Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998match to light the incense or any cotton thread all – “Cotton buds any use?” –still we managed fine, using a Tibetan blessing cord and a small bowl of water forthe sprinkling of the rooms. What with all the parittas we have done for BhanteDhammavāra recently, and with all the extra voices, we managed to raise a goodtower of sound – including The Twenty-eight Buddhas again, the ultimate protectionagainst demonic attack.Phase Two of the afternoon was a visit to the great trees of Montgomery Woods– a small grove of ancient redwoods, a few miles west of Ukiah along Orr SpringsRoad. Take a left at the north end of town – just at the “Get US out of the UN –no new world order” billboard, and the local gun shop – then wind your way upinto the vast crumple of green hills filling the area between Ukiah and the PacificOcean.The day was bright and the spring sun flashed from the heads of poppies,lupins and clusters of other wild flowers – brave purples and glowing yellowsthat the naming mind has no handle on – everywhere there is the dense flush ofgreen richness: in the gullies, up the banks, over the meadows, wrapping the hills.The landscape sings as it falls away from our road on either side – views to SnowMountain in the northeast and south into the twisting valleys of the Coastal Range.Craggy outcrops and oak meadows, fir-bristled hills huddle and sprawl aroundeach other in apparent disarray, like a heap of malachite drunks piled up after aserious night – rain-besotted, shamelessly resplendent with the lavish inheritancesof Nature – they grin in their sleep as their emerald beards pour forth with gleefulabandon.Patches of cloud speck the sky and form racing shadows on the land below us.We wind through fields and trees until we finally descend to the river. Once at thewoods we meet up with David Dawson, Chris Bradley (a young Canadian stayingat Abhayagiri) and Tan Ñānamuni who had all gone ahead in the car. We slowlywend our way through the groves of vast and silent beings, seasoned by centuriesof change and the restfulness of each other’s company. Ajahn Vajiro, Tan Jutindharoand Tan Kataññuto have never been in such a place before – like all first-time visitorsthey are awestruck by the deep surreal quietude of the place. A rich silencethat is quite unlike anything else in the world – as if the trees were talking, in aninaudible register, at one word per hour, discussing matters other than the natureof these little bipedal bugs scurrying around beneath them.Huge logs are left to lie where they have fallen, to transmute and rot andsupport the next generations of forest life – it’s another of those strange ironies thata fallen redwood tree actually supports more life than a live one – we also hear ittold that the fabric of the trees, all that carbon-based matter, is woven from thecarbon dioxide of the air. So these trees are in some way sky incarnate, the gods ofthe empyrean descended into form only, on their destruction by fire and decay, toreturn to that element again. Even if the science is not 100% accurate, it’s certainlysomewhat true, and gives a very different perspective of what we are all gazingup to here.68