Stories of tudong and pindapata

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Hanzze
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by Hanzze »

I guess that is a wish that is not so easy to fullfill. Maybe to self-evident as that it is extra mentioned. Just saw this story, which might be appropriate to the last posts:
The Basket of Conduct[4] contains ten stories of the Bodhisatta's former lives. In one of these lifetimes he was a brahman named Sankha who saw a Paccekabuddha, or non-teaching enlightened one, walking barefoot on a desert path. Sankha thought to himself, "Desiring merit, seeing one eminently worthy of a gift of faith, if I do not give him a gift, I will dwindle in merit." So the brahman, who had a very delicate constitution, presented his sandals to the Paccekabuddha even though his own need for them was greater (Division I, Story 2).

from: Dana - The Practice of Giving
Another story I would like to share: Let's call it "The teacherous peta".

Cambodian people (I guess even most South East Asian People) are very saddha (saddly mostly just raga) minded people. Dana is well taught by monks and people love to make make Dana to get good results. Unfortunate 99% of the monks accept money and as money is easy to handle and quick to share it is rather difficult to get enought to eat. One can imagen that it is more that arousing if there comes somebody with a almsbow along and does not take money. As the people use to follow each other, it depends very much on the reaction of the fist person behind the entrence of the house you might stop. "He does not take money. You can give him Mi (imported instant noodels)" would be the most accuring message through the village. It's food and one even does not need to cook it to eat it, but the impact of industrial food has its signs after some days.
One day it was another Mi day. As the bow was full I returned to the my place. On the way back through the village one person approches me reaching passing a bag with a cake and a Sojamilk can into my direction. "Full is full, but if I do not take it, it might be another 'dry instant noodle day'. Overheld by greed and fear that I would spend my meal again just with this noodles, I thought that it would be ok to make a exception and exepted that gift.
It was a follmoon day and on this daiy all the petas of the neigboring villages usually gathered on the land of the monastery. There is one young man you is really ugly, mostly naked or nearly naked, mentally and also bodily disabled how leads the grows of petas from one donation occation to the other.
As I came near to the place I used to resist (a small open temple to wrship the place ghosts) he was just following a group of people featuring some food to the spirits. He just pushed some cakes and sweets, taken 5 seconds after the people laid down the gifts, with both hands in his mouth as he saw me coming along. He suddenly started to laught and quickly walked torward me. He streched out the hand to my alm bowl and wanted to open it. In the first moment I realiced did not realice my thought "Hey you greedy being, don't take what is on the top in the bowl. You can have everything else, but wait" and layed my hand on the bowl. As he pulled stronger on the cover, I came to awarness again and let him open it. Of cause he took that what was so crasped by me. Then I needed to laugh inwardly and was actually very happy about this situation of "ripping kamma".
He is one of the greatest teachers in this monastery, saddly even deveted people and monks use to beat him. For him it's not only the food that he enjoys, he also enjoys it to make banter and annoy the "Dana" receiver. One more thing is, that he is actually not that greedy as it seems. As soon as he had taken something he always shares it with the other petas, most of them are poor village children, who enjoy it to spend their time in running for good food around.
He loves Mi but is not used to get it as a gift. He stood still with open eyes and open mouth for minutes as I meet him one time outside of his appearing in the monastery, just working on a field. The children learn much with him, some this, many also what will really help.
After it was silent and the mind empty of those events again I started to prepare my place to eat some dry instantnoodles. In the same moment visitors came and donated some "real" food.
Just that! *smile*
...We Buddhists must find the courage to leave our temples and enter the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with suffering. If we listen to Buddha, Christ, or Gandhi, we can do nothing else. The refugee camps, the prisons, the ghettos, and the battlefields will become our temples. We have so much work to do. ... Peace is Possible! Step by Step. - Samtach Preah Maha Ghosananda "Step by Step" http://www.ghosananda.org/bio_book.html

BUT! it is important to become a real Buddhist first. Like Punna did: Punna Sutta Nate sante baram sokham _()_
daverupa
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by daverupa »

yawares wrote:
appicchato wrote:The Buddha went barefoot...(I) wouldn't dream of any other way...

Dear "appicchato",
Please give me 1 or 2 stories that the Buddha went barefoot!! :thinking:

Curious mind?
yawares
:anjali:
The Vinaya allows shoes with one lining in them. Any more is a dukkata offense.

The context is Sona Kolivisa, a "delicately nurtured" individual, being allowed the use of one-lining shoes, but Sona said that if it wasn't allowed for everyone, he would not use shoes due to future criticism, but if it was laid down as a rule, then he would not be ashamed.

