The Dharma Force

Last Entry on my China Stuff

Hi all,

Sorry it took so long for me to continue my blogs.
My wife and kids came back from China.
Enough said!

Before I continue with my regular blogging, I'd like to thank a few friends.

I'd like to thank Miss Gypsy gypsy4evermore . In the time that I was absent, she sent me e-mails and C-notes to encourage me continuing to put my random thoughts to WDC. It was great for me, although I am not sure if it will be helpful to the continuing problem of Cyber-pollution.

I'd like also to thank my friend "Magician". It was wonderful to know you, wherever you are.
"Magician" was the jackrabbit that invaded our backyard. For the past few weeks, one of my kids' main activity in the morning was to chase it all around the backyard.

It promoted their health, saved my wife and I's energy, and provided laughs and scars on my body that I would not likely to forget. My 7 year old daughter tried to rattle it with a shovel while it was under a bush, and of course, as life imitated cartoons, I got slammed on the head. The shovel was confiscated, the girl was reprimanded and the rabbit was amused. (Not only it was not harmed, it was never in any sort of danger, and I saw it looking around for a popcorn stand!)

Then of course, I will come back to the rabbit's nickname "Magician". For some time now, I had known that there was a rabbit in my backyard. I had seen it scrolling around the place in the morning yawning. (with coffee in one hand and a few berries in the other, if I can believe my half-sleep eyes.)

I went out to investigate and I found nothing. I must confess that I used the shovel in the first place, but like my daughter, I did not successfully discover its hideout.

Then when my kids came back, it was a fun activity for them to chase it around. But to our amazement, it was able to disappear into thin air whenever it wanted.

One Saturday morning, I decided to make the event a family affair. So my wife and I and the kids chased the rabbit from one end of the yard to the other. It was not our intention to harm it. We just wanted it out of our yard. So we left the gate open and chased it all around the place.

Then like before, it dived under a bush and disappeared. My kids and I were poking around with tree branches, (now that the shovel was relieved of its duty), and my 1 1/2 year old son is throwing pebbles at the bush. His timing is off, so the pebble was not going straight out, but straight up. Very interesting.

Then my wife started to laugh. She pointed at a black rock in the corner of the fence. It took about 10 minutes for me to see it. I am very near-sighted. It was the rabbit. It was able to stand in the corner of the fence with its ears tucked in and its head down, only its blackish back was showing. In the first and second and third glance from us, it looked exactly like a rock.

I was still convinced it was a rock, until my daughter threw a bunch of pebbles at it. Her timing was good, but her aim was bad. One of the pebbles glazed its long ear, and it flapped around a bit.

But still, it would not move. Now what are we going to do? We don't want to kill it. And I kind of inclined just to watch how long it could hold that position.

A few minutes later, as my daughter's pebbles brought unwanted dust to its fur, it shook out its head and gave us a look of reproach and ran off.

And we had not seen it since.

Later, we figured that it was not making a home in our yard. It was just trying to dig through to get to our neighbor's yard. That yard had some tasty watermelon vines growing. But since we blocked off all the tunnels, it figured to be safer to find an alternate route.

Oh well, safe journey, "Magician".

Now, comes the last installment of my trip to China.

On that trip, I met a man. A holy man.
He was a Buddhist monk. He was about 88 years old.

I had been trying to find a way to describe him, and I could not find the right words.

He was like ..., well, he was sort of like ...

He kind of was like ...

Let me put it this way, did you ever watch the movie "Forrest Gump"?

He was like Forrest Gump, except, he was no Tom Hank, he was a Chinese, he was a Buddhist monk and he could not run. Otherwise, he was very close to that guy.

A good guy, a decent person. People took advantages of him, and he was very happy about that.

His life was very simple. He woke up at 2am in the hour, prayed to Lord Buddha until around 6am. Then he rested a little bit. He received visitors from 8am to noon. Then he took his only meal of the day at noon. If the visitors came around noon, then he would skip his only meal. He rested in the afternoon, and more prayers.

He had the reputation as the holy man in the region. His true titles were that he was the Abbot of a couple dozens of temples around the region. The titles were only honorary. He had no controls of any of these temples, although he raised the money to restore all of them from ruins.

His disciples were numerous, ordinary people found peace by watching him going about his normal activities. In China, all religions were controlled by a federal agency, with political offices governing all the temples. They were the real power behind the scene.

So they used his fame as an ATM. He was put into all of those run-down temples one by one. When he resided in one, people will come to see him, to pay respect. Then their donation will be collected by the temple for restoration and such. Once that was done, he was shipped to another temple.

He lived in a small apartment with one bedroom and one living room just above the norm for all the monks. It was small and without air-conditioner. In a few months, he would be off to another temple. Some of his wealthy disciples bought a car for him a few years back, one of the officials in the agency took it for his use. Then the disciples bought him another one, then of course, another official took it.

Throughout, he never complained one word.

I hope you can see the resemblance of him and Forrest Gump. I really really hope you do.

When I went up to meet him, I did not know what to expect of him. In the sad world we live in, most of these so called "Holy Man" are just fakes, frauds.

I was half expecting that he was a mysterious man with mysterious gifts that could see into the future and past. (Well, actually, I did see a lady with that kind of quality, but I am still reserving judgment on her abilities, so I would not write it here, yet.) Or I had hoped I would meet a scholar, well versed in the mantras of Lord Buddha. Instead ...

I met Forrest. A simple man. Not that well-educated. Not that famous, although some of his people thought him as Buddha re-incarnated. He was just an old man, happy to see visitors.

His famous words are, "Do good things, don't do bad things."
"It is advantageous to be taken advantage of ."
Well, the second one is hard to translate into English. Basically, it means if someone took advantage of you, don't get mad, just accept it.
Or in biblical translation: "Turn the other cheek."

Can people do what he did? I don't think so. At least, I cannot do what he did.

He was born into a well-to-do merchants' family who believed in Buddhism. When he was very young, he want to become a monk. But that would of course meant that he would go into a temple and never got married. So his family begged him to reconsider. His father gave him a grain store to manage. But soon, he almost managed it to the ground, because he would give credit to anyone who asked.

There was an old saying around here, "If you cheat me once, shame on you; if you cheat me twice, shame on me." Basically, nobody is gullible enough to believe the same lie twice.

But let's turn that around, what if you can be gullible enough to believe the same story every single time, and gave your hard-earned money to cheats time after time until they found in the goodness of their hearts not to cheat you anymore.

Can you do that? Can anyone except a holy man be capable of doing that?

When I visited him the first time, I got home puzzled. He was just an ordinary old man, why did these people say he was holy. Then I read his biography written by one of his disciples, and I was impressed.

The stories were numerous, and they were ordinary. But they were all about the same thing. Accept all bad and unfair things in your life and move on. Accept that all people are good. If they did bad things, it was because they were either igorant, bad-tempered or scared.

Then I visited him second time, mainly trying to confirm the stories and to see with my own eyes, if it was possible that he was truly a holy man.

I got my confirmation. It was just a feeling. That "Hi Forrest" feeling. Nobody except a fool, or a senile old man, or a true holy man could do what he did. If the abbot of the ShaoLin Temple could go about his business in his brand new car, and talking on his cell phone, then the least this old man can do was to add a window air-conditioner to his apartment.

He was happy and he was at peace because of his faith. It was not just the faith of Buddhism. It was also the faith of the goodness in people's heart.

Amazingly, I have a thought about "End of World". As long as a person like him, like Forrest still existed in the world, who was still foolish enough, senile enough to believe in the goodness, then our world will not come to an end.

I pray for his long life.