Oz Yatra
by
Lesley Synge and Winton Higgins
Winton: The dharma yatra
is an ancient Buddhist institution. It's a kind of pilgrimage
- a way of walking the earth in a sacred way - and a form of
meditation retreat. Australia's first dharma yatra took place
over the first six days of October 2006. Over forty of us (including
three small children and three other motorised supporters) gathered
at the Dharmananda community, on Terania Creek near The Channon
in northern NSW, to begin the walk of around 70 kilometers in
all, most of it through rugged bushland. Our starting point was
an important early site of engaged Buddhism, as the long (ultimately
successful) struggle to save the old-growth forests from logging
had its base here in the 1970s.
Lesley: I'm grateful I
became one of the yatra tribe. I'm a fifty something Brisbane
woman who'd responded to the generous offer contained in a Buddhist
e-newsletter: send us a modest cheque to cover costs of food,
turn up with your kit, and off we'll go, a prospect made possible
because of a couple named Ronnie and Emma and their friends Tim,
Liz, Jay and several others. Ronnie and Emma live with their
young family on 80 acres on the edge of a national park northwest
of Byron Bay. (International readers may like to check out a
map of Australia; once the most easterly point's been located,
go inland.) Since the 1970s, droves of alternative life-stylers
have settled this lush hinterland, prompting an unofficial name
change from Northern Rivers District to 'Rainbow Region'. The
country Ronnie and Emma wanted to share with us is that of the
Tweed Caldera, a once-gigantic volcano now heavily-eroded, Bundjalung
country to indigenous people.
Inspired by a yatra in
southern France, they assembled a team to support our six-day
Buddhist walkabout: two lay teachers, two vegetarian cooks, two
drivers (one transporting the camping gear and a water tank,
the other hauling a mobile kitchen) and guides to get us across
three national parks and various private properties to Tyalgum,
our destination. There we had the option of hooking up with a
festival being organised by the local Aboriginal community. Although
there were no Aboriginal people in our group, the indigenous
practice of 'walkabout' - travelling the land for a spiritual
purpose - was an inspiration.
Winton: From Dharmananda
we walked up the hill to the historic Forest Meditation Centre
for our first night together, the only one not spent in our tents.
We got to know our guides, helpers, teachers and benefactors
- not least Sandra, her culinary genius, and her 4WD-drawn mobile
kitchen that would rendezvous with us each evening. Carol Perry
and Victor von der Heyde (members of the Insight Teachers' Circle
of Australia) gave the dharma talks and led the sits.
Lesley: In the meditation
hall deep in wet sclerophyll forest, our teachers convened the
first of many circles - they were mechanisms for discussing logistics,
agreeing on parameters, expressing experiences, and receiving
dharma teachings. As the night closed in and the air grew crisp,
we introduced ourselves. In the hotch-potch of individuals there
were subsets, often overlapping ones: quite a few educators (some
in institutions as well as dharma and yoga teachers), community
workers, environmental activists, a couple of city slickers and
a good number of locals including two men from Fairyland, a gay
community near Nimbin. A number of people were facing serious
illnesses, and a number were alternative health practitioners.
Most continents were represented, and ages ranged from a babe
in incubation to the wisdom of sixty-four years.
Carol reminded us of the generosity of the tradition that had
preceded us. 'We built this hall out of slabs from the trees
we felled in the 1970s. No power tools. No generator. Ten of
us sanded by hand the hardwood floorboards we're now sitting
on to make it ready for our visiting insight meditation teacher,
Joseph Goldstein from the United States. Christopher Titmus from
England painted the four pictures of meditation postures you
see on the walls. John Seed [who became famous throughout Australia
protecting rainforest we'd later journey through], created the
mandala.' Victor von der Heyde encouraged us to be aware of our
habitual perceptions. 'Instead of our usual identities we could
as easily see ourselves as just forty mammals moving across a
landscape.'
soft sweet somethings
dance on our noses -
mosquitioes
After our first group sit,
we rolled out our bedding in the meditation hall, blew out the
candles, and settled into our night camps. Outside, the wind
and the forest played, tossing dark blocks of foliage across
patches of stars.
On the second day, we tidied
the hall, meditated, ate breakfast porridge and dismantled the
camp, all to the early morning twitter of forest finches and
the duff-duff beat of a bird far away. Carol advised us to engage
with the retreat without grasping for any particular experience;
'simply let nature do its work.' Ronnie set a steady pace, a
mind-friendly rhythm impervious to distractions and off we went
in a wordless transit along dirt roads. Except for a footfall
of crunch, shuffle and slide, the group moved in silence and
took rests in silence.
