Suffering and compassion

Compassion. At least once a day someone says the heart of Buddhism is compassion. Today one of the Venerables – that’s the title of the women in black robes – said instead of getting angry in our minds about the Discipline Master’s actions and barked commands, we should recognize the difficulty of what she’s doing and the selfless compassion that’s involved.

Okay…

My first reaction to that statement was relief: if she felt the need to address angry reactions to what was going on, then at least I had company. I mean, one of my feet was developing a deep blood blister where the cotton shoes were rubbing, my back and thighs were coming up with odd twinges from kneeling and standing motionless for long periods on marble floors, it was over a hundred degrees at midday, and people were yelling at us because we couldn't flawlessly follow dozens of rules we'd just heard for the first time 48 hours ago - in Mandarin. I was feeling especially mortified by my glaring imperfection, me, Miss Teacher's Pet Rule-Follower, unable to kneel when I was supposed to kneel, bow when I was supposed to bow, stand when I was supposed to stand.

That morning, when I’d blown it yet again, and was looking frantically through the chant book, I suddenly noticed the commands to kneel, bow and stand, in some cases, were actually in the chanted words themselves. So most of the people knew when to kneel, bow, and stand because it was actually in the words they were saying, the same words I was chanting but couldn't understand. I started to cry. Right there, in the front row, in my gray and brown robes. I felt like I was six. Unfair! It’s all unfair!

I sat in the air conditioned auditorium afterwards. A nun was speaking Chinese into the microphone up front when the teacher from Torrance passed me a note. It said: "If you would be interested in similar experiences without the frustrations, look into the Shambala Center in Eagle Rock – very American - or anywhere that’s oriented towards laity.”

I scribbled "thank you" on the note and gave it back to her. I was grateful for the kindness of this stranger I’d been wordlessly muddling along with for four days. But I had another reaction as well: Sure, I am pushed to my limits by all this but I don’t think I want diluted Buddhism, one made palatable for my American idiosyncrasies. Certainly not for this project because that would be off-point but I'm not sure I'd want that anyway. First, it’s unfair to think I was learning how to become just another practicing Buddhist when this retreat's very title, "Short-term Monastic Retreat," told me otherwise. I'm quite certain the rigors of clergy training in any faith would put me into the same state, no matter what the religion. But if the point of Buddhism is, as they said, to reveal the true nature we all have hidden by our greed, anger and ignorance, well, it was plain that this retreat was certainly kicking up a dust storm of my defects.

The Venerable standing in front of us in the auditorium was talking about our attitudes towards this retreat, the challenges we were facing in ourselves because of its rigor, she said that the lack of complicated morning skincare should feel freeing. “You should be happy because no one will be looking at you anyway. No matter how good your skincare products, you cannot use them on your mind.”

Someone laughed. I thought it was in appreciation of the idea. It does make its point in a funny way. But the Venerable barked, “You laugh? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Where is your mind? No one’s going to look out for you. We have this structure, these corrections to help you.”

I was shocked. I felt like I’d fallen into some alternate universe where conventional social niceties were violations and what would be rude disregard was a virtue. It sure felt anything but compassionate to me. If that’s compassion, it’s a pretty muscular definition unlike any I’ve known. I don’t think of stern admonitions demanding to know “where is your mind?” as compassionate. But perhaps I should consider it.

My mind is usually on anything but where I am or what I’m doing. Instead of concentrating on the rituals I'm learning, I'm almost exclusively focused on pleasing those around me, doing it "best" and, therefore paradoxically, doing it worst. I've had jobs where practically my entire concern was over what people thought of me rather than the tasks at hand. Right now, I get in the car to drive the boys to school and I swear the car drives itself. I remember none of the actual driving because I’ve nursed whatever worry I have to some kind of action plan for the day. And it's never occurred to me that this might be a problem. I love the world that swirls in my head – most of the time – and I think I even use it to protect myself.

I remember when I first realized that I didn’t have to actually be in the car with my squabbling family, that I could look out the window and conduct thought experiments in my head – If I can see that man walking his dog on the street, can he see me? Will any boy ever want to kiss me? If I broke my leg like Helen Pilling, would as many people want to sign my cast? – and, whatever imperfections I decided my family members had, would fade. I could no longer see them or even hear them.

A lot of the time, I am still that little kid worried about what the world thinks of me. My head is crammed full of it.

On the other hand, the very idea to do what I’m doing came from one of those mind-wandering drives. About a year before 9/11, I’d gotten tired of feeling bewildered when I listened to news reports of people of faith in disagreement or at war with each other over matters of faith so I decided to take two freshman survey courses at the local state university: Intro to the Bible and Intro to World Religions. On my final drive home from the classes, I felt a deep relief that at least I now understood some of the basics of what people believed, of what was actually written in the Bible. But, as my car left one freeway for another, I began to think, "I still have no idea what it feels like to actually practice any religion. What would happen if….?” And this project is what came of that mind ramble. I’m not so sure I want to give those rambles up. Or if I should even try, what the purpose might be, and what any of this has to do with religion.

But the central purpose of Buddhism is to alleviate suffering and there is no doubt that these nuns think suffering comes from our thinking, from an out of control mind. And, believe me, I could see and feel my mind run riot almost moment by moment in the four days of not talking and just doing.

On the retreat schedule, every morning after breakfast, we had a walking meditation. Sometimes it was a normal deliberate walk, other times it was as slow as our breathing. We were supposed to be utterly conscious of our bodies as the weight shifts from one foot to another. We were always in a line, always behind the same person.

This morning, Ven Miao Hsi was busy so we had had a new leader, an earnest young nun who was concerned that we looked so nervous. Well, yeah, we were nervous. There seemed to be so many ways to go wrong, so many ways to be "unmindful." She seemed particularly concerned about my furrowed brow. "You seem worried. I can tell by the lines on your face."

I thought: well, I suppose there's botox for that. Unfortunately, I could ever pay someone to inject paralytic toxin into my face so, instead, I choose to think of the deep lines around my mouth as my "smile" lines and the twin vertical lines over my nose as my "thought plumes." On my sane days, I'm even rather proud of those. But the collision of all of these present moment-by-moment rules with my people-pleasing performance anxiety and churning storytelling brain was eye-opening. I hadn’t considered the extent to which I fundamentally operate from “I think, therefore I am.”

If thinking is the source of suffering, (which it’s pretty hard to argue it isn’t) I think I embrace suffering. In fact, I might go even one step further: I can’t think of a lesson I’ve learned in my life that was worth anything that I learned without suffering. I mean, would I be on this retreat if I didn't believe in the value of suffering?

Well, maybe there is one.

When I gave birth to my sons, I learned I was capable of sustained, unconditional love. I suppose some might argue there was suffering involved, physical and structural life changes, but I can’t call any of it that. Although sitting here right now in front of this keyboard, I can go into the future, the future when, if I’ve done the job right, my boys will leave without a thought for their independent lives and, yes, I will suffer then. I can weep right now, thinking about it.

Is this evidence of the damage thought can do? Is this an example of how not being where you are, where your body is at this moment, can saddle life with unnecessary pain, wiping out present joy?

