Yesterday, I found myself hanging out with Dave The Monk. I was taping him for a segment on meditation for HealthyStyleNY. Of course, for the life of me I could not get the words, “I’m here with Myong Haeng SN at the Chogyesa temple” out of my mouth for the clip. I kept laughing and stuttering through the Korean words, while awkwardly touching Dave inappropriately on camera. I’m assuming that’s a no-no for monks.
Dave mentioned another American monk who was in town at the temple for a special dharma talk. His name was Hyon Gak Sunim…or Paul. I met him, and he was this boisterous, sarcastic former-Jersey-boy-turned-monk now living in Munich. All the good ones turn monk, huh?
I knew I had to hear his talk.
He sat down in front of 30 or 40 squatting people, mostly Korean and Buddhist. I hung out in the back in my red dress, propped up on a chair, ready for anything.
One of the first things he said, in a very strong tone (he is from Jersey, of course!), was, “Soon, you will die!”
Wow. Aren’t Buddhists a cheery bunch, I thought. The Jew in me would rather hear him say, “Soon you will eat,” or something like that. Much more hopeful, you know?
But really, he was making a point that: We are living in a state of impermanence. In fact, he said we’re all terminally ill. Someone has cancer today, but they might die by getting hit by a car tomorrow.
You would think I might be feeling depressed by this point. I turned around and noticed the snacks being laid out, which made me feel better.
Monk Paul started getting more intense. “I was at a conference on hospice care and every religion offered hope for the dying. In Buddhism, hope is bullshit!” I was taking notes in my head now: Okay, monks can’t have sex…but they can curse? Interesting.
Monk Paul kept on. “I love Obama, but that hope he sold us was a lie. Hope is the future. It’s the promise of something not happening. Fundamentally, it’s an illusion.” Buddhism doesn’t teach the future. He explained that hope and believing in an eternal life is a cancer! Think about all those terrorists who blow themselves up for their ideas about the afterlife.
Jesus! Jersey-boy-turned-monk had a point. Of course, I love Obama and I love hope. And that’s okay also. But this was another lesson about being here now, about appreciating the present.
Monk Paul hinted that we should replace our hope with this question: What am I? Then he kept repeating, “What am I? What am I?” like a broken record. He explained that it’s a question we can’t really answer, but it puts our minds in a state of now. A state of meditation.
Finding zen is really about looking inside yourself and investigating who you are, here today, in the now. Everything else is…well, as Paul would put it, everything else is “bullshit.”
3 Comments for No Hope in Buddhism?
Tony | June 7, 2010 at 9:06 am
GSX-R750 guy | July 1, 2010 at 5:28 pm
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Certified Nursing Assistant | July 20, 2010 at 3:56 pm
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<< Slow Sex
I’m sure most of your readers have heard this one, but Eleanor Roosevelt’s ditty bears repeating: The past is history. The future is a mystery. Today is a gift; that’s why it’s called the Present.
(Okay, that may not be verbatim, and I don’t think Mrs. Roosevelt was a practicing Buddhist, but you get the idea…)