Black Prayer Beads Turn White from Turning7/15/95 I. Leading the Ox by the Nose After two weeks as a tonsured monk I drove home in my car. The noise on the pop radio crackled. The third-generation punk musicians finished fishing for the last refurbished notes at the bottom of a pop culture barrel. Los Angeles billboard signs stood out; paint encrusted on a palette . . . For the first day of the Buddhist monastic retreat I drove up to the Los Angeles suburb Hacienda Heights from San Diego. I found Hsi Lai temple standing there amidst farmland and Asian storefronts. The Chinese monks checked me in and handed me gray undergarments. Although it was mid-summer, I thought it would be nice to wear pajamas for a week or two. We were instructed to wear our overgarments at all times. Hui Chi, the leading master for our English and Cantonese-speaking group often said, "You don't want to be seen in your underwear do you?" After I got my gear, a monk sheared my hair off. I chanted 'Amitofo' inside my head while they clipped it off. The barber was chanting too under his breath. Hopefully Amitabha (Chi., Amitofo), Buddha of the Western Pure Land, thought I looked sharp. Us temporary monks sewed our names in our clothes while sitting on the blacktop in front of our dormitory. Inside, our sleeping mats were arranged on the floor, side by side and folded in quarters. Basins were provided for the 5 a.m. mad dash to the shower. A monk would wake us up by tapping on a wooden fish. Monks sleep uncovered on their right side, but tend to roll over in their sleep and snore in chorus. One guy crept off to sleep in the laundry room the first night . . . II. Mystic Rubic's Cube Taking the Bodhisattva vow with Ven. Hsing Ting in the Big Buddha Hall was like being inside of a mystic Rubic's Cube. One could spend lifetimes cracking the puzzle. The hall was dim. Incense burned. We were surrounded by engraved Buddha images. Three massive Buddhas nodded down at us. Their reflections shone in the marble floor. Three hundred men and women clad in robes knelt on mats, seeking to plant the bodhi seed. The master called the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas from the 10 directions to witness the event: the first call the hall quaked, brick and steel splintered and flew apart. Dust settled on my half-open eyelids. Master Hsing Ting summoned the Buddhas again: clouds grumbled from afar unfolding slowly into a smoky lotus. The lotus turned dark, dense and New England gray. The third time the master called: whirling dervishes, laughing devas and Buddhas of all shapes, colors and sizes (an incense trail inhaling its own smoke in high-speed reverse) flew down through the top of my head. III. Receiving the Incense Marks The monks had us chant NA MO BEN SHIR SHIR JIAH MO NI FO NAMO (homage to Shakyamuni Buddha) over and over again for a ½ hour. I got kind of a Dharma high. Eddie 'Shunyata' Sandoval and I hit the prostration mat 20 or 30 times waiting to get lit up. (Eddie was a L.A. Mexican guy. I went to his house before the retreat. His mother was very nice and gave me a Fresca. Eddie talked about ghosts but our discussions always led to emptiness or 'shunyata.' I often whispered 'shunyata' to Sandoval when we were in line. When Eddie turned around I asked who was answering). The nuns stamped little ink bulls-eyes on our inner left forearms. One for the Buddha, one for the Dharma, one for the Sangha . . . I got the Master of Discipline's table for the burning. The Master of Discipline was polished obsidian stone. His every movement was smooth. The Master of Discipline's eyes uncovered your innumerable past lives. "Burn out the evil" the Master of Discipline said as he gripped my wrist. He carefully set three quarter inch high incense cones on the ink marks and lit them. I took the burns. So did a few paper skinned elderly ladies. People chanted 'Amitofo' loudly over and over. I thought about how the triple gem (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) and 5 Precepts (don't kill, steal, lie, have inappropriate sex, intoxicate yourself) both have a Substance (cause) and a Function (effect). Practice leads to the effect, and the practice of the Bodhisattva is to save all sentient beings. But if form is emptiness, emptiness is form, whom or what is there to save? Practice is the most important thing. Similar to picking up every grain of Ganges sand, it could take a long, long, long, long time . . . I thought . . . form is emptiness, emptiness is form . . . this isn't too bad, until the flame reached my flesh and bit . . . form is emptiness, emptiness is form . . .I smelt the burn, and disowned the pain. As Master Hsing Ting had advised in the meditation hall: once your body is set, don't move, "You don't own it anymore." IV. Discursive Thoughts We are iron cast in the fire of our own efforts -- steel . . . How does a point experience life on a line? And a line as part of a square? Or a square as part of a cube? How does a 3-d shape experience life in the Fourth dimension, or non-duality, or Nirvana? . . . The sculptor begins with a dumb block of stone, a gray slab of uncultivated tofu. The Buddha nature is hidden inside the creamy nougat of a candy bar. Bite down on it, you can't identify the taste but it seems familiar. The sculptor trims and tucks . . . Part-time monks follow their group leader. Six little samanera ducklings preen and fold the lapels and lines of each other's robes. Press the creases and seams of our minds. A man's actions, expressions and habits are the ingredients listed on a bottle of emptiness. The sculptor chips away at himself, folding and tucking until there's nothing left to chip. And who is holding the hammer? Who grips the anvil? Who hears the 'tink' tink' 'tink' 'tink' 'tink' . . . We are golden Buddhas cast in the furnace of the mind V. Work Meditation One day, the Dirty Dozen were doing work meditation; i.e., pluck out the weeds defying the monastery hill. Pluck out the weeds by the roots and they'll never grow back. Furrow the mind with bountiful vegetables; water the seeds, let the bad ones wither . . . As the weed-free hill napped in the hot summer sun, the Dirty Dozen congealed in the steaming parking lot. We were decked out in wide-brimmed straw coolie hats. Gripping dixie cups brimming with three sips of grape juice each, we grew teary. "Best cup of grape juice I ever had!" An ocean of grape juice blotted up on a tongue tip. 'Karate-Teacher-from-Colorado' Lee said, "Man, you guys are making a religious experience out of this grape juice." We laughed, guilty as charged . . . VI. Nolo Contendere Ven. Master Hsing Ting stood like Abraham Lincoln, ready to emancipate all sentient beings. He gripped either edge of the podium, flanked behind and on either side by three 20 ft. tall Buddhas (bodyguards ready to bounce discursive thoughts, smirking as if to say, he's 100% right, if only you knew!) The Master proclaimed the doctrine of emptiness as the ultimate one-way ticket to Nirvana, no local stops. Emptiness can be frightening, that's why we keep checking the fridge to see if that jar of relish will magically appear, free from the law of dependent origination. You know the jar's not there, but a Bodhisattva of, say, Kuan Yin's stature serves as a nightlight. & Kshitigarbha is on call to vanquish asuras under the covers . . . (Do you remember seeing someone in a dark storefront window late at night? Startled, ready to fight or take flight - recall the relief you felt when you realized, "It was just me after all" . . . me? ….) ------------------------------------- 'The Dirty Dozen' is the term I gave my Dharma group. An English speaking Chinese monk supervised our platoon-like group throughout the Monastic Retreat. There were a few white guys, a few Mexican guys and a few Cantonese speaking guys in my group. Dharma talks for the majority of Mandarin speakers were translated on the spot for The Dirty Dozen's benefit. ------------------------------------- Author's note: I did not pepper this piece with a lot of referential Buddhist terminological footnotes. I thought it would distract from the overall tone. This is a good resource -- Stephan Schuhmacher and Gert Woerner, The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc. 1991) |