The first leg of the journey
was short and the sight of a little red catering caravan in a
clearing signalled that we'd reached our first campsite. Normally
Sandra does a circuit of the 'Rainbow Region' markets, supporting
herself and her daughter by selling the delicious curries she
learned to cook in India. She was now cooking for us purely out
of kindness. The luggage van was there too, our kits unloaded
onto a plastic tarpaulin ready for us to turn into cosy tent
shelters.
Winton: As with most
retreats, the day had begun with a bell at 5.30 am, then yoga
at 6.00, and a 45-minute sit after that, and each day ended with
a sit and a dharma talk. The only difference was that we quickly
learned to practise yoga and sitting meditation in bushwalking
boots, on uneven ground, and in whatever the weather dished up.
What Freud called 'the narcissism of small differences' quickly
fell victim to the intensity of the retreat experience, of our
interaction, and the skilful teachings. We denizens of urban
jungles might initially have started off with doubts about putting
ourselves in the hands of a bunch of laid-back rural 'hippies'
in the wilderness we were about to face, but we quickly came
to realise that we'd landed in very good hands. Just about every
contingency had been meticulously provided for in preparing the
yatra, and local bushcraft smoothly overcame the unforeseeable
ones.
Lesley: People lent insect
repellent, helped erect each other's tents, and pitched in and
scrubbed the cooking pots. The support team's three children
were kept occupied with great indulgence and their laughter and
games rang out across the otherwise more silent campsite. Nobody
got too precious about the discreet breaking of silence because
walkabout logistics necessitated it. 'These are just the signs
of life,' Carol Perry told us as we sat meditating, while the
children ran and shouted, and the cooks clanged their pots, creating
a feast of South Indian cuisine complete with mugs of hot, spicy
chai for our evening meal.
The Tweed Caldera, an awesome
landscape shaped like a giant cauldron as one would expect, became
visible on the third day. Mt Warning, a volcanic plug, rose from
its centre and became the navel around which we decorated our
journey. Ronnie had warned us that we faced two long and difficult
days, and the most rewarding. We'd climbed up the southern rim
of the ancient eroded volcano and now we walked along it through
almost pristine national park forest (Nightcap and Mount Jerusalem),
world-heritage forest saved from further logging - as it turned
out - by some of the women and men on the yatra. Now sixty-something,
they were revisiting a bit of the planet they'd fought to protect
(at nearby Terania Creek) when they were young and new to Buddhism.
Winton: Saturating our
senses in the grandeur of the wilderness, we settled into the
sweatiness and steady rolling rhythm of the long hours of walking.
It produced a strong taste of egolessness. Many of us were beginning
to experience the yatra process as just forty mammals moving
across a landscape, as Victor had suggested, noting too what
a strong sense of sangha (community) our walking was generating.
We passed a portly three-metre-long carpet snake dozing contentedly
in the sun, its coiled body occupying most of the breadth of
the track. While most of us knew that this is the luckiest snake
species to encounter in the Australian bush, every sense was
on high alert as we each walked within 30 cm of that formidable
being which greeted the thirty-five pairs of boots tip-toeing
past it with exemplary equanimity. It snoozed on in the sun.
May all beings be happy!
Lesley: We glimpsed what
it might have meant to live off the land, as the Bundjalung people
had done before colonisation. What bushfoods did we pass, unheeding?
We soon learned we ourselves were food sources; leeches got a
whiff of us and arched their ebony bodies in bloody desire for
the nutrition we offered. Ticks too, burrowed into our flesh
- all too much for one of the women who decided to drop out and
head back to the comforts of home. As if proof were needed that
we did indeed walk on indigenous pathways, I found some stone
tools. The first was a very weathered stone axe-head; two days
later a sharp scraper, perfect for cutting through tendons and
scaping the flesh from skins of small mammals. Had these tools
been lost, or broken, or put down ready for next year -- a year
that never came? There was a sense that we were a kind of new
tribe, linked to sacred traditions which had arisen thousands
of years ago - both Indian Buddhism and indigenous Australian.
From vantage points we
caught glimpses of our yatra support, the little red mobile kitchen,
a sight dear to us because it liberated us to meditate and trek
without going hungry. With its vibe of hippie and gypsy, we saw
it inch down steep and dusty back-roads with its load of metal
pots and sharp knives, gas bottles and eskies packed with organic
vegetables. It was a reminder of the impressive knowledge-base
which had supported a hunting and gathering existence. Aboriginal
people - we felt their absence. And their presence.
in mossy trunks of slain
giants
axe gouges
from pioneer loggers
On the third night we camped
on the edge of Ronnie and Emma's land. A cold front brought stormy
weather and we now recalled the e-newsletter's instructions:
be prepared for all weather conditions. For some reason my left
leg was troubling me, aching so much that I knew I'd have to
drop out if it hadn't healed by morning. It was better. The day
was clear.
