More on my life in the monastery
Today was so hectic from the get-go, I didn't realize until this evening when so many people showed up for a class that it was Friday. I didn't even realize the unusually thick flow of traffic today signaled a weekend. So much for TGIF. The sameness of our routine makes it hard to distinguish one day from another. Of course no distinction was the Buddha's point. Since we all just make up the distinctions we live by, we all need to understand they are disposable. Or in today's parlance perhaps, non sustainable.
Breakfast this morning was a hard boiled egg, another glutinous and tasteless tingmomo (a knot of steamed dough) and a spoonful of some undercooked, unidentifiable round beans. I thought it odd that every monk was at the table at the same time, most of them silent and sullen until our main lama, seated in the center, started talking in what I began to realize was not a private conversation with the monk across from him. As Lama went on, the monks' faces became solemn and more sullen, some staring into the empty mugs they gripped. Lama talked for maybe five minutes, and recognizing the word "rinpoche" about a dozen times, I understood this was a serious organizational meeting to prepare for the arrival of our teacher. Hearing Lama say: blah blah blah Sandy blah blah, I figured tasks were being assigned, schedules re-arranged. There must have been some consultation or else volunteering because now and then a monk spoke up.
Since I was sitting next to him, I could see Lama continually consult a bullet list he'd made in Tibetan. Meanwhile the monk at the end of the table seemed to be taking notes. The talk went on for a half-hour, right past the start of morning prayer time. Two monks tried to get up but Lama told them to sit down; this was more important. He kept talking. Then the note taking monk passed his notebook around with his pen and each monk signed on the line where his name had been written in Tibetan. I think this was a form of blood brother ritual, taking a very sacred oath of absolute cooperation and duty for the time to come.
As soon as we were able to disperse, I raced outside to the back of the property where work is going on. A while ago, someone I know volunteered to create a bird sanctuary back there that Rinpoche will be able to see from his rooms. What's manifesting is an elaborate wood, metal, mesh structure with Tibetan monastery touches that will house four huge bird feeders. The contractor Rick, who is probably in his late 50s and has buzz cut white hair, has been traveling three to four hours to and from his home on Vancouver Island by car and ferry to do this job. Because he can't find anyone else willing to make that commute, he brings his 24-year-old son Stu, and the two work back there with generators, saws and a radio tuned to country music. Rick was never a religious man and admits to being a beer and beef ice hockey fan, but he feels so moved by this opportunity that he's been putting his soul into the project. For almost 40 years, he's hand built houses, remodeled all sorts of structures and crafted expert cabinetry, and I think he knows this bird feeder may be his swansong. He's been trying to keep his pulmonary fibrosis secret, never letting on that he can barely breathe these days because half his lungs are too full of fluid to work. It's some kind of miracle that he is working so hard back there.
What Rick doesn't know is that the monks do know and they are praying for him, praying that his merit in making this bird sanctuary will be the blessing that extends his life. It will be a memorial. Monday we are going to bring him into the shrine hall--if he will come. He is so humble, he doesn't want to be a bother.
The sanctuary was actually designed to be a memorial to the 16th incarnate leader of our lineage, His Holiness the Karmapa Rigpa Dorje who built an aviary at his monastery in exile in Sikkim because, according to him, birds--especially songbirds--are manifestations of sublime goddess energy. Songbirds have been greatly harmed by human habit and are a dying breed so this is partly an effort to ease their suffering. As it happens, the 17th Karmapa, now in his mid 20s, has told all monks their most important job at this time is to not to meditate in isolation but to save Mother Earth and all she has given birth to. So here we are. Hopefully the sounds of melodic chirping surfing the breeze out back will create the illusion of an earthly paradise here and now in suburban Vancouver.
Of course having this theoretically beneficial bird sanctuary just means more work for the monks. When the feeder is completed next week, we will have to solicit donations for all the birdseed--hundreds of pounds of it--and purchase a metal trunk to store it in so the rats don't come and then a monk will have to go back there twice a week to sweep the cement flooring. Now there is talk about leveling a small roadway to drive the birdseed bags back there and so one thing inevitably leads to another and another in the vicious circle of Samsara. We will have to maintain the structure and clean it, making major efforts to create a mini monument that, as we all know, will inevitably collapse and fade to a memory.
But now that it is freshly arising, we had crucial final decisions to make, like how far beyond the roof the rafters should extend and what the roofing material should be: wood shingles? metal? asphalt roofing strips? I had to fetch the artist monk who has been quite busy painting thangkhas that must be completed in another week or two. He padded back through the swampy yard in his flipflops and silently pondered that question while I looked around and pointed out ordinary asphalt roofs on other buildings. Finally he said: "I think not metal. I think maybe when it rains, the noise on metal will scare the birds. So no good." He wanted natural wood shingles.
Lama came out and decided Rinpoche should plant a special tree back there to consecrate the ground. What tree would be special? A no-brainer: red maple. It's the tree of Canada and its leaves are the maroon of the monks' robes. So now we are getting two of them, one for each side of the bird feeder. And now of course we have to arrange the planting and watering issues. Just like the prayer we say inside: human beings create their own Samsara with endless busyness and its frustrations.
This afternoon I saw on the New York Times website two more Tibetans had set themselves on fire to protest the brutal totalitarian aggression of the Chinese police, anxious to smother Tibetan culture and people to death. While I was reading that, about a dozen Chinese people were in the shrine hall with the monks doing a four hour prayer ritual for the removal of all obstacles to the achievement not only of enlightenment for everyone, but more importantly right now, perfection in our operations during Rinpoche's stay. Four hours of drum pounding, cymbal clashing and incessant chanting so we don't mess up. So while some Chinese are intent on genocide, others were intently here praying for the Tibetan monks in exile. That is a major dharma teaching right there.
More about the individual monks and their Chinese fan club later.
~Sandy Garson"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
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Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion
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posted by Sandy Garson @ 11:54 AM
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