“Anyone can be a Buddha,” the shorn nun said. “All sentient beings are equal. No one is more likely than anyone else.” We just have to come to know that, to be able to see this “precious pearl” we all have hiding under the muck of our greed, anger and ignorance. And this “compassionate” stress on being present in the here and now is meant to help us see everything that we contribute to our own muck.

One of the Venerables asked if we thought our life was tough, if we thought this retreat was tough. “Easy or tough, depends on your mind. Happiness and suffering all come and go. Nothing is permanent.”

Not even this retreat.

11 July 2007

Collision

Silence is a powerful force. It changes your brain.

The retreat had been, by no means, a meditation retreat (we'd only done that twice for less than an hour each time) and we'd sat through a couple of lectures a day but, aside from two group meetings, none of us were supposed to talk. Ever. Not in our rooms, certainly not at meals, not even on bathroom breaks or while we worked together in the afternoons on our assigned chores. (Our group mopped marble, vacuumed the long red indoor/outdoor carpet; cleaned the office windows, sills and ledges.)

So, when our gray-suited line opened the dining room door to leave the silent hall and found ourselves in a parted sea of regular folks - dads in plaid shirts, moms holding their small children back, a cacophonous school group eager to get in to eat, their voices caroming from marble floor to cement ceiling and back, all curious to get a gander at us as we streamed by without looking at them -- the sound, the energy was overwhelming.

Just months before I'd been in one of those school groups with Matt's class. It's how I knew about Hsi Lai. I'd been one of those unconsciously noisy people, unaware how I was affecting others. None of them were especially noisy by American standards, by my normal standards, yet there I was, in effect, unable to stand my own noise.

Help! I'm back in elementary school!

It's a good thing I'm typing this or you'd never be able to read it, my handwriting is that bad. I was the only one I knew of who Miss Holmes kicked back down to pencil after graduating to pen in fifth grade. I don't remember if I was ever allowed to write with pen for the rest of the year. So, when we were told to go to the conference room on top of the other wing of the Hsi Lai Temple, that we were going to spend the next hour "copying the Heart Sutra," I confess I panicked.


The conference hall had long U-shaped conference tables that could seat dozens of people. At each place around the table was a beige booklet and what looked like a black brush but was actually an automatic brush, kind of like a pen except with a brush instead of a roller ball or ballpoint. We could copy the Heart Sutra in Chinese or in English. Guess what I chose.

The Heart Sutra is considered the best. most condensed summation of Buddhist thought. It's hard to overstate its importance. It's venerated in all branches of Buddhism. Its power comes not just from the meaning of its words but the very vibration of saying it aloud. Some branches say that The Heart Sutra is enlightenment. There are many different translations of the Sutra, (this link takes you to one of the versions.) There are longer and shorter versions as well as line-by-line interpretations of it by countless Buddhist monks and scholars.

The practice of sutra copying is yet another exercise in focus, in mindfulness. And there's nothing like making the effort to do something perfectly with breathtakingly imperfect skills. I think heard Miss Holmes, wherever she may be, cackle when she saw me take up that brush and try to flawlessly trace those faint gray letters. And here are the results of almost an hour of work.

Yes, the part in black was all I got done.

Avalokitesvara was profoundly absorbed in prajna-paramita; I, on the other hand, was profoundly absorbed in trying to stay on the lines.

I think Buddhists might say there's no difference. Miss Holmes would beg to differ.

My new name?

When you become a Buddhist monk or nun, you get a new name. Mine was "Ben Ri." For the rest of the Hsi Lai Eight Precept retreat, that was what I was called and how I had to sign my name. Our entire group was "Ben" something. When they gave me my new name tag, I decided that, when I got a chance to talk, I was going to ask Venerable Miao Hsi how to pronounce it and what, if anything, Ben Ri meant.

This idea of getting a new name... I guess that happens in a number of different religions. At least some Catholic nuns change their names when they become nuns but I think they get to choose their own. I'm not sure how I feel about this idea of a new name, of leaving the one I was born with behind.

Before I got married, I never felt all that strongly one way or the other about the whole name change thing, perhaps because I really only ever use my first name anyway. It's unusual enough, it usually doesn't require a last name to separate this Marley out from all the rest. So, I figured that, if I got married and if I liked my future husband's last name better than mine, I'd change it. If I didn't, I wouldn't. But, when Kevin and I decided to get married and it turned out that I actually did like his last name, I found I just couldn't do it. I'd been "me" too long. It felt weird to change my name, the implication seemed too great, like I was going to have to give up my very identity just because I'd decided I could spend the rest of my life with this guy and I didn't think that's what being married meant, giving up my separate identity. I thought it was more like deciding to go down the same path together.

Now, this may explain some of why we had a pretty rocky time of it our first decade together. But, just a few months ago, as a twentieth anniversary present, I told Kevin that I was finally -- and officially -- going to take his last name. He burst into tears. He'd been pretty cool about it when I'd decided not to back in 1987 so I was shocked it meant so much to him. I can't finish all the paperwork to make the name change official until the end of the summer but I put a ribbon around the initial social security forms and gave them to him as my present. Just in terms of reaction, it may be one of the best presents I've ever given.

I wonder what it'll feel like, how much it'll matter, that my name will be new, different. I mean, I even have to get used to a new signature when my pen seems to write the name I was born with almost automatically. I guess I'd better start practicing...

But I'm not writing about marriage...although, perhaps, the problem I had letting go of my old identity and the effect of that unwillingness is exactly why ordination comes with a new name. I guess I have a pretty strong notion of who "Marley" is and what it means to be me. I always assumed that that was a good thing, something to work for. And it's important to me, this name: it was my mother's mother's last name. There have been consequences of the choice of this name for me, a story that went with it, a story that I love, that has become mine because my name is Marley. So, when I consider the possibility that I could, if I wanted to, live the rest of my life without that name, I find it completely confusing. There is part of me that's sitting here demanding to know who I might be, then, without that name? Would I be "me?" Should I care that much about something that's the definition of superficial? I mean, my name isn't me, is it?

My Hindu teacher, Swami Sarvadevananda (who also got a new name when he became a swami) refused to talk about his previous name, the name he was given at birth. He'd left that person behind along with his old life, his old concept of himself. Do I want to leave mine behind? Is it even possible?

How much does my name have to do with who I am anyway? Who I really am?

During the time we were supposed to be taking our showers, I went looking for Venerable Miao Hsi. She was answering email at her desk. "Can you tell me how to say my name?"

I cannot even pretend to replicate here how Ven Miao Hsi said to pronounce Ben Ri: it's pronounced nothing like it looks. The "Ben" part is pretty straight forward but"Ri" involves some teeth, mouth, and throat action we don't use in English that I could never quite master.

And how did she choose mine? "We just give out the names at random. From a list. 'Ri' means 'now,' so Ben Ri means: 'beginning' or 'starting now.' "

Beginning Now. Pretty perfect, eh?

10 July 2007

Compassionate Hitting?

In a talk sometime after our "ordination," one of the Venerables told a story about a monk-in-training whose teacher asked him, "Why did you come here?"

"I want training."

The Master shouted, "You think only of yourself!" and beat him with a stick.

