99998. Final Steps: Walkabout and Pabbajjaa
 

Beings go about their games in a way that both transcends _and_ alienates the human body from the surrounding nature.

Thus, when a Being loses its compulsion to play games, it seems natural that the body it grabbed to satisfy this compulsion is given back to nature.

This does not mean to dump it someplace but to reunite it with its orginal environment, thus restoring the 'natural' game environment of the _body_.

One example of playing out the body in its original game environment has been practiced since thousands of years by the Australian aborigines. Their spiritual quest, too, comprises the unconditional march back into nature, the 'walkabout'.

To 'modern man', this approach seems strange: he is so far alienated from the body's game scenario that he is viewing the 'normal' life style of aborigines as that
of 'savages' who live already in nature, void of 'technology'.

Gotamo considered it impossible to end playing games at large without the body's return to nature: the last stage of liberation, if it is to happen in the current body the
Being, seemed only possible to him in the natural habitat of the body itself: in nature.

Going back to nature involves giving up the context of human 'homes', 'living outside (human) homes' - pabbajjaa in Pali, a direct parallel to the Australian 'walkabout'.

There is a significant difference between walkabout and pabbajjaa, however: the liberated Being does not engage in the prototypical hunter/prey game anymore and restricts itself by nourishing the body as a 'gatherer' rather than a 'hunter' who is killing for a living.

This is only feasible if the person gives up 'everything' that is commonly associated with civilization: the name it had been given at birth, all possession except a basic
dress and all agreements with any groups of any kind that the person ever entered in the course of its lifetimes.

Such a person (quote) "lives amongst the lions at the hillsides, under the open sky, led by noone, the entire planet is his home".

Again, this radical approach is a prerequisite only and only for the very last stage of liberation: the realization of 'nirvaana' while the human body is still alive and
kicking.

A body, living in 'harmony' with nature, will literally synchronize its attitude or 'tone level' with that of nature, a frequency that is _considerably_ higher than that of
the bodies of 'modern' man.

All this is quite difficult, if not impossible, in our times. A person like this would likely to be arrested and put into an asylum.  Even if there would be nation
that would allow such an 'a-social' behavior, the clima of the land must be right, too, and its inhabitants must be inclined to support the liberating person, or 'bhikkhu' ('wandering monk') as he was called by Gotamo, if there is no sufficient food readily available from Earth.

An exception was therefore made during the rainy season at which the 'bhikkhu' was allowed to interrupt the ultimate quest for liberation by staying under roofs.

Another exception was that the 'bhikkhu' was allowed to accept food from 'normal' people living in households.

A further exception was made to review progress and to answer questions: the assembly ('sa.ngha') of Gotamo's 'bhikkhus' interrupted their voluntary (spiritual) solitude
and gathered twice per month for this purpose.

The human body itself is _never_ in solitude except in a confined 'room', whether this is a prison cell or a suite in a 'modern' appartment building.

The 'grown' (-'cultivated') adult does not allow the body to be happy in the elements of nature - only a child is sometimes allowed to let the body come up on the scale of attitudes, for example by splashing in the water of a pool or the ocean.

The ultimate liberation of a Being thus ends in releasing the body as well and on _all_ levels it now becomes true:

  "Total Happiness has been achieved through happiness!"

                        Copyleft © 1998 by Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.