30th April – 2nd May: Buddhist retreat in Zaoxi

Last weekend I decided to do something different.

Last weekend I went to a buddhist retreat.

Zaoxi, close to Lin’an, close to Hangzhou.

How to get there? Zaoxi is a little village in the middle of nowhere, you need three and a half long hours of bus from Shanghai South station and half an hour of “private” taxi.

I left home at about 7:40am and I arrived in the temple at about 1pm.

I wanted to go away from the civilization for a while, to get some time for myself, to go awway from the “chit chat talks” (that I like, sometimes), to move out of the “booze booze booze party” offers in shanghai (that I like). I wanted to get centered and grounded again.

***if at this point you feel bored, you can stop reading, it will not get better!***

Malcom, an australian novice, around 50 years old, welcomed me and introduced me to Shifu (=Master) Zhong Rong: you know those people that as soon as you meet, you think “gosh, he has such energy within, such peaceful harmony inside”? He’s one of those people, radiating peace and good vibes.

Malcom introduced me to the “facilities”, excusing himself every second for the poor style: yes, it is true, the temple is not the 5 star hotel I got in Beijing, it is very basic, the bed is damn hard, the toilets are not in gold or silver, but they are clean. “But hey, we can offer you a warm shower!” and I “wow, great, but.. i don’t need it”, and him “but you know, if you want to take it -it will sound weird- but you should inform me: there is a complicate system of pipes to get the warm water from the solar heaters, I have to close this, open that, and if you take the shower it could be that it will be too hot”. Fine for me I told him: “I did not came here to feel the luxury”.

I got my room, a perfect one: there was a bed, two bowls (one for washing the face and one for the feets), a chair and one light. Perfect. And I got two big hot water containers!

As I locked my room and tried with some efforts to get the key back (“You have to take the key out with gentleness”-and it worked. damN!), we head to a room with chairs and couches, and we start a nice conversation about buddhism. Buddhism is great, you can summerize it in three guidelines:

* Do good

* Do not harm

* Have pure thoughts

When a Master said so, from the top of a treehouse, to the governor who passed by (this is a story), this person said:” Any child of three years knows that.” and the master: “Any three-year-old child may know it, but even an eighty-year-old man cannot do it.”

In the afternoon Malcom gave me and to Richard (hongkong/brit guy) a training in meditation and mindfullness: greeeaaat! The craziest thing happend when he said “Feel the gravity pushing your body to the ground”. Woa…that was mind blowing…

Around 6pm the bell of the dinner time rings, an we all /5 people totally/ head to the dining room: Poopo, a 70/80 years old chinese nun, deaf, a bit loud and ..sometimes a bit crazy, had prepared gooood food: steamed rice with five different vegetables. Yes, right, vegetables, in a buddhist temple you do not eat meat. Or sweets. Neither you drink alcohol.

After dinner, as the best practice requires, we go for a “meditative walk”: a normal walk, but you have to keep focus on your breath, and at the same time you can enjoy the scenery, enjoy the colours.

It can sound weird…but yes, it’s definitely an experience.

A friend of mine decided to come here too, but she arrived only around 7pm. After the initial talk, the walk around the temple and some brief accomodation, I meet her, Malcom and Shifu at the “living room”. We had nice and debated talks about karma, about the “it’s not fair” approach, about some teachings from Shifu / yes! Joanne was the translator / till… Malcom said “as everything is impermanent, I think it is time to go to sleep. Do you want me to wake you up in the morning tomorrow?”. Yes, sure.

I head to my room, tired from the day, relaxed and calm inside. There is no light, so Shifu showes me the way with a torch. As he leaves, i went out of my room, and enjoyed my first complete clear sky at night in China, with lots of “chinese” stars. And a huge loud chorus of frogs.

I lay down on my hard bed, I feel as I will sleep immediately. I open the mobile to set the alarm. Gosh, I am tired. The mobile starts up. 8:45pm. I repeat, 8:45pm. And I wall asleep immediately.

I don’t remember the last time I falled asleep at 8:45pm in healthy conditions.

Except waking up in the night once /you know…drinking too much tea results in …you know it!/ I had an amazing sleep.

Wake up time at….4:15am! Yes, correct, 4:15am. Because the monks start the chantings at 4:30. (it was “optional” to attend it, I could have slept till 6am when the breakfast was planned..but hey, I am in china, in a buddhist temple, when else will I have such opportunity to attend live chanting again?).

The sun is still sleeping, there is a peaceful quiet, even the frogs are silent now.

I will not describe the chantings because it is impossible to describe it with understandable precision, but the thing i will say only is that it begins with ringing a huge bell lots of times, with different rythms (yes Angie, I would have loved to do it!!!), followed by playing a huge vertical drum (about 2 meters tall) with long thin sticks.

