I stumbled on a great post the other day while doing some link-hopping.
With Robes and Bowl on the Cotswold Way: My First English Tudong is a piece by Ajahn Manapo, an English Buddhist monk, recounting his
tudong in the English countryside.
I could go tudong – that’s what I could do. But where would I go? Would I get fed? Where would I sleep? How would I be treated? These are precisely the questions that are meant to remain unanswered as a tudong monk hauls his alms-bowl and robes onto his shoulders, and – carrying neither food nor money – steps out of his monastery and into uncertainty.
I really like the very reflective but also very
present account of the journey - how the obstacles and frustrations he encounters serve as seeds from which his reflections on his mind, body and spirituality grow and bloom. (I also like that he's the same age as me!)
The second reason [to go tudong] concerns a particular characteristic which pervades the tudong experience: uncertainty. I didn’t know if I would eat, where I would sleep, what dangers I might encounter on the journey. Living in this way not only sharpens your faculties, it brings you face to face with a reality that is ever-present but towards which we are usually blind when living a settled life. That reality is uncertainty. Although we presume things will continue as they always have: that we will eat tomorrow, that we will work tomorrow, and even that we will wake up tomorrow, there is no guarantee that these things will happen. Ensnared by the delusion of certainty we live at odds with the true nature of things, whereby we form attachments – creating a constant source of tension – and set ourselves up just to fall. To open up to uncertainty; to confront it; to live it, is another reason why I went tudong.
Anyway, I thought I would share
the link in case anyone else was interested.
