Author: petersalvia

The first time I participated in a dharma assembly, and I would have no idea what that term meant if you asked me back then, I was up earlier than usual.

It was two weeks after I’d first visited the relics exhibition at Lu Mountain Temple. Monday thru Friday was a slog so Saturdays were my usual sleep in time. But I had this weird dream with monks talking to me using the bottoms of their feet and I abruptly woke up at like 730 in the morning…

Not alarmed by the dream and somewhat more awake than usual, trying to figure how anyone could contort their feet to talk like that… I recognized if I got my butt out of bed I could arrive in time for the meditation class that started at 9a.

Normally, I would just recognize the opportunity and pull the covers back over my head. For some reason, this time I didn’t.

Dharma Assembly Entrance, Take One

I kicked off my shoes and entered the Buddha Hall at Lu Mountain Temple and everyone was quietly seated in front of the little flat chairs. I was wearing Adidas pants that made a swishing noise as I tried to quietly find a little flat chair to sit in front of… I realized I was anything but discreet. New pants next time, idiot.

And at the front of the room was a monk sitting with closed eyes, meditating. I remembered thinking, in that moment, this was so rad and may be the closest I would ever get to meeting a real Jedi Master in this lifetime. Sincerely. Not ironically.

Master Yong Hua was so… still.

Once I finally settled in, I looked up and watched as Master Yong Hua slowly and with intention looked at me, then past me, raised his arm, pointed his finger and snapped once loudly. A precise snap. I looked around and behind me and an old monk stood up. Without saying a word, he waved at me to follow him. So I did.

He walked me out of the Buddha Hall to another small building and that’s where I met Venerable Xian Jie (XJ) for the first time.

I’m going to save my first experience being introduced to Chan Meditation with Venerable XJ for another post.

Joining the Dharma Assembly for Real This Time

30 minutes later Venerable XJ walked me and the other beginning meditation class attendees back to the Buddha Hall where we again sat back down on the floor in front of the little flat chairs and I participated in my first Dharma Assembly.

It was not like going to church. It was more like Sunday School. But you sat on the floor and got to ask any question you wanted to. I didn’t ask any questions at all, I just listened and took it all in.

Master Yong Hua spoke for about an hour, detailing his experience with Chan Meditation. How it had benefitted him and how he had seen it benefit others, too. He explained (either at this talk or another in the following weeks) how Chan was the Chinese word that the Japanese word Zen was translated from. So that was cool, because I’d heard of Zen. Who doesn’t want to be a little Zen now and then?

Somewhere during the talk the sun started to brighten the windows of the Buddha Hall and my morning malaise began to wear off. Maybe it was the experience of sitting on the floor, I don’t know, but I started focusing more on the conversation and the people sitting with me.

Listening to a Dharma Master Speak

I was seeing how Master Yong Hua would speak and look at each person in the Dharma Assembly, address us both as a group and as individuals. Discussing the broader topic of Chan as well as answering people’s specific questions about their personal experience with meditation.

At the time it felt like a combination of an oral storytelling festival (my family’s southern roots are big into the oral storytelling tradition, listening to radio plays, books on tape, etc.) and a community town hall forum. If I give you my best, direct and matter-of-fact definition of what a Dharma Assembly is, I would tell you it’s:

The opportunity to participate in receiving and discussing personalized, extemporaneous wisdom from a dharma master.

And I feel it’s important to state that Dharma Assemblies are a safe place. A peaceful gathering. A social event where people are respectful of others, thoughtful of their surroundings and for the most part focused on listening and participating in the topics being discussed.

And Master Yong Hua was fascinating to listen to. I felt comfortable sitting with him and the other monks and laypeople in the Buddha Hall. He would glance in my direction from time to time but generally I just listened to him and others’ comments.

When the Light Bulb Turns On

Then he said something I will never forget. And I’m paraphrasing from more than 8 years ago:

“The American Dream is a great thing. The right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. But there is a flaw to this dream. Pursuing happiness implies happiness is outside of you. External to you. This is not the case.

“Happiness is within each and every one of you. You do not need to pursue it, only find it within yourself. And that’s why we practice Chan [meditation].”

It hit me like a freight train of common sense; like I’d heard this before and just remembering it now. The relentless pursuit isn’t necessary at all… all the happiness you need is already within you.

I’ve spent blood, sweat and tears campaigning for Health Insurance Reform and wanting to contribute to our American Democracy, to benefit our people, in many different ways. That in and of itself is rewarding. But I’d never heard the American Dream parsed this way before; it’s truth laid so bare.

To me, it’s still the most American takeaway I’ve ever heard.