(Earlier, Sona became one of the arahants, and let his insight known via a discourse, rather than a proclamation. The Buddha said of this, "Thus, monks, do young men of worth make their insight known. The truth is spoken, and the self is not obtruded.")

So it seems no shoes for anyone, prior to this.
  • "And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting oneself one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation of the four establishments of mindfulness. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself one protects others.

    "And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting others one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, goodwill, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others one protects oneself.

- Sedaka Sutta [SN 47.19]
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gavesako
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by gavesako »

Recollections of tudong walk in Thailand
Some memories from a tudong walk in Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son province, northern Thailand, in December 2006:


… Walking up the mountain and down again, overlooking the hilly area of Pai ahead of us, we arrived at a village of the Karen hill-tribe quite exhausted, having covered about 25 km that day. Fortunately there was a small forest monastery with some monks from the north-east in this village, and the following day one of them invited me to go and have a look at the waterfall nearby. A group of young Karen boys tagged along behind the two monks, the Phra Farang (Western monk) being an exciting new arrival in this village off the beaten track which would regularly get cut off from the tarmac road during the rainy season.

The waterfall was quite nice, we had to wade through the stream and jump from stone to stone in order to reach it. The boys jumped into the pools and splashed cool water over themselves to escape the midday heat. Then they offered us the mandarines to eat and they also helped themselves – they tasted sweet and delicious. On the way to the waterfall we had passed an orchard of mandarines and the boys picked a lot of the fruits which they put inside a bag – my bag, which they had offered to carry for me, having been trained as good temple boys by the local monks. On the way back, feeling refreshed, the boys were cheerful and playful. As we passed that orchard again, I asked them about the owner, assuming it was someone from their village. They said, “No, the owner is from the next village, that is the Liso hill-tribe. He was here last week patrolling his property with a shotgun, and he threatened to shoot at anybody stealing his fruit!” They laughed at it as if they had told a joke, but I felt a bit uneasy about the few remaining mandarines … still inside my bag.

Shooting people here, close to the Burmese border, was not that uncommon. There were couriers carrying heroin and amphetamines to be sold in Thailand, and the drug dealers were targeted just around that time during the notorious War on Drugs which allowed shooting any suspects as a free-for-all. We were told that anyone possessing a mobile phone and a good map of the area would be seen as a potential courier. And human life does not count that much in this part of the world, even if carrying a foreign passport.

Continuing our walk further towards Wiang Haeng, we had to pass through a forested hilly area with few villages and only a bumpy dirt road used mainly by motorcycles. There were pine trees growing here because we were quite high up in the mountains. The temperatures at night could drop down to just above 0° Celsius. Finally, as it was already getting dark, we found a Liso village and put up our umbrella tents among the trees nearby. As expected, I did not get much sleep that night, having only my ordinary robe plus my sanghati, the double-layer robe, to use as a blanket. As I was spreading my mat on the ground, I did not see much in the dark, but as I got up in the morning, picking up my bag which was wet from the dew, I noticed some little holes in it: I have unwittingly placed it on a termite nest and they started nibbling on it.

Around 6 AM, shivering with the cold, we walked towards the poor-looking village and past the school which had the appearance of a cow shed. This place really looked like it has never seen any Buddhist monks before. The hill-tribes were not originally Buddhist, but with the development programs of the Thai government reaching out to them, they have been partially converted to Buddhism (but more recently the aggressive campaigns of the foreign Christian missionaries have had a noticeable impact here).

We walked between the bamboo houses, carefully treading in the mud trying to avoid pig excrement, while there was smoke to be seen rising from the dwellings, obviously a sign of some food being cooked. Then a Liso woman opened the door of her house and stared at us for a while in surprise. Offering food to the monks on alms-round was not part of her daily routine. But she would have seen Thai people in the town doing it, perhaps at the market where she sometimes went to sell vegetables and buy a few necessary things. Today was her chance to make merit just like the town-dwellers do every day, and not only that, the monks in front of her house were white Westerners! Strangely, the roles were reversed on this occasion: Instead of seeing the Farangs merely as wealthy tourists, a potential source of income for her, she was in a position to provide them with a meal to sustain their physical existence for a day. That gave her a sense of worth and dignity she may never have experienced before in her underprivileged backward life up in these hills. It was the shaven heads, yellow robes and bowls in the hands of these Farangs that made the difference… and the bare feet.

