I consider myself a wanderer, an outcast, walking my own path to explore the variations of the path that many have trod before me, redefining my previous vows as my commitment to them. There are lifetimes to do the institutional thing and there are lifetimes to do the wild thing.
The monastery I was considering was the closest thing to home I've found, and still I left. Sometimes I think of going back, but then I realize there's no need to re-try it. I tried it and rejected it as an option in this lifetime. Re-trying it as an excuse to not commit suicide is lame now.
And even though I'm not into the institutional thing, that was where I received my "formal initiation" in this lifetime, maybe just touching base with the idea in this lifetime, and so that's where I place my nominal affiliation.
When I came to Taiwan, I found the practice at DDM was similar in practice and philosophy, and it turns out that Master Sheng-yen was friends with Thich Nhat Hanh. But my contact with DDM was just as a visitor, and as they all "belonged" to DDM, they accepted that I was under TNH's umbrella. But that's just a point of reference since I never accepted any one individual as my teacher.
So I practiced with the DDM international group for a while, and then when it stopped doing it for me, I stopped going. I think when I first started going, it was largely because the monk leading the group was American.
Even though he ended up at a Chinese monastery with an insistence, as noted in the obituary, on orthodox Chinese Buddhism, we shared a cultural background, one which was devoid of any Buddhist preconceptions, and that we found and had to explore it on our own because of the lack of resources in the U.S. to feed us any set doctrine.
Our educations were both liberal, white American. The foundation of our Buddhist construction was probably more similiar to each other than with any of the Chinese practitioners, at least the ones I met.
On the most fundamental level of discourse, he and I knew that there was no "right" doctrine, and we knew how to listen to and respect other varying discourses. The Chinese, on the other hand, are much more into expounding their knowledge and teaching other people who don't have their insight, or at least that's my perception of their attitude. They are much more black and white about wrong and right.
I left the practice group when he left to head a DDM center in the U.S. northeast, and his replacement was a Chinese nun, and sure she was an accomplished monastic and I respected her, but I still thought she had that sort of patronizing Chinese superior air in the cultural aspect of her approach. That's totally personal, not criticism. My reservations I keep to myself and I point anyone interested in the direction of DDM's international group.
Actually I felt reaffirmed about leaving the DDM group when the obituary mentions the "Four Insistences" – capitalized. There is little that can be insisted upon across the board in this life, so to even have them revulses me.
But then they're not even very enlightened things to insist upon. The environmentalism and education ones are not bad, but they are qualified into "Four Kinds of Environmentalism" and "Three Types of Education". All this putting things into boxes, all these restrictions and confining seems to be the hallmark of institutional religion that I find repugnant.
The other two things they are "insisting" on – DDM ideas and Chinese Orthodox Buddhism (whatever that is) – just drives me away. Too cultish.
The irony is the monk who used to lead the international group was sent to the U.S. to promote the internationalization of DDM. They're internationalizing but they're insisting on Chinese Buddhism. No, if you insist on Chinese Buddhism, you're going to get Chinese followers and foreigners who fetishize Chinese culture, the way Japanese Zen is so fetishized in the West.
I think Plum Village is much more international – focusing on Buddhism, not Chinese Buddhism or Vietnamese Buddhism. Vietnamese Buddhism came from Chinese Buddhism, and TNH studied Chinese to get to that source material, but he's not stuck on cultural trappings.
No one stopped my pursuit of Tibetan teachings while I was there, and I never saw anyone looking down on other elements that people brought from whatever background they came from – including non-Buddhist ones.
Well, there was one instance where I saw a monk decline a painting someone had found in storage and asked if he wanted it. He declined by saying it was "too Pure Land (Buddhism)" for him, but I think that was kind of a joke and also just a matter of good taste on his part. I thought it was funny.
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| TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2:59 p.m. - Bikeway at the tip of the beak of the duckhead, where the Keelung River drains into the Danshui. Ricoh Caplio R4. |
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| FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 6:50 p.m. - Retirement ceremony for my boss. Great guy and a journalist of integrity. |
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| SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7 - Da'an Park footbridge. Re-visiting my old haunts in the Shida area. Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN. |
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| FEBRUARY 8 - Bade Road, near Jianguo Rd. |