Happiness can be Sitting in front of a Little Flat Chair

I can be happy sitting in front of this little flat chair right now. I don’t need to go anywhere, I don’t need to buy anything, eat anything, drink anything, watch anything; my happiness is waiting for me and all I have to do is look within myself to find it. I can sit here for as long as it takes if I want to. It’s up to me.

This internal monologue exploding inside my head as I politely (if not noisily) sat next to the other members of the small, humble Dharma Assembly at a small Buddhist Way Place on a run-of-the-mill SoCal Saturday Morning.

I’ve recounted my takeaways from my first Dharma Assembly experience in different ways during other Dharma Talks since then. But I think it’s important to write it down and make my experience available to others who may have had similar experiences.

Or maybe you’re just curious what the heck is going on in these Buddhist Temples at any given time.

Something like this, probably. Your Dharma Assembly mileage may vary 🙂

Discovering a Buddhist Way Place for the first time (also commonly referred to as a temple), learning more about Buddhism, meditation and a myriad of wonderful things can be an exciting journey – it has been for me!

If you are thinking of visiting a Buddhist Way Place for the first time or the universe happened to stumble you across this blog by happy accident… I’m writing with you in mind!

Welcome!

A Brief Academic Digression (you can skip this)

So real quick, what is a Way Place? Well, it’s translated from two Chinese characters ( 道 and 場 )which, in my non-expert and humble experience, can open a whole can of worms when accurately defining their singular meaning in English.

But don’t fret, there’s a great resource used by many Buddhist disciples and professional academics to land on a basic meaning (or meanings) that we can all generally agree to disagree about and then also move forward with constructive discussion.

On the website buddhism-dict.net (enter guest for name and leave password blank), the term Way Place (道場) can be translated with the basic meaning site of enlightenment. More casually (because I deal best with profound stuff by being a bit casual to compensate), becoming enlightened can be referred to as achieving the Way. It then follows the Place where you become Enlightened is a Way Place.

I’m bothering to go into these slightly academic details only because there is a long tradition of Buddhist Scholars who definitely have opinions that I am not at all versed in and with all due respect require more thought and consideration than I feel is helpful for my personal cultivation. Most of the time.

But for some people it’s super helpful, fascinating, wonderful and fully worth investigating thoroughly. They find it helpful for their cultivation and being helpful, especially when some people may disagree with my takeaways on finer points, is the intention of this blog. So I will consider the box well enough checked from an obligatory standpoint and move along with the story…

How I Found Buddhism

In the summer of 2014, I was thankful for the talented people I was surrounded by and the successes I had experienced. I was collaborating on an innovative, successful show with talented cast, crew, leadership… all around a big life win.

The me in this video hadn’t learned how to meditate, how to turn off my brain and power down my computer so I could recharge and reboot… yet. That Peter didn’t even know that was a possibility.

On a personal level, I was challenged balancing career & family and finding a healthy lifestyle that worked for me. I’d been doing the same stuff the first 14 years of my career and along with many successes also consistently hit the same speed bumps: work stress would mount, working relationships could strain, my body would get out of shape and a gig could come to an end; a common cycle of life in production.

As each cycle completed, I would dust myself off and get back on that bicycle. But this time, I was on a great show with a great team and very much wanted to break out of the same pattern; I wanted to snap the chain and go for a good, long ride on the beach. I’d never looked into Buddhism before, so…

Thanks to some friends at a nail salon in Burbank, CA (a longer story for a different time), I got a Vietnamese newspaper placed in my hand with an address circled for Lu Mountain Temple in Rosemead, CA.

As advertised, a Buddhist Relics Exhibition was being held and open to the public. It was time to try something new and see if I could generate a different result. Find a new bicycle. Get on a better path for myself and the people in my life.

Visiting a Buddhist Way Place for the First Time

I’d never been to a Way Place. I’d always called them temples and would never have known the phrase ‘Way Place’ at the time. My friends told me to wear something nice but not too formal. It was summer in SoCal so you know that meant it was going to be hot. And I get sweaty. But whatever, buy the ticket take the ride.

I pulled up to Lu Mountain Temple and wondered if I was at a bodega or someone’s home. But then I saw some multi-colored flags by a fence and as I walked up to the gate, under a canopy, there was a person wearing a robe sitting in a chair. I said hi and she pointed me towards the door to the Buddha Hall entrance. I saw there were shoes outside the door so I took mine off and stepped inside.

Going to a Buddhist Way Place for the first time, I was really thankful for the sign at the door that helped ground me with a simple explanation of where I was, how to act, and what I was there to see. I’m a golfer, I appreciate etiquette.

