Junior Assistant Adjunct Professor Hailey

I just started a new job. It is part time and will never be full time, at least as long as my career holds out. You never know. A few years ago, my dancing career took a nosedive and I wondered what would happen. I had pretty much nothing to fall back on. I can always pick up gigs as a musician, but that never paid the bills. I used to do a lot of musical theater when I was younger. I doubt that pays as much today as it used to. And there is little to no demand for a coloratura mezzo-soprano who knows all the biggest show tunes around here. It kind of amazes me that I live in a time and place where dancers easily earn more than musicians.

I have been very slowly building up my academic CV. I am not at all qualified to be a professor anywhere in the world, but I have some experience as a substitute teacher of sorts at two or three different universities. When one of them offered me a low level, part time gig, I jumped at it.

My roommate and sister from another mister, Lily, is working on a master's degree at Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages. Through her, I met a professor who taught a dialectology class, among others. After substituting for her a few times, and more importantly, after she wanted to drop the class, I threw my hat in the ring. I have no doubt there were other, more qualified applicants for the position. What I had on my side was the recommendation of a tenured professor and the approval of several students. That those students had already taken the class and would no longer be my students seems to be irrelevant. One of the worst things about Wenzao, in my opinion, is that they put entirely too much stock into what their students want. That helped me get the job, so maybe I should like it, but it seems to me that the students should never be in charge of any school. They are the customers who pay to keep the lights on, but keeping them happy has to be one of the slipperiest of slopes. And the customer is rarely right.

As of August, I am a lecturer for the Department of Translation and Interpreting, College of International Culture, Education, and Foreign Affairs. That looks great on my CV, but it is a part time job and I only teach one class. Next semester, I will only teach one class. Next year, who knows. I could be invited to go away. Or asked to teach a single class again. In Taiwan, lecturer is about as low as you can get on the ladder and still be allowed to teach a class. In the United States, I might be called an assistant professor, though I am not at all qualified to be an assistant professor here. During my first semester in Minnesota, we used to call all the teachers professor, even if they were graduate students who were little more than teaching assistants.

As of September, students in this dialectology class went from being taught by a full professor to a part time lecturer. I would see that as a serious step down if I were them. This is not a general education class that students take to get an easy A. Almost everyone in the class needs it for their major, though I was surprised by how many different majors are involved. No one has complained about their new teacher, as far as I know. Then again, no grades have been posted yet.

The hardest part about teaching this class, so far, has nothing to do with the actual teaching. Standing in front of a group of mostly young people whose minds are sponges and want to soak up my wisdom, or at least the wisdom of the textbook, is easy. I like having a captive audience. It is all the paperwork that sucks any inch of glamor out of the job. Substituting for someone else is much easier. They did all the paperwork. All I had to do was teach the class.

When my sister used to teach at a cram school in Hong Kong, it took her maybe five or ten minutes to write up her lesson plans. At Wenzao, I spent about a month preparing, as well as a few extra hours the night before each class. The big difference between our experiences, other than one was after school tutoring for children and one is a university class, is that her school pretty much left her to her own devices. My school wants to know every move I am going to make, and they are watching me closely. I assume that if I do not screw this up, they might relax a little next semester. Or they might never really trust me. I am a foreigner who works part time. You never know.

Two Down, Eighteen To Go

My krav maga instructor went back to Israel. He wanted to go back as soon as the plague started, but I guess being in a country that is practically unaffected is better than going to a place that was hit pretty hard in the beginning. After the initial blast, Israel was one of the first countries to start working on a vaccine, and they started shipping drugs to other countries long before Russia and the United States got the spotlight for shipping their drugs. After he returned, cases went up. That is probably a coincidence.

On a slightly smaller scale than a worldwide pandemic, that left me without a teacher. We do not exactly have krav maga schools on every corner around here. According to the Times of Israel, there are about 500 Israelis living in Taiwan, and the overwhelming majority live in Taipei. I know nothing about where the Times of Israel leans politically or how respected they are. The only newspapers I remember anyone reading when I worked in Tel Aviv were the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, though there are plenty of others. The government of Taiwan does not publish an easy spreadsheet of every foreign resident's nationality, and they have never been interested in keeping track of anyone's religious affiliations, which makes sense when Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism tend to overlap, and all of them mix and match with a wide variety of folk religions. Trying to label everyone would be a nightmare.

The good news is that my krav maga instructor recommended a replacement before he left the country. I was not especially happy about it since he was my third instructor and now I had to move on to number four. For some reason, I was hoping to have the same dashi for 20 years. So far, none of them have lasted 20 months.

My new laoshi is Taiwanese. I was reluctant at first. My previous instructors were Israeli, which I preferred since krav maga was born and raised in Israel. Then I looked up the new guy's CV. He has more than enough wushu experience in wing chun, jujutsu, and aikido, and has been studying krav maga for almost as long as I have been alive. I never thought twice about learning the Indian religion of Buddhism from Taiwanese monks, so why not continue learning Israeli defense from a Taiwanese shifu?