The next day the Master asked him again, "Why did you come here?"

The monk-in-training said, "For your training."

The Master hit him with a stick again and said, "Answers can't come from outside! They have to come from you!"

Still the monk-in-training came back a third time. (Stories like this always have a third time, don't they?)

The Master asked, "Why have you come?"

The trainee said, "If you want to beat me, beat me."

And he was enlightened.

I'm not sure this story translates, culturally. I don't know about you but I don't want to learn anything from someone who is hitting me. Call it ego, call it pride, call it resistance....I call it self-preservation. I guess that's the point, that it's that "self" that gets in the way of realization but, I dunno, the idea that hitting can be compassionate just plain makes no sense to me. My parents spanked us. I hated it. It was shaming. It felt like the ultimate exercise of power of the big over the small. I don't remember learning anything from it except secrecy and guile.

At one point the Venerable said we "preceptees" (i.e. temporary monastics-in-training) had it much easier than the real trainees back in Taiwan: they have no place to sleep they can call their own, for example, and the detailed rules are rigidly enforced, sometimes with sticks. A little research turned up the fact that the Rinzai sect of Mahayana Buddhism is known for this. Here's a link to a pretty well-known Zen monk named Brad Warner (author of Hard Core Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up, among others) explaining the source of this practice by talking about the beginning of Rinzai and Master Rinzai, himself.

All I know is, it's hard enough to put up with the fierce scowls from the Discipline Master and the threats of public tongue-lashings; I can't imagine lasting one day if hitting were part of this.

It's a good thing that people keep talking about the ways in which Buddhism changes as it becomes established in a new culture. (*see below for more on this) It's hard to imagine this stick thing surviving in any form of Western or American Buddhism.


Note: Some of these links are in the column over there ======> in the "Stuff to listen to" list but here are a bunch of links where Brad Warner talks about Rinzai Buddhism at the Victoria Zen Center in Victoria BC, Canada:

11/17/09 ...about Linji (Linchi/Master Rinzai)

11/19/09 Introduction to the Record of Rinzai

11/28/09 Introduction to the Record of Rinzai, part 2

(and there are number of other talks on this site: Living Zen)

* Cultural differences in Buddhism
The two main branches of Buddhism are Theravada, which is found primarily in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia, and Mahayana, which is practiced in Japan, Korea, and Tibet. (Both are represented in the United States.) Grossly simplified, Theravada says you should focus on your own salvation; Mahayana says the salvation of others comes first. Theravada is older. Mahayana is more popular.

Tibetan Buddhism, the Buddhism of the Dalai Lama, is quite different from the Chinese Rinzai/Pure Land/Ch'an that's practiced at the Hsi Lai Temple. Because of its distinctive characteristics, Huston Smith refers to Tibetan Buddhism as the "third way." It's a great example of the way in which Buddhism settles down over time in a new culture. Tibetan Buddhism came directly from India but it incorporates some of Tibet's pre-Buddhist deities and has a more mystical tradition. In China, Buddhism interacted with Confucian concepts of social order and so became something quite different from Tibetan Buddhism.

The Heathen gets...ordained?

Ordination day at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple and it’s over 100 degrees.

Even the nuns looked nervous. They’d spent three hours the day before trying to teach us everything we needed to do during the ritual and we’d given them good cause to be nervous.

Along with having no clue that the retreat was conducted exclusively in Mandarin, I didn’t fully understand that we were literally going to be temporarily ordained. The central purpose of the retreat was to give lay people the experience of a monastic life, if only for a week. The idea is that there might be people who long for this kind of commitment who can’t do it in this lifetime because of the commitments they already have to their parents, or spouses, or children. So the central ritual is a temporary ordination and we spent the first full day preparing for it. Part of the preparation was explaining just how serious, sacred, what we were doing was, even if it was only for a handful of days.

In the auditorium before the training and rehearsal, they went through a list of things that would disqualify us from going through the ceremony – which seemed like kind of an awkward time to be going through a list like this. People had rearranged their lives, some had come from all over the country and even Canada to be at this monastic retreat, so none of us were going to want to find out we might not be able to fully participate. I mean, I could give a list a mile long as to why I shouldn’t be allowed to be ordained even temporarily, the most obvious was I knew essentially nothing about Buddhism, but the Discipline Master said no one could go through the ceremony if we were “from another religion” and “intended to return” to that religion. Did that apply to me? Am I from “another religion?” I can’t say I’m Buddhist but does that mean I’m from another religion?

I feel like I’ve spent my life hearing that I don’t belong. My father was raised in a Jewish home but, according to Judaism I’m not Jewish because my mom is not. I think I’m not Jewish because I don’t know a thing about it, not because my mom isn’t, but I guess that just helps make the point. I went to a grade school with an Episcopalian tradition. I wasn’t Episcopalian. I’ve been asked quite often if I’m “born again” without anyone really taking the time to explain, precisely, what that actually means. I’m from a neighborhood and family filled with guys but the school I went to for twelve years was all girls. It gets even more petty: in third grade, my telephone number didn’t begin with CH7 the way everyone else’s did. Sitting in the coat closet before school one morning with Nanny and Wendy, Nina and Helen, I knew that, if my telephone number began with CH7, they would like me better. I just knew it.

So, you bet I was “from another religion” if that actually meant “not Buddhist” and I guess I could say there was a distinct possibility I will return to this nothing from which I came but I had laid everything, everything, out in my application and interview: I told them who I was, what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it. Full disclosure. So, now what? We were about to get our final training to go through this ceremony that would make us actual monks in training for the rest of our time here and, well, should I go through it? Could I?

I found Venerable Miao Hsi sitting alone at her desk during the break before dinner. She assured me I was good to go. As I was. Okay. I was going to become a temporary Buddhist monastic or nun. It was kind of like becoming a judge without even knowing there were three branches of government. But if Miao Hsi didn’t think it was a problem, if she thought I might learn something worth learning from this, I set my own doubts aside and just tried to do what I was told to do.

And what were we taught? Everything. In some ways this was the best part for me in that they started from scratch without assuming anyone knew how to do even the most basic of acts correctly. Like bowing. Finally someone taught me how to do it and, the only way I could draw attention to myself was by not bowing.

First, you bend at the waist, then you reach forward with your left hand to the far corner of your brown cushion then, as you kneel down, you put your right hand down, too. Once your head is touching the cushion, you turn your hands over, unfurl your fingers so that your palm is flat open, ready to receive “the feet of the Buddha.” Then you gently lift them up above your bowed head before standing back up in a smooth, even motion. When you walk into the temple, you do this three times. When you leave the temple, you do this three times. And, at all sorts of points in the ordination service, you do anywhere from one to nine of these sorts of bows.

It was so much easier bowing in a crowd than alone. And being taught how to do it correctly – and when – was great, even if I was usually a beat behind because of the lag in translation. I think if religious institutions everywhere simply posted or handed out a “how to” guide in the back of every pew, “kneel here, sit here, bow here, etc.,” there’d be a lot more people willing to at least check out a new service or two. New people like me are always worried we’re going to be up when everyone is down or down when everyone is up and the fear of being mortified has kept me outside of more than one religious institution. Even Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk, wrote about the trauma of the uninitiated in his autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain.

