monastic living:
Someone left a 10lb. Ghiradelli milk chocolate bar in one of the monastery kitchen pantries. Did you get that? It’s a ten pound bar of chocolate! We’re about halfway done with it, chipping at it after meals. I’ve been avoiding it because gnawing on slabs and chunks of chocolate doesn’t really appeal to me. Today, one of the monks asked me to do the honors of chipping away at it, so I got the thing out, chipped a few slabs off, nibbled a bit, he nibbled a bit, and then I put it away. He asked, “Where’s the bowl of chocolate nuggets?”. I didn’t know that was in my job description, but in any case I went back to the pantry to get the chocolate and put the chunks and slivers into a bowl. As I picked up the chocolate, a light shone down on me from the heavens as I realized, there in the pantry, that right in front of me was about fifteen jars of peanut butter!

Fast forward to image of me leaving the dining hall a little hyper and listening to my own racing heartbeat.

I love peanut butter, I can’t begin to tell you. I love peanut butter! Mix chocolate and peanut butter and don’t talk to me, leave me alone, “Can’t talk, eating”. I probably mentioned this before, but one of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard was about Amina when she was young. She, too, loved peanut butter and one day ended up eating a whole jar of peanut butter. She got so nauseatingly sick afterwards that she hasn’t had a bite of peanut butter since. *sniff* Brings a tear to my eye.

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA
The monks are still hashing out a new daily/weekly schedule, so things haven’t quite gotten back to normal yet. Morning sitting, meals, and work teams have been established, but that’s all. The monks are also in the midst of room changing which they do every six months or so, so that might be slowing things down. I think it’s a practice in impermanence that requires them to regularly change rooms and roommates. I don’t think that would be a problem for me if I became a monk, but the way I am now, I’m not even liking sharing my guestroom with long term guests. A revolving door of short term guests is fine, though. I’m not sure what the difference would be, but I think if I became a monk, I would just accept it. I don’t think any transformation is necessary on this matter.

It’s been really cold here. You’d think we were in San Francisco. Ah, the irony is just killing me. And it rained all morning. In April. It's not supposed to rain in San Diego in April! There was so much rain this Winter that all the paths in the mountains around the monastery are overgrown with plant life. I went for a jog wearing shorts, and I came back with my legs stinging from all the brush I waded through. Not to mention the anxiety of possibly stepping on a rattlesnake. One close encounter was enough for me, and I had two already. The longer the rains last, the more growth there will be. The more growth there will be means a lot more dying when it gets hot, and it will get hot. The more dying plant life there is, the greater fire danger there will be. Something definitely to be mindful of.

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA
I want to immerse myself into this practice to find my sincerity in being an aspirant here. I can’t try to be sincere, I just need to focus on maintaining my practice and find out if I’m sincere or not. I need to make an effort to not let negative feelings and thoughts factor into this.

This morning I woke up to the 5:00 morning bell, which I’m glad somebody sounded or else I might not have gotten up (not sure if my alarm clock is working). Made a quick cup of contraband coffee with a hot pot and a plastic cone filter, and got down to morning sitting by 5:50. After sitting I did solo walking meditation up a nearby hill and did some morning martial arts exercises (more about the exercise than the martial art) until breakfast, at which I maintained Noble Silence though others didn’t.

Noble Silence is a deep part of practice which I don’t think is emphasized enough here. I admit that I haven’t been very good at holding to it, either. I imagine that it is better maintained in Plum Village. At 9:30 in the evening a bell is sounded to signal the beginning of Noble Silence, a time of silence and silent reflection that lasts for the rest of the evening until after breakfast the next morning. No frivolous or extraneous conversation is the hallmark of Noble Silence, and beyond that, it is up to the individual how far to take it. On the light end, you can do anything you want as long as you don’t talk and try to maintain a meditative mind in whatever you do. More seriously, one can do nothing that distracts from active silent reflection and meditation.

Escondido Public Library, Escondido, CA
Strange, a week after I arrived at the monastery in October, we had a College Students Retreat. Now, a week after I arrived at the monastery this time, we had a College Students Retreat. Both retreats felt great and were energizing. The first one was not indicative of what was to come, and I suppose that this one isn't, too.

