Recollections of Plum Village
I ARRIVED AT the tiny station of St. Foy La Grande just after one in the afternoon on January second. That morning, I had left Paris. It had been snowing and was still dark on my long walk up the boulevards Port Royal and Montparnasse to the big SNCF station. Then the three-hour train to Bordeaux, and from Bordeaux another hour east along the Dordogne to St. Foy.
It was Friday. There were three others at the station also traveling to Plum Village: George, a British college student; Barbara, a German humanitarian worker; and a Japanese professor from Keio University who was spending his sabbatical year in Paris. We talked some on the drive before turning our attention to the fields and rolling hills dotted with forest and old stone buildings.
Upon arrival, I settled in to West Lake house and met my housemates: an Italian architect, a French actor, a Belgian activist, a Brit, and a Canadian. Ronan and Valerie were staying next door for the duration of the three-month retreat. Valerie was seven months pregnant, and Ronan worked at a bank. They were from Nantes and had been coming to Plum Village periodically for six years.
I was happy to see familiar faces. Brother Antonio was a Portuguese with a big smile who had been a stonemason prior to becoming a monk. He and I had become friends while demolishing stairs together in the snow at the Blue Cliff monastery in New York, but now he was living in Son Ha Hamlet. Brother Phap Son was there, as was the Frenchman Brother Phap An. Phap Son’s mother, Helena, was visiting from Ibiza. We greeted each other and reminisced about the ebullient goodbye party that had been thrown for her two years earlier. And I was glad to see Brother Phap Dia. He had still been an aspirant in 2007. Now he wore the brown robes of a novice monk and looked very happy.
Sitting meditation was at five-thirty that evening. It felt wonderful to be back in the warm, stone meditation hall at Son Ha, the waning winter sun passing through the stained glass windows. I found an empty cushion and sat down. A brother invited three sounds of the bell. The undulations of sound, multiple notes intertwined, slowly subsided. It became silent, and I focused on my breath. It was good to be back at Plum Village.
THE ITALIAN ARCHITECT’S name was Ettore. He was originally from Milan, but now he was living outside of Perugia on property with a few acres of olive trees. He and I shared working meditation one day while making compost. We talked about agriculture. It turned out that he had stayed in Crystal Waters, Australia with Max and Trudi Lindegger and also with Jeff and Frances Michaels as a farm hand. I mentioned I had stayed with Max and Trudi for two weeks while I was in Australia in 2006 and had met Jeff and Frances at the Ecological Farming Conference in California. Small world! Had he tried Max’s home brew? Yes, he certainly had. Molto forte.
Composting was usually done by Brother Phap An or by Mickaël, a French optometrist about my age. Mickaël, along with about half the population of Plum Village, had the flu. Brother Phap An was on cooking duty. The compost was laid out in long windrows. It was very cold and wet during the winter, so the compost would be in a state of suspended animation until spring.
I had not known this when I registered for the retreat, but Son Ha ended up being a predominantly French-speaking hamlet in 2009. There were seventeen lay friends staying for the entire three months of the winter rains retreat, along with the fourteen monastics. Of the lay friends, most were French. Adrien was from Belgium, as was my roommate Cyrille. Robert was a German who had studied in Paris. Gerard was Dutch, but he had lived in France for ten years. Christopher was French-American. David was a Scotsman-turned-Canadian.
I do not speak French, but I enjoyed hearing it everyday. It is a beautiful language. I especially loved hearing the Five Contemplations in French before meals. “Cette nourriture, fruit du ciel, de la terre, de beaucoup de travail et d’amour, est un don de l’univers tout entier…” (“This food, fruit of the sky, the earth, and much hard, loving work, is a gift of the whole universe…”).
Engaged Buddhism
THICH NHAT HANH, the Vietnamese Zen monk who founded Plum Village, is often simply referred to as Thây (teacher). His talks were all in Vietnamese this year and translated into English by Sister Chan Khong. The unifying theme for the retreat was “global ethics”. Every Thursday and Sunday, Thây would mine Buddhist teachings for insight on how to engage as a global citizen. The whole sangha (community) of monks, nuns, and lay friends would meet at one of the big meditation halls, usually at seven-thirty in the morning. We would all meditate together before the talks. Then there would be walking meditation before lunch. I always enjoy walking meditation. The muddy trails around the hamlets, covered with leaves in various states of decay, make it easier to grasp the teachings of impermanence and interconnection.
