Ayya Vimala, Ayya Viveka, Ayya Kathrin and Anagarika Sabbamitta will go on Tudong from 1st-14th May 2017 in Belgium/Germany. We will start on 1st May in Sankt Wendel in Saarland, Germany and walk towards the site of the new Tilorien monastery in Belgium.
‘Tudong’ is the Thai form of dhutanga, meaning literally ‘means of shaking off’, i.e. the practices that emphasise renunciation, and it can refer to the thirteen dhutanga austerities, or to the forest bhikkhus who live observing all or some of these and other renunciate practices, or more narrowly, to the custom of walking for weeks, months, or even years on end with just a bowl containing spare robes and essentials such as a razor, sewing equipment and matches; a water kettle; and a ‘glot’ – a large umbrella with mosquito-net which acts as a tent. Mostly dhutanga walks are undertaken by bhikkhus of the forest monasteries when they are considered stable enough and well grounded in the Vinaya-discipline. You have to learn to live simply to go tudong, and to handle yourself with skill in the face of such difficulties as not finding alms food, disease, and bad weather. Moreover, for a foreigner there are the problems of language and custom, and as a meditator outside the shelter of the teacher, doubts about one’s practice and one’s purity, I could see quite clearly that it would be enormously strengthening to walk through that lot and keep on going, and its flavour and appearance very much fitted those ideals of homelessness and simplicity that had led me to take ordination.
We will travel without money, food or pre-arranged accommodation. So we will collect alms for food and find shelter where we can. Wild camping is not allowed in Germany so there we will have to ask, usually at churches, for accommodation for the night. Usually churches have some kind of community-hall where we can spread our mats out on the floor.
Maybe Bhante @Sujato or Ajahn @Brahmali can say a bit more about this but yes, as I understand it, it is allowed as long as you are no more than 1 km from the nearest house. This has to do with keeping safe. However, for us this is not an option anyway because camping in the forest is not allowed in Germany and no matter what the Vinaya says, we will have to obey local laws.
Actually, we will do better than that. Our Anagarika will have to occasionally check emails because of Ajahn Brahmali’s retreat which we are organizing in June, so she will bring a mobile hotspot and tablet and we will post pictures on Facebook daily as long as we are in Germany (hotspot stops working at the border).
don’t know what your goals may be, if any, in undertaking this apart from practice of asceticism, but i think it can serve as a strategy of raising the Dhamma and the Sangha profile in Europe
Apart from not having a video-recorder, no we don’t plan to make a documentary.
But we will bring brochures to hand out to people and of course we will be there to inform people who have questions. We do this close to the new monastery also as some form of promotion.
That’s exactly how I imagine the spread took place in the days of the early Sangha.
More and more people got blessed with the sight of a bhikkhu or bhikkhuni and that naturally triggered the beautiful question in people’s minds: what kind of teaching make people adopt such lifestyle?.. and then the question lead people into conversations, and those with little dust in their eyes would at least take the Triple Gem as their refuge…
Ahh! The beautiful contagion of the Dhamma, dooming people’s suffering to a beautiful and peaceful end…
Something changed in my plans due to the work that needs to be done for SuttaCentral Next. It has been difficult for me in the last months to find enough time to spend on the coding of the front-end and I cannot see this situation change until the end of June. Therefore, I have decided not to go on the Tudong but to do a coding/meditation retreat for 2 weeks instead.
So I will be off email and D&D also for this time. However, the Tudong will continue with Ayya Viveka, Ayya Kathrin and Anagarika Sabbamitta. Sabbamitta will post frequent updates on Facebook with pictures of the nuns on Tudong as long as they are in Germany. The pictures from their passage through Luxembourg/Belgium will be posted afterwards.
Are they taking requests? Is there any possibility they can post here instead? D&D is as ‘digital social media’ as I get and much as it would be lovely to follow their travels nothing will make me yield to the Facebook Monster.
Well, being suitable respectful as ever I endeavour to be I, too, would not dare to make such a request. I was merely as bold as to make an inquiry about making requests, which itself I hope was taken entirely light-heartedly.
Really, I was just registering the fact that very occasionally those of us who occupy narrow audience-bands have cause to regret the price paid for keeping clear of FB and noting that this is one such occasion for me.
hopefully the address of their FB page will be posted here and then it will be just a matter of periodical checks of the page for updates, this doesn’t require having an account, the ability of commenting isn’t so indispensible
I fully understand your aversion to FB! I never even knew how this page looks like before I opened an account on my name just for the purpose to manage the Samita FB page
However, as Ayya @Vimala mentioned, I am not sure how it works with the D&D app. So far I couldn’t find something called like this in the app store of my tablet which I will bring for the Tudong. I can try, and if it doesn’t work, please, as @LXNDR suggested, just check the FB page from time to time.
And thank you for your interest! This gives a great mental support for this enterprise!!
It is called “Discourse”. It is a standard program that we use for D&D also so you will have to tell it you want D&D and not for instance meta.discourse.org.
D&D is as ‘digital social media’ as I get and much as it would be lovely to follow their travels nothing will make me yield to the Facebook Monster.