The chanting lasted for about fourty-fifty minutes, then I had time for a power nap. After the breakfast aka “rice with vegetables”, I got a fantastic shower. And a power nap again

There were two bowls, one metal and one plastic: one for the face and one for the feet. Metal — face; plastic — feet. Remember it. I got to know this order…the day after. Opps….

In the morning we had another time the so called “mindfulness meditation”, followed by a lunch made of …rice and vegetables and…a nice short walk to the village. There I decided to buy two packs of 5 kilos each of rice and to donate them to the temple. Little detail, the 30 minutes walk under the sun with the two bags of rice on the shoulders. I did it as a present, as I arrived to the kitchen (which is on the top part of the temple), I put them on the table, and there was nobody to receive it. It was totally fine, I felt happy anyway, as a small mission.

What I am going to say now will sound weird to lots of readers: even if I was in a buddhist temple, the teachings and training of Malcom were not directly dealing with buddhism. It was about life and meditation. It was not like “an hour of religion teachings in the highschool”, not at all, the only time when there were some teachings of buddhims was on sunday afternoon for an hour, the rest was “not religious stuff”. Believe it.

This is one of the amazing things of buddhism: it gives you freedom. It tells you “Experience it with sincerity. Try it first, and if you like it, and if it feels fine for you, go for it. If not, change it”. It is  not like a set of dogma or of rules as cristianity, it is not a “do it like this because I say so” or “if you do this, you will get punished”. In buddhism there is no word for “guilty”, but the closest concept is “integrity”. There is no sense of “self punishment” in buddhism, the closest concept to this is “shame”

The word “temple” is meant as “practice hall” in buddhism. And the buddhists are bowing to the values of buddhism, they are not bowing to the buddha.

I will sound stupid but…that’s cool. That’s a complete free approach to life, away from dogmas. Great.

Previously we had talked about karma and the buddhist belief in reincarnation: I was curious about the view on the destiny of bad baaad badasses people, thinking that they were not so much punished in buddhism. Well, they /in the buddhist religion/ reincarnate in animals, if they were really bad. If they really had an extremely negative karma, they can go to the buddhist hell.

Then I saw the cat of the temple, a little white and brown female cat, missing half of one of the “back legs”. She was “miao-ing” all the time. Poor cat.

Before dinner there was an hour of free time, and I went to Malcom and asked: “Can I help for something now?” – “Well..not that much. Wait, wait…if you really want to help there is one thing: temples get incredibly easily dusty. Here there is the broom if you want”. happily, yes, I do want. I have swept the small temple on the top (there were three halls): I have never thought that dust can come so easily! I sweapt dust, burnt papers, bat’s poop, incense sticks…

Till the dinner bell rang! One of the things i will tell to my future grandsons is: “Look, your crazy grandpa once had swept a buddhist temple in the middle of nowhere in china”. Cool!

Dinner was great! Poopo cooked some freshly cutted bamboo shots: delicious!!! I tried to explain it to her with my funny chinese but.. yea…sometimes she shouts back in a cranky way

I was eating so much bamboo!!! Joanne told me: “You should change your blog name to BigNosePanda!”. Awesome!!!

After dinner we go for another mindfull walk and after it Malcom said “goodnight”, skipping the usual after dinner chat.

“gosh, who knows what’s the time”. Richard, brit business man/white collar, said, while heading to the rooms “Gosh, i feel tired and relaxed. It is like marjuana, but cheaper and healthier”!

After preparing some stuff, I lay down, again, set the alarm and… 7:30 pm.

Come on…it is too early to fall asleep…I should read this bookkkzzzzzzzz…

.zzz….

z…

zzzz..

Wake up at 4:15, frogs are still sleeping, monks chanting, power nap, training again of meditation aaand… poopo rings the lunch bell at 10:30. “What?!?!? I think I have to give her a clock as gift”, said Malcom!!!

During these days I got two cheap water thermo containers: after more than a day, the water was still boiling hot. How is that scientifically possible?!?

And here it comes the time of the pre-leaving bag packing, greeting the people and…leaving to Lin’an. Me and Joanne were travelling back together to Shanghai, and as we arrived to the Lin’an bus station, with a huge crowd of people, with loud firecrackers because of a wedding, with air pollution and noise I immediately thought: “I wanna go back!!!! Bring me back!!!”

The bus ride to shanghai was… a further exercise. The bus had the suspensions completely broken, so it as like a 3 hours jumping rollercoaster. If I had not vomited there… I will not vomit anywhere else!!!

I almost did it to eat vegetarian for three days in a row, but in the evening, in Shanghai, I needed some energy because I felt a bit weak, so we went to a restaurant eating some delicious dim sum called “shalunpao”. With pork. I love pork…

I went back to my flat around 9:30pm, totally tired. But I had difficulties to sleep, and in the morning I was not that much relaxed. I had an amazing sleep time in a stone hard single bed, but not in my great puffy smooffyyy king size bed. Something is not correct, right?

A question to everybody: “What is the juice of life that makes you stand up every morning for?”

Have a nice day

BigNosePanda