Not that I need the most advanced grand master for a teacher. I have been studying krav maga for two years this month. I am a lifetime away from being an expert. At best, I will be able to say I know a little something about it after 20 years. In the meantime, I can probably disable an attacker, assuming they have no experience. I am in no position to win any trophies. Fortunately, and one of the things I like about krav maga, is that it is not about scoring points in a competition. It is about defending yourself in real life as quickly and aggressively as possible. Unlike most East Asian forms, there is no such thing as an illegal move. In a judo competition, there are rules and regulations. You can get disqualified for doing something the wrong way. In krava maga, you can do whatever it takes to stop your opponent, depending on local laws.

My personal favorite move entails breaking an elbow and/or dislocating a shoulder. I have never used it in a real world situation, and hope I never do. It seems like it would be pretty effective. Breaking legs is also surprisingly easy. The femur is the strongest bone in the body, but snap the patella and that person is going down immediately. Disable the connection between femur and tibia and walking is impossible, even if the bones are fully intact. Actually breaking someone's femur can easily lead to lifelong issues. Instead, you can dislocate their patella without causing any permanent injury, as long as they get prompt medical attention.

My last instructor spent about a month teaching me how to break bones in the hand, with emphasis on the thumb. The thumb is a good target because of its importance to most people, and it usually stands apart from the fingers. Fracture someone's pinkie and they might keep charging, though unlikely. Pretty much everyone forgets whatever they were trying to do once their thumb is hanging flaccid.

Naturally, we learned about other soft targets. The eyes and throat are impressively weak spots. I want to assume I would hesitate in injuring someone's eyes, even in a life or death situation. It seems to me that potentially blinding someone permanently should be off limits, but in krav maga, nothing is off limits. The groin is especially popular, and one of the first body parts most men reflexively protect. No one ever protects their hands. There is also a neat trick involving the attacker's liver, but you have to know exactly where it is without any diagrams, and most of it is protected by ribs.

Do I really need to know how to break another person's bones? Not at all. I live in Taiwan and sometimes China. The odds of my being physically attacked or robbed by a stranger are practically nil. This is not that kind of culture.

As much as I love almost everything about Japan, I am more likely to be harassed there than here. Japan is enlightened in many ways, but still has a problem with entitled men who think women are property. As an obvious foreigner, I have never personally experienced it, and most likely never will. I am a little surprised that creepy men grabbing women in public is still a thing in the 21st century. It is very illegal, and the police take it more seriously than they ever have, but the people with the most power are always slow to stop acting like tiny dicks. If Japanese women knew krav maga, it would end overnight.

I might never work in Tel Aviv again. I have no doubt I will go back to visit some day. Israel might not be as safe as Japan, but it is nothing like the war zone Americans are told it is. I never felt anything but safe on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Those would seem like the perfect places to practice some krav maga moves. Or maybe not, since more people know how to respond there. Most Israelis spend two or three years in the military, the home of krav maga.

I used to work in Europe from time to time. Not so much lately. I assume I will work there again in the future, after they fix their health issues. Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Paris are all wonderful cities. And far more dangerous than Israel or Japan. The laws in the Netherlands, Spain, and France oppose most acts of violence. As a foreigner, I am more likely to be targeted by pickpockets than anything else. I never have been, though I think that would be a better scenario than some crazy dude with a knife.

Legally, I am an American citizen. I have only set foot in the country three times in the last ten years, but I can go there any time. It is one of the few places in the world where they have to let me in, no matter what. It is also the most dangerous place I will ever go. This is the internet, so I have to point out that, no, I am not saying the United States is the most dangerous country in the world. It is the most dangerous country I will probably ever know. I have no intention of ever going to Yemen or Afghanistan. You never know what the future holds, but I'm not going to break out the Fodor's North Korea just yet.

In the United States, I am far more likely to be attacked, robbed, and/or shot than anywhere else I have ever been. I would bet serious money that I will never be attacked anywhere in Europe. I would bet everything I own that I will never be shot in China or Japan. Whenever I leave the United States, I am more than a little surprised that I was not the victim of one crime or another. Of every place on this planet that I have ever been and am ever likely to go, krav maga is most useful in the United States.

Of course, this is all academic. I am a third year student. There is far more in front of me to learn than behind me. And if I were ever in a situation where I actually needed to use it, for all I know, I might curl up in a ball and pass out. Anyone can say they would be the nerves of steel badass, run into the burning building, and single-handedly save the universe from alien invasion, but you never really know how you will react to something out of the ordinary until it happens. More often than not, my fight or flight response is to fight. Manly men tough guys think that is cool, even though running away is often the absolute best thing you can do. In the unlikely event that I ever need it, learning krav maga could protect me from my own instincts to investigate the fire.

Even if I never get to break any bones, krav maga has taught me a great deal about situational awareness and intuition training. And the extra exercise never hurts.

Professor Hailey

I taught a university class last week. Obviously, as a visiting lecturer in a single class, I can't call myself professor. I can't even call myself a lecturer. You get no title for one day's work. If anything, I am that lady who came in that one time. Some of the students called me laoshi, but that was more about being polite than anything on my CV.

