Author Topic: Hermitage-Thundola  (Read 10661 times)

Jacques

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Hermitage-Thundola
« on: September 05, 2014, 09:25:40 PM »
Hermitage-Thundola

In January 2010, I happened to came to Shri Lanka and I had the opportunity to spend a full week in the forest hermitage of Tundola, in the midst of the hills south-east from Kalutara and Mathugama.  A friend who knows well Buddhism in Shri Lanka, and particularly the locations of forest hermitages, had accompanied me there.  I have got the training of medicine and then the specialization in psychiatry, but for the past 25 years, I live in India for research about meditation, yoga, védanta, Buddhism and psychology. I follow a spiritual practice too, in the lineage of the great sage Ma Anandamayi who left her body in 1982.  I am often in hermitage in Himalaya, near the Nepali and Tibetan border, but on the Indian side. My spiritual master is of French origin, doctors as I am, but spent 30 years near Ma Anandamayi, and was 17 years in solitude in Himalaya.

On the first day in the hermitage, I needed of course some adaptation, but on staying on, I could  feel what is said of monastic life whatever the tradition : “Once you have seen one day, you have seen all of them!" Actually, it was the time of the presidential election.  The contrast between the busy plain full of posters for this election the forest hermitage in the solitary hills was definitely striking.  Indeed, I had the impression to be in a hermitage of the Himalayas in the company of the Rishis of old.  The first principal Upanishad is the Brihad-Aranyaka, it means that of the “great forest”.  Indeed there I was, in the great forest with rishis-like monks.  Silence was the same, the murmur of the river too.

A retired old  man who knows how to build had developed the buildings of the hermitage for the past five or six years, including a temple able to contain maybe 40 people and the buildings for the monks and their visitors.  He was still continuing to build, all that completely free, as a service to the Sangha.  The whole life there is under the sign of attention, at the beginning in view to adapt myself to this new environment, but soon afterwards mainly to see how I was reacting to the minute changes in the daily life or to the inner working of my mind under pressure due both to the practice and the solitude.  It was like the magnifying glass making me much more capable to see clearly the lights and shadows of my own mind.

Every day, we used to go down for panda-dan, receiving alms. We walked about half an hour along the stream to meet the family which was coming up for this alms-giving. I used to arrive in advance. It was particularly impressive to suddenly see the monks coming barefoot and in complete silence from out of the trees and the rocks like out of nowhere.  The present families were also regularly struck by silence while seeing them appear. Was the practical continuation of this very old tradition of a daily gentle meeting of the word and of the ones who have renounced it.  The donations by visa card and internet, however well-intentioned, will never replace the simple act of giving food directly.

There was such a demand from the devotees to bring food to the hermits that they had to book one year in advance to fix a day when they would be able to do it.  This is the best proof of interest of the Buddhist community for their monks, especially for their hermits.  Of course, this is a great security for those renouncers, but it may be also a risk, inciting to laziness: if the food is secured for the whole coming year, why should one make so much of efforts?  So, sincerity of purpose must be maintained, it means practically that it should be rejuvenated regularly.  In the Indian tradition, and so in Buddhism also, we see the tendency to distinguish two types of monks, the kutiriya which dwell always in the same place, and the parivrajika, which should not stay more than three days in the same location, lest they start to become attached.  It doesn't mean that staying at the same place continuously is not also a kind of austerity, which  includes its own difficulties.  Whatever the type of life monk is leading , he has to be attentive.

   Tundola means "Three Rivers".  Culturally, one could see, in that name, a symbol of the subtle body and the process of meditation according to Yoga.  The basis of the Raja-yoga is that the sensations of the body finally flow into three currents, ‘rivers’, pingala and sushumna, and that the three must be brought gathered to their confluence in the third eye.  This means that actually this third eye is Tun-dola, Three Rivers. Actually, monks are spontaneously attracted by rivers, and often they like to settle on their banks.  In the zen tradition, Master Dogen narrates the episode of a Chinese mandarin called Lu, who in the 6th century was able to reach Enlightenment by spending a night in a hut near a river.  In a poem, the mandarin suggests that the very continuous sound of the stream had triggered the great experience.  This attainment was later confirmed by his own master.  The river sound gives the continuous evidence of a basis of permanence which, by difference, helps us to better see the impermanence of our own mind.  In Sanskrit, nada means river, and nâda means sound, especially that of silence.  It seems  to resound everywhere, although it actually originates from the flow of blood in the arteries and some other physiological causes. Given that, the yogis and some sages in the Mahayana tradition too  chose to take it as a  of support of concentration to stop the mind.  Even for monks which does not follow this Yoga, the benefits of the continuous sound are there to give a basis of stability to the mind.

by Dr Jacques Vigne  :)
Paris, and Hardwar (India)
« Last Edit: September 05, 2014, 09:58:08 PM by madhavi »