..续本文上一页ch other, starting out in Bengali, going on in Pali, and finishing off in English. It never occurred to me to feel embarrassed about not being able to speak correctly, though, because I really couldn”t speak correctly. Even what I could say, I couldn”t pronounce properly. We seemed to become close friends during our time out on the ocean.

　　When we landed at the Calcutta docks we took a rickshaw to the Maha Bodhi Society Center, where we stayed in the Nalanda Square Buddhist Temple. There I made friends with a Thai monk, a student of Lokanatha named Phra Baitika Sod Singhseni, who helped get me oriented to India.

　　The Society gave me special privileges there during my stay. Living and eating conditions were very convenient. Altogether there were eight monks staying at the temple. We had to eat vegetarian food. When mealtime came we would sit around in a circle, each of us with a separate platter onto which we would dish our rice and curries. After I had stayed for a fair while I left to tour the ancient Buddhist holy places.

　　It made me heartsick to see the state of Buddhism in India. It had deteriorated to the point where there was nothing left in the area of practice. Some monks would be sleeping in the same room with women, sitting in rickshaws with women, eating food after noon. They didn”t seem very particular about observing the monastic discipline at all. Thinking about this, I didn”t want to stay on.

　　At that time India wasn”t yet especially interested in Buddhism. According to figures gathered by the Maha Bodhi Society, there were just over 300,000 Buddhist in the country, and only about 80 monks — including monks from England, China, Mongolia, Tibet, Germany, etc. — living under very difficult conditions. Hardly anyone seemed interested in donating food to them.

　　We set out for Bodhgaya, taking the train from Howrah Station at 7 p.m. and arriving in Benares at eleven the next morning. From there we took a horse carriage to the Deer Park in Sarnath — the spot where the Buddha delivered his first sermon, the Wheel of Dhamma, to the five brethren — about eight miles from Benares. When we got there I felt elated. It was a broad, open area with old chedis and plenty of Buddha images kept in the museum.

　　We stayed there several days and then went on to pay our respects to the spot of the Buddha”s parinibbana in Kusinara, which is now called Kasia. What was once a city had now become open fields. Riding in the bus past the broad fields, bright green with wheat, my eyes and heart felt refreshed. At Kasia we found the remains of old temples and the spot of the Buddha”s parinibbana, which had been excavated and restored. There was a tall-standing chedi, not quite as large as the chedi at Sarnath, containing relics of the Buddha.

　　The next morning we went on to pay our respects to the site of the Buddha”s cremation, about a mile from the spot of his parinibbana. This was now nothing but fields. There was an old ruined chedi — nothing but a mound of bricks — with a large banyan tree clinging to the ruins. A Chinese monk had fixed himself a place to stay up in the tree and was sitting in meditation there. That evening we returned to Kasia.

　　The next morning, after our meal, we took a bus to the train station and got on the train back to Benares. While I was staying in Sarnath I had a chance to see the Hindus wash away their sins, as they believe, on the bank of the Ganges, which flows right past the center of Benares. The old buildings of the city looked really bizarre. I once asked a professor of history and geography, and he told me that for 5,000 years the city has never been abandoned. It has simply been moved to follow the changing course of the Ganges.

　　This river is held to be sacred because it flows from the heights of the Him…

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