Am I qualified to teach a university class? Not in the least. And yet, I did so in Hong Kong two or three times. That was because the actual professor of that class wanted someone to come in and explain to her students how screwed up the educational system is in the United States. I was the only American who could communicate with her students that she could find on relatively short notice. Rather than teach the class, I simply talked about my experience with American public education and answered, or tried to answer, about a million questions. I was nothing more than a guest speaker.

On another occasion, I spoke to a different class at the same school about American politics. This was at a time when American politics were considered the most divisive they had been since the Civil War, and yet, compared to today, seem like a quaint and innocent distant past. While I have no interest in discussing American politics with Americans, it can be an interesting subject in a classroom full of Chinese students. Absolutely none of them regurgitated a single talking point from any of their favorite “news” shows. They only used their own words and were open to actually discussing the subject. I don't remember exactly how much I was paid, but I remember thinking that an American teacher would love to get that much money for so little work.

My tenure as a professor in Kaohsiung was something different. An actual professor at my sister's school had to go out of town for a family situation. Rather than cancel her dialectology class that day, she asked me if I could be her substitute. Reasonably, I pointed out that I am neither a professor nor lecturer, have no teaching license or certifications, and have not taken a dialectology class since 2015. I assumed that the university had some form of substitute teacher system in place. Surely, they must do something other than cancel a class whenever the professor is unavailable. But looking at my own time as a student, I cannot remember ever having a substitute teacher after high school. When the professor was out, class was canceled that day.

As a substitute “professor”, all I really had to do was follow the real professor's lesson plan. The book does most of the work if you read the unit, and most of the students came to class prepared. But the lesson plan was written by and for their professor. As someone new and different, the class had a number of questions for me. Fortunately, no one asked if I was at all qualified to teach the class. They probably assumed that since I was standing at the front of a class at their university, I must have the right to be there.

Dialectology is the study of dialects, obviously, and a fascinating subject. I don't know the first thing about most of the languages on this planet, but the one or two languages I know have a wide variety of dialects. Chinese dialects are so varied that some people consider them separate languages. If English has anything in common with Chinese it is the vast number of mutually intelligible, and sometimes unintelligible, dialects around the world. Just as someone from Alabama might have difficulty understanding someone from Scotland, someone from Xinjiang might have difficulty understanding someone from Fujian. The dialects can be wildly different, but the languages are the same, more or less. The people from Xinjiang and Fujian can read the same words, as can the people from Scotland and any literate people from Alabama.

My students for the day were well aware of the differences in Chinese dialects. While they all learned Chinese in Taiwan, many of them had traveled to various parts of China, where almost no one speaks Taiwanese Chinese. Even the few who have never set foot out of their home country have seen movies and TV shows filmed in a hundred different dialects. With so many Chinese people on the planet speaking a language that has existed for thousands of years, the variety of dialects is completely natural.

What the students all seemed surprised to learn was that English has almost as many different dialects as Chinese. They know that it is spoken everywhere the British subjugated the native people, but they also know that it is a new language. When watching English-language movies and TV, they mostly see American shows with actors who learned how to speak in the most generic of General American accents. Even the British and Australian actors on American TV are trained to use a General American accent. Someone with a good ear for accents and dialects can tell you where most of the top Chinese celebrities come from. Despite the hundreds of Australian actors in American movies and TV shows, Americans point to Crocodile Dundee as an example of an Australian accent because everyone else had to master General American. When I was in junior high school, I took a theater class on the Mid-Atlantic accent. I think that one is pretty noticeable, but no one uses it anymore.

Since I am from Minnesota, I speak with a slight Upper Midwestern accent and occasionally use words and phrases like boughten, spendy, skol, you know. This means that when I say dot and daughter, the vowels sound the same, as do bot and bought, stock and stalk. To people in other parts of the United States, those vowels have different sounds. Pin and pen sound completely different to me. Mary, marry, merry all sound the same. Roof has a shorter vowel sound than boot, casserole is hotdish, couch is sofa, cola is pop. To most Americans, Minnesota means the characters from Fargo, but that was obviously an exaggeration of how they speak up north. Most Minnesotans sound like Dakotans. And those of us with theater training can use General American if necessary.

To my Chinese students, everyone who speaks English sounds the same. Just as the students all sound the same to English speakers. To me, they sound Taiwanese, which is a world away from Hongkonger. I'm starting to hear a difference between northern and southern Taiwan, but that could be my imagination. Too many people in Taiwan grow up in one part of the country and go to school in another part. After school, they might go back or stay. All the movement around the country makes it much harder to pinpoint accents and dialects. China is much easier. When you meet someone from Shanghai in Xiamen, you know they are from Shanghai right away.

