Nidahas

The sound of the gong to end the group sit­ting at 2pm went on longer than usual. As it countin­ued, the retreatants in the med­i­ta­tion hall started com­ing out, and word spread that ‘Karanam­potha’, the tall grassy hill in a remote cor­ner of the monastery, was on fire. A scram­ble for broom­sticks(!) ensued, and the rick­ety old 4WD turned up with the Abbot and a few monks. It picked up the retreatants, almost 30 of them hang­ing on for dear life, and sped along the jeep trail.

The smoke was vis­i­ble in the dis­tance as the jeep turned from the trail on to the fire­break, and con­tin­ued the climb towards the top. It reached the end of jeep-able track, and the broom­stick brigade sprang in to action.

The fire had started from the other side of the hill, which is next to the vil­lage, and spread to the side of the monastery. When the monks reached the scene, the vil­lagers were already present. They were clear­ing the ill-maintained fire­break. This being the rainy sea­son, no one had expected a bush­fire. Appar­ently a boy from the vil­lage had set it off inad­ver­tently while prepar­ing the fam­ily hena.

A coun­ter­fire was set off from the fire­break towards the fast approach­ing bush­fire. Due to the strong winds, some­times the safe side also started catch­ing fire, but heavy thrash­ing from the broom­sticks and leafy branches pre­vented it from spreading.

It took a lot of work to set off coun­ter­fires sys­tem­at­i­cally to cover all the prongs of the bush­fire, while keep­ing them under control.

After one and a half hours of fight­ing, the fire reached nib­bāna. Some monks sus­tained minor burns, and some req­ui­sites had to be sacrificed.

The tall grass that cover the moun­tain were easy objects of upādāna for the fire. It had burnt through most of the hill before let­ting go.

Now there comes a time, friends, when the exter­nal fire prop­erty is pro­voked and con­sumes vil­lage, town, city, dis­trict, & coun­try; and then, com­ing to the edge of a green dis­trict, the edge of a road, the edge of a rocky dis­trict, to the water’s edge, or to a lush, well-watered area, goes out from lack of sus­te­nance. [MN 28]

So when even in the exter­nal fire prop­erty — so vast — incon­stancy will be dis­cerned, destruc­tibil­ity will be dis­cerned, a ten­dency to decay will be dis­cerned, change­abil­ity will be dis­cerned, then what in this short-lasting body, sus­tained by cling­ing, is ‘I’ or ‘mine’ or ‘what I am’? It has here only a ‘no.’ [ibid.]

Usu­ally the grass, grow­ing 6–7 feet tall, is a for­mi­da­ble enough bar­rier to pre­vent any­one from reach­ing the top of this hill. But now that the fire had removed that obsta­cle, the monks started climb­ing up.

The view from the top was breath­tak­ing. On the oppo­site side of the hill, the Knuck­les range was vis­i­ble in the distance.

And the val­ley below was bask­ing in the rays of the evening sun.

Hav­ing done their task and laid down the bur­den, the group stayed at the top till sunset.

Photo cred­its: Ven. Saraṇasīla of Ukraine who did a great job of doc­u­ment­ing the inci­dent. Images are released under a CC-BY-SA license.

Fires at Karanam­potha due to hena prepa­ra­tions are quite com­mon, espe­cially dur­ing the dry season.