Here is a post from Matt Palmer from our community
For church this week, we went to a gathering at Mile Square Park in the heart of Fountain Valley. We attempted to “smart mobbed” as we all gathered at the place separately arriving each in our own cars, . In order to smart mob, you need contact by cell phone to land the others who are arriving to the spot, and this gathering repeatedly conveyed that silence was paramount and cell phones were not allowed (although when they did ring by those who left them on, no dirty looks were given). This was a gathering of Buddhist followers coming to speak and take a day in the park with monks and nuns of the Monasteries taught by none other then the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn.
I arrived alone and could easily be recognized the gathering from far away by red banners saying statements like “I have arrived” and “I am free”, and monastic in brown robes and white cone type hats. The moment I left the parking lot, and entered the grassy area in which they were to meet, I felt a presence like none before, I had to stop and stand to take it all in. There were about five hundred or more people all waiting to see Hahn (the Buddhist equivalent to Billy Graham), and 80% of them were Vietnamese. I definitely stood out (being Caucasian), but was greeted warmly by a Vietnamese man who struck up a conversation with me. He said he was not a Buddhist but a “movie maker”, who spent the part of the war in a P.O.W. camp for 7 years. When I told him that I was a Christian (hard to say to a group like this with a lot of baggage on the Church as a whole, especially against them) he asked if I was “curious about all of this”; we spoke for about a half hour.
I had read one of Hahn’s books, Living Buddha, Living Christ and was inspired by the respect that a devout and renowned Buddhist spoke of Christ as a peacemaker and a “brother” of Buddha. I was ironically reading Hahn’s book on 9/10/02 before going to bed and remember he was speaking about his opinions of war, his efforts during the Vietnam war to reconcile with the North and South, and his passive stance. Ever since then, I have had a new respect for Hahn and that he has at least dared to examine other faiths to sharpen his own understanding and faith confident in the correlations of others to his. This was what brought me here but I encountered something much more.
When the monastics arrived, everyone was asked to get up from the crowd and line a pathway. There was a sea of brown, and one man in yellow. At first, I assumed that Hahn was the man in yellow, but when he got closer, I recognized that the man to the right of the man in yellow was Hahn, in a brown robe. The scene was spectacular, these people in brown walking in rhythm, but not marching, holding small clay pots in their hands, everyone on the side silent, palms together. Later I learned that the reason they put their palms together is to “look beautiful”, the palms together resemble a budding lotus flower; something very beautiful and sacred to them.
After Hahn walked down this path of lotuses followed by the rest of the monastics, he sat down and spoke, asking everyone in the crowd to “sit beautifully”, which I noticed was cross legged or Indian style, palms together. He then started to speak in Vietnamese then translated into English. When he spoke, it was not in anger, it was not to force, it was not to convince, it was to guide. The ambience and setting was amazing. Just the fact that everyone was silent and meditating on the teaching was different for me, but very refreshing.
The agenda for the day was to take the crowd through a day of the life of practices Buddha himself would have exercised. Hahn spoke first of how every place can be a beautiful place or a place of “hell”. We can decide to see the beauty in it and take it, or we can put up our defenses and make it hell. He then gave us something to meditate on as we did a small meditation walk within the park, lead by the monastics. The words were “I have arrived”, “I am home”, “I am here”, “I am now”, “I am solid”, “I am free”, “I live in the ultimate”. Walking around what was no more then a quarter mile, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. Everyone was walking to their own pace, monks with nuns, monk and nuns along side lay people. You could hear what they were meditating on, and the only real sound was the grass crunching under everyone’s feet. This place where dogs play Frisbee and kids play football had all of a sudden become sacred.
After we got back from our walk, Hahn spoke again and asked everyone to “sit beautifully”. He then spoke of how the Buddha would mindfully eat and how the daily routine for a monk / nun is to walk into the town where the monastery was and to go door to door with a clay pot and ask for food in exchange for a teaching. After collecting the food, the monks / nuns would go into a forest and eat mindfully the meal together in the beautiful surroundings. Hahn then asked that those in the crowd would give to the monastics present, a piece of food in exchange for the teaching heard that day.
Being a Christian, this teaching was amazing. So many times in my life I think of how fast I eat, walk, breath and consume without first thinking of how precious it really is. All of the situations I am in can be either a heaven or hell, not by other people, but by me. Was this teaching from a prominent Christian evangelist seizing the moment to convert, no. This was a man who is very small, soft spoken and has shaken the world in very significant ways, just by teaching others to be mindful. Some would wonder if this was “church” or if it was simply a cultural experience? Does this “count” for my attendance to a church gathering for the week. I would say that it was deeply spiritual, and touched me on so many levels that I have not gotten in a traditional church setting ever.
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