Buddhist Monastery Random Thoughts

4 December 2012, 1:00 p.m.

I’m sat for several hours, alone in the Buddhist monastery, with no idea where to go from here. I’ve been sitting alone in a freezing room staring at a statue of a rejoicing fat Buddha who, with his arms victoriously pumping in the air, seems completely unashamed of his glorious manboobs. They are epic, to the point of being obscene. I’ve been staring at them for so long that I’m starting to question my own sexuality. I hear monks chanting a drone in the room next door, but all I can think of his how tempted I am to buy this statue a supportive bra.

4 December 2012, 2:30 p.m.

I finally worked up the courage to announce my arrival to the Buddhists. Actually it wasn’t so much courage as the very real fear that I would have to amputate my toes if I stayed in the cold any longer. Shyly shuffling past men wandering around in orange bed sheets, I strode up to the office door, startled myself by unintentionally knocking a little too loudly, and waited.

I ended up being greeted by a German nun who was missing several teeth and whom I would never see again. Judging from what a total space cadet she was, I can only assume that immediately after showing me to my room she reached Nirvana and ceased to be. Or maybe she went on vacation. Whatever. Upon hearing that my name was Samantha, she became overjoyed and rejoiced in the same way that I rejoice when offered cake. She marveled at the uniqueness of my name. “Samantha. Oh it is such a rare name! Samantha.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that three girls out of about 50-60 in my high school class had the same name.

She continued to fuss: “Samantha. Is this a name you chose for yourself?” Sorry, what? Confused by the question I simply stood there stupidly and, not knowing what to do with themselves, my hands found their way to my back pockets. Because, apparently, looking like I’m grabbing my own ass was the best solution my hands could come up with under pressure. Eventually I’d learn that a lot of people at this place had adopted ‘Buddhist’ names, like Edward is now Amitaba or something, in the same way that certain types of Jews that I met in Israel would not stop trying to get me to adopt awful Hebrew names to replace Samantha, names that made me sound like your grumpy grandma who doesn’t really speak English and smells of soup. I think they thought it’d make me a better Jew, and to their credit maybe if I had chosen to start calling myself Ruchama Tova or whatever I wouldn’t be typing this story up in an Anglican convent.

The Buddhist nun continued: “Is it Indian in origin? Samantha? Samantha.” She repeated my name to herself a few times, marveling at the sound it made.

I did think of my poor mom and wish she were here. She loves the name Samantha (obviously), but I’ve unfortunately never appreciated it in the same way. As this strange, toothless German lady flapped around and got herself all worked up about what a fantastic, rare and mystical name I have, I knew that if my mom were here she’d say to the nun, “I know, right?!”

5 December 2012, 6:30 a.m.

I am, there’s no delicate way of putting this, mincing through the snow in Crocs that are probably only big enough to comfortably house my toes. I’m off to the temple, where a novice monk who seems absolutely terrified of me for no apparent reason will give me a cloth to rub fingerprints off all the temple’s brass doorknobs. Or, as I succeed in doing, smear the fingerprints around until they become even more obvious dirt. Some days I use to a broom to move dead hair and flies to other, more exotic locations in the temple, but never to the dustpan. Other days I plump up cushions sitting on the floor, and as I bend over or crouch down to adjust the cushions my pants consistently fall down just as another monk walks in behind me.

My pants have sagged so many times at the worst possible moment that I don’t know if the monk could pick my face out of a crowd, but he and my ass are now pretty intimately acquainted. Like old army buddies now, best man at each other’s wedding and everything.

But, having never been afflicted with the appalling sight of my rear end, the novice monk has no excuse for the look of sheer terror and surprise that warps his face every time he sees me. Despite the fact that my thighs make a roar of jean friction as I walk, announcing my impending arrival, this novice monk always reacts like I’ve startled him, like I’ve jumped out from behind a corner and yelled, “BOO!” Mindfulness, my ass…

7 December 2012, 10:30 a.m.

I’m in the kitchen chopping onions, the stench of which will remain on my fingers for a week, when Billy Connolly begins to give me instructions on what to do with my pile of grotesquely unevenly cut vegetables sitting in a wok, stewing in their own shame.

