Getting into the swing of monastic life: Week two

By week two, we had already gotten the routine of living in the monastery down. Thus, I will not give a day-by-day summary, but instead tell the most interesting experiences from my second week at Fo Guang Shan.

It was during this week, however, that our punctuality began to slack, so we were given a lecture on timeliness that was a bit more serious than anything I had ever experienced. After two people were late for 5 minutes, Ven. Yifa, the programme's director, called us all together and explained to us a very important point of Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. As one of the 5 precepts, or 5 major vows, is not to kill, that does not only include physical murder, but also killing people's time. When we are late, we kill part of peoples' lives; thus, being late is a much more serious offense in Buddhism.

On June 8th, we had a question and answer session with all of the staff members, and the monastics that had worked very closely with us. Some of the more interesting information we were given was how we were selected, why certain monks became monastics, and Fo Guang Shan's opinion on many issues. One of the questions I asked was Fo Guang Shan's opinion on Taiwanese politics, specifically on the topic of Beijing/Taipei relations. They explained to us that they hoped for a peaceful solution, but implied that they saw unification at hand. Later, I read a Wikipedia article concerning Fo Guang Shan and Master Xing Yun, and it explained that Master Xing Yun had been heavily criticized for his support of the One China policy.

That Monday was our only day off, and during the morning one of our lecturers, a grad student named Peter, offered to give us a symbology tour of Fo Guang Shan. Thus, we spent most of the morning going through the various temples, and talking about the symbolism of the Buddha statues, the layout of the temples, and their various meanings. This was another example of how Buddhism is largely dependent upon visual symbolism for explanation.

We had a few more lectures on meditation that day, some of them led by Ven. Hui Feng. One of my favorite quotes about the problems of keeping the same posture for half an hour was this: "Some of you, at the beginning, are like 'I am a stone Buddha,'" says Ven. Hui Feng "but at the end, you are like 'I am a marshmallow Buddha.'" We also had a few more practice sessions in the meditation hall, trying to prepare us for our silent retreat.

On that Tuesday we took our first cultural tour of Taiwan, which was wonderful because we got to leave the monastery. Our first stop was a rehab center in Tainan. This center, supported by Fo Guang Shan, is a center for those attempting to recover from drug addictions. The day we were there they were having a small ceremony for those who got to leave. They sang sweet songs, and planter coffee trees, symbolising their entry into a new life. After the ceremony, they gave us a really strong barley based drink and sticky rice cakes, neither of which was particularly good tasting.

We then went to the Fo Guang Shan monastery in Tainan, which at first didn't seem like a monastery, but a business building. We were greeted by eerie smiling faces singing songs about how they welcome us; to me it seemed like the entry into a horror version of "It's a Small World." This was our first introduction to the concept of a cultural tour. Every monastery we visited, we were taken to their main shrine, we bowed to their Buddha, and they present us with an introduction and a small gift (usually a statue or a keychain; in this case, it was a necklace). After we bowed to their Buddha, they took us to the basement for lunch. It was at this point that all of us were truly ecstatic. Our lunch included cheesy potatoes, pizza, tofu curry, fried rice, fresh juice, and bubble tea. Because we had been eating Fo Guang Shan monastery food for so long, this was an extra special treat for us.

They then gave us a tour of the monastery, which was basically what happens when Buddhism mixes with 8 million dollars. The rooms were equipped with international video phone capabilities and white boards that would never fade, the auditorium had newly built cushioned seats, and the classrooms were also highly equipped with technology.  Some of us commented that we couldn't help but wonder why all of this money went to such high tech monasteries when they could be used to better serve the poorer people of society. Then again, it wasn't necessarily the monastics that benefitted, but instead the lay people who attended, which made it seem more useful. And Fo Guang Shan certainly did its' part to reach out to the community.

After that monastery, we were taken to a Daoist monastery in Kaohsiung; although we were only able to spend half an hour there, it was interesting. The deities were quite colorful, and there were clearly many superstitious rituals that the practitioners could partake in. The entire temple was elaborately decorated with bright colors and complex dragons.

Our day ended by visiting a monastery under construction, where we still were given a speech by the abbot and a small gift of a bracelet. We didn't stay long, however, since the temple was currently being built, and there was little to see. Instead, the abbot of that monastery took us out to dinner.

Never before had I seen a vegetarian restaurant quite like this. Every possible Asian dish a person could want, from sushi to dimsum, was included and served, but with no meat. The deserts were particularly impressive, with Hagaan Daas ice cream and a chocolate fountain. There were dozens of kinds of teas, fruit slushies, and made to order dumpling soup. We were all in heaven, and returned from our cultural tour quite full and satisfied.

The rest of the week, we had a few very interesting classes. A graduate student from Harvard named Jason Clower came to give us lectures on the history of Buddhism in China. He explained to us that his research primarily used to be "monks with guns," and while his research interests have changed since he began his graduate work, for our lecture he would be talking about monks with guns, and how Buddhism spread to China. He was a great lecturer, with many great stories to tell about how the Buddhists interacted with the local Chinese Daoists and Confucists when they first arrived in China in the 4th century.

