Oh boy it’s been busy around the monastery lately. Along with a few short-term residents in and out, we had a major two-day ceremony with around 200+ attendees each day. It was a pretty wild time, although with all those people came heaps of good vibes and high spirits. Everybody came to see our massive collection of relics which Ajahn Chandako has been collecting for years; I was pretty unaware of the importance of Buddhist relics, but apparently in Asia often thousands of people show up to check out a relic or two on display… we have literally dozens. So many, we had to use a dinner table to display them all. If, like me, you have no idea what a Buddhist relic is, my basic understanding is that it is the energy of enlightened meditation masters which manifests as physical matter, usually in the form of a small rock, jewel, or crystal. Now, you may already know that Buddhist believe in rebirth, but you may not know that once you become enlightened, you don’t get reborn anymore; in other words, you are able to escape samsara, or the cycle of suffering in life. On a quantum physics side note, today scientists know that atoms are made up of invisible vortices of energy and are actually spinning and vibrating at unique frequencies, meaning individual atoms a) don't have a physical structure like the Newtonian model we were brought up with, and b) they're mostly made up of empty space; essentially atoms are little balls of vibrating energy, and thus physical matter is composed of energy (1, 2). So when you think about the very pure energy that a meditation master creates and [potentially] throws into the universe upon the death of his/her body, and then think about how physical matter is made up of certain atoms vibrating at certain frequencies, there seems to be some connection there… or something. Where can you find a little piece of meditation energy, you may ask? Well, apparently these relics spontaneously appear for certain people during their meditation practice, and can also spontaneously disappear if treated disrespectfully. So most of these relics that Ajahn has were given to him by people who stumble upon them after a particularly special meditation sesh. With such ambiguity and mystery surrounding them, obviously there are a lot of fake relics out there… but luckily living meditation masters can in fact confirm if a relic is legit or not. Still a skeptic? That’s cool, you can do some more of your own research or something, or just not believe it; I got plenty more to talk about.
If relics are a little too much to get your head around, here’s a fact that’s based pretty firmly in the physical world: with 200+ people eating lunch at the monastery, I had 200+ plates, bowls, forks, knives, spoons, cups, mugs, et cetera, et cetera (yep, two etc’s) to wash by hand. Initially I tried to meditate with the dirty dishes for a while to see if they would spontaneously manifest as clean dishes… but no luck. Thankfully, there was a crew of some good-natured volunteers to help me, and we worked out a nice little system of rinsers, washers, dryers, and stackers to power through the daunting pile. So, with the dishes in order, everybody had a nice weekend and many were inspired by the presence of the relics.
Oh, I also forgot to mention the 12 straight days I worked to clean, tidy, mow, organize, reorganize, and otherwise prepare the monastery before the crowds even showed up. I was pretty worked, and pretty tired of work, for sure. But relief came one day when Ajahn asked, “Hey, you want to go for a hike? We should hike the creek, you haven’t been down there yet, right?”
“Nope, haven’t been yet, let’s do it.”
“Great,” he said, “I’ll get the goat, you should grab some loppers, it’s really a jungle down there.”
10 minutes later, a monk, a goat, and a scruffy kid with a machete in hand set off on an adventure. I mean… the scenarios that come together on this monastery… you just can’t make this stuff up. I should also mention that Lucky is a super awesome goat and is happy to just follow us wherever we go without a leash. He’s like a well-trained dog, but better because he climbs hills like a champ and we don’t have to clean up his poop. So Ajahn and I fight our way through the bush down to the creek in the back of the property. Nobody ever goes down there, so it’s grown in pretty thick and there’s no trail; I was going to town with the machete. I’ve had some pretty great bush experiences since I’ve been in NZ, but this was the definition of bush wacking. For long portions, we simply walked in the stream, as it was easier than scrambling through the foliage on the bank. Plus, I wasn’t trying to like demolish the bush… I enjoyed using the machete, because, let’s admit, it’s pretty fun and I felt like a real adventurer, but there is definitely a little magic to a bit of nature left untouched. It was also interesting to see how certain species of plants taker over certain plots: one area was full of long vines hanging down and knotting themselves up, then there was a section of tall razor grass (which is really uncomfortable