I was glad that Thây had selected global ethics as the retreat’s theme. I was first drawn to his writings because he has always actively sought to address the challenges and suffering present in the world. As a young monk in Vietnam, he created an organization to help villagers suffering under the war. Later, while in exile in the United States and France, he tirelessly brokered for peace. After the war, he focused his efforts on supporting orphans and boat people. He now advocates for peace with Israelis and Palestinians, hosts retreats for people of color, fosters interfaith dialog, and engages in constructive dialog with the scientific community on topics of mutual interest. In recent years, he has become a clear and forceful voice on environmental issues. Thich Nhat Hanh is, in a word, engaged.
My interest in engaged Buddhism was sparked in 2006. That spring, I was fortunate to spend time in Sri Lanka with my friend Momo Waguri and her students from Chuo University in Japan. Her class was studying global development issues, and one of our primary hosts was in Sri Lanka was Sarvodaya, a grassroots development organization that is based on Buddhist and Gandhian principles. Sarvodaya, which means “uplift of all” or “awakening of all”, was founded by Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne in 1959 to address rural poverty. Today, Sarvodaya works with fifteen thousand villages throughout the country to promote rural empowerment and grassroots, sustainable development.
A common critique of Buddhism is that it teaches rejection of the world and detachment from life and its messiness. Most people who practice Buddhism will tell you that this is a common misperception, that Buddhism in fact provides people with tools to embrace the suffering and chaos of life and while still remaining present and connected. As with any philosophy or religion, there is a wide spectrum of ideas on just how much (and in what manner) to engage. In the 1960s, Thich Nhat Hanh felt that the Buddhist leadership in Vietnam was not responding actively enough to the deep suffering caused by the ensuing war. A few years earlier, in 1958, Dr. Ariyaratne saw lack of awareness and a growing gap between wealthy urbanites and the pressing needs of the rural poor in Sri Lanka. Both men promptly took action and created social organizations to address the societal ills they observed. It is this type of socially engaged Buddhism that is increasingly finding resonance in the United States.
One of the reasons I love Plum Village is that it is a haven and meeting place for people who are truly and passionately engaged, who strive to live their lives with more purpose, courage, and compassion. They are teachers, doctors, journalists, and aid workers. To be in the company of such people is to learn about the art of living through osmosis.
Inauguration
THERE IS NO television at the monastery. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would miss watching Barack Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States. A few days before the event, the phone rang at Son Ha and it was for me. It was Elena. She and Paul were inviting any lay friends who wanted to watch the inauguration over to their place. Did I want to come? They would have a short sitting meditation just prior, and following there would be time for discussion and dinner. Just bring some food to contribute.
I decided I would walk to Paul and Elena’s and started out around three o’clock. It was about four miles from Plum Village. I walked up the hill to Puyguilhem, admiring the old church as I passed. It was relatively warm, and the white horse at the corner house was pacing alongside the fence. I stopped, he stopped, and we proceeded to engage in a staring contest.
I turned left at the old cemetery. I liked that the gravestones were grouped in families. Several of the larger graves had severe-looking iron crucifixes on them. From there, the road went down and then up again. The fields had enormous, cloddy furrows from the fall tillage. I winced, thinking about erosion and compaction and things pertaining to ecology that I knew more about than I did two years earlier.
The road curved around another hill and brought me into a dark and mean-looking little town. “Town” is perhaps a generous term. The area consisted of a small handful of houses and a mechanic’s shop. Each house had a dog or two chained to a stump or post, and each dog had a harsh and unwelcoming bark. I quickened my pace.
It started to rain right as I approached Elena and Paul’s renovated stone house. Two minivans from Plum Village were parked in the driveway, and inside Elena was welcoming the guests who had just arrived. I looked around and noticed that Paul and Manfred were the only other males out of twenty-five or so. The men at Upper Hamlet must have figured out a way to watch the inauguration on the Internet.
I found a seat on the floor. Paul welcomed us and proposed the schedule for the evening. Everyone seemed excited and there was an air of anticipation, but we managed to sit for thirty minutes of meditation. Then we went around in a circle and introduced ourselves. There was a cat that I managed to coax over for a pet, even though she seemed unsure about the volume of people in the house.
Together, we watched the BBC broadcast of the inauguration. I sat next to Sister Jackie, the only African-American nun at Plum Village. She appeared to be in her late fifties. Prior to ordaining as a nun, Sister Jackie worked in Washington, D.C. as a civil rights advocate. She provided us with running commentary throughout the broadcast. "That guy in the Burberry scarf—that’s Martin Luther King’s son. Oh! Oh! And there’s Aretha!"
