Yesterday I stopped by the bookstore of Fa Yuan Shi and saw a flyer selling tickets for Buddha Tooth Relic exhibition. This event is only available once a year to the public for 5 to 7 days. I am glad I came across the flyer. Guess, I lucked out.
I got onto the metro system for the first time today to go to LingGuang Shi and bowed to the Buddha Tooth Sharira. I stood and waited for a seat to open up and sit down. An opening showed up in front of me, as I leaned forward for the seat, a man one seat over slid over to my seat and blocked my seat by claiming it for himself even though he already had a seat. He strategically performed this smooth act to make sure I couldn’t sit but everyone else could. This grandfather looked away nervously as if he knew nothing of such a maneuver he just performed. I laughed to myself and continued to stand. I wondered what kind of life this person must have gone through to have to develop such a habit in order to make room to take care of his own.
I ended up sitting across from the blocked seat. I watched these elders who have facial feature of abundant blessings. Yet they are unhappy people. Their faces were grey and lacked light. What are blessings without wisdom? It is like having access to a pantry of unlimited top quality baking supplies to bake perfect goodies,
this is blessings. And without the recipe, wisdom, the potential of these ingredients are not able to be put to its full potential use.
As I exited the metro I asked other passengers about what bus to take to get to Ling Guang Shi. A woman who happened to be going to the same place told me to follow her. I told her I was there to bow to the Buddha’s Tooth Relic. She was happy to have met me and disappointed she didn’t know about this, otherwise she would have pulled her son out of school to do the same. She had just decided on a whim this morning to visit the monastery because she really wanted to read the Surangama Sutra and hopes to locate one for her to take home to read. The interesting part was she was illiterate.
On the bus, I told her stories I remembered from the sutra to encourage her interest in continuing to read the sutra all the way through. I quickly realized the entire bus was attentively listening in and decided to invest in this opportunity, so I just kept sharing bits and pieces until it was my stop to get off.
This local Beijing woman’s name was Cheng. She decided on her own to be my tour guide for the monastery. The place was filled with people of all sorts of backgrounds, it was quite a circus scene. They make the viewing possible publicly once a year this time of the year. While waiting in line for the viewing Cheng asked me about my practice. I told her, my basic practice is done twice a day, after waking up and before going to bed. It involves recitation of sutras, mantra, and meditation. To me, the important part isn’t how much, and that more isn’t better. Or even what, every dharma door is the best if it works for you.
She complained of how difficult it is to come across dharma talks, books, etc… It takes special connections just to learn something. She gets her information from friends who know friends of friends of this or that particular province in the south who is able to access dharma teachings from teacher in Taiwan. Oh, what long complicated journeys just to get a tiny access to dharma. I felt so sorry for her. She wanted to share her very special blessed pendant with me if I cared to receive it. Cheng said, it’s limited in quantity because it has to be snuck in and it is of popular demand.
I learned she specifically wanted to request Shurangama Sutra to read and wanted to read commentary by Ven. Hsuan Hua. She was a bit illiterate so I called my friend Victor in Shanghai and he recommended sound files for her to listen to downloadable off the web. I was glad for her because how was she going to read when she can’t? She said she’ll listen while she works around the house.
Cheng had beautiful ears but her face had sharp lines of anger. I think when she gets going, she can strike intense lightening. She envied that I was single. She said if she had encountered Buddhism earlier in her life she would probably not be married with children right now. I reminded her that we all have our life lessons to grow into with the affinities we laid out for ourselves and in the end we all get there. That grass if often seen greener on the other side of the fence.
Cheng insisted to buy me lunch and I think her budget was a bowl of noodles and not anything else. Honestly I really wanted to have some dumplings for $1 more, but since she felt the needed to show me hospitality, I was not going to upset her by paying on my own because dumplings were out of her budget. She also insisted I bow to every image and light incense to everyone. I just politely followed her and smoked myself to death by stepping close to the burner, lovely just lovely. On tope of it all, they blasted these so called Buddhist songs over the intercom but it was more like china slow love song. It was not centering or grounding.
The pagoda for viewing of the relic was filled with people. We were instructed on how to hold the incense and how to bow and what to recite etc… There were so many rules to worry about carried out on military tempo that it was very difficult to enjoy the whole supposedly sacred experience.
Cheng and I parted with her inviting me to stay with her next time I am in Beijing and that if I should have any difficulty in Beijing airport, I should call her husband who works there.