So I'm supposedly an aspirant now. You'd think that as an aspirant, the community would have a vested interest in me. It sure doesn't feel like it. Maybe it's a test, but after what I perceive as the last test they put me to in becoming an aspirant, a rather costly test financially I might add, mind you, I'm really not in the mood. I'm not in the mood for games and I'm thinking what I see is what I'm getting. And what I'm getting is a cold shoulder from the Vietnamese monks. I don't feel welcome by the community in a Sangha that emphasizes community. I feel welcome by a clique composed of the Western monks. At worst, they completely and simply blow me off. At best, they'll answer a direct question. It bothered me for a few days, but now I don't care. What I see is what I get, but I'm putting it all down and not letting it bother me. I'm here for a purpose, and I'm going to follow through with that purpose without their help or not.

So for ordination, I came up with two criteria I mentioned: 1) Full heart into it, and 2) joyfully. On the immediate aspirant path now, my only question is whether I'm sincerely on it. Am I sincerely here in exploration and pursuit of monastic ordination? I don't have the answer right now, but that's the immediate question I'm working on, giving 'yes' the benefit of doubt. If the answer becomes clearly no, I'm not sincere about it, I have to leave immediately and not waste the monks' time and resources.

The College Students Retreat was great because of the young, fresh energy. The feedback they gave us was wildly positive, and it was refreshing hearing that they were getting so much out of being at Deer Park for a weekend and joining the practice. They were glowing by Sunday from leaving the rush and tumult of their student lives behind for a weekend, from the clean, crisp mountain air and beautiful surroundings, from the positive energy and easy smiles of the monastics, from the slow, easy pace of monastic practice.

Group walking meditation during the College Students Retreat, Sunday morning.


We don't have another retreat until late May, which is great. One stressful memory I have from my earlier stay at the monastery was something like three retreat weekends practically in a row. I think I'm better equiped to handle something like that now, though.

This week, I think the monastics will be coming up with a new daily schedule, so things will get back to normal pretty soon. My cousin returned to Taiwan, so now I can focus on getting disciplined and practicing diligently. I'm already back on a strict sitting regimen that I intend to maintain, alone if not with the community. I'm also planning on giving learning Japanese one last shot, self-study just for myself, to do what I've been blocked from doing for over 20 years. I also hope to spend at least one shift in the kitchen every day whenever there is a Western monk on the cooking team for the day. I'm going to try to break down the block I have about cooking, too, even if it's just by chopping for the next however many months. I'm also going to try to be less obsessive about getting on the internet and cutting back on coffee, which already looks to be a woeful failure.

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA
Someone cleverly declared a week of “lazy days” from the monastics’ return to the coming College Students Retreat this weekend. It has made it hard to fall back into the monastery routine, but has been good since my cousin is still in the country and sometimes we end up talking late at night, after her brother-in-law and daughter have gone to sleep. She’s staying at her brother-in-law’s house in the Bay Area until she leaves for Taiwan on Friday. We still have a lot to talk about, and my being on the monastic path has been encouragement for her in her practice, which has been instrumental in her working through her issues. Her practicing has been inspiring for me and has helped keep me clear and fresh walking down this path.

It was weird that I got back here at the same time as the monks, and then the remnants of a head cold that I didn’t know I had flared up, making me feel like I was getting over jetlag in sympathy with them. But it made it so I couldn’t even sit for 45 minutes until yesterday when I was finally able to complete two sessions. It felt really good, sitting is the bomb. Imperceptible things happen during sitting, and if you know how to meditate, I guess they come quicker than they have for me. If you don’t know how to meditate, they start to happen organically, but it may take years and years for the mind to get it. Like me. For me, I’ve noticed the length of time I sit affects the quality of the sitting. 45 minutes is better than 30 minutes, although harder. 45 minutes now is still really long.

Otherwise, these lazy days just mean unscheduled practice for the monks. For aspirants, like me and one other person who has been here for the past three months while most of the monks were away, it’s like we’ve been put out to pasture.

I feel that things are different for me this time around. When I was here from November to January, I was grappling with the monastic path and becoming an aspirant and what that means. This time, I’m considered an aspirant, but I don’t feel as focused. I’ve wandered off the path and I’m wondering how and if I’ll get back on. I’m very distracted. As an aspirant, I’m aspiring towards ordination, but I’m a little more reserved and conservative about that. I’ve heard that in some schools, there is pressure to ordain in order to increase numbers and prestige, or to gain as many adherents to the school as possible. I don’t think the Plum Village system is like that, which is part of the appeal. They wait until an aspirant is ripe before thinking about ordination. As for me, I absolutely will not ordain until I feel I’m ready, which means that I feel it deep in my heart that I’m putting my whole heart into monasticism, and that I’m going into ordination joyfully. The idea of ordination should energize me and make me happy. Right now, it doesn’t, and I believe that I will have to have some initial transformation within myself to get to that point, a transformation that can only come from steeping myself in the practice, and practicing sincerely and diligently.