“Fry it…” and here, mid-sentence, he is spirited away for a few uncomfortable seconds to what I can only assume was Brigadoon, but the look on his eyes suggests that wherever he is he’s there long enough to fall in love, get married, have a painful divorce, and develop a drinking problem before mentally returning to the kitchen. And then the adverb finally arrives, after getting caught in traffic on the 405: “…gently.”

He smiles softly to himself as he silently shuffles away, and I’m left feeling like I can’t go on. No, before I can gently fry these vegetables I have to ask, “WHERE THE EFF DID YOU GO?!”

7 December 2012, 11:30 a.m.

I just want to be silent. Polite society questions like ”Where do you live?” or “What do you do for a living?” are too challenging at the moment. I just want to eat my porridge and stare at a wall. Like, forever.

But so many people here won’t stop scooting along the carpet to enter into my personal space to tell me all about how they came here to get away from it all, to have some quiet. They go on to describe in detail their great love of silence, and how there’s too much chatter in the world, and “Oh I just need some peace to think.”

I’m shy (not to mention a rancid bitch), so they soon lose interest in me. They then scoot their meditation cushion over to another person, and they proceed to tell each other how they came here to get away from the noise of society, completely oblivious to the fact that they ARE the noise of society. I keep thinking to myself that if I had a gospel of my own to preach, it’d be a gospel of “Everyone shut the fuck up for like FIVE minutes. I mean, Jesus, is five minutes too much to ask?”

At this particular moment an older English gentleman is approaching me. He’s the epitome of lost soul, constantly moving from religion to religion. He had previously casually dropped into the conversation that he was a Muslim for four years, not too long ago. You know, having the sort of spiritual crises you have at the age of 20-something with the expectation (desperate hope?) that by the time you’re this guy’s age you’ll stop having them.

Anyway, he plops down on the floor next to me and for a minute I’m relieved to find him silently poking at and contemplating the various types of fish on his plate. He then points at a fried fish ball on his plate, asking me, “Is this like gefilte fish?”

I’m thrown by the question. “…Sorry?”

He points again. “Is this like gefilte fish?” Suddenly I remember that about an hour ago the topic of my Israeli kibbutz experience (and the implication that I’m Jewish) had come up. I guess this is his way of reaching out to me as a Jew?

Trying my best to smile politely, I simply say, “Ah, no…that’s just fish…”

Another pause, a chance for him to point at a differently prepared bit of fish on his plate. “So, is THIS like gefilte fish?”

“Well, no…that’s also just fish.”

He now points at a third variety of fish, because for some reason today we had three varieties of fish, and he asks me, “Right, and is THIS like gefilte fish?”

At this point I realize what is going on here. Congratulations, I want to say to him, you know a word in what you probably call “Jewish,” and you want me to know that you know it. As this man goes on to make further inane comments about gefilte fish, I start reflecting on this, what I HATE about being Jewish. Folks find out you’re Jewish and they start trying to show off that they know something or someone Jewish—this whole thing is something my non-“minority” friends will never fully understand. Nobody ever says, “Ooooh, you’re a WASP? I think my cousin’s neighbor is a WASP…actually, come to think of it, pretty much everyone I know is a WASP.”

But no, folks find out you’re Jewish and they want to tell you that they like challah bread, or (more frequently) they get all desperate to tell you about their neighbor’s Jewish brother-in-law. The subtext there is a hysterical “SEE?? I WOULDN’T HAVE GIVEN YOU UP TO THE NAZIS IF YOU HID IN MY ATTIC!” Or, perhaps more realistically, “I WOULD GIVE YOU UP TO THE NAZIS, BUT ONLY OUT OF FEAR AND NOT OUT OF RACE HATE SO THAT’S OKAY I GUESS.” You know, the sort of statement urgently blurted out a little too loudly, like a verbal kneejerk reaction.

I don’t know what these people want from me when they tell me their coworker’s last name is Goldstein—“that’s a Jew name, right?”. Do they want me to say I know their Jewish second cousin by marriage? Do they want a medal? What am I supposed to do with this information?

Usually I utter an empty, high-pitched “Oh.” Because really that’s all I can manage. But I think the next time someone tells me that their second grade teacher’s husband was Jewish I’ll have to start a slow clap that gradually builds into a one-woman standing ovation, as I wipe away tears from my moved Jewish eyes, saying, “Bravo, maestro. Bravo.”