But the biggest surprise in teaching the class, hands down, was the use of cell phones. Back in my day, phone use was strictly forbidden in most classes. Today, it is their most useful tool. Almost none of the students bought a physical copy of the textbook. They all had it on their phones. It took me a while to get used to everyone staring at their phones when I asked them questions or read bits from the book. As an American, my first thought was that there is no way to know if they are looking at the book or just screwing around on their phones. But I got over that pretty quickly. This was a university class. Every one of them had to earn their right to be there. Though not exactly the most prestigious university in the country, it is competitive enough that coasting through is not an option. This was not a general education class. To most of the students, it was required for their major. Paying attention was in their best interest. Of course, that is true with most classes, but these were not American students. Announcing your laziness and stupidity are not considered cool in Chinese culture.

A few days later, the actual professor told me that the students liked having me as their substitute teacher. Of course, that could simply be a case of something new and different to break up the routine. She asked me if I would be willing to substitute again, if needed. There is no way I could ever make a career of this, especially since I already have a career that takes up a good deal of my time. But I can see myself in front of another class again someday.

How To Be a Buddhist Monk in 489 Steps

Rather than live like a monk when I was at the monastery, I lived like someone who was there to study Buddhism. The monks had their schedule and I had mine. Different groups of monks had different schedules. It was almost like working in an office building. Everyone was there at the same time, but not all doing the same things. My schedule was designed for students, but as far as I know, there were no other students there at the time.

05:00 Daban
At the crack of dawn, someone banged on the 起板 (qiban), which they called 打板 (daban), telling everyone it was time to wake up. There are no satisfying English translations for daban, anban or qiban. They are wooden boards that monks tap on to signal a specific time or event. As with anytime anyone rang a bell, there was a specific pattern that matched whatever was being announced. It was essentially a monastic alarm clock. Though there were computers and smartphones all over the place, they still followed the tradition of keeping time through chimes. Everyone knew what each pattern meant, and I knew that most of them had nothing to do with me. Daban meant it was time to wake up. Of course, people could and did wake up earlier. I always did. But tapping on the wooden board was the signal to all that the day had officially begun.

05:30 – 07:30 Morning meditation
Every morning, most of the monks went into the large Amitabha Chanting Hall to chant jing for two hours. Unlike meditation, chanting was done while standing. For two hours. Monks, in general, are not known as the most athletic people in the world. They spend a lot of time reading and meditating. I never saw any of them on an elliptical trainer. But every single one of them could stand still without straining and suffering. Or at least without showing it.

I was not unwelcome to participate, but told rather bluntly that this was a more advanced practice that I was simply not ready to learn. I was gradually taught some of the jing, but never expected to know any of them as well as the monks. Without knowing the jing, I would have simply stood there for two hours, which would have been pointless.

Instead, my morning meditation was scheduled during the morning chants. That meant Laoshi had to miss his chanting to teach me how to meditate, but he was happy to do it and I was glad he was there. I have been taught how to meditate by a few different people, and all of them taught me something different. The only real similarities were clearing the mind, controlling the breathing, and going full lotus. Different teachers will have different ideas about how to meditate, but everyone agrees that the lotus position is the only proper way to sit. Half lotus is only acceptable if you are just starting out or have joint issues, and no one approves of sitting criss-cross applesauce. Full lotus makes the most sense. If you can get yourself into position, it has to be one of the sturdiest ways to sit. You can knock over someone in a half lotus with a feather, but someone sitting full lotus could fall asleep during an earthquake and never fall down.

Fo Guang Shan practices Chan meditation, which has its own rules and regulations. You could fill a book with all the rules. In fact, people have. I read one of them. The main point is mostly about breathing and trying not to think about all of life's daily bullshit. I was given a personalized mantra, but my takeaway was that any mantra will do since repeatedly chanting pretty much anything will automatically shift your focus. But you don't want to chant jing because most of them are too long and you would find yourself concentrating on the jing rather than the meditation.

My morning meditation was not coincidentally scheduled during the sunrise, just as my evening meditation was during the sunset. On the first day, I wondered why we were doing it outdoors rather than in the giant Meditation Hall. I assumed it was because I was just learning while the monks in the hall were there for serious business. Teaching me would have been a distraction. But then the sun went down and I understood why Laoshi chose a spot uphill, facing west. It was one of those magical moments where you are relaxed and generally content and suddenly feel the sun's warmth on your face. I thought it was beautiful. Until Laoshi pointed out that if I was truly meditating, I would not have noticed the sun setting at all. The following morning was the same, except we were facing east instead of west. I felt the sun rise on my face, which is kind of hard not to notice, which only pointed out how much I was failing.

08:00 – 08:30 Breakfast
Breakfast was served in the dining hall; a large, open rectangle of a room with at least fifty long rows of folding tables placed end to end. All of the utilitarian seats faced in one direction so that no one sat with anyone facing them. Everyone sat side by side, in rows, facing the backs of the rows ahead. The reason immediately became clear. Meals were for eating, not talking. The oldest monks sat first, followed by the younger monks, then the novices, students, and miscellaneous laity. I was close enough to the end of the line where it never mattered what order anyone was in. After all the monks, it was first come, first served. Though there is a hierarchy at the monastery, seating was not about obedience to any chain of command. It was purely out of respect. In any situation where groups had to wait in a line, the oldest were always at the front.