“Another thing which Catholics do not realize about converts is the tremendous, agonizing embarrassment and self-consciousness which they feel about praying publicly in a Catholic church, The effort it takes to overcome imaginary fears that everyone is looking at you, and that they all think you are crazy or ridiculous, is something that costs a tremendous amount of effort.”

He should know; he was writing about himself long before he became a monk, when he was beginning to think just about becoming a practicing Catholic. And I don’t think this feeling is confined to those wanting to learn about Catholicism. So I was incredibly grateful and relieved that nothing was taken for granted at the Hsi Lai retreat and tried to throw myself into doing whatever I was taught carefully and in synch with the rest of the room.

Monastic robe. They were going to hand them to us in the ceremony and we were going to have to know how to put them on correctly. Not so simple. The robes hang from one shoulder and then close underneath the opposite arm with a small cloth loop around a fabric knob. It’s pretty easy, at least for me, to put the robe on the wrong shoulder or inside out and, when you sit down or kneel or stand up, you can pull the knob out of the loop without knowing it. I cannot tell you how many times someone pointed out that I was walking along, unaware that my robe was flapping in the breeze...until I figured out that I could wrap the loop around the knob twice.

Sitting mats. We were given a sitting mat that was actually beautiful, orange and red geometric shapes, bordered in black. It came already folded like an accordion in four longitudinal pleats with the corners together on one side. We were told to walk with the folded mat draped through our fingers, open edges to one side. I still can’t tell you which but I can tell you that the nuns think which side matters a lot but for a good reason: if you hold it right, you can easily unfurl it in one effortless motion and then drape it on the cushion you kneel on. To make the mat fit on the smaller cushion, you have to make a horizontal fold in the middle of the sitting mat as you lay it down, kind of like a Mad Magazine rear cover. And, like the Mad Magazine cover, when it’s folded right, it makes a picture; in this case a properly folded mat makes the shape of a square cross. When it’s not in use, you either carry it in front of you like this --->>>

…or hang it over one arm, underneath your robes.

The hard part of opening it up is making sure it’s flush with the far edge of the cushion and then neatly draped with that fold, in synch with your neighbors - which is a heck of a lot easier to do if you can figure out when to begin. And getting it elegantly folded back up with the edges open on the correct side and on one arm (where it stays during the service) while politely turned away from the front altar? Hah.

Begging bowls. All Buddhist monastics have one and only one bowl from which they are supposed to eat and drink everything. Different sects vary in how rigidly they treat this practice. During the Hsi Lai ordination ceremony, we were going to be given a ceramic bowl during the formal ritual and required to carry it with us the rest of the week in a bag slung over the shoulder opposite from the brown robe shoulder. We learned how to receive it during the ritual, bow, and then put the bowl into the tight, zippered pouch without dropping it on the marble floor. The bag was orange, round, made out of parachute-like material with a long strap so the bowl end up carried on one hip underneath the robe. All fine, but the straps, which had to lie neat and flat across one shoulder, were wrinkled and hard to smooth down. I often felt the person behind me straightening out my strap and I did the same for the person in front of me.

Oh, yeah, and the ceremony was dozens of pages long with chants and call and response sections in a booklet where everything was in Chinese characters, phonetic syllables, and English translations. The only way I could keep up with the chants was to stick with the phonetics so I rarely got a chance to truly understand what I was chanting. When I asked Miao Hsi about this later, I found out that the meaning doesn’t matter so much as the sound we were making together. It's all about the sound more than the words. It’s funny what a big difference just knowing that makes. I kept getting frustrated that I wasn’t intellectually engaging with the content of the texts and so missing most of what was meaningful but, in fact, had I just let go of my intellect and gone with just what was happening there at that moment, I would have gotten more of what that ritual experience was designed to offer.

There was a lot of kneeling as well as bowing all the way down, sometimes once, sometimes three times, sometimes more and the number of times didn’t always match what the manual said. And there was no question, the small group of us English-only speakers up in the front row were by far the worst in the room of over two hundred “preceptees.” I could feel the shrine full of gray, brown, and black waiting for us so many, many times.

I got stuck most often on getting the sitting mat refolded. It was possible to kind of shake it back into order if you held it right but I rarely got it right. (Until the second to last day, one nun or the other would come by and just grab the mat out of my hands and turn it around so the edges were facing the right way.) And kneeling down and touching your head to the cushion without the ceramic bowl flying around and smashing on the floor was an art in itself. I never broke the bowl – a MAJOR faux pas, I mean, monks are supposed to go without eating if they break their bowl – but mine certainly clattered against the floor and a dining room chair once or twice.

Given all of this, it’s no wonder the nuns seemed particularly on guard when it came time for the actual ordination.

I was so intent on doing what we were supposed to do, when we were supposed to do it, all I felt during the ceremony was panic about messing up, the challenge of standing still for so long on marble floors in the incredible heat and raw, cracking feet, and relief when it was finally over. I was, for the moment, a Buddhist nun. I was, most certainly, an empty suit.


9 July 2007

The outfit

The temporary monastics, all of us!

(The people in the orange and red robes are the real deal)

Hot flashes in monk's robes

...or are they nun’s robes? Things seemed pretty gender neutral here. The women in robes referred to themselves and the men as “monastics,” a word my spell-checker doesn’t like.

Two nights, two mornings into this seven day monastic retreat and I can tell you there are some things about this monastic life that are a lot simpler: you sleep in the tunic and pants you wear all day so you don’t need to choose clothes or even get dressed in the morning – you already are. And you have nothing to do to get ready other than wash your face, brush your teeth, and pull your hair back…if you have any. (Real Buddhist monastics, women included, shave their heads. It symbolizes giving up worldly concerns.) All of this makes getting down to the stone courtyard to stand in motionless lines in front of the scary Discipline Master before 6am almost no problem.

That is, if you aren’t having menopausal hot flashes. During a triple-digit heat wave.

Our room had no air conditioning. And those silver tunic and pants? They had elastic at the wrists and ankles and were nice and polyester-smooth on the inside. So when the raw, searing heat raked up from the sides of my hips, up my neck, behind my ears, drenching my scalp in sweat at least once an hour - all night, all day - I felt like I was sealed in a microwave bag. During the day it was hell because you were not allowed to move at all once you were standing, kneeling or sitting. So I’d suddenly feel myself drip and not be able to do a thing about it. At night, once the lights were out and the three other women in the room seemed to be asleep, I stopped trying to “sleep like a bowl” and tried wet dish towel instead, even going so far as to unbutton one and even sometimes two of the buttons that kept the tunic closed up to my neck. It’s amazing how quickly a few restrictions can make previously insignificant things feel wanton.

In the courtyard at dawn this morning, though, there was a bit of a breeze along with the withering stare of the Discipline Master. It wasn’t just her drill sergeant demeanor that made her so frightening. In that long list of instructions we were given on our first day, we were told to start memorizing six different Buddhist and Hsi lai texts and that we must be ready whenever the Discipline Master asked, to recite any one of them. Recite or kneel in atonement if we couldn't recite on demand. On the stone. For at least ten minutes. (Well, that’s what they said would happen. I never saw anyone made to kneel in such a harsh manner.)

