New life from scratch…New beginning… New me…Transformation…Enlightenment…Forgetting the past….Forgiving myself… Those were the words playing on my mind when I made my decision to apply for a silent retreat (Winter Kyol Che 2019) at Musangsa Korean Zen Buddhist temple, and I must admit, those words sounded quite appealing.
Though, it would be wrong to say that there was no practical reason for that idea whatsoever. Yes, practical! No matter how contradicting the words “practical” and “temple” may sound. I had a problem, and the problem was huge…
How It All Started…
I’ve worked as an online ESL teacher for over 3 years teaching Chinese kids English through an online platform, one of the biggest online companies in the world. I was happy and complacent…
Working online and having a steady income means you have the entire world at hand as long as you have a fast internet and the US passport which was definitely my case. I’ve been to Italy, Spain, France, Poland, Hungary and finally reached Asia – Vietnam and Korea…And that’s where my problem started…
Korea is a fast growing country with the average monthly income of $2000, which is two times more than what I was making with my online job. Though it wasn’t as hopeless as it seems at a glance.
I did have an opportunity to make more money if I took more classes per day. So, I decided to load myself with work to reach the goal of at least $1500. And I did reach it…but it came with it’s price….and the price was….my voice! I just lost it…
But the weirdest thing about my condition was that the voice loss was not due to the vocal chords injure but was rather some kind of psychosomatic illness. I couldn’t talk effortlessly.
All my speech organ muscles would become extremely tense, and my voice sounded squeezed, hoarse, as if I was a smoker with experience who had been drinking and smoking all night long, then yelling drinking songs till morning.
It also sounded as if I was about to start crying. After several unsuccessful attempts to consult with all possible doctors, such as ENT, psychiatrist, psychologist, physician who couldn’t find any problems, and having researched the symptoms on YouTube, I diagnosed myself with quite a rare diagnosis called Muscle Tension Dysphonia.
Nobody knows what causes it as well as there’s no particularly effective cure for it. They say Botox injections may temporarily relieve it but then the symptoms would come back. I was shocked, pissed off, frustrated, and…simply in despair…
I didn’t know what to do, as I was making money with my voice. So, I thought that if I stayed silent for some time and tried to balance my energy channels in meditation, it might help. That’s how I came up with the idea of joining the 2019 silent retreat at Musangsa Temple in South Korea.
The Genius of Simplicity
My first enlightenment experience came when I handed over my phone and passport at the Musangsa office upon arrival. The clerk took me to an empty room and told me to wait for about an hour.
Anyone in my shoes could have been bored to death waiting for an hour without holding the phone in hands, updating the Facebook status to “Came to a 7 day silent retreat at a Buddhist monastery”, chatting with friends or just surfing the web.
So, was I, but my reasonable mind reminded me patiently “Hey, you really don’t need to keep your friends informed on each step you take in your life”. I kindly thanked it for being so patient and came to realize that using the phone has become my reflex.
This little piece of technology that keeps my mind excited, aggravated and stressed each and every minute of my life has become an addiction, which is so hard to give up. I looked around the room – a big empty room with a Buddha statue in the middle, no furniture, no decorations, just a big pile of red mats and the clock ticking on the wall “tick-tock, tick-tock”.
In a way, it felt like coming back to the past when I was a child, often bored but never depressed and always happy, because each moment was so new and interesting offering so much to learn.
My First Encounter with Zen Buddhist Monks and Nuns
Next was the orientation which lasted for about an hour. A bald-headed Korean lady introduced herself as a nun in charge of the household.
She looked like someone I definitely pictured in my mind when I was envisioning a real Buddhist nun: round eye-glasses, a soft voice, unbelievably graceful gestures and demure smile intrinsic to Japanese women.
“Each of you will have daily jobs to do”, she said. “Diana, you will be responsible for cleaning the study room at 8am every day”. (I felt relieved and excited at the same time – the job was easy, and I’d get to look through the best book collection of the founder of Korean Zen Buddhism himself).
“Oh, and wash dishes after lunch, you know, those big bot and pans used for cooking”, she added with a smile on her face which this time seemed quite spiteful, or maybe “spiteful” was my mind’s interpretation of her smile, since I’ve always hated washing dishes.
I did, though, try to hide my disappointment with a forced smile, but I also realized I came there to try to tame my mind.
Shortly after she finished with her instructions, the Chief Nun came to tell us about the rules of conduct before, during and after the meditation practice. She had a very strong Eastern European accent which made it really hard to understand.
What I did understand seemed quite shocking: 1) during the meditation, she might come up to me and hit my back with a wooden stick, 2) during a so-called “formal meal”, I needed to clean the 4 bowls I was eating from with a little bit of water and a piece of kimchi and then DRINK IT.
She also explained the order in which all 4 bowls should be taken out, placed, eaten from, then washed out and put together. Trust me, it was one of the most difficult things to remember in my entire life.
