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Heng Sure
Sherry and Kenton Hyatt drove out from Cambria to bring the monks some hot food. With them in their orange VW bus was "half of Cambria" said Kenton. In all there were seven: Abraham and rosebud, aged 2 and 2months respectively, sherry's father papa Joe miller, aged 86, and Lynne Borges and her baby daughter, Elizabeth.
'I was so happy to read that Buddhists don't cut their ties with family," said sherry.
The meal was set out on a cliff above the pacific but a rain squall moves us back in to the bus. Papa Joe who is ailing with the problems of old age, is "not able to walk well on some days." He was originally going to stay in the car and miss the picnic; when the rain came we gathered the party around him.
"You bow in this weather, don't you?" asked sherry. "Rain or shine," said Heng Ch'au.
Sherry: "That's the other thing about you that impressed me right away. You're not out fort the easy path, I believe."
Heng Ch'au: "You're the fist person to say that right out. People say to us 'take it easy!' and I answer, 'no, we take it hard.' You realize Heng sure is not being impolite. He's made a vow silence."
Sherry ( laughter) "Yes we know. I can really see the advantages of silence. All the trouble you save. I talk all the time without thinking, so I stick my fool in my mouth-left and right."
Kenton: "Can you tell me briefly what Buddhism is all bout in you view?"
Heng Ch'au: "The Buddha dharma is a method to break your false thoughts and your attachments, so that you can respond to the world as it is right now. I came to it because it gets right to the heart of what's important in life. Buddhism is about ending birth and death and helping other people."
Kenton: "How do you do that?"
Heng Ch'au: "Right now we're doing it in just one of the many ways possible. We're bowing so as to end disasters and calamities; to turn back the suffering and bad vibes that fill the world. Buddhism holds that all suffering comes from the presence of the self. We're not bowing to anything in particular. But we are trying to bow away our egos."
Sherry: "That's what people see in your work."
Heng Ch'au: "I think so. People aren't really interested in two individuals-it's what we represent. Are you working for others? That's what counts."
Kenton: "How come Buddhists are identifies with seclusion?"
Heng Ch'au: "Basically monks and nuns are mendicants-wanderers. Temples and monasteries are like basses camps to mountain climbers. We leave our homes and the whole universe becomes a home."
Sherry: "So you don't have to go to a temple to be practicing Buddhist?"
Heng Ch'au: "If you really practice, then the whole worlds a temple. Buddha dharma transcends all boundaries. It doesn't get stuck in any distinctions. That's what we like about it. It's really democratic."
Kenton: "Hmm. Buddhism might be the first true workingman's religion. I'm a tour guide at Hearst castle. Can I be a Buddhist and a tour guide too?"
Heng Ch'au: "Look at it this way, Kenton. All the tour guides at Hearst castle are Buddhists. Only some don't recognize it yet. Start with that principle. It's only a matter of time."(Laughter).
Kenton: "How did you two find your way to Buddhism?"
Heng Ch'au; "Like everyone else, we looked hard for something that had heart, something that lasted. As I said that, I wanted to do what was important. To me that meant repaying the kindness of my parents and doing good for others. "I couldn't bear the thought of my life just going down the tube."
Kenton: "Well sure, that's everyone's dream. No one plans for this life to be a waste, but somehow it happens to a lot of people."
Heng Ch'au: "We had to put down a lot to find the dharma. We took a lot of false roads along the way. You have to come a long way to find out that you had what you wanted all along."
Kenton: "Do you take days off from the bowing?"
Heng Ch'au: "Our rest is in our work and our work is restful. We like what we do so we do it all the time."
Kenton: "Very few people in the world can say that."
Heng Ch'au: "It is said that we are born drunk and die in a dream."
Sherry: (laughter) "Wow! I like that. Ain't it the truth?"
Heng Ch'au: "We have a dream of success or fame or all pleasures of desires satisfies and then when we get what we desired, it turns out to be more suffering. If you want a lot of money, you have to hire people to guard it from thieves. If you eat a lot, you get overweight. If you buy a lot of clothes, you cant wear them all-what a lot of hassle."
Sherry: "This comes from false thoughts and attachments in your view, right?"
Heng Ch'au: "Precisely."
Sherry: "Well, you two have so little. Seems like it would be hard not to always think about getting more."
Heng Ch'au: "We've learned that what we need, we get if we are sincere. What we don't need, we don't get."