Some tracts were short, some were very long. They were: the Refuge and Transfer of Merits Verse; Humble Table, Wise Fare; the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra; the Great Compassion Dharani; Rebirth in Pure Land Dharani; and a Prayer for Those Entering the Monastery. (I’ll put some of the texts up in a later post.)

It was utterly unclear to me if I could be called on from day one to recite things I couldn’t possibly have memorized. We were encouraged to memorize them in the language in which they were written (there were Chinese characters, phonetic spellings and English translations for each) but I had to draw the line somewhere. And it wasn’t like we had a lot of time to study: we had our shower time and a short thirty-minute break in the middle of the day. Period. If I had a prayer of memorizing anything, it was gonna have to be in English so at least I’d know what I was saying.

Just two days in and I was standing on stone at dawn in rough cloth shoes that were starting to rub my feet raw in the weirdest of places terrified that the black-browed nun was going to demand that I recite something I hadn't memorized yet. All I’d gotten under my belt were the Refuge and the Transfer of Merits Verse:

Refuge

Taking refuge in the Buddha, I wish all sentient beings to understand the highest doctrine and make
the greatest vows;

Taking refuge in the Dharma, I wish that all sentient beings to study deeply the Sutra Pitaka and acquire an ocean of wisdom;

Taking refuge in the Sangha, I wish all sentient beings to lead the congregation in harmony and without obstruction.

Transfer of Merits

May kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity pervade all Dharma realms;

May all people and heavenly beings benefit from our blessings and friendship;

May our ethical practice of Ch'an and Pure Land help us to realize equality and patience;

May we undertake the greatest vows with humility and gratitude.

I found myself wanting to clean up the grammar, to suggest a simpler way to say some of these lines. But I didn’t. I made a decision to jump into this fully so my focus was solely on doing what was asked, hoping that, at some point, I might have a clue about why.



9 July 2007

Learning how to eat

I thought I knew how to eat…

By taking the short end of the stick, you can cultivate virtue.
By putting yourself in another’s shoes, you can develop compassion.
By accepting things as they are, you can be carefree.
By enjoying without attachment, you can always be happy.

Venerable Master Hsing Yun
Humble Table, Wise Fare: Living the Dharma

I was looking forward to dinner. I was hungry.

Our suite of six, led by Ven Miao Hsi, walked in a line arrranged by height down the hill, across the courtyard and into the dining hall. Wherever we walked all week long, we always walked in that line, facing the same back.

Dinner turned out to be a lesson in how to eat for the week, the rules.

In the dining hall, rows of narrow metal tables topped with clear vinyl faced a center aisle where Venerable Hui Sheng, the Director of Social Education at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple, sat on a higher platform to eat. There was so little space between the tables, so little space between the chairs, it wasn’t easy to sit down especially when we were supposed to do so in utter silence. As in no sound at all. No sound when you pulled the metal chair out from under the metal–legged tables, no sound when you slipped your body between two chairs while a couple of hundred others were doing the same, no sound when you pulled your metal chair back under the table - across the linoleum right next to those metal table legs - while sitting on it. And, once you were as close to the table as possible, you had to sit upright, never leaning on the chairback, and still. Utterly motionless. Looking at nothing.

I am not a quiet person.

I am not a motionless person.

I love looking at other people. Love it.

Once we were all in place, Venerable Hui Sheng began our first meal together by explaining Buddhist etiquette, about the reasons for all of the rules. He talked about the importance of mindfulness in all we did, about not disturbing the mindfulness of another, especially another monastic. That was, afterall, what we all were about to become for eight days, Buddhist monks and nuns.

“Now imagine what this hall would sound like if each of you made even a little bit of noise. There are so many people here, it would be very noisy indeed.” So he taught us how to eat so we would disturb no one.

We had two small plastic bowls, a small plastic plate, and metal chopsticks lying right in front of us on a paper napkin. He pointed out that, if we simply picked up the metal chopsticks they would clang together and make noise. To avoid that, we were to hold down the eating end of the chopsticks with two fingers of our left hand while putting the first two fingers of our right hand on the each of the ends of the chopsticks, lifting them up and apart from the other before fully grabbing onto them with our right hand.

Next came the bowls and the plate. During the lengthy prayer we chanted after sitting down, the left bowl was filled usually with soup, the right bowl was usually filled with rice and the plate with an assortment of vegetables and soy-based protein.

Once the chopsticks were in hand, we were to take one side of the left bowl with our left hand and the other side of it with our chopsticks – metal chopsticks against hard plastic – and move the bowl to our right side, closer to us. Then we were supposed to take the bowl of rice on the right, moving it across to our left side.

We then were supposed to pick up our bowl of white rice with our left hand, fingers underneath the bottom, and lift one bite of plain white rice to our mouths. “Don’t dip your head to the bowl or look around. Chew carefully. Taste the rice.” We were to do this two more times before eating anything else at our place. Venerable Hui Sheng told us to eat from the rice bowl, putting whatever else we wanted to eat first into it. There was an elaborate system of communicating if you wanted more of anything as we weren’t allowed to speak or even to have eye contact with the people serving us. Drinking water wasn’t poured until you put one of the food bowls back, empty, near the far edge of the table, signalling that you were ready for it to be filled with water.

No matter what, at the end of the meal our bowls had to be clean. For those of us with no better than B+ chopsticks skills, doing all this without making any noise was pretty near impossible. Our clean bowls were supposed to be silently stacked and neatly lined up with everything else, along the far edge of the table when we were finished. We were then to sit erect, hands in our laps, looking straight ahead at nothing, until we were told the meal was over.

Eating was just plain scary. Every bite, every gesture, became a potential attention-grabbing embarrassment. That we were each responsible for the serenity of every other person in that room seemed to make beans more slippery and bowls of soup more sloshy. Far from being mindful in the sense of methodical and serene, my mind was a battleground of fear, confusion, and desire to excel (read: to please). I wanted to be the best but feared I’d be the worst. If attachment to ego is a cause of suffering, my uncertain eating skills put me deep into it.

Even worse, there was no hiding, no space to make a mistake because they’d put us English-speakers right up front. When I first saw where they put us, I was happy; I like to be able to see what’s going on, up close and in detail. But, not only wasn’t I supposed to be doing that, it also meant that they, too, could see me, up close and in detail. I guess it was so they could easily give us the extra help we were clearly going to need but we were so close to the monk presiding over the large room, every mistake felt huge. And it wasn’t just my imagination. Our mistakes were noticed and, on occasion commented on. “It is important not to make scraping noises with your chopsticks when you clean out your bowl.” “You must ask yourself why you want to eat some food and not eat other food. It is practice to take what is offered.” “Please do not look around. What is there to look at?”