And as she seemed to have enough experience dealing with beginners, she obviously knew it was impossible to remember all in just 5 minutes. So, all she said was “You’ll get it. Just look at other people and follow them”.
How Fear Breeds Terror or My First Blush
My first experience in the Buddha Hall was quite shameful. I came in where everybody was just sitting with their legs crossed and did the same thing – just sat down and crossed my legs.
As I looked up, I saw the Master Hye Tong, the Chef Nun and 20 other people looking at me as if waiting for something. Since I’m not that much into Buddhism traditions, I couldn’t have possibly remembered that the Chief Nun told us that every time you come in to the Buddha Hall for morning and evening chanting, bow to Buddha 3 times, do 3 prostrations, then bow to Kwanseum Bosal, then to the portrait of Sunsanim – Seung Sahn.
Through the darkness of the room backlit with candles, I saw a young girl looking at me ready to help using her body language. From her eyes and hand gestures, I understood that I needed to do all those bowings and prostrations. “Oh my, God does exist and can help me through other people!” I thought.
I had my next shameful experience during my first formal meal. I did remember Chief Nun mentioning “Put only as much food as you can eat” during our orientation. Of course, I knew my limits, so, I did exactly as she told us!
But she seemed to have forgotten to mention one little but extremely important thing: that we should finish eating within 10 minutes. Moreover, all your actions should be synced with the others which means to start eating, bow, clean and finish eating simultaneously.
So, I was eating at my normal pace, enjoying every bite of the vegetarian food, and as I raised my eyes, they suddenly got bigger. I saw all monks, nuns, and disciples just sitting and waiting patiently for me to finish my meal.
I had half of the bowl of rice and half of another bowl of salads and snacks left. I’m pretty sure everybody noticed how red my face turned, as I wasn’t sure whether to throw all the food away unnoticeably behind my back or stuff my mouth with it and just swallow without chewing, then choke and die.
Finally, the Chief Nun came up to me and said “You can put it aside for right now and finish it later as an exclusion for today”. “Thanks God, they are merciful towards newbies”, the voice inside me said.
Thus, my 1st two days at Musangsa Zen Buddhist temple felt like a complete disaster to me. I did regret about my decision coming there. I hated waking up at 4am, then voluntarily agree to destroy my knees while doing 108 prostrations, I hated meditating for 8 hours a day, I hated the formal meals as well as I hated eating my meals while sitting in the same meditation pose.
My knees were killing me, my eyelids were heavy, my back was making a cracking sound each 5 minutes while I was trying to straighten it up. In addition, I felt like my imperfect self was really a bad fit in this perfect world where all objects from plates and pots in the dining room to shared shoes in the bathroom should be put geometrically perfect, parallel or perpendicular to each other.
At least, this is what my SMALL SELF was telling me. While my BIGGER SELF kept looking for a bigger meaning in that crazy house.
The Turning Point…
On the 3rd day a new girl arrived who was supposed to be my roomie, and who was also a newbie to Korean Zen Buddhism. I definitely felt connection with that girl at first sight, I guess, this is what you call karmic relationship – we probably met in the previous lives and built close relationship, that’s why it felt as if we knew each other for ages.
I shared what my SMALL SELF was suffering from in that crazy house, and she asked me a rhetorical question which changed my view of everything that was going on, “Why do you feel ashamed?
Don’t you know that Zen is all about being non-judgmental, and nobody here will judge you for not knowing something?” That question pretty much shut my SMALL SELF up and gave a way for my BIGGEL SELF to feel free.
From that point, I started looking at things differently. Nobody except for me was responsible for judging my own self. So, if I could stop that, then I could learn new things without any pain or shame. And I CHOSE to do that…
From that point, each small step that was taken, brought me happiness from learning. I started loving waking up at 4am, doing 108 prostrations, I started loving the formal meals, the people to whom I never had a chance to speak, the ugly lazy fat cats that I was jealous of, since they had their own schedule and didn’t need to follow the crowd, I even started enjoying to put the bathroom shoes in a perfect parallel to each other.
I realized that everything that comes my way, comes to teach me something, and I should take difficulties as a challenge instead of beating myself over the wall and cursing the life for injustice. I started loving the communal work and washing dishes. I felt useful, I felt like I was living a real, not the virtual life, and I finally felt HAPPY! I felt that each moment was so precious, since it will not last forever.
How It All Ended Up…
So, did the silent retreat and the time spent at Musangsa Temple help me recover from my illness? No, it didn’t. However, the lessons that I learnt during the monastery life were absolutely worth my time and efforts, as they were meant to help me develop the right attitude towards my condition.
Everything is impermanent in this life, and so is my condition. But I intend to enjoy every moment of it, because it came my way to teach me something important.
It came to teach me to be a peaceful warrior and never give up, and to love each and every battle that you go through, because each of them is unique in its own way. And this is the Zen way…
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