to walk through), followed by a plot of ferns, and so on. Of course there was a little intermingling, but the plants seemed generally segregated in a way, I think mostly because (logically) certain areas are suited for certain plants, so they thrive there and dominate, pushing out other flora. But anyway, it was like walking through 5 different types of jungles in one walk, pretty cool. And let’s not forget Lucky, who doesn’t like water, so chose to take the high road along the steep valley walls. It worked out pretty well for him because, well that’s kind of his natural lifestyle, but being a young goat, and one who doesn’t get out much by goat standards, every once in a while he would come toppling down. That was always pretty funny to see particularly when he took a splash into the stream and then freaked. I’m learning that goats are very particular little beasts. After tromping our way upstream for a while, we finally came to the first pool, which was preceded by a considerably large waterfall: probably about 15-20 feet tall. Even after being here for four months now, I discover something new on the monastery property almost weekly. So Ajahn and I scrambled our way up the waterfall, first climbing on a fallen tree, then scaling up the edge, and, near the top, just right up the middle. When we got up there, we looked down and Lucky was like “Uhh guys? You’re not serious right? Comon back down… lets go… comon…….really?” With a few encouraging words and beckoning hand motions, he started up the log and made it surprisingly far until a major tumble into the waterfall, down its face, and into the pool. Oh man, that was one unhappy goat. Throughout a normal day, Lucky has a number of strange and often obnoxious songs which he sings at the top of his lungs, but after the tumble he was screaming like I’ve never heard before. Poor guy. So Ajahn climbed back down to console him, and together they found an alternate route… coincidently, Ajahn almost tumbled down trying to follow the goat’s path. After we collected ourselves, we continued upstream, on to a few more deep pools, another waterfall, and eventually pushed up to a pool where even Ajahn hadn’t been yet. Being the first one to lay eyes on it, I staked my claim by declaring it Edgar’s suwammin’ hol’. After a few moments relaxing at the hol’, we continued up and finally popped out of the bush into a marsh, where we were able to easily climb right back up to the main road towards the front of the property. Lucky was dry, Ajahn was happy to have finally treked the whole stream, and I had not chopped of my own hand with the machete, so all in all it was a great little adventure. Unexpected and full of quiet wonders, I yet again had a completely unique experience within the monastery property.
Our little excursion was pretty great, but I still had a lot of work for the following few days, and of course ultimately the weekend of hundreds. I pretty well enjoyed myself throughout, but I was ready for a real break. I gladly took the day following the ceremony to lounge about, but you know I’m all about new experiences on this trip, so Venerable Mudito, another monk here on the monastery, and I set off on a short Tudong. Tudong is an aspect of practice in the Thai Forest Tradition where monks wander out with no money, no food, and no plan other than to find peaceful environments in which to meditate. Generally this is done on foot and the monks simply go on alms round daily for food, but since we only had four days, we decided to take the car to make it a little easier to find those hard to reach, way off the grid spots. Since we had a car, and Kiwis are generally unaware of the concept of alms rounds, we took some food too… aside from these two things, though, we were going to follow the guidelines of no plans, only solitude. I hit the motorway south into Hamilton, then saw the turnoff for Raglan, a beach town, and headed west. Mudito is a pretty easy going guy… so easy going it’s sometimes hard to find his opinion on things, so I pretty much took the reigns, which meant that I stopped at every nature walk, scenic reserve, waterfall, historic landmark, and sometimes just rocks that looked cool. In the first day, we took an hour hike to the top of a hill with a sweet view, saw a 150 meter waterfall, cruised through a wind farm, swung through little Raglan where I chased around some camera-shy crabs, gazed off the edge of a massive gorge, followed a random dirt road for 45 minutes, and found ourselves meditating on a beach void of any other humans as the sun dipped below the ocean’s horizon. We weren’t really sure if camping on this beach was legit or not, but if our level of doubt on the legality of beach camping was 5, our level of doubt that anybody would actually come check was 10, so we went for it. Good choice, because nobody came and when we got up at 7, we had about 6 hours of just sitting, walking, meditating, and ruminating all undisturbed. By about 1pm, the clouds broke and it immediately became unbearably hot, so we packed up and hit the dusty trail.