For most of the monks, breakfast was the only meal of the day. They are strong believers in fasting throughout the day, but also recognize that people need to eat. In English, breakfast literally means break fast. That is exactly how the monks use it. But in Chinese, 早餐 simply means early meal. Some of the monks ate dinner, which was called the medicinal meal because it was for those who might have medical issues with only one meal a day. As a student, I was never expected to fast all day, and I am currently trying to gain weight, so fasting would not be ideal. In addition to breakfast and dinner, I was always free to eat at any time in any of the restaurants on or near campus. The museum down the hill has an entire food court. But I would have to pay for any unscheduled meals, and I wanted this experience to be as authentic as possible. Getting snacks from the 7-Eleven down the hill does not strike me as particularly monastic.

Breakfast was always rice porridge. Every single day. Just like dinner, for those who participated, it was quick. Everyone sat down, the monks did a quick chant, everyone ate without any conversation, there was another chant at the end of the meal, and everyone left the room in an orderly fashion. At the monastery, the purpose of a meal was to eat. Anything else was a distraction. Everyone had too many things to do.

They handed out a lot of wisdom nuggets in the monastery. Sometimes too many. It must take years just to remember all the aphorisms. But one that really stuck with me was the idea that food is medicine. You should only take what you need. In the monastery, no one lives to eat.

08:45 – 10:45 Reading
After breakfast, my reading time was pure independent study. Most of my day was spent with at least one other person, guiding me or watching to make sure I did not break anything, but when it was time to read, I was on my own. They gave me books and told me I could sit anywhere, indoors or outdoors. Sometimes I would find a quiet nook in one hall or another, but most of the time I read outdoors. A few of the gardens were on the side of a hill and not the worst place in the world to read.

11:00 – 13:00 Lecture
The daily lecture was exactly how it sounds. One laoshi or another spoke for two hours on subjects ranging from meditation to jing to Dharma to the difference between Humanistic Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism to the Buddha's life and a lot of what he said. The lesson plan was whatever that particular laoshi wanted to talk about on that particular day. I would have preferred to know what the lecture was going to be so I could read up on that subject beforehand, but that was not the way they wanted to do it. I was not arrogant enough to tell them that my way was better than what they had been doing for two thousand years. Even so, the lectures were highly educational and entirely too much to absorb in such a short period of time.

13:15 – 14:15 Gardening
Just after what would have been lunchtime, I worked in one of the gardens. I was there to study rather than work, but manual labor is a routine part of any monk's day. There are a few gardens throughout the monastery, mostly maintained by a combination of monks and civilian professionals. Somewhere on site was a vegetable garden that provided most of the food eaten in the monastery and the museum. I never saw that one, but I walked through several gardens and worked in an herb garden. I think they had me working with the herbs because they were easier and safer. Had I killed all the basil, meals would taste slightly different for a little while. Killing an entire crop of vegetables would be disastrous. I also doubt it was a coincidence that I was working around food at the same time my mind was supposed to be thinking about lunch. Buddhist monks are big fans of denying pleasure, and for a lot of people, eating is one of life's greatest joys. What the monks never knew was that I have no appetite and can easily go all day without eating.

14:30 – 15:45 Free time
The monks were encouraged to take a nap in the afternoon. The Meditation Hall had alcoves to sit and meditate or take a nap in between all that meditating. There was always someone in the Meditation Hall, and I'm pretty sure a few monks spent the entire day inside, napping in between meditating. There is a strong work ethic at the monastery. Everyone pulls their weight and everyone does some kind of labor that people in business suits would deem beneath them. But when you wake up at dawn and work all day, you need the occasional nap. The older monks generally stayed awake all day, doing all their monk business. At nap time, I could always find younger monks sleeping here and there.

I spent nap time jogging around the monastery, or last least the parts less frequented by the public. My exercise routine was neither encouraged nor discouraged. The monks believe in staying healthy, but prefer to do so through meditation. As long as my afternoon run did not get in anyone's way, no one had a problem with it. Nap time seemed like the perfect time since most of the monks were indoors for an hour or two. Afternoons are not the ideal time to exercise in the heat and humidity of Kaohsiung, but my mornings were pretty busy.

16:00 – 18:00 Evening meditation
Evening meditation was just like morning meditation, only facing west in an attempt to block out the sunset. It took a long time, but I could eventually reach the point where I never noticed the change of light and heat. I even had a time or two where everything around me just faded away. I think that is at least mildly impressive since I was surrounded by nature, which is often hard to ignore. Birds especially have a way of mocking your meditation. I could only get to that point with a teacher. Try as I might, it never happened on my own. I never learned how to levitate or do anything crazy, and I was nowhere near the on-ramp to the freeway that eventually leads to the neighborhood next to Nirvana. At best, I would say that what I experienced was piece of mind.

18:30 – 19:00 Medicinal meal
Dinner, the optional medicinal meal, was as organized as breakfast, but with a wider variety of food. There was a different dish each day, either at random or in a pattern that I never recognized. There was usually rice, but sometimes noodles, with vegetables and a variety of soy products. There was almost always soup. The evening tea was noticeably different from the morning tea, but no one told me what it was and I never bothered to ask. At this point in my life, tea is tea. As long as it has no caffeine.

