the Arhat's cave

Monday, Dec 8

Found out last night there are no classes for the next three days because of exams in the higher grades. It's a bit chaotic here, with no knowing when there’s going to be a day off; classes falling through; and schedules constantly changing.   There's not a set time schedule of school days such as Monday thru Friday. The off days are more random, some based on Buddhist prayer days and moon-based, and no one seems to know much ahead of time, so I often don't know until the night before or even the morning itself, that there's no school for that day, or for the next two or three days. (Thuzar's most frequent phrase is “I don’t exactly know” when I ask about what’s happening; she herself has to ask other teachers because there doesn’t seem to be much notice about anything.)

 

So I took a walk to the road’s end to the meditation center Aung had
mentioned to me—only it turned out to be only in the construction stage. It’s a massive one, though, with a long flower-lined entrance way, and lovely landscaping, large accommodation blocks, and large hall, and a couple of completed houses.  Passed a man herding goats on the way back, and a dog with a litter of tiny puppies.
 

     At lunchtime I asked the principal about any nearby meditation centers I could go to during the three-day school break, and he offered to arrange for a couple of his monks to bring me to meditate in the caves of a nearby monastery in the hills during the day, coming back down here for meals and sleep; and they would introduce me to the Sayadaw at the monastery.  

He made the calls and arrangement, and an hour or so later a car was readied for us and we were on our way. The monastery turned out to be the little one I’d found by walking down the steps at the top of the hill, only we came to it by driving up the road to the 30 Buddhas Pagoda and taking a path down

into the valley from there.  Apparently some earlier Sayadaw had attainted Arhathood while meditating in the cave.  Me unfortunately, though, simply keeping falling asleep. The air was also a bit musty, and hard to breathe for a long time, particularly with my lingering congestion. I left early and spent most of the last hour before dusk up at the stone bench at the three-way intersection of the steps up from the monastery, the path down to IBEC, and the steps up to the pagoda (from which I watched the sun set). 
  
This became my pattern over the three days. I would go up to the hills early, going into the long corridor
of the cave for a couple hours in the morning and in the afternoon, and doing sitting/walking above at the shaded stone bench at the top of the monastery stairway in the earlier morning, noon hour and later afternoon, and at sunset I would come back down.

Tuesday, December 9

 The night darkness still impresses me. There are lights in town—each little shop has its light bulb or florescent light, and there are florescent street lights spaced every so often—but the overall sense is of darkness, with the frequent motorcycle headlights emerging from and disappearing into the darkness.

 (Mostly it's motorcycles here, rarely see a bike; sometimes trucks or the little pickups; and on some streets, cars.  Note: Mandalay and here seem to have actual traffic lights, and Mandalay has traffic cops at the major intersections directing cars: not the crazy scary chaos of Yangon traffic. [FYI: I wrote this before I stayed in Mandalay, where crossing the street near the school was intimidatingly scary.)

I took a photo of the street’s darkness when we stopped tonight for Thuzar to copy something (using my newly discovered camera "scene" dusk option—thank you, Dawn, for the emailed pdf which I started reading through last night).  We’d gone to town with Sumon, whose father was here to bring her back to her village, which is on an island reached by boat or canoe. She showed me a video on her phone of it and it was quite impressive. Her father is a crafts trader, and the images she showed me of his wares were lovely. He treated us all at a rice shop which offered immense plates of delicious food.

While I was resting in the teacher guesthouse after lunch (my respiratory flu lingers on), Aung shared with me the little volume of Australian poetry he’d just received from an earlier volunteer. Quite good. (Read in the introduction that Australian newspapers used to publish poetry, and that their ten dollar bill bears the picture of two poets (a man and a woman). Would be lovely if our newspapers held poetry, and our dollar bills…).

Older than most of the other teachers who are in their early twenties, Aung has a solid, stable, thoughtful presence, and has the heart of a poet. (He is also more solid in build, not as willow slender as most I've met, with a roundish face.) He's been eager to hear my thoughts on teaching, and came to me once for counseling around a love he was too slow to communicate, thoughtful and deep as he is, so that by the time he had asked her to marry him she had found another lover ("lover" being, as I understand, Burmese for boyfriend or girlfriend)—her loss, I told him. He has also been my IBEC guardian angel as it were, appearing out of nowhere here and there, in perfecting timing. 

Thuzar says she will try to bring me to her village before I leave. 

   

Zoe