With such a peaceful start to the day, both Venerable and I were quite quiet and content. Generally, meditative lifestyles exclude music or regular news feeds, so we neglected to use the radio. For me, the radio/cd player is usually a road trip staple; sometimes it’s why you go on a road trip. But, even with no music and very little conversation, there was a great vibe in the car and it was neither boring nor awkwardly quiet, nor lonely or in need of anything more. The scenery certainly didn’t hurt, but it was really interesting for me to be driving in a quite car and feel totally at ease. After a while following the dirt road, we found ourselves at Kawhia, a small and very quiet fishing village. I saw a few guys on the dock cleaning a boat, but other than that, no soul was present in downtown at 2pm on a Thursday. Nevertheless, it seemed an interesting little place, so we used their public toilet, donated our garbage to their dumpster, I took a picture of a boat, and we rolled on. The road, now paved, wound around the edge of Kawhia’s bay and back inland. I can’t recall right now, but somehow we ended up back on a dirt road… I was pretty much shooting for places that no other tourist would think to bother with. In fact, I was quite successful in this endeavor, because as we realized we had no idea where we were or where we were heading, we discovered that we had no map depicting the road we were on. Our most detailed map didn’t even include our general area. So yeah, we were pretty out there. As we wandered to its fullest extent through farmland and unnamed bush along an apparently non-existent dirt road, I saw what appeared to be an overgrown, unmarked, ungated driveway. We slid to a halt and I broke the silence to inform Mudito, “We’re gonna check that out.” The 100 meter overgrown driveway lead to a small clearing backed up by endless bush with little sign of recent human activity, so I went back for the car, and as Mudito made sure the coast was clear, I pulled in and nestled the car between some bushes. Alright, now I’m not trying to encourage anybody to trespass, and neither Mudito nor I were out to illegally tromp all over somebody’s land… but keep in mind we had no money to pay for lodging, nor did we want to be in an environment with other people. New Zealand is a great backpacker’s country, and thus has lots of cheap places to stay with lots of cool people, but those places generally are full of people with different motives than a monk on Tudong. Namely, partying/dancing/drinking/discussing/hooting/hollering/bikinis, versus meditating. We just wanted a little quietude to unobtrusively meditate in the forest. So anyway, with the car stashed away, Venerable and I parted ways and climbed into the bush. I found a little spot to lay my tent and gave myself a bit of time to scribble in my journal before settling into some sitting, eventually laying down as the moon rose. I was happy to find my old friends the possoms were out and about, no doubt relatives of my tipi-climbing friends back home, as they appeared to climb the trees around me and occasionally fall onto my tent. Those possoms. After a while I had to get out the stern voice, and was subsequently left alone.
I climbed out of the bush at 7:30 to find Venerable patiently waiting to receive some food. We cooked up a bit, packed our things and hit the road, though we had to again face the reality that we really had no idea where this road would take us. Eventually we reached another bay, much larger than Kawhia’s bay, though no more populated. The road took us around the bay and dumped onto a paved road, where we were finally able to get our bearings. Once we did find our place on the map, we realized we were near Waitomo, which is cave country, so we began searching for caves to explore. In Thailand, caves are a very common place to practice meditation on Tudong, so Mudito was all about it. We did find a couple of caves, but since we were on a more popular road, there were a few people at each cave, and so we decided to just do a bit of exploring and move on. We also found a massive waterfall that was awesome, probably one of the best I’ve seen since my time in NZ. It was very wide and had lots of rock shelves for the water to crash and splash off of. It looked like something they try to reproduce at Disneyland as the generic ‘beautiful, majestic waterfall,’ except it was the real deal. Pretty great. After admiring for a while, we moved on in search for a place without other tourists; we weren’t like bitter about having other people around, they were enjoying the sights just as we were, but the purpose of Tudong is to get out of the mainstream. Our big break came when I saw a wooden sign that said Apple Tree Road. The sign was a bit small and rather decrepit, quite different than the normal road signs, so I figured this was our route. Yet another dirt road led to a metal sign that said something about how the Queen of England was going to get pissed if we camped on the land, and we weren’t allowed to steal any of the trees from the pine plantation, but we could walk around Cave Road and Double Waterfalls if we wanted to. Sweet, sounds good, thanks Queen of England. The road continued through the aforementioned pine plantation to a sign that said “Double Waterfall” with an arrow. Alright, if you say so. The road narrowed and narrowed until we agreed it was time to leave the car behind and continue on foot… little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. An hour and a half into following trail makers (not a trail, there was no trail, just orange markers nailed to trees in the bush) we thought the Queen had laid out the ultimate dupe for some foolish Buddhist wanderers. We hadn’t even seen a creek yet, how was this going to lead to a waterfall?? Finally though, another sign read “Double Waterfall à 20 Min” so we followed a few more orange makers until we heard the sound of falling water! I climbed down a steep embankment to find, you guessed it, a waterfall… but not a very impressive one. Pretty standard actually. And what’s this double about? That Queen! The Duper!! But no, Mudito explored a bit and found a few more markers, leading down to the second waterfall, and then…how can I put this into words… the most magical place on earth. At the foot