19:30 – 21:30 Dharma lesson
The evening's Dharma lesson was just like a regular class. Rather than a private lesson, like my lecture time, it was a class full of monks taught by a senior shifu. Just like in school, we were all expected to take notes, and there were periodic tests. Oddly enough, it was the most informal time of the day. The monks were always serious when it came to meditating and chanting, but they smiled and laughed in the classroom, even though everyone was expected to learn every ounce of the lessons.

Afterward, I was free to do whatever I wanted for the rest of the night. Some of my favorite time at the monastery was walking around after dark. The tourist side closed at 17:00 and that was when the spirit of the place really came to life. After the sun went down, the grounds were lit up with lanterns and more than enough electric light. It is almost a shame that the monastery is not open at night, but the lack of tourists made it far more beautiful. Monasteries are not natural tourist attractions.

22:00 Anban
At ten o'clock on the dot, someone hit the anban, which was just like the daban, only a different pattern. All the monks knew what it meant, and I figured out the difference right away. Of course, it helped that one was in the morning and the other was at night. That made it a little obvious.

Once the day was officially over, the monastery fell silent. It was never a particularly loud place to begin with, but in the dead of night, even the crickets kept it down. I went for a few walks after anban, which were always interesting. If you want solitude in the city, early morning is always better than late at night. Taiwanese generally stay up late, and the only people out before dawn are going to work. It was the exact opposite in the monastery. While I always saw at least one other person out and about at night, the place was deserted compared to the mass of motion during the day.

This was a unique experience that I can always repeat, but probably never will. Getting the most out of it requires spending more time in the monastery. If I have the time, I am more likely to travel somewhere. Studying in the monastery is a great way to learn a great deal in a short amount of time, but it is far from a vacation. While my brain was flooded with all things Buddhist, I doubt I will retain most of it. Sooner or later, I will forget most of the jing. And as much as I think meditation is helpful, there are never enough hours in the day.

Seeing Buddha's Lightor At Least a Tiny Spark From a Great Distance

If you want to be generous, you could say that I am an expert on maybe one subject. At most. Buddhism is not it. If you want to learn about Buddhism, there are a few million people who can tell you more than I can. In fact, there are more than a few books on the subject, written by people who know what they are talking about. Some of them were written at Fo Guang Shan Monastery. They will happily give you a book or ten. Even the museum hands out free books. One of Fo Guang Shan's primary missions is to educate. They have founded and/or sponsored more than a few universities, high schools, and elementary schools. Something all schools have in common is books.

After a couple of weeks at Fo Guang Shan Monastery, I now know infinitely more about Buddhism than I did prior. Unfortunately, one of the things I inevitably learned was that I know almost nothing about Buddhism. The farther one travels, the less one knows. That is Tao, but the same concept.

Buddhist monasteries tend to be on top of mountains, when available. That is mostly for seclusion. 佛光山 (Fo Guang Shan) means Buddha's Light Mountain. It was built just off the Yushan mountain range, which cuts through south central Taiwan. While the unobstructed views are nice, it was built there to make it harder for most people to reach. But it was opened to the public over the years, with streets and ample bus access, and became a tourist attraction. More than a few monks told me that the large museum was built downhill to draw people away from the monastery while still providing a Buddhist day trip for civilians.

I know that there are different branches of Buddhism that believe different things, and more than a few disagreements within each branch. Mahayana Buddhism started in India and worked its way to China a couple thousand years ago, where it mixed with Taoism and got stirred around in a big pot until it was hard to tell where Buddhism began and Taoism ended. Fo Guang Shan practices Humanistic Buddhism, which comes from Chan, which is a school of Mahayana.

I know that Humanistic Buddhism is about living people. The temples, memorials, pagodas, and statues are for the living. The Buddha was a human who lived and died, as humans often do. Humanistic Buddhism tends to focus on improving the lives of people right now rather than killing in the name of gods and getting a trophy after death. Ironically, while the Buddha personally ordained the first female monks and Humanistic Buddhism advocates equality, education, and altruism, Fo Guang Shan's founder was a bit of an asshat and a lot of a misogynist. Fortunately, he is 90 something years old and retired. His successors are more enlightened and live in the 21st century. As with most religions, women were only subjugated in later years after some extra sensitive male egos took over. Today, just like 2500 years ago, women can be monks, be seen with the men, and even breathe without permission. That worked out better for me.

Unlike probably everyone at the monastery, I am not Buddhist and have no intention of ever becoming Buddhist. I have studied and/or am studying it for the cultural aspect rather than religious. I never mislead the monks or pretended to have any other motives. I told them upfront that since I am studying Chinese/Taiwanese culture, and specifically the differences between the two, I think I should be studying Buddhism as well. No one can ever understand China without at least a rudimentary grasp of Buddhism. That would be like studying the thousand years of war in Europe without knowing anything about Christianity.