She called out something excitedly towards us in her language, being older she probably never had a chance to learn Thai. Then she made a gesture of putting some food into her mouth, smiled and ran inside her house. After a minute or two, she came out with a pot of hot water and some packets of popular Mama instant noodle soup, sold in the market. We stood there and opened the lids of our bowls. She paused for a moment, not sure how to do this for the first time, and then she simply poured the hot water into our metal bowls. She took a packet of Mama noodles, tore the plastic wrapping open, emptied the bag into the almsbowl, and then threw the plastic inside as well (for good luck?). Hungry monks are grateful for any kind of offering, and we also got some steaming hot rice with a bit of cooked pumpkin from another house. We chanted a blessing in Pali language, and they were no doubt assured that the local deities and spirits will continue to protect them from all dangers. Or were those white men dressed in robes who emerged from the forest unannounced also some kind of ghost? Feeding them should work best in any case…
Bhikkhu Gavesako
Kiṃkusalagavesī anuttaraṃ santivarapadaṃ pariyesamāno... (MN 26)

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yawares
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by yawares »

daverupa wrote:
yawares wrote:
appicchato wrote:The Buddha went barefoot...(I) wouldn't dream of any other way...

Dear "appicchato",
Please give me 1 or 2 stories that the Buddha went barefoot!! :thinking:

Curious mind?
yawares
:anjali:
The Vinaya allows shoes with one lining in them. Any more is a dukkata offense.

The context is Sona Kolivisa, a "delicately nurtured" individual, being allowed the use of one-lining shoes, but Sona said that if it wasn't allowed for everyone, he would not use shoes due to future criticism, but if it was laid down as a rule, then he would not be ashamed.

(Earlier, Sona became one of the arahants, and let his insight known via a discourse, rather than a proclamation. The Buddha said of this, "Thus, monks, do young men of worth make their insight known. The truth is spoken, and the self is not obtruded.")

So it seems no shoes for anyone, prior to this.


Dear Hanzze and Daverupa,
Thank you very much for the stories...now I'm clear/crystal clear.
Truly appreciate,
yawares
:anjali:
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Alobha
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Lost in the woods

Post by Alobha »

I have a little Tudongstory to tell, too.

A few years ago I accompanied two monks and we travelled through the forests at the Czech-Bavarian border. It was the first time that I met Bhikkus in person and needless to say that it was quite a new situation for me. I was quite anxious that I could behave in an unbeneficial way or bring harm to them in any way. There I walked with these incredible focused, well-trained, virtuous disciples of the Buddha. I read a good portion of the patimokkha before, learned what to say when offering fruits, learned how to speak and approach Bhikkhus but I still felt so unprepared and well, unworthy. My friend Sascha, who put me in contact with the Bhikkhus, told me what a rare, what a great and unique opportunity it would be for me to accompany monks on pilgramage and it sure was. How could I deserve something so special ? I did all I could to prove worthy while we were walking, but of course I was still unprepared. My feet were covered with a few nasty blisters after a few days, I found out that I packed my backpack a bit too heavy, and perhaps I slowed them down a bit. What a shame, I was there to support the monks and yet I gave them so many reasons to be irritated and bothered..

On one occasion I cooked some milkrice with cranberries in the morning when we took our break for the daily meal at an open shed that was located at a higher hill. It was some instant-milk powdered milk rice and it did not taste nearly as good as I could do it with a real kitchen and fresh ingredients.
We hid our quite heavy backpacks at a near place in the bushes and walked down the hill to see how the landscape looked there. After we walked down the hill for what felt like more than a kilometre or two, we found a place where to sit and I tried to meditate in a place that was a bit secluded from the hiking trail.

I had no idea how much time had passed when I got up from the meditation. And when I looked around, the monks were gone! Poof! Nowhere to see! How could I loose track of the monks I was supposed to take care of? Oh Damn me! I tought that maybe they just had enough of me! Of course! How could it be different? How could I loose them and not even manage that? Desperate that I might have lost them for good I hastly walked back the path to the hill where we hid our backpacks.
It didn't take long to find the monks as they were just coming down from the hill - carrying not only their, but my backpack between them, too!
What a fool I was, worrying about being lost when in company of disciples of the Buddha. One can't get lost with such trustworthy, marvellous, virtuous and wise company! They just decided to take off a bit of my baggage, by carrying my backpack down for me while I could have some time to meditate in peace. What a kind gesture this was. :smile:

One of the monks gave me the advice at the start of the tour not to beat myself up and you know, while I missed to get this teaching into my heart back then, they already achieved it. They never criticised or blamed or disapproved of me, I did. They were not beating me up, but all they showed was this vivid, lived kindness and compassion, this true understanding of and sympathy for other beings. They were the highly venereable monks and yet they were carrying my luggage. Years have passed since this occasion but it's still an experience that keeps reminding me that there is something as a human being to live up to, something to pursue, to develop, something of immeasurable value in this world.
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Hanzze
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by Hanzze »