What was there to look at? What wasn’t there to look at? Everything was new. Everything was something I felt I needed to see. Plus I look at people when they talk to me. I could hear my mother’s voice saying, “Marley, look at me when I talk to you! It’s just plain rude not to.” My mom’s first assessment of someone I’d bring home was often, “I like him. He looks you right in the eye when he’s talking to you.” But there, in that room, in that situation, my need to look was even more extreme: how would I know what to do and when if I couldn’t look at everyone else? For goodness sake I couldn’t understand Mandarin and had to wait for the translation of directions that were often issued as immediate commands. It just seemed plain logical to bolster the lagging information with visual cues. Logical, but wrong.

Facing us, right across the aisle, were all of the men with their newly shaved heads. If I’d been able to look at them I would have relied on what they were doing when I wasn’t sure. I would also have tried to figure out who they each were and why they were there. Without conversation or real information except what my eyes could see, I would have filled my empty mind with stories spun from the slightest shreds of visual information, fantasies about who they were and what their lives outside the retreat were like. One was only fourteen years old. I’d have followed his progress all week long had I been allowed to look.Was he having a rough time? Was the guy next to him helping him or did he feel burdened by feeling responsible for someone so young? Maybe the boy was his younger brother. Did they look like they could be brothers? I could have wasted a lot of the retreat in these irrelevancies, none of which had the slightest chance of being true, and all of which would have blocked what the retreat was meant to do, make us collide with ourselves, with the clouds in our minds.

The cost? I would have lost the awareness of what was happening to me – something I do a lot. And I wouldn’t have been able to watch myself panic and rebel; to recognize my dependence on the distraction of others, the way I use them to avoid myself; or to notice, for the first time in my life, that white rice actually has a taste.


7 July 2007

Monastic retreat: arriving

The truths of Buddhism are living truths and they cannot be handed to us by anyone. They must be discovered and experiences by each and every one of us.

Master Hsing Yun
Buddhism, Pure and Simple

It was the kind of summer day that burns out power grids when I walked through the entrance shrine with its five enlightened beings and back out into the sunny courtyard of the Hsi Lai ("shee lai") Temple and monastery in Hacienda Heights for the Eight Precept Retreat, eight days, seven nights. We were were supposed to bring nothing but a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, some underwear, white socks, and a sleeping bag. The form also said we’d need to bring, or buy from the temple, brown lo hans which are cloth, semi-open shoes. Nothing else was allowed.

So, with a small knapsack and sleeping bag in hand, I followed signs around the central courtyard and up the carpeted marble stairs to the registration room where I got a name badge with both English and Chinese characters on it. I was also given a thick manila envelope filled with a few booklets, a pen, a pad of paper, and a schedule for the week. Every moment from 5:20 in the morning until 10:20 at night was accounted for. Good, I thought, at least I won’t have the problem I’d had in Olema where, aside from making my meals, there was nothing running interference between me and my so-called “monkey mind.” In Olema, I’d felt like I was constantly policing a band of small children in my head.

I went to another table where I was given the clothes I was to wear for the rest of the week: two knee-length, slate gray tunics with matching pants that looked like raw silk but were made out of a heavy, manmade material. A robed nun put a folded dark brown cloth in a plastic bag on top of the rest. Then a woman behind a table directed me to still another table where a nun asked if I wanted to make a donation for food. They’d only asked for eighty dollars for the full seven nights of room and board so I gave sixty more. It didn’t feel like quite enough but I’d emptied my pockets before I got out of the car so it was all I had. I was then sent to still another table in the back for a translation device.

Yes, a translation device. A United Nations-like earpiece wired to a receiver I could clip onto a belt – if the gray outfit had a belt.

I hadn’t really focused on the part of the application where they asked what language we spoke. And I admit I ignored the moment in the interview where the cheerful nun had said, almost in passing, “You know you might not understand everything – we do a pretty good job of translating but still there may be some things you’ll miss. Don’t get upset. Just go inside (yourself). Notice what it brings up in you.”

She really meant it: the entire retreat was going to be in Chinese. Mandarin, to be specific.

Of the 207 or so people who came to the retreat, no more than a couple dozen of us spoke English. I turned out to be one of perhaps ten non-Asian people there. That meant I had to learn how to use and wear one of that translation device every waking moment and figure out how to keep it in my uniform’s pockets, battery functional, wire to my ear, while learning how to bow, kneel, take on and off various robes and other ceremonial items and take it on and off to go into the bathroom, all without accidentally dumping it or the earpiece on the ground. It also meant that someone from the temple had to be translating absolutely everything that was said from 5:20am when we got up until we went to our rooms around ten each night. Just think of the logistics and effort that required from the temple staff…kind of amazing.

Once my arms were full with papers and stacks of clothing and devices and my knapsack and sleeping bag, I followed a nun up a steep hill behind the monastery along with a young blue-haired girl who was wearing the most amazing amount of make-up. It was quite a contrast walking behind these two: the compact, shorn, Buddhist nun wearing heavy robes in the desperate heat followed by this brightly colored, barely-dressed girl wearing nothing more than a magenta bra under a cobalt blue sun dress as she struggled up the hill in her platform sandals.

Oh, and did I mention I was in the midst of the worst menopausal hot flashes of my life? Wave after wave of raw burning rose up from my ribs, tearing up over the sides of my neck and face with a heat no amount of sweat could cool. One swept over me as we topped the hill and walked into a building that said “Buddha's Light Publishing.”

One by one, the six other women meant to share the one bathroom flanked by two small rooms arrived. Other than the minimal conversation required to sort out which two drawers were whose, and an exchange of names, there were no real introductions. We were not supposed to talk in our rooms or, really, anywhere, for the full eight days and seven nights except for a couple of special sessions mid-week. So, with my roommates, I had little to go on but external appearances. All I knew was the bed next to mine was assigned to a white, middle-aged woman with fairly long semi-dyed blond hair who was an active Buddhist from Toronto. When she asked the nun a question, she called her “Sifu ” which I found out later meant "Teacher." The bed on the other side of her was taken by a heavy-set Indian woman with glasses who marched into the room and chose her two drawers before anyone had a chance to think about it. Perpendicular to us, was the final bed in my room which was taken by a tall, middle-aged Chinese-American woman who was our group leader. A woman from Miami and a teacher from Torrance shared the other room with Blue.

The nun took Blue Girl’s and my remaining valuables - cell phones, car keys, any jewelry – and sealed them carefully in separate envelops for safekeeping. I finally got a close look at the nun’s name tag: Venerable Miao Hsi. When she wasn’t our mother duck, she ran Buddha's Light Publishing. And, we learned later, she’s fully ordained like all the nuns in this brand of Buddhism. There’s no difference between the monks and nuns in terms of the rituals they can perform.

Once we were all there, Venerable Miao Hsi ran through the rules for the week in a kind but clipped manner: “Put your tooth brush, tooth paste, soap, cup and shampoo in this basin.” she said, holding a round plastic bowl. “Everything else you brought, including any make-up, any clothes other than the underwear you need, put those away. Your second set of clothes and the robe,” she held up one of the brown folded cloths wrapped in plastic, “should be carefully folded and on the shelf whenever you aren’t wearing it. And you won’t be wearing the robe until tomorrow night.” She then moved to the side of the bed I’d been assigned to demonstrate. “When you get up in the morning, here’s how you leave your bed: you take your blanket or sleeping bag and fold it first lengthwise in three and then you fold it again: one end into the center and then the other end on top to make a perfect square. Everything’s in threes. It should then be placed with the pillow on top at the head of your bed and look very neat.”

