West Meets East 1

"All I'm trying to do is wake up," I said to the monk.
He smiled widely, as practically all Chinese people - and Tibetans like this monk - do. His attentive brown eyes glinted the way you imagine the eyes of the Maitreya Buddha will probably glint one day. His hands were folded in his lap over his tan robe. He looked at my friend Huang Renda and began speaking in Putonghua, ordinary Chinese. When he finished, Huang Renda said:
"The master says you are ready to come to the monastery if you want to. But if you can't, if things in your life are still requiring your attention, you can just keep doing what you're doing and that will be enough."
"What does he mean, 'Keep doing what I'm doing'?"
They exchanged a few more words in Chinese. "He means you should keep teaching because you are a good teacher."
"Mr. Huang," I said, "please tell him I'm uncertain about this. For years I've known that the things I've been trained to teach are not what most of the students really need."
"What do you mean?"
"I learned to teach people to analyze - to use their rational intelligence and logic to approach everything, even poetry. And I'm good at it, actually, there's no point in pretending to be modest. But in the last ten years or so I've realized that most Western students believe the only real knowledge is rational, and so enormous ranges of their lives and consciousnesses are blanks. They don't need more rational exercises. They need to recognize their own emotions and what they might mean. As much as they can, they need to recognize that their other faculties, their intuition, their moral sensibilities, their spiritual awareness, are kinds of real knowledge too. Important kinds. - We can use the word 'spiritual' here inside the temple, but it's a tricky word in a Western classroom."
Huang Renda, a native of Quanzhou - which 900 years ago was probably the largest and most dynamic seaport in the world, and a confluence of religions from Buddhism and Taoism to Manicheanism and Christianity - he smiled too with that resonant Chinese warmth. "But that's why you are a good teacher - because you know poetry is understood in the heart."

Huang Renda repeated this to the monk, who listened patiently and then laughed. He spoke at length. All speaking in China is at length.
"It doesn't matter," Huang Renda finally said in English. "The master says you are doing the best you can, which is all anyone can do. If you make mistakes, it doesn't matter. You just keep working."
I thought about this for a moment, then remarked, "Rumi said, 'Straying maps the path.'"
The monk got up and talked while he poured more hot water into our small handleless tea cups, where green weeds floated serenely.
"The master says you can do good works by translating Buddhist sutras."
"But I don't know Chinese," I said. "And anyway I know so little about Buddhism that I'd probably misrepresent the teachings."
They conversed again. At length.
"The master says you can learn."
"I hope so," I said.
When it was time to go, the monk expressed regret that I was leaving China and we wouldn't be able to talk further. He gave each of us a small book, a pusa outlining instructions for how to pray for spirits trapped in the Avici hell, suffering horrible pain without hope of escape. As we stepped out his door, he put his palms together gracefully and bowed. I tried to do the same, but it felt extremely awkward.

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