Three bowls and a pair of chopsticks each

This post was originally sent on Sun, 03 Oct 2004

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Wow, I heard from my mum that the two posts that I blogged last
wednesday never showed up (at least not by the time she wrote to me).
Let me know if they really never did and I'll repost some of the
stuff I wrote then, as I can't seem to access even the page for
editing my own blog from here so I can't see what's actually there, I
have to do all this by email.

But for now, let me tell you something about the life at the temple
here on Jiuhua mountain.

The day at our little temple begins at 4:30 when one of the girls
starts banging two pieces of wood rhythmically together to let all of
us know it's time to wake up. And so we do, get out of bed, put on
our clothes, wash up and put on the dark temple robes.

At 5 a.m., the 9 of us have all taken our places in the temple room,
each having a prayer cushion in front of us for kneeling and bowing
down. And so the morning prayers and chanting begin, with one of the
boys beginning the rhythm with a little bell, and the other
percussion instruments soon join in, and the song and chant begins.
Needless to say, I can't do any of it, nor do I understand anything.
But I do my best to keep up with the kneeling and turning and joining
my hands...

The prayers finish around 6 a.m., after which we quietly walk into
the next room, neatly in a line, to eat breakfast, which one of the
women has by now laid out on the tables. so we sit down, at three
tables, each seating 3 people, the 3 men on one side, and the two
tables of the women facing them. The food is served by one of the
girls, who will give each of us some rice porridge in one bowl, and
different kinds of salty vegetables in another, and maybe some bread.
She will then stand by during the whole meal to give people more food
or water, as they want it. There is a little prayer before eating,
and some of the rice is offered to the buddha on the altar, before we
tuck in. The Master begins first, of course, and the rest of us
follow suite. the whole meal is eaten in total silence.

After the meal, the master will talk to us about different things,
mostly about practical stuff as everything is still in its very
beginning as the life at the temple is concerned. In the lst post
(which might never have appeared) i wrote about how he has been
really angry a lot, and not just talking but shouting and even
hitting people, with some of people begging on the knees and crying
and apologising for doing some little silly things in a
"wrong" way. But this has changed in the past couple of
days, now he is actually talking and teaching people nicely... makes
everyone a lot happier, too! But, people are still on their toes,
trying to avoid making 'mistakes', such as putting the chopsticks in
the wring position or serving the vegetables in the wrong manner...
hmmm

After breakfast, everyone does all kinds of work, there seems to be a
lot to do as it's all so new still. But I really don't know what to
do myself! I keep asking everyone what can i do, but they keep
thelling me there's nothing I can do. And then the master tells me to
try to help out and so something... But as I said before, I'm mainly
supposed to be studying and learning about Chinese culture, so I've
been spending a lot of time with my Chinese books.

And as the mountain is so so beautiful, it's lovely to walk around
the little footpaths...

This week it's the holiday week for the national holiday, and it can
be seen even in our little temple, though it's pretty much out of the
way from any of the main temples, and it doesn't even appear on any
of the temple maps. But still, we have had quite a few visitors in
the past couple of days. They seem to come in two makes:
First, there are huges groups of people, mostly from the 'lower'
classes (it's funny how clearly the classes show in the socialist
society!!!). They all come wearing their tour group hats and carry
their pilgrim bags, and they rush in in a huge wave, sticking insence
everywhere, throwing money on the altars and the boxes, kneeling down
just about everywhere and throwing the insence boxes and wrappers all
over the place. They even come in during the morning and evening
prayers, just doing their thing right in the middle of all of us in
our robes!! And then they are out just as fast as they came in.

Then there are the other kind of visitors, who come in smaller
groups, and seem to be mostly from the middle and upper classes. They
come in more slowly, look around, talk to us, pray and offer some
insence and generally are much more quiet and take their time.

So so much to tell about the life here, but I have to get back again.
I still don't have time to answer those emails but i'll try to get to
it soonish. And next time I will continue the story of the day at the
temple...

Hope this works this time...