Buddhist Relics are a Whole Thing

I mean I literally had no idea. I had a copy of Rage Against the Machine’s debut album on cassette since high school so I generally knew about the monk who had lit himself on fire during the Vietnam War out of protest.

Imagine my shock (and awe) when not 10 feet after I stepped inside the temple I saw a picture of that very monk with an explanation of who he was and a relic, a real tangible thing, that remained of him after his immolation.

He was no longer a picture on the front of a cassette case. I was literally standing next to him, in his presence, in this small little non-descript temple. The impact was profound… everything suddenly became very real.

And so I started to look around the Buddha Hall, seeing the other relics, feeling a lot of energy from the realization that I had not prepared for this and now I was having a life experience. I took pictures, people let me walk around unbothered, some folks were sitting on the floor meditating, chatting or whatever… I just took it all in. And at one point, when I got near the altar, one of the lady monks with a shaved head and wearing a robe (I just didn’t realize female monk are called nuns at the time, so now you do too) asked me if I’d like my picture taken. I said sure!

Behind me, there are major relics in stupas (the fancy glass containers on tables). The three statues are standard fair for a Buddhist altar along with Dharma Protectors (smaller green and red statue lower left) and others, depending on the the school of Buddhism the temple follows. In this picture, I knew none of these details. It just looked rad and I was stoked to be there.

And then as I walked around the room someone asked me if I’d like to receive a blessing. I’d bought the ticket, I was riding the ride.

My Experience with the Whole Body Sharira

So I had no expectation of what it was to receive a Buddhist blessing. I didn’t know that was a thing. And the way it went was an older monk took the sharira, pictured above, out of the case while I put my hands together, closed my eyes and lowered my head (I’m nearly 6’3″ and he is about 5’5″ or so) so he could hold the relic over my head.

At first my eyes were closed and it was dark. I felt the stupa rest on the top of my head. Then, something I’d never experienced before or since, happened. The inside of my head went from dark to slowly filling with a soft bright light, kind of like a balloon rising , until i felt… totally bright inside.

It wasn’t alarming, it wasn’t frightening. I felt calm, good… peaceful. Not like radical, far out peace kind of thing. Just content. Balanced. And when I opened my eyes I knew I’d had an experience. I didn’t say anything, I just let it pass. I said thank you to the monk and kept looking at the rest of the shariras in the exhibit. I found one of the nice little flat chairs that were all over the floor and took a seat.

The Little Flat Chairs are for Laying Your Head On

No one told me at the time. Only when I came back later did someone tell me they’d never seen anyone sit on a bowing cushion before. Going to a Buddhist Way Place for the first time, I had no idea!

So you use them for kneeling then bowing your head close to the floor and touching your forehead on the cushion. That’s what I put my butt on. What an idiot lol.

But everyone there was so nice, they didn’t say anything. A nun sat down on the floor next to me and said hello and started chatting. After a minute or two it occurred to me I could sit on the floor too, so I did. Which was the thing to do, lol.

And we had a very casual and pleasant conversation about how I had found out about the exhibit, what I thought about it, what I did for a living, you know… get to know you kind of things.

Then she asked me if I’d like anything to eat. I was famished and said yes. She took me to the kitchen and it smelled wonderful.

Buddhist Way Place (Temple Food) is the Best

I’m not vegetarian. Not yet, anyways. And I certainly wasn’t 8 years ago. But the food smelled so good and I’d had Pho before. But not like this. The ladies in the kitchen were so nice to me, they brought food to me and brought seconds and asked if I wanted more after that.

I don’t have any pictures but I remember it was a Pho like dish with broth and noodles and a beef flavored tofu that was not at all like the weird vegan replacement meats I had tried before; this was legit amazing food.

So if you are going to a Buddhist Temple for the first time, be sure to try the food. If they are serving it, I guarantee it will be worth experiencing. Buddhists Sangaha (monks & nuns) are vegetarian and vegan as a part of their cultivation (their monastic lifestyle) so if you need to go for a burger or a taco afterwards I totally get it and did too, but wow the flavors are just so good.

Concluding Thoughts

And that was pretty much my first experience. Coming back after going to a Buddhist Temple for the first time is the trick. And I’m planning to share how that and many other experiences have gone for me since I took refuge (became Buddhist).

If you’ve made it this far I hope you’ve found my story helpful to you in some small way. Leave a comment, I’m grateful to learn your thoughts and questions. And if you’re interested in going to a Buddhist Temple for the first time yourself, here’s a handful of Way Places I recommend checking out.

Emituofo,

Peter