I’m wading into the water to get to that point, but I’m not pushing myself to get there as long as we’re in lazy days and my cousin is still in the country. Things will change next week, after the College Students Retreat, when a new schedule will be devised by the monks and days become more regimented, although I use that term loosely. Hopefully, I’ll start getting a better sense of aspirancy from the monks, some sort of guidance, since at this point not a lot of attention is being paid to us, no nurturing, no encouragement, no heads up as to what will be expected of us as aspirants. Part of me is feeling that it isn’t within the function of Deer Park to nurture aspirants, that is something Plum Village has the facility for, and that’s why we’re feeling unguided and isolated, but, of course, it’s too early to make that assessment.

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA
I finally made it back. I was supposed to be back on Wednesday, April 6, in accordance with a nice, tight, clean schedule, whereby I was to leave New Jersey in the morning, land in San Diego around noon, take an express bus to Escondido in the afternoon, take a local bus halfway to the monastery, walk the rest of the way, arriving by evening and having the door to my room left unlocked since they would know exactly when I was returning. I would have a week and a half to settle into the monastic practice before the monks returned from Vietnam.

Instead, I chose a circuitous route back to the monastery that involved flying into a completely different city, over 500 miles of driving, constant family presence, constant two year old baby tending, living for free out of a Days Inn that was owned by a friend of the family, and some groundbreaking intimate space with my dear cousin who, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve known for 25 years and is probably the most important person in my life and is now important to my practice path as well. She’s been helping me through this decision to be on the monastic path, as well as exploring a series of repressed memories from the 90’s. No joke – cleanly excised from my memory, confounding and frustrating. And my steps on the monastic path have become varying degrees of uncertain.

I flew into San Francisco on Thursday, April 7, about 10 hours before my uncle, step-aunt, cousin and her two year old arrived from Taiwan. From there we rented a minivan and met up with my cousin’s brother-in-law and her two little brothers (my uncle’s youngest sons), one who lives in San Jose, the other who flew up from San Diego. The two brothers are about 10 years younger than my cousin, and after their mother died, my cousin played a large part in raising them through their adolescence, much more than my uncle did, because he just didn’t know how to do it. Actually, she played a large part in raising them even before their mother died because she was a local politician by then and didn’t spend much time raising them herself. Consequently, their loyalty and love is much more to my cousin than to their father, but everyone gets along pretty well.

We stayed one night with my cousin’s brother-in-law in Oakland, had lunch in San Francisco the next day with another branch of family who were in town because their daughter was getting married, and then drove down the coast, stopping in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and then finally reaching San Diego. My uncle has an old, old friend from Taiwan who owns a Days Inn, and they were more than kind and gracious and generous enough to put us up for however long we wanted to stay. No joke, they are a couple who I now refer to as Uncle George and Auntie Connie, and they were so wonderful and positive and went way above and beyond being hosts. By the end of the week that we stayed there, I told Uncle George that if they were my parents, I would consider their words and advice regarding the monastic path. I think they must have been really great parents to their two kids, and if I was their son, I’d be taking their happiness into consideration with any decision I made.

After arriving in San Diego, the plan was just to stay for a few days before they took me to the monastery and they would all leave for their respective destinations. Somehow, their stay kept getting extended, and I kept pushing back my return date to the monastery. First my cousin who lives in San Jose extended his stay for an extra day before flying out. My uncle and step-aunt flew out according to plan to go to New Jersey for the New Jersey portion of that other cousin’s wedding. But my cousin kept extending her stay, and I kept pushing back my return, until finally we ended up hanging out until the last possible day that I had to leave. Instead of having a week and a half to settle into the monastic practice, my cousins returned me to the monastery pretty much at the same time the monks returned from Vietnam. My cousin left the next day to return to the Bay Area to spend a few days before flying back to Taiwan.

