..续本文上一页n word of great importance and vitality still. The meanings of this word Dhamma are rich and many. For a start, Suan Mokkh emphasizes four primary meanings:
Nature (all reality and all things)
Natural law (the law of conditionality, everything happens dependent on causes and conditions)
Duty according to natural law (the duty of human beings at every step, stage, and moment of their living)
Fruit from that duty (practiced in line with natural law).
If we wish, we can say also that Dhamma is the "Buddhist God," a non-personal god, neither mind nor body, is Truth, is The Law. A Buddha merely discovers the Dhamma, nothing can create or effect it. Through a thorough understanding of Dhamma, the Buddha came to the realization that is the highest potential of humanity, the fruit of duty done perfectly - that is, selflessly - the end of all misery and suffering. He then honored and worshipped only this Dhamma. Those who follow the Buddha”s path must do their best to penetrate through their own experience to the heart of Dhamma. A good way to begin is to live close to nature.
Strictly speaking, everything is natural, is part of nature. But somehow the naturalness of asphalt, concrete, polyester, and air-conditioning do not awaken the heart in the same way that trees, termites, rain clouds, and mud can. If we are able, we try to live in an environment that brings us close to natural things, where man does not dominate leaving the stamp of his designs and desires, where natural forces work unimpeded, where natural laws reveal themselves easily to the patient and quiet observer.
Suan Mokkh is the first forest Wat in modern Southern Thailand. Trees and vines are everywhere, not planted; beautiful, fresh, surprising. They were here first, then the Wat with its structures fit in and around. It is a privilege to live among trees, rocks, streams, mouse deer, langur, and gibbons, birds singing unseen and suddenly flashing color-movement, snakes harmless and deadly, and untold insects (three inch grasshopper plops onto typewriter and springs off). In the old days, tigers and leopards used to come down when hungry to eat a dog. The privilege becomes poignant as I read how the world”s forests are dying of poison, pillage, and war, or remember the chain-saws shrieking just across the Wat”s fence my first year here.
I”m typing at a hut in the back of the Wat, one of about forty spaced 20 to 30 meters apart. I type mainly at night by kerosene lantern. Remnants of the afternoon rain drip from the tree leaves, various cicadas chirp and hum in their chosen crescendos, termites migrate (do they mimic big city commuters or vice versa
), the fading moon rises. Looking up from the keyboard there is darkness, tree shapes, shadows, everyone”s home. Regularly, I go down from this porch (the hut is raised four feet off the ground) to tend a fire and pour its water for tea or to pace barefoot on the red sandy soil laid bare around the hut, attending to my breath as a kind of walking meditation. Other times, when there is light, I walk around, stand, stoop, to observe vine shoots, ferns, mushrooms, mosses, chameleons, puddles, and the geopolitics of various ant races. Events, transformations, patterns, cycles gently manifest to the heart that seeks to be at peace with nature. In human society we live in the complex world of language, ideas, beliefs, culture. But this more simple, this ego-less world, is for us to live in, too. Here are constant resources for reflection and contemplation about life, its meaning and purpose, the ways of living, peace. Am I worthy of this seventy foot tree
Will I listen to its Dhamma
What do this pair of thrush teach through their nest building on the porch
Who is the ancient monitor lizard basking regally in the sun
To li…
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