In honor of our upcoming India/Nepal pilgrimage, Thay Phap Dung recounts his experience of the 2015 India pilgrimage below, sharing insights and poetry inspired by the path of the Buddha.
The Sangha Walks With the Buddha
Summary notes and observations during the 2015 India pilgrimage with the fourfold Sangha, by Thay Phap Dung:
Our thirteen day pilgrimage ended with Brother Shantum gifting us a traditional yellow orange thread to be tied around our wrist to commemorate the completion of our spiritual journey. In Hindi, the thread is called a “sutra” – appropriate for our pilgrimage which was themed, “Following the Steps of the Buddha”. We are now linked together by our two week journey, by our shared personal inner transformation and by our deeper understanding of India and Buddhism. We return home with more than just pictures and souvenir gifts. As Shantum shared in his last remarks, our spiritual journey will continue at home. India is a place of deep spiritual transformation, a place where myths and modernity mingle – a place that never leaves your heart.
The Wonderful Colors of the Sangha
Our pilgrimage was special because everyone on the trip was required to be a practitioner, and to have attended at least one retreat organized by Plum Village. We were encouraged to practice during the journey while sitting on the bus, walking, eating and interacting with everyone we met. We were practitioners from Germany, Holland and England, America, Ireland, France, Australia, Switzerland and even India. There were two Dharma teachers, many OI members, and eight monastics – four monks (Brothers Pháp Xả, Pháp Chương, Pháp Lý and Pháp Dung) and four nuns (Sisters Bi Nghiêm, Giác Nghiêm, Hiền Hạnh and Hiến Nghiêm). The presence of mindfulness practitioners contributed to the richness and depth of our experience. It was a retreat on wheels, immersed in the spirituality, history, sounds, smells, sights and tastes of India.
At the magnificent Bodhi Tree, we had a chance to see how the rich colors of our own sangha have their place amidst the colors of every other Buddhist tradition. On our first morning, we woke early to walk to the Maha Bodhi Temple before sunrise. We walked in silence, mindfully, feeling at home even though many of us were there for the first time. We prostrated on the cool damp stone and circumambulated the temple barefoot before finding an open area for sitting meditation. Saffron-robed monks from Thailand were chanting in Pali up ahead, young Sri Lankan nuns and their white-clad disciples were chanting to our right, and to our left, about 20 Tibetan monks were prostrating towards the tree with speed and vigor on their boards. Ahead to our left we heard the familiar sound of a Taiwanese temple bell, the monastics dressed in grey, and closeby we heard Vietnamese words from another delegation of pilgrims. Sister Hiền Hạnh prepared tea, and we sat following our breathing, opening our hearts to listen to the present moment – a colorful, fragrant, mystical present moment.
The rest of our delegation gradually assembled in silence, and soon we were enjoying Brother Pháp Xả chant of the evening verse for the morning’s sitting, because he knew that it would contain the lines about sitting stably under the Bodhi Tree.
Tourist to Pilgrim
The tour challenged everyone to find balance between traveling as a tourist and being a pilgrim, between experiencing the superficial and mundane and touching something deeply with our spirit. We were challenged in many aspects: by the sight of crows feeding on the carcass of a cow along the pathway, by the flight of yellow butterflies dancing in the sunlight, by the skinny children chanting for a handout, or by the peddlers scratching at our side for a purchase. What we saw in our daily outings reverberated when we returned to the comforts of our hotels with fine dining and air-conditioned rooms.
The circle sharing times helped when we had the opportunity to voice our joy and challenges of the day. We could express ourselves and be heard, and connect our shared experiences. As one pilgrim shared, “We are not here to have a good time, to take pictures or be charmed by India”. The trip for many of us was in the truest sense a spiritual journey, and an opportunity to look deeply at ourselves, and our journey so far in life. We had to live with each other, accept each other and support one another.
Whenever we practised mindful walking, interacting, and looking deeply at the people and sights with eyes of awareness, we were truly pilgrims. Each site became sacred through the depth of our looking. Whether the Bodhi Tree is real depends on our true presence in the moment. We used the practices that the Buddha taught, to stop and to truly be present and in contact with our body, feelings, and emotions. We had many opportunities to sit quietly at the sites, follow our breathing, and contemplate the life and meaning of our Root Teacher.
The Buddha as a Sangha
Thầy has shared many times that the next Buddha to be born will be in the form of an enlightened community. Many times during our journey, the presence of the Buddha, Thầy and all our ancestral teachers could be felt within our collective. We saw how precious it is to travel as a four-fold community of practice, trying our best to apply the teachings in every moment. The Dharma felt alive in our delegation, and not just something belonging to the past.
At the summit of Vulture Peak, we chanted the Heart Sutra as an offering to the Buddha and our spiritual ancestors. As soon as we began the chant, a gentle blessing of rain fell on our gathering. We remained focused until the very end of the chant, by which time the rain had passed as quickly as it had come, and we felt a sense of magical coordination with Earth and Sky. One pilgrim shared later in our circle gathering that the culmination of conditions – rain, chant, Vulture Peak, the teaching of Thầy on no birth, no death nature of clouds, the recent passing of her daughter, the presence of her Dharma friends – all these elements united and invigorated her entire body and mind. She felt her tears merging with the rain and her pain softening with a gentle smile of acceptance. Her consciousness shifted. She felt the real presence of her daughter for the first time, no longer as an intellectual understanding but as a living reality. Her child was smiling as she smiled.
The Buddha shared that the true Dharma will be his real continuation. Wherever the living Dharma is practiced, the Buddha is also present, and the living Dharma can only be found within a living Sangha. It is not in books or Youtube lectures, but in the way we can live a moment or an interaction with deep awareness, understanding and love.