Winton: Elation and
exhaustion peaked the day we climbed up and then descended from
Mt Jerusalem. Tim gave an unforgettable dharma talk at a lookout
point; it began with the cataclysmic origins of the caldera itself,
and ended with its subterranean interconnection of tree roots
and leaf mulch today. Life is a series of interlocking networks
in process, not a cavalcade of enduring atomized entities - a
theme that the yatra itself taught so powerfully. As we ate lunch
on the breathtaking top of the mountain we had the privilege
of pondering his words.
Lesley: Tim spoke about
Mt Warning, Woollumbin in Bundjalung language and meaning cloudmaker
or weathermaker: a mountain sacred to the indigenous people,
and rarely glimpsed without its wreath of cloud. It had been
sighted and named by the British explorer Captain Cook in 1770
to alert seafarers of offshore treacherous reefs. 'Here you can
observe the global relationship between forest and climate. You
can see the forest breathing out, creating water. No forests
breathing out - no water.' Waist-high in a snow-bank of flowering
ti-trees, we listened and shared in Tim's understanding of interconnectedness
as inspired by the region's ecology. 'Just as there is no separation
between soil and the fine parts of tree roots, there is no separation
between humans. Where do I begin and you begin?' he asked.
Then it was back to our
silent passage through the lost world of Gondwana.
australian spring
and the tender pink tips
of the trees
scribbly gums -
arcane messages left by
the insect yatra
leaf stone
leaf stone
leaf
Towards evening we descended
from the perfection of the Gondwana realm into white-settler
influenced countryside with its cattle and barbed wire fences,
discarded farm equipment and barking dogs, but also with a camping
ground by a pleasant lake with welcome facilities such as hot
showers and flushing toilets.
The pace was as steady
as ever as we progressed northwest across the base of the caldera.
We spent two more evening camps in places wisely chosen by Ronnie
and the team for their tranquillity and isolation, always with
the attendant red kitchen with its cooks and volunteer kitchen-hands
creating an evening feast. Our meditation circles were now graced
by large moons, like the night we camped in a clearing in a tallowwood
forest (on a private property offering "adventure therapy
for corporations and communities").
Winton: The night was
clear, windless, and utterly silent. If you opened your eyes
and took in the sight, you saw scenes from the Pali Canon - scenes
of the Buddha and his many followers sitting silently in the
forest under the full moon. The roots of our 2500-year-old tradition
felt very immediate.
Lesley: Our last night
was in Mebbin National Park, another magnificent forest which
'rainbow' activists had also saved from further logging. It was
now time to play our own part in the generosity of the Buddhist
tradition. Many heartfelt thanks were given to the yatra team
and bowls for dana (donations) filled with banknotes. Around
midday on the seventh day we arrived at our geographical destination
west of Mt Warning - Bray's Creek outside Tyalgum. We'd supported
each other through. To bring the retreat to a close, we sat in
a circle one last time.
Our teachers had often
included poetry in their dharma talks and now Carol read D.H.
Lawrence.
When we get out of the
glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, underlying life will
rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper
On returning to our homes,
Carol suggested that before conveying the stories of our journey
we listened well to those who hadn't come with us because they'd
kept the home fires burning. We all spoke briefly - we had a
ration of five words each! - and then our teachers led us in
a wordless farewell, progressing along the line of the circle
and gazing into each other's eyes to connect with - then release
- each of the forty unique individuals with whom we'd shared
the week. Tears were shed; then it was back to the world of ordinary
talk.
Some continued on to join
the Wollumbin Dreaming Festival; some found a bus service down
the road on bitumen heading east; and most of us climbed aboard
the charter bus to head back to The Channon country. There we
reclaimed our vehicles and sped away, winding up and around the
moonlit hills, on to wherever our homes were.
Winton: We ended the
yatra with that balanced, spacious feeling one gets after an
intensive retreat that has 'really come together'. But the yatra
had also been a ripping adventure, and adventures make for very
strong bonds indeed. When we took leave of each other at Brays
Creek, many tears were shed. We don't believe Emma and Ronny
would have succeeded in getting rid of us if they hadn't first
acceded to our intense gratitude and promised to organise another
yatra.
Lesley: Two people returned
to the Forest Meditation Centre to sleep a seventh time in the
meditative embrace of the first Australian yatra:
frog hullabaloo and night-time
peace -
at the channon market in the morning
chai from a little red caravan.