Venerable Yifa, the programme director, also gave us a few lectures that week; some were scheduled, and some were not. We were lectured nearly daily it seemed on punctuality and disrespect in being late. As we all lined up to prepare to go wherever we needed to go, Venerable Yifa would often walk up and down our two lines. Because she was so intimidating (even standing at less than 5 feet) we were often reminded of Darth Vadar walking up and down lines of storm troopers. This image often made us giggle, which got us into even more trouble. At one point, there were people missing to go to lunch, and Venerable Yifa did not only lecture us, but also berated the staff and Venerable Hui Feng. This suprised us, as this did not seem to be typical behavior for a Buddhist monastery. It made me realize, however, that even though these were monastics, they were still human, and human power struggles still affected them as much as anyone.

Venerable Yifa also gave us lectures in class on Buddhism and modern morality. She explained the Buddhist perspective on Euthanasia, abortion, and other various moral issues relevant to todays world. I found that most of them seemed to mirror religious values in the west, although the justification for the values, often leading back to karma, were very different from Christian views of why abortion and various other things were wrong. It was implied, however, that they saw little problem with homosexual marriage; we are not sure, however, whether this was because they were talking to westerners or not. Nevertheless, we found out later that Taiwan as a country is Asia's leader in homosexual rights, and currently they were working on legislation to make homosexual marriage legal. Because we had always thought that Asia was more conservative than America in this aspect, this suprised us; yet it made us realize that the monastery's claim on homosexual marriage was not divorced of cultural beliefs.

One of our more enjoyable classes this week was a calligraphy class. We were given tracing sheets of the heart sutra, and were asked to copy the Chinese characters. They explained that this was a very meditative process, and was common practice for the monastics. Some people really hated it, especially since the room was not air conditioned, but I really enjoyed it. I personally really like calligraphy, even though my hand writing is pretty poor, and I thought this was a great meditative practice. I continued to do it during our meditation retreat the next week.

Another more interesting session that we had was a panel discussion called "Buddhism in the Eyes of Westerners." It was a four person panel, consisting of Peter (our art history lecturer) Jason Clower, Venerable Hui Feng from New Zealand, and Venerable Miao Ming, a nun from Canada. Many of the questions were about how to make Buddhism appeal to Westerners, and what obstacles they saw to bringing Buddhism to the West. I asked a question about imagery and Buddhism in the west. When Buddhism came to China, the images of Buddha took on a very Chinese-like face and structure. I was wondering whether the images in the west did the same. They told me that in America and Canada, where part of the appeal of Buddhism was its Oriental exotic nature, the images remained largely Chinese. Venerable Hui Feng, however, metioned that in their monastery in South Africa, one is immediately greeted with a very large African Black Buddha.

This related largely to a discussion that a few of us had the next day with Jason Clower during our free time. We talked about upayeh, which literally translates to "half truth." He explained that in many Buddhist texts, Buddhist practitioners are encouraged to give upayehs as means of getting people in the door and interested in Buddhism at all. Thus, things that may seem like contradictions really aren't, they are just ways of appealing to different kinds of people. Because being buddhist, and reaching enlightenment, is such a long process, it is acceptable that people just accumulate some good karma as they live this life, even if they don't accept the entire truth. This was an interesting concept, and it seems completely different from Christianty's methodology.

The morning of the 14th was a full moon, so we were asked to get up early to attend the full moon chanting ceremony with the rest of the monastery. The chanting lasted approximately 45 minutes, and towards the middle there was some very fast chanting that none of us could keep up with. I stopped trying to sing and I just closed my eyes and listened; the music surrounded me, and I thought it was so beautiful and lifting. After the fast portion, the rest of the monastery filed out and circumambulated around the main shrine singing the same line over and over. However, after the whole monastery had left, it was only us left in the shrine, and somehow the tune of the chant had gotten gradually lower and lower, and many of us were just growling. Nevertheless, I found the chanting very beautiful.

Not everyone felt that way, however. I talked to a friend afterwards who was so frustrated about trying to keep up with the chanting that she didn't quite know what to do. She told me "I wasn't chanting, I was just making sounds. At one point, I was singing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.'"

This was also our first morning eating breakfast with the rest of the monastery. Since that day was Saturday, we got mantou, or steamed buns. During breakfast, some of the servers came around with margerine. I thought this would be nice on my bun, so I asked for some. They gave me quite a bit, and once I tasted it, I didn't care for it all. Therefore, I tried to scrape it all off and put it on my rice bowl. Then, people began coming around with hot water, which I wanted, so I tried to put all the margerine on my plate. I then realized that it was the other bowl that the hot water went in, so I tried to put all the margerine back on the bun bowl. By the end of breakfast, I managed to get margarine on both bowls, my dish, my chopsticks, the table, and all over my hands. As they only gave us a small napkin, I found myself in a big mess by the end of breakfast. It was at this point that I learned my lesson about the margerine.

The final thing that we did before we went into our silent meditation on the third week was present our personal projects. I admit that I did very little work on mine, as I was still trying to adjust and didn't have the strength to put a lot of energy into my project. I did, however, learn a lot about the monastery