Looking with the Eyes of Compassion
Our eyes could not possibly look away, close shut or be numb to the amount of suffering and poverty that presented itself during our pilgrimage. Each day when we left our protected hotels and when we stepped off our buses, we saw it and felt it. For those in India for the first time, it was challenging and even unbearable on a few occasions. The beggars knew every mental trick in the book for they were the storehouse of many tourist behaviors who had come before. They were smart, and many of us, accustomed to the sterile environment of Western society, where the aging, sick and crippled are far from sight, were unprepared for such strong stimulus. Some of us felt weakened as the trip continued amidst drastic poverty. Sometimes, we returned to the bus as if it was a haven of relief, fresh water for those dried from the emotional drama – a relief from the dust, squawk, and neediness of the Indian commotion.
In some sense our experience could be compared with that of the young Siddhartha when he left his protected palace and entered the market place. Supposedly, he saw the sight of the sick, the aged, the dying, and the peaceful one. We were awakened to the reality of life, the poverty of India, and richness of people’s hearts. In our lives at home, with plenty of material comforts and external distractions, we had had few opportunities to look deeply at ourselves and the world; now the poverty of India offered us a chance to reflect and to touch the spiritual realm and to find a deep meaning for our lives.
Black gold
A few miles from Bodhgaya, our Sangha walked the edges of rice fields to the stupa commemorating the place where legend has it that the young village girl named Sujata offered kheer to the exhausted ascetic Siddhartha. Ahead of us flowed the river on whose banks it is said Siddhartha fainted. In the distance, the sharp mountains projected upwards above the palm trees – the very mountains where Siddhartha practiced asceticism in the caves.
We trod in a single file between the rice plots, careful not to fall down into the water-filled paddies. We saw village women in the distance effortlessly balancing a bundle of rice stalks on their heads, crossing the field with ease and grace. We passed others making buffalo dung patties: “black gold”, as they call it. They were kind enough to let us join them. And so some of us did, digging our fingers deep into the warm, moist, fragrant, black treasure, and forming it into simple discs with a hand-slap. Although we lacked their skill, it was a pure and simple opportunity to practice the mind of no-discrimination: seeing the lotus in the mud, and cherishing the treasure in the dung, the most precious fuel in the region.
Our Root Teacher
This aspect of the trip was the most worthy. We could stop and be still, we had a chance to look deeply. This contemplation could never be removed from us or be forgotten. It brought up issues that will be with us for the rest of our life. It would be difficult for us not to remember and to look at ourselves and our circumstances differently after having been on the pilgrimage.
Plum Village Intensive
The pilgrimage was a great example of an intensive practice retreat in our Plum Village tradition. It was a kind of “retreat on the road”. The loose schedule helped us adapt to conditions, and yet we took every opportunity to share our practice when we were not too tired from the day’s travel. We were encouraged to practice everywhere that we visited, being truly present, walking mindfully, speaking and listening mindfully, taking care of our energy, our body and our feelings. We traveled as a sangha body, looking out for one another as brothers and sisters, and cultivating a collective energy of mindfulness, spontaneously inviting the bell, offering a guided meditation or brief body-awareness relaxation. During meals and on the bus, we were encouraged to practice noble silence and to enjoy our breathing.
Our circle sharings were a chance to put words to our experiences and be nourished by each other’s insights, joy and happiness. They were also a chance to embrace one another’s difficulties and suffering. The diversity of the sharings made our gatherings rich and meaningful, and broadened our experience of the trip.
Buffalo’s gold – Insight poem while on pilgrimage
Stop and see
Not with your eyes or lens
Open and feel
The warmth of primordial richness
Only when you touch and spread it in your hands
Will its true nature and gold be revealed
Daring
Undiscriminating
Only then you will bow to your knees
And drink the precious water in the buffalo’s footprint
(Do not be afraid of your suffering, avoiding or covering it up in so many ways. Only when you can stop and pay attention to its signal will you be able to see its true nature, know its cause and possibly find relief. Be daring and humble to what it may teach. Accept it as it is. It may be the only chance you have.)
What the Cows Moo – Insight observation after returning home from Indian pilgrimage
The plump cows of France are well tended to. In their rich and green pasture, they roam freely within the boundaries of electric fences. When hungry, they have fresh hay served and when thirsty, fresh water is even provided. Some even have personal doctors that give them special medicines when they are sick. It is a blissful life. Eating and sleeping are their main activities. They wait for their turn to enter into the large metallic barn, never wondering and asking each other why they are treated so well, nor asking themselves, “Where shall we go beyond the metal barn?” or “Why we see our friends enter the barn but never leave?”
The cows of India are homeless, roaming unbound in the streets and countryside. They scrounge for food from one garbage pile to another, rummaging through plastic scraps and packaging, by-products of modern conveniences. They rest on the road side and sometimes at intersections, oblivious to the honking of passing traffic. Their bodies are cubist, with bones almost protruding through their skin. They wander aimlessly without an owner or anyone to bother them. The Indian people have deemed them sacred animals. Their dark eyes are kind when we have a moment to peer into them. They seem to question with their lazy swinging tail, “Where are we humans going in such a hurry?”
Lost and Found
Things are lost
Then some things are found
Left behind
Passed unnoticed
A moment of distraction
Between seat crevices on old Indian tour buses
In hotel closets and table drawers
So many memories
So many pictures
How many faces and how many names
If you forget or lose something
Someone will remember and find it again
If you delete it upon exit
No need for note taking
Unbound
Limitless
We welcome you to join us on our next Pilgrimage to India in February 2025. Learn more and register here.