When President Obama spoke, the room fell silent. We were transfixed. I latched on to the phrase, … the time has come to set aside childish things. The camera panned to the crowd. It was beautiful and moving to read the emotion in each face.
After the speech, we each shared our reactions. Paul invited the Americans to speak first. I think there were six of us. All told, I counted eleven nationalities in the room. No one was more touched than Sister Jackie. She was radiant.
Dinner was simple and delicious. We said our thanks to Paul and Elena and then set out for the monastery. Manfred and I were the only two to walk back. He had been a Carthusian monk for sixteen years before leaving the order. The Carthusians are the Catholic contemplative order featured in the documentary film Into Great Silence. So it was fitting that, after a few words at the outset, we walked in quiet for the next hour. Orion shone brightly above, and it felt good to be alive.
Tết
TẾT IS THE Vietnamese New Year. Celebrations started at Plum Village on January twenty-fifth. That afternoon, the Vietnamese monks and nuns began making earth cakes, rolling steamed rice around mung bean paste, wrapping the cakes in banana leaves, and boiling them over wood fires in huge pots for twelve hours. The next morning, there were four monks asleep in the Son Ha meditation hall. They had been singing songs and tending the fires all night long.
“Life as normal” suspends during Tết. Each day, a different hamlet plays host to the whole sangha. In the mornings, everyone gathers for the Vietnamese tradition of oracle readings. The person whose oracle is being read relates a question or concern they have, then pulls a verse of Vietnamese poetry at random from the meditation bell. Thây and others then interpret how the verse pertains to the inquiry. The ritual is done in a lighthearted manner, but the insights can be surprisingly profound.
In the afternoons are the room visits. Tết is the only time of year when the monks can visit the nuns’ rooms and vice versa, so room visits are a momentous occasion. The monastics try to outdo each other with chocolates, nuts, fruit, tea, games, and song. Lay friends get into the act as well, stocking their rooms with treats for visitors. Vietnamese custom has it that the mark of a good host during Tết is a floor covered with peels and shells and wrappers, so guests are encouraged to eat with abandon. This merriment goes on until ten in the evening for four and a half days.
Tết is an unusually social time at Plum Village. I found myself savoring long, deep, reverent and irreverent conversations all throughout. There was a talk about the social movements of the 1960s with Leo, the Irish farm advisor, and Sister Pine, the former D.C. lawyer. Then there was a wonderful discussion about development issues with Irishman-come-Bostonian Darran and my good friend Maya, a psychologist in Paris. Christina, the Italian photojournalist, and I would share news that we had heard about the early days of the Obama administration (He’s closing Guantanamo!), and I would tease Berliners Stefanie and Felix that, as German Buddhists, they needed to start getting a bit more serious.
Tết ran its course until Thursday, and by that time, everyone was ready for a rest. I felt privileged to have experienced it and to have seen one of the many mechanisms by which the community maintains and renews itself.
Quiet
ANOTHER THING THAT I love at Plum Village is the quiet. When the bell rings for morning meditation at five-thirty, you get out of bed and dress in silence. You walk five minutes along West Lake until you reach the meditation hall. You enter and it is quiet, aside from the soft sounds of the brothers and lay friends settling onto their cushions. Then the bell ringer sings a brief chant and invites three sounds of the bell. Silence again for forty-five minutes. Three more sounds of the bell. You get up, stretch, bow, and leave the hall. You take a walk or maybe have some tea. The bell rings again, calling you to breakfast. You fill your bowl, find a seat, and wait for everyone to serve himself. Three more bells. You eat, slowly and appreciatively. Two bells. Noble silence is over. The room begins to fill with the sound of morning greetings.
Life is quiet and unhurried. The whirring, jumbled thoughts in your mind start to decelerate. You are more aware of birdcalls and shifts in the breeze. Sometimes a fluttering leaf will stop you in your tracks, and there you will be, smiling and laughing to yourself.
You start to walk more slowly. You get in the habit of breathing deeply three times every time the clock strikes or the phone rings. You become comfortable with silence, even with people you do not know well. Silence ceases to be the bogeyman.
Sometimes you feel a deep sense of peace. It is usually fleeting, but it is real. You think about how every cell in your body contains the DNA of your father and your grandfather, and you close your eyes as you walk up the hill to the church at Puyguilhem. You can almost feel them walking with you, Papa on your left and Dad on your right. You feel strong, and the sun has broken through the clouds to warm your face from ninety-three million miles away.