One of the great things about Buddhism, as well as Taoism and Confucianism, is that everyone is welcome to learn as much as they want without any pressure to convert or sign a blood oath. Unlike the western religions, it is perfectly acceptable to mix and match in China. Most of the people who practice Confucianism are also Buddhist, Taoist or something else. Some insist that Confucianism is more of a philosophy than a religion, but all religions are philosophies, in one way or another. What I like is how different it all is from the Judeo-Christian philosophy of kill or be killed, us versus them. Chinese philosophy is more live and let live, we're all in this together.

The not very creatively named Main Shrine
Fo Guang Shan Monastery

Flower and Stone Garden
My favorite place to read

Tathagata Building, Jade Buddha Building

Golden Buddha Building
Golden Buddha Shrine

Dharma classroom

Main dining hall
Cloud Dwelling Building

Meditation Hall
Tathagata Building

Amitabha Chanting Hall
Jade Buddha Building

Dharma Square

Sutra Repository

Lots of Buddhas

Even more Buddhas
Overlooking the Gaoping River

Great Buddha Land
“The highest standing Buddha in southeast Asia”

Dharma Hall

A Brief History of the Buddha

The Buddha thanking his mother for giving birth to him

Fo Guang Shan Museum
Just a quick hike down the hill
Or an elevator ride for those in need

Great Path to Buddhahood
and the Eight Pagodas

Bodhi Wisdom Concourse
Home of the Eighteen Arhats

Sutra Repository Stupa
with one million Heart Sutras

Stupa of Vow

Stupa of Wisdom

Sutra Repository Stupa, Fo Guang Buddha, Stupa of Wisdom

Fo Guang Buddha
I had to pump up the contrast because I was facing the sun
But I think it worked out OK

Meditating On Buddha's Light Mountain

Main Shrine
Fo Guang Shan Monastery


I live about 30km from Fo Guang Shan Monastery, the leading center for Mahayana Buddhism in the country, according to them. I never asked around. The monastery is pretty big, though no self-respecting Buddhist would ever brag about size. Just down the hill is the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum, which is one of the most popular tourist sites in Kaohsiung, even though it is practically in Pingtung and at least 35km from downtown. The museum is pretty enormous. Someone told me it was the largest Buddhist museum in the world. I never checked. But it does house the tallest seated bronze Buddha statue in the world. That is easy enough to verify, but one should keep in mind that there are a million superlative Buddha statues. Most of the tallest or biggest will mention indoor, outdoor, standing, seated, reclining, bronze, wood, gold, left handed, right handed or facing east. But again, no self-respecting Buddhist would ever brag about size.

I spent some time at the Fo Guang Shan Monastery, but not as a tourist. You can certainly visit the monastery, but most people go to the much larger museum. I have been to the museum a time or two, but I went to the monastery for a completely different reason.

Fo Guang Shan has a program specifically for foreigners who want to play Buddhist for the weekend. The “volunteer group” lets people sleep in dorms, do a few arts and crafts, and mostly wash dishes and do laundry. It is probably beneficial for the monastery. They have people come in and do some chores, while the volunteers get a brief introduction to Buddhism. I did not want that.

It should be noted that both the monastery and museum have full time volunteers who are mostly walking information booths for visitors. They are all locals who work at Fo Guang Shan for years and wear civilian clothes with colored vests, depending on location and specialization. If you enter the Sutra Repository, you will be greeted by a monk in brown or gray robes who might not know much English beyond a few words and a volunteer in a red vest who might be able to explain the room in two or three languages. At the Great Buddha Land, you will be greeted by a volunteer or two in yellow or orange vests who may or may not speak any English. The museum has far more English and Japanese speaking volunteers than the monastery. These volunteers, though called volunteers, are nothing like the foreigners in the weekend volunteer group.

Like a lot of temples and monasteries, Fo Guang Shan Monastery has a temple retreat for foreigners. The difference from the volunteer group is that people pay to sleep in the dorms, wear gray pajamas, learn the basics of meditation and chanting, pretend to learn calligraphy, do some light chores, eat three meals a day, watch a tea ceremony, and always stay in their group of however many people are booked that weekend.

Before I went, I did a little research. Most of the information I found was on the volunteer group and the paid retreat, so I initially thought I might pay to stay the weekend. But the more I looked into it, the more it sounded like a waste of time. The volunteers spend little to no time with the monks. They are supervised by a public relations employee of the monastery who is not ordained. They eat in a separate room away from the main dining hall. Almost all socializing is with other volunteers. They sleep in shared dorm rooms, wear whatever clothes they brought with them, and live in their own volunteer bubble. There is no schedule, aside from meal times. Their only obligation is to do assigned chores, which is mostly cleaning things outdoors, washing things indoors, and doing laundry. The paid retreat is more educational than the volunteer group, but far too short and superficial. It is like reading only the first paragraph of a long book. And you have to pay to get in.