We then awkwardly followed her into the small hall outside the bathroom. A large clothes drying rack stood in one corner. “Your towel must be folded on this rack in the same order as your beds. Number one (that was me) goes here,” she said, placing her hand on a rung, “Followed by two, three, four. The other room, you go down here. When you fold your towels, the edges must be together, neat. The open side, the side with the edges, faces to the left, just like this. Every towel the same.” Venerable Hsi then took one of the small hand towels – the only towel we got, the only towel we were allowed – to demonstrate the required degree of perfection. “There will be room inspections every day so it’s important that everything be in place.

I panicked. All I could think was, how am I going to remember all of this? And what does this have to do with religion?

Let me say, straight out, I never put things down in the same place twice. I am the key-losing sort. I like to think it’s because I am too focused on the people in my life and the things I’m thinking about to worry about such mundane and routine things as order but the truth is, I’m a slob. A recovering slob, the way you have to be if you’re a mother or someone in charge of a workplace, but I’m the sort that comes up with reasons why unmade beds are actually good. (“Airs out the sheets.” “You’re going to just mess them up when you get in them later.” “It feels homey.” Etc.) But now I’m going to have to use just one single tiny hand towel all week and remember to fold it so carefully that all the edges match perfectly and that the opening is on the left not the right side every time I hang it up?!?!??! And they were going to inspect and critique whether or not I'd folded my slippery sleeping bag into thirds lengthwise and then again horizontally into a perfect square that could stay neat all day and whether or not my toothbrush was lined up perfectly parallel to my toothpaste and soap? This was a non-detail-person’s nightmare. I mean, I actually like chucking each section of my newspaper across the room in the direction of the wastebasket when I'm done reading it in bed. Kevin doesn't like it and I have no idea why I like doing that except it makes me feel all swashbuckly. And I have no idea how my shoes end up right in the middle of the room where people walk but they always do. Kevin claims I'm secretly out to get him. I'm not. Really. I swear. At least, I don't think I am.

Ven. Miao Hsi continued. “This is part of your mindfulness training, to keep track of your mind. There is no talking at any time but you may always come ask me any questions you have or with any problems you have.”

I admit I watched Blue Girl more than the nun during the demonstration and I couldn’t help but have sympathy. “No way” was practically screaming out of her head, probably with at least one expletive between the two words. A decade ago that would have been me, full of bristle and rage, caught up in a mental argument with what felt like rigid arbitrary rules. When I saw her reacting, I realized that something had changed in me. Maybe it’s my age or maybe it’s my determination to know something I don’t know but, while I did feel overwhelmed, sure I’d never remember everything I was supposed to do, I still felt willing to see what following these directions might mean to me. Plus, I reminded myself, I can do anything for a week. Well, almost anything.

But Blue Girl couldn’t. Long before sunset, long before dinner, her mother came back to pick her up and she was gone.

Now, what I’m about to describe may seem extreme – and it was – but it’s meant to give people of all sorts a direct experience of what life is like for a monk or nun-in-training in this sect of Chinese Buddhism. While there were a few people in attendance who were actively considering whether or not they might want to become a monk or nun, most who signed up for this retreat were simply practicing Buddhists. This intensive session is something this sect encourages people to do at least once in their lifetime. It was meant to be tough. Just how hard core? All the men -- even the fourteen year-old boy -- had to shave their heads.

There were a few people there for other reasons like me. One of my suitemates turned out to be a world religions teacher in a local public high school. But I feel the need to warn you: what I’m about to describe is not the everyday practice of Buddhism; it’s the daily practice of a monk-in-training for this particular branch of Buddhism which is a Chinese order blending many different strands of Buddhism including Pure Land Buddhism with elements of Ch’an (known more commonly in the United States as Zen.) This branch of Buddhism is among the largest Buddhist denominations in the world, that is, everywhere but here in this country where pure Zen Buddhism is much more widely known and practiced.

Pure Land is sometimes described as the branch of Buddhism closest to Christianity in that it says that “liberation” from suffering – the goal of Buddhism – can be reached through the grace and intervention of a higher being and that chanting the Amitabha Buddha’s name can help call on that grace. Most Buddhist sects don’t get into the issue of God or any notion of divine being at all; most sects do not consider Buddha to be a divine figure like God. It’s not a matter of whether they do or don’t believe in God or a god; Buddhism’s focus seems much more pragmatic than that. The Four Noble Truths, the essential core revelations of the historical Buddha – a Hindu prince named Siddartha Gautama – are simply these:

Dukkha: All worldly life is unsatisfactory, disjointed, suffering.
Samudaya: There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment or desire (tanha).
Nirodha: There is a way out of suffering, which is to eliminate attachment and desire.
Marga: The path that leads out of suffering is called the Noble Eightfold Path.

So what all sects of Buddhism share is a focus, primarily, on the pragmatic alleviation of suffering. There are two main branches of Buddhism (Theravada & Mahayana) and they’re split along a simple idea: what's most important, your salvation or the salvation of others? The Hsi Lai temple is part of the Mahayana branch, the branch that focuses on the salvation of others first and this retreat was designed to help us learn how to reduce our suffering. But first I guess we had to learn all the ways we suffer and why.

The “Eight Precepts” we were supposed to follow during the retreat were 1) no killing, 2) no stealing, 3) celibacy, 4) no lying, 5) no use of intoxicants, 6) no eating after noon, 7) no use of decorations, dancing, or watching entertainments and 8) no sleeping on comfortable beds or sitting on comfortable chairs. The first five precepts are supposed to be followed by every Buddhist except the third, for lay people, isn’t celibacy but to refrain from sexual misconduct.

Okay, so following the precepts was the big picture. The devil was in the details. Our most basic actions were broken down into rules. And it didn’t stop with towel folding.

Once we’d given up all of our belongings and gotten into our grey tunics and pants, brown lohans and white socks, head shaved if we were men, hair pulled back tight if we were women, we went to the auditorium to get the rest of our rules of conduct in the auditorium from a frightening six-foot tall Chinese nun who was called, just for the retreat, the Discipline Master.

This woman could give Roald Dahl's Mrs Trunchball a scare. Her eyebrows were black, her shoulders were broad, her glare was a weapon. “Sit up! Don’t be lazy, leaning back on your chairs!” She barked harsh Chinese syllables into a wireless microphone close to her scowling mouth. A beat or two later, a sweet voice translated her barks into my ear. “This is not respectful. You must cultivate a respectful posture. Don’t bend your body even if no one reminds you. You must cultivate this so it will be part of your life.”

She was imposing, her fierceness mesmerizing. A few syllables later, the sweet voice in my ear said, "What are you looking at?”

What are you looking at? It took me a moment but I suddenly realized, in this room of over two hundred people, she meant me, she was talking, no, yelling at me, me and a few others. I thought I must be hearing something wrong. Looking? There's a problem with looking? Isn't it respectful to look at someone when they speak to you? Disrespectful not to? I "look", like, all the time. I’m dependent on looking. I learn by looking. I support what I hear by reading lips and body language. I've even made a living my entire life by being a careful looker; after all, isn’t that what reporters are? Professional lookers? How am I going to be able to know what’s going on without being able to look at anything, especially when they’re speaking Mandarin? I mean, I wouldn't have known I was one of the people she was speaking to if I hadn't been “looking.”

