Tayuan temple, a Tibetan Buddhist temple which is home to a massive White Dagoba said to house one of the 84,000 Shahara relics of Sakayamuni, was the location of some of our most profound experiences with monks at Wutai mountain. First, we witnessed a monk listening to an MP3 player, an incongruous picture which puzzled many of us. Later, while we stood in a group listening to our tour guide Mary explain some aspect of the temple, a monk took a video of us on his cell phone. We asked Dr Clark why monks would have these sorts of luxury items, and he explained that many of the monks at Wutai mountain are not, in fact, Buddhist monks but people hired by the tour organizations to perform as essentially costumed characters, like Mickey Mouse at Disney World.
In contrast to these pseudo-monks, we had a genuine encounter with an actual Tibetan monk on pilgrimage to Wutai from Tibet, picture in the second picture. The monk sat down beside Micheal while he wrote in his journal and started asking him questions in Chinese. We called Dr Clark over and he translated for us. The monk was asking us if we had ever been to India, as he had recently gone there on pilgrimage and found it to be profound and inspiring as a spiritual place. He wrote his name in Micheal's journal, but in Tibetan, which is nearly impossible to romanize, so we still don't know how to say or write it. I found myself later wondering how this devout Tibetan monk felt about the pseudo-monks with cell phones and MP3 players, and how his spiritual experience at Wutai contrasted with his experience in India.
The final picture is of a monk who had just finished meditating under a tree, a common practice in reference to the story of the Buddha achieving awakening while sitting under a Bodhi tree. I took a picture because this monk seemed to exist as a sort of in-between of the very devout Tibetan monk and the fake Wutai-land monks with cell phones, as he lived on Wutai as a devout monk. I wondered, too, how he perceived the fake monks. This disparity between the illusion of these monasteries as active and thriving places full of devouts when in fact most are actors, and the fact that there are actual devout monks who live in and come to these places defined in many ways my experience at Tayuan.
In contrast to these pseudo-monks, we had a genuine encounter with an actual Tibetan monk on pilgrimage to Wutai from Tibet, picture in the second picture. The monk sat down beside Micheal while he wrote in his journal and started asking him questions in Chinese. We called Dr Clark over and he translated for us. The monk was asking us if we had ever been to India, as he had recently gone there on pilgrimage and found it to be profound and inspiring as a spiritual place. He wrote his name in Micheal's journal, but in Tibetan, which is nearly impossible to romanize, so we still don't know how to say or write it. I found myself later wondering how this devout Tibetan monk felt about the pseudo-monks with cell phones and MP3 players, and how his spiritual experience at Wutai contrasted with his experience in India.
The final picture is of a monk who had just finished meditating under a tree, a common practice in reference to the story of the Buddha achieving awakening while sitting under a Bodhi tree. I took a picture because this monk seemed to exist as a sort of in-between of the very devout Tibetan monk and the fake Wutai-land monks with cell phones, as he lived on Wutai as a devout monk. I wondered, too, how he perceived the fake monks. This disparity between the illusion of these monasteries as active and thriving places full of devouts when in fact most are actors, and the fact that there are actual devout monks who live in and come to these places defined in many ways my experience at Tayuan.
This is amazing information about the monks!
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