Eventually, I figured out that I could stay at the monastery as a student. Student is not really the correct word. In Chinese, I was 學習者 (xuexizhe) rather than 學生 (xuesheng). The easiest translation is learner vs student. Fo Guang Shan welcomes locals who want to learn as much about Humanistic Buddhism as they can cram into their brains. There is no time limit. Some people stay for years before eventually joining the monastery. We all knew I was never going to do that, but I could probably stick around for a week or two. I'm not technically a local, but since I moved here from China, they treated me as if I was Chinese. Being from China or Taiwan is not required, but only the tourist weekends are in English. If you want to study for any length of time, everything is in Chinese.

While I was Xuexizhe, my teachers were mostly 老師 (Laoshi) or 師父 (Shifu), and rarely 法師 (Fashi). While every shifu and fashi is also a laoshi, laoshi and fashi are only called shifu by people further down the ladder. I was at the bottom, so I could call everyone shifu or laoshi. Fashi, of course, is only reserved for specific laoshi. Or shifu. To every fashi and shifu, I was Xuexizhe, but the occasional laoshi called me Xuesheng. I think maybe five people on the entire campus knew my Chinese name, and I only told one laoshi my English name, because he asked and he enjoyed practicing his English with me.

All the monks had names, of course, but they also had Dharma names and courtesy names. This is pretty common in Chinese. Sun Yat Sen was born Sun Deming, called Sun Wen as a child, called Sun Yat Sen in Hong Kong, called Sun Zhongshan in Taiwan, and given the courtesy name Zaizhi. I still call him Sun Yat Sen, the rare time he comes up in conversation, but no one around here knows who I am talking about until I mention Zhongshan. Ironically, the National Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall in Taipei is not called Sun Zhongshan Memorial Hall. Not that it matters since that is the English name. In Chinese, it is the National Father of the Country Memorial Hall. To avoid confusion, I was encouraged to address the monks by title rather than name. Pretty much everyone I met was either Laoshi, Fashi or Shifu.

I spent most of my days with one monk or another, usually Laoshi. I ate with monks and novices in the dining hall. I met plenty of other people at the monastery. It is almost impossible not to. But I did not see a single foreigner or another xuexizhe. All of the volunteers I met were full time locals who knew what they were talking about, and not part of the foreigner volunteer group. I don't know how often they host weekend retreats, but I doubt any were going on while I was there.

I slept in a tiny, private room, which was more decorated than I expected. It was all Buddhist decor, but I thought it would just be bare walls and a bed. It was more like a small hotel room with a larger than average bathroom, which is not much of a surprise since Fo Guang Shan often hosts monks, scholars, and dignitaries from all around the world. They gave me student robes to wear, which were a different color and style from what the monks or novices wore. The hierarchy of robes was fairly complicated and took a while to figure out. No one was ever going to mistake me for a monk, especially since I had hair, but the clothes announced to everyone exactly who I was, which was convenient. Since part of the monastery is open to the public, tourists sometimes wander into areas not intended for tourists. Had I been in civilian clothes, I would have spent too much time trying to explain why I was there. The robes were an all-access pass, or more like a low-access pass.

There was a schedule for practically every waking moment of every day. It was far from hectic, but I was expected to follow it religiously. I was free to leave at any time, of course, but as long as I was there, they wanted me to be fully there. Being in the moment is kind of a big thing to Buddhists. Best of all, I was not part of any group. I was in a group of one, getting individual attention, except when I was surrounded by monks. My schedule might not have been tailor made for me specifically, but I was the only person on it. Sharing the experience with a group of tourists would have diminished it.

Since Humanistic Buddhism is more about helping the living than mourning the dead, the monks at Fo Guang Shan are not cloistered in a cave somewhere. They operate a wide variety of social and educational programs around the country. They work in village clinics, volunteer in city hospitals, operate rehabilitation services in prisons, run orphanages and senior centers, and do all the usual monk jobs of feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, and officiating at weddings and funerals. They go to conferences around the country and other parts of the world. They publish articles, hold seminars, and write books. A lot of books. Every shifu wrote at least one book and the laoshi were handing me books left and right.

I never witnessed any of their outside activities. As a xuexizhe, I was not at all qualified to do anything even remotely close to monk work. From what I saw, even the novices mostly stayed on site. Unlike the monks, I was cloistered, but in a monastery too large and populated to feel claustrophobic. There are usually two to three hundred monks at the monastery, with ample room to hold a few thousand during conferences and major holiday festivals. There was an ordination ceremony while I was there. New monks from around the country came to Kaohsiung to get sworn in. It was wall to wall monks for a few days. I have no idea how many people came to the monastery, but it could have easily been in the thousands.

Something I saw all the time was how much they embraced modern technology. Fo Guang Shan is known for its use of modern technology. They have websites and apps, a couple of podcasts, a public relations and marketing department, and like a lot of other Buddhist groups in Taiwan, they have TV shows. Not shows about monks who go from town to town solving crimes, but single camera lectures where a monk talks to the audience. Sometimes they chant. It is not riveting television. There was no TV in my tiny room, but the entire monastery is a wifi hotspot. Not only was my phone not taken away, I was encouraged to bring a laptop to do online research. Seeing monks with smartphones and other i-devices is common in Taiwan, but for some reason, I did not expect it in the monastery. I had to remind myself that these people were Buddhist, not Amish.

Dharma Square