My new off road vehicle: the path
For the last seven days, I have been living in a Buddhist monastery with nine maroon robed monks in their 20s and 30s. Eight of them are from remote villages in Himalayan valleys high above Nepal, and the other from a Tibetan refugee settlement in Bhutan. They communicate with each other in Tibetan, which at breakfast the other day sounded like blah blah yah yah iPhone blah blah yah yah Blackberry blah iPhone..." They talk to me in halting, heavily accented English, which they are anxious for me to correct. "Say dee-VEL--up, not devel--UP."
We each have our own room behind the ornately gilded shrine hall that, with the dining room, kitchen, office and library, serves as our common ground. Every so often, we cadge a bit of exercise either behind the building where the monks have one of those portable basketball nets you see in American driveways, or by walking around it, circumambulating and turning the prayer wheels set in the walls as the faithful would do in Tibet.
My life is less hectic than that of these jack of all trade monks who when they are not in prayer have to wash windows, change light bulbs, re-arrange the cushions in the shrine hall, collate texts, iron their robes, tend the plethora of ritual objects, paint thangkhas, garden, coordinate classes, food shop, prepare texts, cook and greet patrons. Two days ago they all went to find a new carpet for our Rinpoche's room because he is coming soon. Today they were out struggling in the rain to push wheelbarrows full of compost. They leave their rooms at 7:00 AM and slip back after 9:00PM to play with their wi-fi gadgets. Two of them are Facebook freaks.
I have been wearing ratty old clothes, sometimes all of them at once because it's been so miserably damp and cold. Fortunately there are no mirrors in a monastery so I can't see myself or worry how my butt looks in pants. I'm not wearing makeup to cover my rough and tumble skin, and my hair is turning into straw, so I know my appearance would scare the hell out of me. Probably from living most of their lives among images of wild looking and disheveled deities, the monks don't seem to notice anything. The other day one of them actually widened his eyes, nodded approvingly at my gold color down vest with its thick collar and said: "Very glamorous."
For centuries Tibetans isolated their monasteries on frozen peaks far from any human habitation, and from the front of this monastery we can definitely see snow-capped mountains. The April weather feels snow-capped too, raw enough that even though I had six layers on yesterday, the damp still managed to sting. Everyone here at sea level in suburban Vancouver is commenting about the climate change, especially in conversations we overhear down the road at Starbucks. Latte for me, mocha or smoothie for the monks.
This imposing brick and gold roof monastery we inhabit was built three years ago by stupendously wealthy Hong Kong land developers right out in the open on a four lane boulevard, so it is not exactly a showplace of serenity. The neatly paved and pansy lined parking lot is often crowded. Hong Kong emigres troop in and out all day to clean, cook, collect the donations or care for the shop they set up. Late in the day they come in their big soccer Mom vans to take the monks to shop or eat dinner. A mixed bag of Canadians show up weekends and early evening for rituals and classes in Tibetan language, torma making, calligraphy and of course meditation. Tourists, many of them Indian, pop in anytime but Monday, when we are officially closed.
Despite these incursions of the 21st Century, our life inside the monastery is traditional. Wi-fi yes, but no mirrors. Maroon robes. Tibetan spoken. Butter tea served in aluminum samovars. The shrine hall is a huge orange coated arena with hanging crystal chandeliers, 1000 brass statues of the Medicine Buddha and intricate brocaded thrones. It looks like one of the elaborate ones you can find today built by Tibetan exiles in the Indian Himalayas or squalor of Kathmandu. Our praying, pounding drums, ringing bells and crashing cymbals just the way monks did 600 years ago is timeless. Yet our lives are ruled by the time we have to be in there for that praying and pounding. You can bet your clocks that everyday between 9:00 and 10:00 AM the monks will be invoking Tara, the benevolent mother of all beings and special savior of Tibetans. Just as between 4:30 and 5:45 they will really be pounding the drum as they call upon the fierce black, skull-crowned protector Mahakala--even on their day off someone has to do it. Twice a week there are prayers to all those Medicine Buddhas, and so on through the roster of deities. It's easy to know I've missed the moment when I see a pile of sandals outside the monks' private entry door.
My main contribution is cooking. It's not just that I want to pitch in and do my share. It's that somebody needed to tweak the diet before these young monks end up like almost all the older ones, great Rinpoches included, with high blood pressure and diabetes. Breakfast is often a thin flour pancake or a lump of steamed dough with a side of beans. Lunch is a mound of rice with thin watery dhal and vegetables like potatoes and daikon with other vegetables mixed with noodles. Dinner is more rice or soup with dough balls or steamed bread.
All those carbs turn to sugar inside the body so bingo diabetes! This fight against all that white food seems tougher than the one against the Taliban in Afghanistan because food habits are so deeply embedded. Here they are also a connection to home and culture. They know they suffer headaches and mild stomach disorders and some of them admit that they often feel too tired to do the heavy lifting but they don't connect their diet to their physical problems. I keep trying in tiny ways. So far nobody has tried the roasted pumpkin seeds I brought with me. Four days ago I did get three of them to taste the quinoa I came with. I sold them on trying it by describing it as the staple food of the Tibetan-like mountain people of South America. They surprised themselves--and me-- by liking it. Here's hoping.
There are definitely infinite food possibilities available including the chickpea flour used in Nepalese cooking. And I want to widen their awareness. But tradition is as deeply embedded in the monastery kitchen as it is in the ornate shrine hall. Except perhaps for the cases of Coke lining the bottom of the commercial refrigerator.
There has been much conjecture over the past decade about what Buddhism might look like when it rooted in the West and there are already contending models. What we have here would probably be called "for late adopters", a fusion of Coke swilling, iPhone crazed maroon-robed monks supported by Hong Kong Chinese, speaking Tibetan but trying to learn English to teach us authentic Dharma right from the 900-year-old unbroken lineage Tibetan master.
More on this experience inside with nobody watching when I have the time....
~Sandy Garson"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
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http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
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posted by Sandy Garson @ 11:22 PM
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