Sherry: "For instance, if you take this wilderness route you're talking about, you'll need a jeep, wont you?"
Heng Ch'au: "See, there's a false thought., if we need a jeep, by the time we reach the turn-off point, a jeep will appear."
Sherry: "Oh, so the 'what-if' questions are false thoughts."
Heng Ch'au: "Right. The point in cultivation is to be here and now. When you're worried about a jeep in the future, you're no longer here and now you're then already."
Sherry: (laughter) "I get it."
Heng Ch'au: "So, when then comes you've already been there. Then when the jeep doesn't show up, you get all afflicted and suffering begins. The best way to be is like little Abraham here. Tomorrow's his second birthday, right? "Right". "Well, you know he doesn't spend two seconds today thinking about his party. But then when it comes, he's right there totally into it, same as he is right now."
Sherry: "Children are really pure. When you shave your heads that way, it makes you look like a kid again in a certain way."
Heng Ch'au: "Exactly, its another way to return to your original face. (Laughter) the point is not to decorate the body or cover it with vanity and phoniness."
Kenton: "How do you begin being a Buddhist?"
Heng Ch'au: "You could say we're all Buddhists to begin with, but we wandered away form our original home. We all begin cultivating by holding the five precepts-the rules of living. No killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, or intoxicants."
Sherry: "Boy that really says it, doesn't it?"
Heng Ch'au: "When you hold the precepts then the whole world is a pure place, a temple. You can hold them anywhere. The point of precepts is right here, to stay pure to open the road to the concentration and wisdom."
Sherry: "Sounds right on."
Heng Ch'au: "Abraham, isn't clouded over by sex and confusion. He doesn't tell lies. But all learned those habits, we've all gotten covered over."
All: "Amen."
Heng Ch'au: "Precepts give you the purity back. They allow you to drop the covers. When you hold precepts, pretty soon you can say 'see what u had before I got dirty?"
"The Bodhisattva does not seek nobility... he does not seek riches or benefit... he only cares about upholding pure precepts." -- Avatamsaka sutra "Ten Practices Chapter." "To be human you must first of all be aware that your father's and mother's kindness towards you is higher than heaven and deeper than the ocean. If you don't consider repaying it, you should be truly and greatly ashamed. Such a one is unfit to be called a person." -- Master Hua
Kenton: "We had the chance to invite papa Joe to live with us and look after him. We just didn't believe that a rest home was necessary. After the decision was made, sure enough, we found room. A big house in Cambria came our way and I found a good job in this area that we like, and jobs are incredibly tight around here..."
Sherry: "Things are really going well since we got all our family back together again."
Sherry: "I can't tell you how many blessings have come to us because of taking care of my father."
Kenton: "We were down and out in Santa Ana, California. I had just come out of college. I had all my plans made and was looking ahead. I was going to be a teacher just when the job market didn't want any teacher. It was a hard lesson."
Sherry: "Then my father's health got bad and we didn't believe in rest homes. We thought, that's the most natural, most simple way to put all the pieces of our lives together? We decided to start by giving my father the treatment he deserves. Lets bring papa Joe home where he belongs. And this is the neat alternative to rest homes. We thought, "we can do it, so we just do it."
Heng Ch'au: "Boy, that's great. The path to Sagehood starts right here with filial piety. Wonderful. You know why Abraham respects you and is such a happy child? Because he sees how you treat papa Joe. If you respect your parents you will win your children's respect."
After lunch was over and the Hyatts had returned home, we were still glowing with the good vibes of the visit. Look at what a good time that family had wherever they go because they didn't forsake their elders. On the highway this Sunday, look at all the middle-aged couples passing in their cars and motor homes with vacant, searching looks on their faces while their parents are off in some rest home bored literally to death. I worked in the geriatric ward in a state hospital in Wisconsin and I'll never forget the miserably lonely old people, no spark left in their lives, passing day after day, sitting in chairs with their heads hanging. So sad. Boy, when I was a kid, just like the Hyatts we wound wrap our grandparents up in the blankets and drive out to the lakes on Sundays for panic. To see that people still do it really fills my heart up. The Buddha dharma is what we need. Kenton said he saw a chance to take care of his father-in-law. A opportunity. That's the right attitude. A chance to cultivate filiality. Right on! Bring the old folks back home!