Ch. 9 - A Taste of Stillness from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

ON THE MORNING OF the tenth day I interrupted my return to the hut following my breakfast to catch my breath on a high flat rock that afforded a view of the entire valley beneath the monastery. The dawn haze had burned off, revealing the neighboring valley, whose sharply edged checkerboard fields stood out in contrast to the surrounding jungle. Perhaps I romanticized by calling this place “jungle” when, in fact, farmland was everywhere. But there is so much unclaimed land in Ceylon that nowhere in the countryside are you so far from the uncultivated forests that you’d not have second thoughts about wandering off in broad daylight, much less in the dark. No cobras here, though, the monks told me. The mongooses made sure of that. One of them was staring at me from a rock higher up the path. His elongated, rodentlike body was covered with prickly fur that made him look as though he’d been dunked in motor oil. His snoutish face was kind of cute, though, and I’d often seen the monks feeding these animals in the courtyard, as a good turn, no doubt, for the animal’s appetite for poisonous snakes. ...

by Eric Lerner

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