Indeed a very special and of cause a blessed journey not many would meet, thanks for sharing this merits.
Much mudita!
Just that! *smile*
...We Buddhists must find the courage to leave our temples and enter the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with suffering. If we listen to Buddha, Christ, or Gandhi, we can do nothing else. The refugee camps, the prisons, the ghettos, and the battlefields will become our temples. We have so much work to do. ... Peace is Possible! Step by Step. - Samtach Preah Maha Ghosananda "Step by Step" http://www.ghosananda.org/bio_book.html

BUT! it is important to become a real Buddhist first. Like Punna did: Punna Sutta Nate sante baram sokham _()_
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gavesako
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by gavesako »

Burmese Alms Rounds
Uposatha Day, First Quarter Moon, October 23, 2012
by Bhikkhu Cintita

Another excerpt from my bio narrative:

When the Buddha returned to visit his princely home after his alms-financed Enlightenment, he continued his alms rounds in the streets of Kapilavastu much to the distress of his aristocratic father. The alms round was for the Buddha a key feature of the monastic life. Even when food was close at hand, the alms round was not to be disregarded. He once criticized one of his disciples, an arahat no less who could meditate for seven days at a stretch without food, for neglecting his daily alms rounds. For the Buddha the alms round was not simply a way to feed the monks and nuns: it had a social role to play in realigning the values of both monastic and lay.

The Pali word for alms round is piṇḍapāta, which means “drop a lump,” rhyming with “heffalump.” and describing the process whereby food accumulates in the alms bowl. The tradition is that monks or nuns leave the monastery, or wherever they are dwelling (most ideally, the root of a tree or a cemetery), either singly or in a group. As a group they typically walk single-file according to seniority, that is, according to ordination date. The robes are arranged formally, covering both shoulders as described above. The monks walk barefooted into a village and then from house to house, not favoring rich nor poor neighborhoods, accepting, but not requesting, what is freely donated, that is, dropped as a lump into one’s bowl.
...

http://bhikkhucintita.wordpress.com/201 ... ms-rounds/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
:popcorn:
Bhikkhu Gavesako
Kiṃkusalagavesī anuttaraṃ santivarapadaṃ pariyesamāno... (MN 26)

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Bhikkhu_Jayasara
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by Bhikkhu_Jayasara »

Ven Gavesako thank you for this wonderful thread. As someone who is working towards renunciation doing a tudong is something that interests me greatly. I am a wanderer and explorer by nature so hearing the stories of wandering monks in the Suttas really connected with me. Then I heard about Ajahn Chah being a wandering monk and decided if i ever become a monk i want to do that. I recently found and read blistered feet, blissful mind.. And that has only made the desire worse :). Testing basic human kindness in America would be quite a journey I bet.
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gavesako
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by gavesako »

Monks have done tudong in America too, especially along the West coast. But it was not as easy as in Europe or in Asia.
Good luck with your aspirations!
Bhikkhu Gavesako
Kiṃkusalagavesī anuttaraṃ santivarapadaṃ pariyesamāno... (MN 26)

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Bhikkhu_Jayasara
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by Bhikkhu_Jayasara »

gavesako wrote:Monks have done tudong in America too, especially along the West coast. But it was not as easy as in Europe or in Asia.
Good luck with your aspirations!

good to hear about this. I think it is important to keep the original traditions alive, same with pindapat in general.

thank you Bhante.
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Bhikkhu Jayasāra -http://www.youtube.com/studentofthepath and https://maggasekha.org/
alan
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by alan »

I like to walk on the beach, and do so every day. It helps clear my mind. But I can't see any reason to go on this overly long walk in bare feet. Seems pointless.
daverupa
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by daverupa »

For those "delicately nurtured" - which probably includes most urbanites - shoes with one lining are allowable. So it must be some sort of dutangha...?
  • "And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting oneself one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation of the four establishments of mindfulness. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself one protects others.

    "And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting others one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, goodwill, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others one protects oneself.

- Sedaka Sutta [SN 47.19]
alan
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by alan »

Pointless self-punishment is not the Buddha's teaching.
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by tiltbillings »

alan wrote:Pointless self-punishment is not the Buddha's teaching.
What are you referring to?
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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gavesako
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Re: Stories of tudong and pindapata

Post by gavesako »

Nice inspiring video slideshow:

The Thai Buddhist Forest Tradition, Thudong: Forest Monks and Hermits of Thailand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCJi3u_KmQQ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Bhikkhu Gavesako
Kiṃkusalagavesī anuttaraṃ santivarapadaṃ pariyesamāno... (MN 26)

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