Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998ering reveals a few familiar faces from the Chicago retreat and many more fromRichard’s evening sessions. We set the stage and speak of the attitude of learning– the model of the mind’s own nature as pure, infinite and bright and, like into CSLewis’ Wardrobe: the further in you go, the bigger it gets.Warm summer night – it’s 10:00ish by the time we close but the dusk light isstill in the gloaming, soon it will be midsummer.June 20 th – 22 ndSitting in the departure lounge at Washington Dulles airport, the steam of a midsummerafternoon and the haze of thunderstorms has filtered in here, regardlessof the “passengers only” rulings. At my back the clear English accents of the stewardessesexchange their news and pass away the mounting minutes before takeoff.The air burbles and clings to the skin like peach-juice.All the contacts with the Michiganders have faded – only Sulipon and hermother came by this morning and Richard had been busy tidying up his variousstray lines of business. On our way back from the retreat at Ortonville, as we speddown the summer highway towards a temptingly empty collection of hours, hehad casually mentioned that Barbara Brodski and John Orr (the former BhikkhuPiyavanno) had also just finished a retreat in the area and (along with 20 or so oftheir closest students) they would be at Barbara’s house that evening in Ann Arborand would be very pleased if I were able to drop by...“The odds are slim and getting slimmer by the minute,” I replied – my energylevels and capacity for one more thing having been reduced to zero or very closeto it.The last hours of the retreat had flowed by easily. These days were the firstreal heat of summer and had held the broad lawns, the rush-bordered lake andthe graceful silver birches in a grip like that of curling tongs. Even at 9:00 p.m.,when the sun was dipping at last to the horizon and we emerged from the eveningsession, the air was still close and steamy. Geese grazed in the falling light by thelake and a few folks carried on with some walking meditation as the color finallydisappeared from the day.I had talked that evening on Milarepa (who was on a Thangka above the shrine,observing the Ten Commandments, also affixed to the wall), on listening and thepossibilities of practice as a layperson. Simultaneously I was working my waythrough Breakdown– a novel by the painter John Bratby, recommended by Richard– which was a riot of color from the late ’50s but, as a novel, about as coherent as ateddy boy rumble down at Flodden Road. It had the weakest ending of any book Ihave read in a long time but it made an interesting contrast to the manicured auraand order of the Henry Butzel Center and the Precepts and routine of the retreat.Sunday morning – the Solstice – the sun rose above the trees before 7:00 a.m.and the air was still warm from the night before. Above the roof of the main building– through the white branches of the tallest of the birches – there hung a perfectfingernail moon and its accompanying morning star, poised a few feet to its left.96