Monks and Murderers

[mamculuna]

Tuesday night we had our annual Saga Dawa (Vesak--kind of like Buddhist Christmas and Easter and Pentecost rolled into one month) celebration. Traditionally Saga Dawa is observed by taking extra vows, doing compassionate acts, and spending time with sangha, so the members of my group take a vegetarian meal to the Buddhist group at the prison. Each year a few more of us are there, and a few more men from the prison population come to see what it's all about, so it's grown from about 10 of us to more than 20, and this year we took along our resident teacher, a Tibetan monk from India. The inmates in SC eat on $1.42 a day (mostly grits and spam), so fresh fruit and vegetables, and good herbs and spices, are a rare treat. We roasted butternut squash with garam masala, made dal and rice and biryani with cardamom and cumin, and made lots of salads and stirfries. And Geshe Sherab's special hot sauce (tomatoes cooked in olive oil with lots of garlic and chilis). Those guys like them some hot peppers!

This year, some of the guys who work in the prison garden (which hopefully will soon provide more fresh vegetables to the inmates) brought wonderful flowers, including a vase full of cleome--pink, purple, and white--and we celebrated the birthday also of one of them, a sweet young Filipino guy who must have been really alone until this group started up. Just before the prayers began, I looked at the earnest history professor deep in discussion of karma with a man with tattoo sleeves of skulls and demons, a dreadlocked blonde woman explaining meditation to a couple of skinheads, the smiling little monk in his robes talking about his life in a Russian dharma center to a spectacled black guy in a jumpsuit, the tall thin murderer from New Orleans bowing in respect to the cello player who'd cooked the barley. Everyone eating peaches and brownies.

I thought about this sonnet by e e cummings:

so many selves(so many fiends and gods
each greedier than every) is a man
(so easily one in another hides,
yet man can,being all,escape from none)

so huge a tumult is the simplest wish:
so pitiless a massacre the hope
most innocent (so deep's the mind of flesh
and so awake what waking calls asleep)

so never is most lonely man alone
(his briefest breathing lives some planet's year,
his longest life's a heartbeat of some sun;
his least unmotion roams the youngest star)

--how should a fool that calls him "I" presume
to comprehend not numerable whom?

e e cummings

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Good for you guys--and wow, that poem is so very apt in a tectonic way.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I'm not being self-deprecating when I say we get as much as we give. The men are thoughtful, compassionate, curious--and filled with a really good energy. Many times I've gone to the group grumpy or depressed and come back much happier (and not just because I get to come back!) We were all that way, that night.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing, both your visit and the poem!

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked both!

[usedtobeljs]

That is a wonderful description of what must have been amazing.

[hugs]

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

It was amazing. Glad you liked reading about it!

[altaego.livejournal.com]

Great post.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[rebekahroxanna.livejournal.com]

I think when I retire I'll become a Buddhist. (Though the visions of hot hell and cold hell from Tibet and Mongolia are a bit much for me. As bad as anything Bosch dreamed up.) You are doing great work.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Well, the good part about Buddhist hells is that you get out after only a few kalpas....

Thanks!