlocked, but I can only imagine his disappointment and confusion on stumbling across these strange dwellings which contained nothing but books and a bed, or at most, worn brown robes.
There were some hard people in that prison. I’d met them, working alongside them in our forest work as anagārikas. The better behaved ones, the ones who had managed not to succumb to the in-house violence, had sequestered just the right favours to work on our property as a charitable exchange between the monks and the prison. They cut wood, collected weeds and smoked contraband tobacco in the forest in view of the monks who said nothing, and smiled. We gave them an opportunity to connect to the influence of good people, and it was remarkable how they changed and softened when we spoke to them as ourselves. These people had committed heinous crimes, and our compassion, and our belief they were good of heart and worthy of better, was making them better men. Despite all this, I wondered what would have happened if that prisoner had stumbled across me, a skinny uncle-fester looking guy walking slowly on a path, no eyebrows, some undiscovered species, and he, in a moment of need.
Now this guy, standing.
In a brief moment between us, but a flash, I’m looking into his adam’s apple, with my thin, fragile eyes, searching for who is this man? He seems dilapidated, and detached, but by the laconic gait of his body I relax, my panic dissolving into the timber flooring of my walking path. I can feel the energy flowing through my feet, earthing me again.
“Hello again,” I’m brave.
A pause, as he looks at me.
“Hey,” he says, with an envious certainty.
Another pause, and I feel my body clench, but then release, as I’m letting it, the prisoner panic going, echoes of that imagining fading.
“Where did you sleep last night?” I ask, out of impulse, feeling the beat of my heart.
He pats his rucksack. “I have a bivy,” he says now, “just put it on the ground.”
“Must have been cold, man.”
“Yeah,” he says, in his paper thin shirt, and cardboard shorts.
He looks bright, considering he’s just risen from the morning dew like some desert wild flower.
Something about his eyes, though. They’re glassy, and full. Full of some knowing, some knowing I can’t see, can’t yet know.
He moves towards the edge of my path now, in a measured, almost robotic affectation, yeah, it is an affectation, I realise, and this man is not completely himself, and I feel the panic again as a rising heat in my chest, my groin tightening. He is heavy-set but I reckon I could take him in flight.
He sits on the edge of my path.
“Cushy,” he says, head motioning to the kuti, and unzips a pouch he produces from his shorts.
Another pause, full of some latent, hidden meaning.
“Cushy?”
He inhales and sighs, rolling himself a cigarette I see he’s produced from the pouch.
“You can’t smoke here,’ I want to say, but don’t.
“I came here two years ago,” he says now, lighting his smoke, and my eyes fixate on the cigarette. He senses this, and offers the pouch to me. In a moment, I relinquish and approach to sit by him, rolling myself one now, and wondering who I am in this moment.
“Relax bro,” he says.
I roll the smoke, and he offers a lighter in silence, and I light the smoke, smoking, I’m smoking again. It feels foreign, yet familiar and I retch at it, drawing it in, tasting the chalk.
“Enjoying it here?” he asks.
“…Yeah, I am.”
He turns his body towards me, spitting on the ground, and I watch my mind judge it.
“There was a guy here a while ago, you remind me of him.”
“Oh yeah?” I say, retreating into my cigarette.
“It’s watered down,” he says.
“What?”
“That’s what he used to say, this guy. He said it’s watered down.”
I know what he means, and it hits me.
“My Mum always said I’m searching for something,” I find myself stumbling, the words jangling out my mouth, and with this he laughs, eyes all jackal, clasping his knees and coughing up smoke.
“Your Mum?” he finally asks, spluttering, eyes teasing me.
“Yeah,” I say, defiant.
His head is tilted down, he’s gazing up from that, looking up at me, head tilted to one side like a canine.
“Fuck this guy,” I think, and he seems to sense it and I realise I’m within arm’s reach of him, and I’ve given it away and I panic again, and he knows that.
He knows that, and he stiffens, rising, and leans on the brick wall lengthening the walking path, and folds his arms, looking down on me.
I could run.
I could run now, I’m out of reach. I could bolt, and track the forest path down towards the dam, screaming, but I won’t. I’m not. I’m still here.
He’s still got his rucksack slinked over his shoulder, and reaching inside he produces a glass bottle of water, I can see it’s some sequestered screw-top make-shift bottle, label removed, and twirling the lid open, he extracts the cap, and throws the bottle neck down his own and takes deep swigs, finishing the remains of the half full bottle.
“Can I fill it?” he asks, before stubbing his cigarette.
Is this why he’s here? For water?
“Yeah,” I say, and point to the water tank, which he already knows is there. “Let me,” I find myself saying, and rise to meet him, now meeting his gaze, and next to him, and I’m taller than him, though thinner, and despite that he feels my stance, and I take the bottle and go to the tank and track him behind me as I fill it, and return.
I give him back the bottle. And then I’m calm.
“Thanks,” he says, and then slides in a swift, slow movement from the path, and onto the ground beneath, adjacent to the hut, walking directly from where he came, like some fata morgana returning to the forest.
Join me in part two, to continue the story.
- Peace.
-
The eight precepts are - 1. To refrain from intentionally taking the life of any living creature / 2. To refrain from stealing. / 3. To refrain from any sexual activity. / 4. To refrain from lying. / 5. To refrain from using alcohol or drugs. / 6. To refrain from eating after noon. / 7. To refrain from dancing, singing, playing music, and wearing cosmetics, perfume, and jewellery (i.e. entertainment and adornment). / 8. To refrain from using luxurious beds and seats (i.e. using simple furnishings) ↩