Two Confessions… on the making of this video

The first is kind of a cool secret:
I happen to have a masters degree in film and video (which, to my mother’s dismay, I haven’t overtly ‘used’ in about 25 years.) So making video is a total artistic OMG!!!! The technology finally got easy enough even for me. I bought a new camera and then a new Mac, and presto, you pretty much just plug them in together and everything ‘works!’ Combine this with traveling, music, tea, wonderful people and spiritual joy and I’d say a new episode might just be poking through the surface… So stay tuned.

The second confession is a bit more serious and up until now, a bit more more private…
I quit smoking and here’s the how and why it happened:

The first night I am in the monastery, which is virtually a world unto itself -  called the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas - with street names like Compassion and Virtue Way. Everywhere there are devout nuns, monks, and mostly Asian practitioners from around the world. We are all staying in an enormous building that was once - and I am not kidding - an insane asylum. Returning to our room after an entire day of recitation I am dying for a cigarette. Of course there is no smoking permitted within the place, so I must go outside to sneak one. This is day one of seven. I’m thinking, God, this is awful. Ridiculous. I can’t do this here.

Then, I imagine one of the Buddhist nuns, with shaven head, lighting up. That is it! It’s just so funny, and so sad an image I say to myself, That’s it! I am quitting. So, in addition to meditating and chanting for seven days, I am privately going through severe nicotine withdrawal.

Now, for those of you who know… the Nicotine Demons get furious when you don’t feed them. They start crawling through your skin and putting fog into your brain, or maybe it’s some of that smoke you’ve been breathing for years. I read in one of Venerable Master Hsuan Hua’s dharma talks that the celestial beings stay away from those who smoke because they dislike the smell.

Now there’s an argument for quitting that I haven’t heard. Even the Gods won’t come near you… It all seems so incongruous here, smoking; such a strange, yet gripping habit.

Quitting at the monastery turns out to be easier than trying at home because it is simply absurd there. And I am quite preoccupied each day from 3 am ’til 10 pm. The real trick is now that I am back in my cozy home, all alone, with only me to know what’s up, the Nicotine Demons are racing back, more furious than ever over my refusal to submit to their cravings.

What is truly a private victory for me encapsulated in the making of this video is… it’s 100% smoke free! You see, my habit of artistically creating something while smoking goes back to my teenage rebellion years. Now, I am rebelling against my own fabrications and delusions. Instead of breaking away from others, going off to smoke while I create something personal and beautiful (the two have a long romance together in my mind), I am staying up ’til 5 am making this video, and well… just ‘forgetting’ to smoke. I take a deep breath over that.

It has been 2 weeks as of this writing. One day, one breath at a time. Wish me good fortune.

p.s. About the peacocks: They roam freely all around the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas and you can hear the cackles of their cries each afternoon while you meditate.

Quehestemehah
You Dance In My Heart

In Beauty, Amara

How Lucky We Are… About the Guan Yin Retreat

I never imagined I would visit a Buddhist monastery, and to tell the truth, I often felt something too complex or grand in all of it for me.  It took hearing Guan Yin’s name to lure me into the Dharma Realm, and the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, after which, perhaps, nothing will ever be quite the same.

It turns out, billions of people around the world have been drawn to the sound of this name as well. It has an indescribable allure, which, once you begin hearing its cadence, as we did for seven days in the monastery, somehow fills the pores of your awareness with compassion. Don’t ask me how it works, but I think the 7-day immersion (such a short time!) of chanting, sitting, bowing, walking, eating and sleeping this name has something to do with it.

The name ‘Guan’ means ‘contemplate.’ Shi (pronounced ’sure’) means “world.” Yin means “sounds.”  Contemplating the world’s sounds - all of them. Thus, one of the reasons why Guan Shi Yin is the Goddess/God who helps us cultivate compassion is because he/she helps us listen. It is the inner listening that begins to happen when you become quiet enough, and chant her name.

A Buddhist Parable
It is said that being born a human being is as rare as a blind turtle swimming in the ocean. Somewhere in the midst of this great ocean is a floating ring, the size of a life preserver. The moment the blind turtle happens upon the opening and pokes its head through the hole is equivalent to how rare it is for a human being to be born into a physical body.

It’s also quite rare, we are told at the monastery, for someone to show up and celebrate Guan Shi Yin in such a way. Perhaps this is why everyone seems so pleased when a few Westerners arrive. Out of a few hundred people coming and going, there are about six of us who stay for the entire retreat.

Things Are Not What They Seem
On the first night during a dharma talk, a monk tells this story.  A junior and senior  ’angel team’ descended to earth briefly to carry out some important work. One evening, they visit the house of a very wealthy man. Greeting the angels (who are of course in disguise), he puts them up for the night in a dingy basement spare room. There is a hole in the wall, which the elder angel spends the night repairing.  The junior angel, who woke up slightly grumpy from a cold night’s sleep, follows his partner leaving the home of the wealthy man to carry on their mission for the day.

Soon they are greeted by a husband and wife, who upon hearing that the travelers need a place to stay, invite them for the night. Although the couple is extremely poor, they put together a fine meal of soup, cheese and buttered bread, offering the very best of everything they’ve got. The elder angel slips out in the middle of the night into the barn and then returns to sleep. In the morning, the husband is heard weeping over his only cow that died in the night.

Furious and upset, the younger angel complains, “The rich man who is stingy, you fix his house. Yet this generous couple, you take their only cow? How can this be fair?”

“What you did not see in the night younger brother, is that the angel of death came for his wife. I gave him the cow.”

***

How many angels or spirits visit us daily, protecting us from harm, nudging us to go this way and not that?  ‘Things are not what they seem’ wafts through my mind throughout the retreat as I feel troubles and disturbances fade in and out of focus like the ending of a movie.

Things sound different when it gets quiet, and very different again when silence and stillness visit - sometimes curiously, in the midst of a chant. You get to hear you own sounds, at times the inane flood of what the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua calls, ‘false thoughts.’ Lots of them. Torrents. But hearing them, and sometimes stopping them in the chant is different. It’s like someone suddenly stops the train and all the stuff inside flies out, finally leaving the train empty for a moment.

I am not so sure whether this should be called a “retreat,” or an advance. It is good once in a while, or as often as we can, to suspend extraneous thought and actions, to cease the chatter and bustle. It is difficult to hear when we are swept away by the constant barrage of inner and outer sound. Curiously, there is a wealth of abundant, subtle energy that surfaces through kindness, giving, compassion and quiet joy.

Namo Guan Shi Yin Pu Sa
Homage to Guan Shi Yin Bodhisattva

‘Quehestemehah’
You Dance in My Heart

In beauty,
Amara