But, then, she wouldn't have been speaking to me.

Okay. No looking.

I had no idea how I was going to pull that off or why she thought it was so important but the muscular nun was pretty riled up about it. "You're about to become monastics and still you look around? Where is your mind? You only have seven days here! Are you going to waste your time looking at others?"

But no looking was just the beginning. The scary nun, along with about a dozen other women in robes, told us how to sit – with our back straight, not against a chair back ever, eyes down; how to stand – feet only slightly apart, toes turned slightly out, right hand resting in the palm of the left at the waist making the bottom of a comfortable triangle with your head as the apex, eyes down; how to walk – mindfully, quietly, in straight line in order of tallest to smallest without looking around at anything or anyone; and even how to sleep – on your right side, somewhat curved, with one hand under your head. We were supposed to “Stand like an oak, walk like a breeze, sit like a bell, sleep like a bowl.” (If we had been actual monastics in training, there would have been someone coming in at night to make sure we were, indeed, sleeping like a bowl.) And, whenever anyone of the monastics addressed us by saying “Preceptees” in Mandarin, we were to answer “Ah-mi-tuo-fo.” It took me two days to actually understand the syllables we were supposed to say loudly and why. It’s the Amitabha Buddha’s name in Pali.

In our dorm, that first afternoon, Sifu (Ven Miao Hsi) said, "When you’re dressed and your rooms are in order, line up outside. We’re going to dinner.”

Although the shadows cast by the buildings were growing, we were having a record-breaking heat wave and the heat was still intense. Those of us who were ready first stood waiting, looking at nothing, until everyone was in their proper place in line with the back of our right hands resting on the palm of our left. Our grey outfits were buttoned all the way up to the neck, our translation devices were in our pockets with a wire up to our ear pieces and, with our hands held just so, we walked single file in silence, back down the hill to the dining hall. Our schedule said it was time to learn Buddhist meal etiquette.




7 July 2007


A class led by Master Hsing Yun on the Heart Sutra (YouTube) it isn't in English but it has voice-over translation

So, you want to be a monk?

How can we overcome our ignorance if we pretend that we are wise?

Master Hsing Yun
Buddhism, Pure and Simple

Buddhism. I needed to start somewhere so I went back to the Buddhist temple I knew because I’d gone along on one of Mark’s school trips: the Hsi Lai temple in Hacienda Heights, California. Why? It had classes on Buddhism taught in English. One of the pieces of paper I’d scarfed up after my first class was an invitation to attend what the flyer said was a “Short-Term Monastic Retreat .” Anyone could take one. Anyone could apply. Its objectives were “to teach traditional Buddhist practice and discipline” and to allow lay people “to experience the monastic way of life.” It was happening in just two months so I filled out an application, telling them exactly who I am, what I’m doing and how little I knew about Buddhism, and then went to the temple for the required interview. I figured, if they’d let me go, I’d go.

It was a beautiful day, an easy drive. I brought oranges for the temple and, when I walked in to the entrance hall (Bodhisattva Hall), an attendant gave me a plate and even showed me where to assemble it. It’s kind of great that at least some of this is feeling a bit less bewildering. I mean, you don’t go empty-handed to someone’s home for dinner and you don’t go empty-handed to a Hindu or Buddhist temple.

As I waited for my turn in an auditorium with raked seats, I watched the two monastics - both nuns - doing the interviews. One was giving a Caucasian woman a stern talk I could only partially overhear. Something about "very hard" and "no make-up” and "no communication at all. You understand?" And who was at the other table? The meditation nun from my one and only day at the temple, the one with the road-building story. I was relieved when she waved me up to her table.

She motioned for me to sit in the chair in front of her while she read my application. I watched the crown of her shaved head as she turned the pages where, in answer to their questions, I'd explained exactly who I was and why I wanted to come. All that kept me from exploding in anxiety about what she might ask was that I'd been completely honest about my ignorance about Buddhism. I’d also been explicit about this project.

She lifted her square face and said, “So you’re finished with Hinduism?”

“Well, no, I’ll never be finished,” I said, “but it was time to come here.”

She smiled. “When you think of a monastic retreat, what’s your idea of it?”

“I think it’ll be difficult, that I’ll find things inside myself that I’ll have a hard time with. But I also think I need to deal with them to learn. I can’t really learn just by reading books. I have to do something.”

“Yes, but why do you want to do this?”

“I don’t know. All I know is a couple of years ago I felt I had no choice.”

“I know what you mean. I had a good job, lots of money and one day it wasn’t important anymore. My boss said, ‘I don’t care about money.’ I said, ‘I don’t either.' But I meant it. So I renounce. So I know what you mean.”

I was taken aback. First, I tried putting hair and a business suit on this dumpling of a woman, who wore nothing but robes and eyeglasses, but got nowhere. She seemed too content with being precisely where and what she was to have ever had any of the accoutrements of drive or ambition. But I wasn’t just my imagination spinning out that froze me. It was that this nun saw something of my situation, of what’s driving me to do what I’m doing, in her own decision to become a monastic. What? I started trying to figure out what I said or wrote that might lead her to such a mistaken conclusion. I’d felt there were little arrows pointing at me, as I walked up the steep steps, past the burning incense and the first altar with all of the offerings to get to the interview, labeling me as what I am: “Unqualified” and "Too late, too far to go." But there she was, smiling at me, thinking we had something in common. I had no idea how to respond.

Luckily she asked what I knew of Buddhist principles.

I told her I knew about the Four Noble Truths. “There’s suffering in life, it’s caused by desire, eliminate desire and you eliminate suffering and Buddhism tells you how to do that and the importance of, uhm, cause and effect.”

She corrected me: “Dependent origination.”

“Yes, and I know detachment is the answer.” I mentioned that I’d taken her meditation class and I liked her story about the road builders. (see very end of the 3 Nov 2008 post)

She said, “I love stories.”

“Me, too.”

“There’s another one that might be good for this retreat.” She started putting my papers back their folder. “There was a man in the back of a temple, bowing down and doing prostrations yet people are beating him. He say to Buddha, ‘It’s not fair. You are a statue, doing nothing and yet you are untouched up there, and here I am, doing my best and yet people are beating me. Why?’ And Buddha say, ‘When you make a statue, you scrape and hit and chip away until it’s in its perfect form. We are different because I have accepted all of these blows, these difficulties. You haven’t.’” The nun looked up from my file and raised her eyebrows at me with a smile. “It’s these difficulties, these hard things that lead to your perfection. We must go through them without attachment to what we think it should be. You remember that (on the retreat.) Mm?”

“I will.”

“You may not understand everything – we try, but it’s very hard to make everything clear – but, when you don’t understand, just go inside and notice what comes up for you, mmm?”

“Okay," I said. "and thank you.”

As I picked up my bag from the floor, she smiled and put my file away.


21 June 2007