by Daniel Marrin
Last week, members of Faith House attended the Sunday service at Manhattan’s Chogseya Temple. Located on 96th Street just west of Central Park, the temple looks just like any other apartment building on the street from the outside, a simple white stone building unadorned except for a door buzzer that reads “Zen Temple.” The temple holds three halls, a basement temple, a parlor and kitchen space with a garden behind on the ground floor, and upstairs another temple and library of Buddhist texts. Our morning service was held in the small basement temple dedicated to Ji-Jang Bosal, a much-respected boddhisatva, or Buddhist who dedicates his existence to helping others.
In the center of the room sits a life-size gold-painted statue of Ji-Jang Bosal, the wall behind him covered with tiny statues given as memorials in remembrance of the departed. (Ji-Jang is said to intervene on behalf of the deceased.)
About 15 people attended the service, young and old but all Korean, except for us Faith House visitors. We sat on pillows in lines on either side of Ji-Jang’s statue, while the temple’s two abbots, Myo Ji Sunim, a Korean abbess, and Myong Haeng Sunim, vice abbot, an American, who sat directly opposite the statue, facing it. Both abbots had a smiling joyful demeanor and conveyed a sense of great vigor about their work.
The service consisted of chants and songs all in Korean, which were mostly either dedications to Ji-Jang Bosal or promises to hold true to the Buddhist lifestyle. In order for us to participate, the Temple gave us a dual-language song booklet: the Korean was written phonetically on the left, and on the right were the English translations. The question was was it more important to sing the Korean and share in the experience of chanting, or concentrate on the translation to get the meaning. In essence, which is more important for one’s first encounter with a faith - to share the experience or understand it?
I chose the middle way: when the songs talked about personal philosophies and Buddhist beliefs, I read over the translations. But for songs that praised individual Buddhists in a list of names, I figured I might as well sing the Korean.
The service demanded a good deal of stamina from its participants, especially in the amount of prostrations. One prostration consisted of going from standing with hands in prayer position, then going down to your knees, bowing your head to the ground, straightening up, standing again, and returning your hands to your chest. This was typically done in less than 10 seconds: the service had us doing it straight for about seven minutes straight while chanting the entire time!
In Catholic churches, I’ve have seen some people struggle to get up after just kneeling for 5 minutes. Here, I saw women twice my age getting up, down, and chanting for nearly ten minutes straight without showing any sign of weakness. Meanwhile, while I was able to keep up with the movements, I was beginning to work up a sweat and couldn’t keep up with the chants: it felt like some kind of Buddhist gym class!
After a brief sermon on simplicity, we closed the service, with three bows, one to Ji-Jang Bosal, another to the portraits of the Zen masters on the wall, and then a bow to each other. For that last bow, the man next to me smiled and said, “Become Buddha,” which apparently is a translation of the prayer between the people. To me, that sounds a little grandiose: become Buddha? Become the father of wisdom and enlightenment? It sounded a bit naïve and haughty to think that I could possibly “become Buddha.”
And yet, the more I thought about it, such a desire is exactly what drives the Eucharist in most Christian churches, that desire to have Christ dwell within us and us in him, to BE his body. Despite that, it’s rarely been said to me that I needed to “become Jesus,” since most Christians view Jesus as a God to be worshiped.
Yet at the Chogyesa temple, the goal seems to be to emulate Buddha more than to worship him. The abbots told us that they were more interested in spreading Buddhism as a way of life than as a religion. It made their teaching more approachable for me, seeming as a complement to my Christian faith. In some ways, the emphasis on detachment from earthly desires was a perfect complement to the Christian teaching that we are “in this world but not of it,” souls moving through in an imperfect and impermanent world.
“WASTE NOT: WANT NOT”
For all the talk of impermanence though, the Buddhists placed great value on conservation of resources, as they showed in the meal afterward. We went upstairs to the long parlor, with pillows placed around in an oval for us to sit, the food in the middle.
The meal began with a group prayer, first with an expression of gratitude to Buddha for the relief of our hungers and desires, and the value of the food to our health. Then everything was passed around the room, starting with the abbots, then moving clockwise around: pots of white rice, tempura vegetables, kimchi, pickled vegetables and scallion pancakes (pajeon), all delicious and flavorful.
As the food went around, abbess Myo Ji said we had to eat everything we put on our plate to avoid waste, and that anyone who left food at the end would be punished. (I THINK they were kidding, but I ate everything to make sure.)
I’d been taught to clean your plate as a kid, but the temple abbots brought it to a whole new level. After the meal was over and all that was left were crumbs, we were served tea and the abbess demonstrated the last part of the cleaning. She poured the tea onto her plate and swirled it around the center so that any remaining crumbs mixed in with the liquid. Then she held the plate to her lips and drank, effectively removing every last crumb.
This emphasis on avoiding waste extended beyond the food. At one point, I asked if they had napkins, and though someone offered, the abbey said, “No, no waste!” and she showed me to use the top of my cotton placemat to clean my hands and mouth.
After we finished, we folded the mats, collected the plates, and then passed towels around for each of us to clean the floor around us and leave it shining, with no trace left of the meal. This was definitely one of the most amazing examples of “waste not want not” I’ve ever seen put into practice in my entire life…and tasty too! More importantly, the practice of the meal seemed to reflected the group’s faith and values. Although life is impermanent, we must still value what we have been given here.
The abbots have invited us to visit their Sunday services and talks any time we want. To find out more, you can visit their website at nychogyesa.org.
Daniel Marrin is a New York freelance journalist, and member of the emergent Christian group Transmission in New York. His writings, and other work, can be found online at danielmarrin.googlepages.com.
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