..续本文上一页temples far behind. If it were Thailand, the country with the greatest number of monasteries and monks, you would board the train at busy Hualampong station, leaving early in the morning for the provinces of the far south or northeast.

　　The first hour”s journey would take you clear of the urban sprawl, beyond the houses, businesses, and shanties backed up along the railway track. Vast plains of central Thailand would roll by, the green rice bowl of Southeast Asia. Mile after mile of paddy fields, checkerboarded into lots by small dikes between fields and rhythmically pided by canals and waterways. On the horizon of this sea of rice, every few miles in four or five directions you would see islands-dense clusters of palm and banana trees. If your train rolled close enough to one of these palm islands, you would see the glint of an orange-roofed monastery and cluster of wooden houses on stilts that make up a Southeast Asian village.

　　Every settled village, whether with five hundred or two thousand residents, has at least one monastery. It serves as the place for prayer, for ceremony, as the meeting hall, and for many years also served as the village school. Here is the place where most young men of the village will ordain at age twenty, for one year or three months, to learn enough of the ways of the Buddha to "ripen" into mature members of their society. The monastery is probably run by a few older, simple, and well-meaning monks who have studied some of the classic texts and know enough of ceremonies and of the basic teachings to serve as village priests. This monastery is an integral and beautiful part of village life, but it is not the temple you have come to search for.

　　Your train heads north toward the ancient capitol of Auddhaya, filled with the ruins of magnificent temples and ”broken palaces that were sacked centuries ago in the periodic wars with neighboring kingdoms. The spirit of these magnificent ruins remains in the enormous stone Buddhas, imperturbably weathering the centuries.

　　Now your train turns east for the long journey toward the Lao border, across the reaches of the Korat Plateau. Hour after hour the land passes. Still you see rice paddies and villages, but they gradually become sparser and poorer. The canals and lush gardens of Central Thai villages, mango trees, and tropical greenery turn into a simpler landscape. Houses are smaller. Village monasteries still gleam, but they too are smaller and simpler. Here an older, more self-sufficient way of life is preserved. You can see women weaving hand loomed blankets on their porches, while rice farmers work and children tend the water buffalo in wet gullies alongside the railroad tracks.

　　The rural countryside in these lesser developed provinces holds much of what remains of the tradition of forest monks and nuns. It still has regions of forest and jungle, small thickly covered mountains, and unsettled borderlands. And for many centuries it has supported forest monks and monasteries dedicated to the preservation and realization of the enlightenment of the Buddha. For the most part these monks do not function as village priests, nor do they teach school, nor study and preserve the language of the ancient written scriptures. Their intent is to live fully and realize in their own hearts and minds the insight and inner peace taught by the Buddha.

　　If you left the train and made your way by bus or hired car down some dirt road to such a monastery, one of dozens in northeast Thailand, what would you find

　　 Would the teachings and way of practice be relevant in the 1980s

　　 Would the insight and awareness training address the needs of one coming from a modern and complex society

　　You would discover that many Westerners had come before you. Since 1965 hundreds of Europeans a…

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