of the second waterfall, the area opened up to a huge limestone flat blanketed with green mosses. As we followed the stream a little further down, we were surprised to find another stream of equal flow not just intersect our stream, but literally crash into it from the opposite direction, then the two tumbled through a jumble of limestone nooks and crannies and down to a field of limestone boulders. I’ve never seen two streams literally run into each other head on, and it didn’t really make sense to me at first, I thought my eyes were somehow misinterpreting something. But I followed the opposing stream up for a while, and in fact it was its own independent system that just came from the other direction. The large open limestone flat had seemingly endless unique formations and pools, formed by the erratic splashing of the two streams throwing the water in different directions, as well as stacks of pancake limestone and little caves all over full of stalactites and stalagmites. Every piece of limestone was like some wacky free-form art, seemingly abstract but with powerful sweeps and dips and forms refined by decades of wind, rain, and something that appreciates beauty. I don’t know, there was something special about that place. And clearly nobody had been down there for a while, because the moss, which covered everything, appeared all untouched and thriving. Mudito and I each wandered in different directions to find comfortable enclaves to sit and observe, and wonder just how the Queen of England found this place. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a special Maori place, so maybe they let her in on the secret. After a while of appreciating the area in its entirety and trying to explore a bit while treading lightly, we remembered just how long it took to get here, saw that the sun was well on its way down, and recollected the metal sign about how the Queen ain’t down with overnighters on her sacred spot, so we hastily began the long walk back. After a long, tiring walk, we made it back to the car and tried to search the map for a place to hide out overnight. I kind of felt like a fugitive on the run, or some old west outlaw or something. I’ll tell you though, it’s no use looking at a map for a hideout… if it’s on a map, you’re probably pretty easy to find. We got back on the main road and began peering as far down side roads as we could, searching for the right place. I found another dirt road with three mailboxes at the entrance and headed in—clearly it was farmland, so there would be plenty of open space, and clearly there were only three houses, so we just had to find those three houses and stay away from them. Passed one, two, three, drove for 10 more minutes, and pulled to the side of the road overlooking a sheep pasture and an expansive valley. Mudito and I both noted the natural beauty of the area and how only the sheep were around to appreciate it… in reality, we were just giving the land its due respect by taking the time to give it a few oohs and awws. Just after the sun went down, a farmer drove by on an ATV, accompanied by three sheep dogs that had somehow negotiated riding on the two back fenders. Mudito happened to be outside doing something, so the farmer had a strange look on his face as he came across a skinny brown-robed man hanging out next to his sheep, but I gave a friendly wave, he gave a nod and continued on, and we never saw him again. We bunked down in the car for the night and agreed to leave as soon as the sun came up in order to avoid intrusion/suspicion.
The sky began lighting up around 6 and I awoke to find Mudito meditating in the back of the car, so I shifted over to the driver’s seat and cranked up the engine. We drove out to an official lookout with picnic tables and whatnot to cook up our food, admire the view, and watch a line of cars drive towards workplaces. Again, the two of us were quiet and contemplative and it was nice to greet the sun on its way up. It was our last day, but we were in no rush really to get back. When we were good and ready and the traffic had died down a bit, we climbed in the car and started driving north. It wasn’t long before I found a sign to Pirongia National Forest and made a quick left turn to get one last hike in. We arrived in Pirongia town to find the iSite (information center), which was also the hiking information center and the local history museum, closed until 11am; I walked over to the local arts and crafts gallery while Mudito relaxed in the car. When the iSite finally opened up, I got some good info from the guy working there, although I also got roped into a 45 minute lesson about the local history. It was an interesting lesson, and plenty of important things had happened in the area, but I eventually started edging toward the door because I knew the conversation could have lasted all afternoon. Anyway, maybe I’ll go back to Pirongia sometime to talk some more. I made my escape and got back to the car with a hike in mind. We took a while to find the trail head, then started walking up. It was a nice little hike, a bit strenuous because it was uphill the whole time, but nothing too taxing. The mountain happened to be almost smack in the middle of our entire route, so when we got to the top we were able to see from Waitomo clear up to Raglan… couldn’t have asked for a better last step to recap all we had seen. Good 360 views kept us gazing for a while and the empty mountaintop gave us our sacred silence, so we basked and enjoyed ourselves fully. Eventually it was time to move on, so we picked our way back down and got in the car once more. Drove back on the main highway at surrounded by more cars than we had seen the entire time and found ourselves a bit of traffic to get stuck in. Finally we arrived back to the monastery, greeted Lucky and Ajahn and unpacked. The next day was a Day of Peace, where people come to the monastery to mediate all day, so I participated in that to keep the mindful ball rolling. Rested, relaxed, centered, and with a few more adventures under my belt, I was happy to start work up once again and get back into the daily routine.
Lots of love to all ya’ll, thanks for reading yet another epicly long post! (Pics of this and more to come... hopefully soon)
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