So I’m adjusting along with the monks to being back here. I haven’t seen most of them as they’re recovering from jetlag, and I’m recovering from a head cold and lack of sleep over the past week (with a two year old crier of a baby, no one gets much sleep). It’s different. I’m different. If I just wanted to stay on the monastic path, I shouldn’t have left in January. I’ve tried sitting meditation several times on my own since I’ve been back, but it’s hard when you’re getting over a cold. I fade in and out of reality and I get bombarded with images of the past few months. I’m also wondering what will be the end result of my stay at the monastery, whether I will actually go forward and be ordained as a monk. That’s the plan, that’s the intention, but I also have nagging doubts now, and all I can do is continue to look deeply into myself and find out what my heart is telling me and what my path should be. The journey I’m taking as a monastic aspirant will already be one of transformation, but the question is whether the transformation ends up with me ordaining or leaving and continuing my path elsewhere.

San Diego, CA
Almost back to the monastery. My departure from Taiwan was a bit of a flurry with my cousin being in the hospital, and us reaching some intimate, mutual space regarding our respective practices.

My cousin and I met 25 years ago when we were kids. My parents sent me and my brothers to Taiwan for the Summer, and in my memory, we were absolute terrors, fighting all the time. For my cousin, our presence contributed to what she describes as the "worst Summer of her life". I remember (and regret) being particularly mean to her, but she reports that I was not the worst of it. Her older brother already made her life miserable, and she was a crier. She cried at everything, all the time, driving people nuts (the way her two year old does now). The presence of me and my brothers made things worse, but it's not like we were disturbing some family paradise. It was just more of what she was used to. She also reports that my oldest brother tormented her more than I did, which sort of makes me feel better.

I wouldn't have been surprised if she hated me for the rest of my life, that when we got older she would be completely cold to me, spit in my face if the chance arrived. The chance arrived only three years later when I was spending a Summer with relatives in Japan, and we decided to go to Taiwan. I was worried and anxious about seeing my cousin again, I was so sure she hated me. (reading between the lines: why was I so worried and anxious about seeing a cousin I gleefully tormented three years earlier?). But when I saw her, she smiled at me, she was very friendly towards me, she was even happy to see me. It was mutual affection and we spent a good amount of time together, not that I remember directly, but I extrapolate from the photographic evidence.

And speaking of the photographic evidence, I was a walking 80s fashion crime. I was mortified to see photos from back then. I wore Adidas shorts that ran way up high on the thigh, matching but color clashing Adidas shirts, athletic socks pulled all the way up, and sweatbands on both wrists and on my head. AAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! I've been trying to figure out how much I'd be willing to pay for her to destroy all those photos. My cousin reports that after that visit, she went out and got sweatbands!

We didn't see each other again until we were in college, and our relationship over the next decade was constantly developing, constantly in flux, and constantly being re-tread, as we tended to block things out of each time we met.

Presently, our relationship is more solid than it's ever been, no more blocking things out is foreseen. Our respective practices are a focal point of our good relationship. Our good and healthy relationship now is also due to her having given birth to Pie and Gracie, which she did at home, both natural. Those experiences took her being to a new level, gave her a confidence that she didn't have before, and I can also tell that she is a different person now (I hadn't seen her since before she gave birth). My being on the monastic path is also a contributing factor, as I'm anticipating the training being for me what having Pie and Gracie was to her.

I think of her as being a part of my practice now, not attaching to her, but gleaning encouragement and support from her. When it comes to practice, she has a lot of wisdom and insight, and what we've discussed over the past two months has been invaluable. I'm anticipating a large part of my training being transforming my spiritually debilitating negativity, and her encouragement and support represents something positive from the front end.

And it's mutual, she says. She attributes my visit to Taiwan to bringing her back to her dormant practice. Raising two kids attentively under the best conditions can be a torrent in the storm, and saying that Pie is a handful is an understatement. I noticed that she didn't have a meditation bell in her practice room in her house, so when I was in Taipei, I ended up on a street with store upon store of practice/worship paraphernalia and picked up a modest-sized bell for her. I think she was really happy that I got it for her, and just a couple days before I left, after she got out of the hospital, we sat together for the first time in her practice room, and she said it was the best sitting she's ever had. Ever. That kind of embarassed me because it's not like I could think I had anything to do with it, but she said it was the calmest and most focused sitting she's had with the best energy.

So now we're walking on our respective paths, supporting and encouraging each other. I should be back at Deer Park within the next few days, and I'm a little apprehensive because of changes in the past two months, but also more confident because of those changes.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ
I'm going to San Francisco and I have no intention of contacting any of my past acquaintances. I thought I might have to call someone for a place to crash, but my cousin booked a hotel room. Sorry East Coast compadres, I didn't contact any of you, either. Put me in a house alone, in the suburbs, with no parents and no schedule, and I'm too busy to get in touch with anyone except the pizza guy.