Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c25.29

c25.29

**Monks seeking solitude of forests for meditation.** Up to now we have been considering the system under which the monks live together in a state of mutual dependence and relationship for purposes of their self-culture. But the Quest of the Ideal which leads these monks out of home into homelessness would not make some of them accept the half-way house of a monastery, but seek the solitude of the forest for a life of meditation. "Many of the Order, unfitted for taking part, even as teachers, in the battle of life, spent all their days in seclusion, being known as forester Bhikkhus. Others sought the silence of the upland woods and caves to complete the utter mastery of detachment, requisite to usher in the cool and peace of Nibbāna, or to recruit from wearing mission work" [Mrs. Rhys Davids, *Buddhism*, p. 204]. It was, however, the elderly and maturer Bhikkhus who were eligible for the forester's life, as has been already stated. The Buddha himself would sometimes seek in solitude a respite from the worries caused by "litigious, contentious, quarrelsome, and disputatious Bhikkhus" and like the tusker would "take delight in dwelling alone in the forest" [*Mahāv.*, x, 4, 7]. We read of the Venerable Bhaddiya living "in the forest, at the foot of a tree, in solitude, but without fear or anxiety, with mind as peaceful as an antelope's" [*Chullav.*, vii, 1, 6]. Another monk, Kassapagotta, lived alone at Vāsabha-gāma in Kāsī, where he was visited by some Bhikkhus whom he entertained as guests on proceeds of his begging for several days till their travel-weariness was over [*Mahāv.*, ix, 1]. We are also told of another monk keeping Vassa alone, receiving robes and dividing them among incoming monks not exceeding four in number [ib., viii, 24]. Life in solitude was sustained by a love of it for its own sake which utters itself significantly in Buddhist literature. This point has been well brought out by Mrs. Rhys Davids [*Buddhism*, pp. 205 f.]. "It is pleasant to see how largely the joy of life in the wild (generally supposed to be a phase of modern consciousness only) gets blended with the spiritual aspirations. We see the solitary as a lover of the heights—were they not 'clean and pure', 'lonely and free from crowds', 'a hiding place and type of the lofty thoughts of great minds? [*Mil. Pan.*, ii, p. 353: 'On the Alpine qualities of a Bhikkhu']. We see him 'become in heart a wild creature', filled with the forest sense of things (*arañña-saññin*), bathing in mountain tarn, listening in his cave to the music of the rains and to the crash of the storm, joying in the beauty of crag and cloud, of verdure and blossom, of bird-life and the cries of forest-creatures." We may sample this early Wordsworthian note in some typical passages cited by Mrs. Rhys Davids from the *Psalms of the Brothers and Sisters*. "To him for whom nothing is left, exceeding good it is that he do live in woods alone . . . to lead the forest-life the Buddha praised . . . I'll seek the jungle that I love, the haunt of elephants . . . lone and unmated in the lovely woods." Again: under the lowering sky and thundering clouds "the brother sits within the hollow of the hills alone, rapt in thought's ecstasy—no higher bliss is given to men than this". Dhammapāla's commentary on these poems gives biographical details of each Brother's life. One Thera who loved the woods was, we learn, known as Woodland (Vana)-Vachchha. Of another Thera, Usabha, we read: "Finishing his novitiate he went to study in the forests of Kosala at the foot of the mountains. Noticing the loveliness of the woods and the mountains, he said: 'These trees and creepers are unconscious, yet by the season's fulfilment have they won growth. Why should not I, who have also obtained a suitable season, win growth in the things that are good?'"