Assignment 4 Tom Johnson

Santa Claus Lives

This is a continuation of my last blog assignment. I wrote about how the supernatural teacher knows your thoughts and intentions better than you do. Hung Shun had a personal experience about this and told me about it. I e-mailed him and he wrote me back. Below is his answer. It is a story about the Master and his interactions with his young Bhikshus.

The Below is by Hung Shun...

The Story of Eating Cake Out of the Garbage Can
By Heng Shun

This true story took place during the celebration for the birthday of Gwan Shr Yin (Avalokiteshvara) Bodhisattva held in March of 1975. The background is as follows:

I had lived in several monasteries in Thailand in 1973 and 1974. In March of 1974 I was ordained as a novice Buddhist monk (Shramanera) at Wat Borvornives in Bangkok. This monastery was one of the very best urban monasteries in all of Thailand. The abbot of the monastery was the teacher of the king and the king actually became a monk there before he took the throne. The abbot later became the Sangha-raja (Sangha-king), the head of the entire Buddhist monastic community in Thailand. My point here is that I studied at and was ordained at one of the most reputable monasteries in Thailand at that time.

When I became ordained as a novice monk, I took the Ten Major Moral Precepts, which included not taking any food after noon until the following morning (after sunrise). I held these moral regulations very purely while I was a novice. Then in June (1974), after I read the first published edition of the Venerable Master’s biography in English, I knew that he was a my teacher. So I made arrangements to return to the United States to study with the Venerable Master. However, I could not return to the United States as a novice monk- a novice monk should always stay with his original teacher until he completes his training and becomes a fully ordained monk, a Bhikshu. So what I did was I gave up my novice monk vows and at the same ceremony took up the Eight Moral Precepts for a celibate lay-follower. These Eight Moral Precepts also included not eating any food after noon (until the following morning after sunrise).

After I first arrived at Gold Mountain Monastery (the original Gold Mountain on 15th Street in the Mission District of San Francisco) in June, for various reasons I only stayed for one week. I returned to my parents’ home in the Chicago area and then returned to Gold Mountain Monastery during the first week of August 1974. During the time I was in Chicago, I very faithfully and purely kept the Eight Moral Precepts (including, one again, not eating after noon).

When I returned to Gold Mountain in August of 1974 one of the many jobs that I was given to support the temple, was cleaning the dishes after the one major meal that was given at 11:00. So at the time of the celebration of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva in March of 1975, I had never broken of the vows that I had taken as a novice and then as an 8-Precept layperson (including the vow of not eating after noon.

So on the day of the birthday of Avalokiteshvara (Gwan Shr Yin) Bodhisattva there were the many special ceremonies and a lot of good food, including many types of delicious desserts. Since there were so many guests on that day- normally we had about 50 or so permanent residents at Gold Mountain (this included the nuns and laywomen who actually lived across town in Pacific Heights- they would come every morning at about 8:00 or so and stay for the entire day at Gold Mountain until they returned home at 9:30 PM). On this day there were 100 to 150 people.

So, by the time I was finished washing all the dishes it was close to 3:00 PM. Now the way the Gold Mountain Monastery was structured, it was originally one building with each floor being about 30’ by 120’ with the first floor having a very high 30’+ ceiling. Then they made an addition of another building about the same size as the original. So it became one big building with two parts separated by a brick wall. The main Buddha Hall was on one side of the wall and the kitchen and dining room were on the other side of the wall. The main entrance to the dining hall from the Buddha hall had these two large thick solid wooden doors that were usually kept closed.

When I finished washing the dishes, I was all alone in the kitchen and dining hall area. When I washed the dishes, I was actually facing towards the main entrance. Anyway, all of a sudden, I saw that in the garbage can, some person (i.e. some “idiot”) had placed several pieces of cake that had been completely untouched. They were just like new. And they happened to be cakes made of one of my favorite flavors- I forgot what they call that flavor now.

So I thought to myself. “Who put these cakes in the garbage can? It is very wasteful to have thrown these new, untouched cakes away like this. Maybe I should eat them. Hey wait, a second, you have the vow of never eating any food after noon and it is already 3:00 PM. You can’t break your vows! It would violate your moral precept of not eating after noon to eat this cake!” So in my mind, I argued back and forth, until I finally came to a decision- I would go ahead and eat the cake. However, before I actually took the cake out of the garbage can and ate it, I looked very carefully at the main entrance and did looked all around 360 degrees to make sure that there was no one in the room who would see me do it. To this day, I know with 100% certainty that there was nobody else in the room. Then I went ahead and scarfed down about three pieces of my favorite cake.

Then I walked into the main Buddha Hall where everybody was doing the ceremonies for Gwan Shr Yin Bodhisattva- I walked into the hall as if nothing was going on, like I was as a cool as a cucumber.

That evening when the Venerable Master gave his lecture on the Avatamsaka Sutra (in those days the evening ceremony was from 7:00-8:00 and the evening Sutra lecture was 8:00-9:00) in the midst of the lecture he said the following (my paraphrase):

“You know here at Gold Mountain Monastery we do a lot of these difficult ascetic (dhutanga) practices. For example, we eat one meal a day, sleep sitting up, and do not eat after noon. You know with respect to the practice of not eating after noon, if you any of you find that too difficult to follow, you can always find good things to eat in the garbage can.” Of course, once what the Master said was translated into English, I was totally shocked. I immediately knew that the Master somehow knew that I had eaten food out of the garbage can. Right after the lecture, I confessed to the head monk, Heng Kuan, that I had broken my vow of not eating after noon and had eaten several pieces of cake out of the garbage can. At that time, of course, many people believed that the Venerable Master has spiritual powers- however, now I knew that he did from own personal experience- and it scared me. I thought to myself, “If he knew that I had eaten out of the garbage can, then he can read all the thoughts in my mind. Wow!!!”

I then kind of hid out in my room for the next several days and did not want to come out. Then all of a sudden several days later I heard a knock on my door. Now, although I had been in the monastery for nearly nine months, I never talked to the Venerable Master directly. Guess who was at the door? The Venerable Master. I opened the door and he came right in. I was extremely nervous and scared. The Master said, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “I’m afraid of you.” “Why?” the Master asked. “Because you can read my mind.” I answered. The Master said, “Your mind? What is your mind? What shape does it have? What color is it? Is it round or square? Is it blue or yellow?” Of course, the Master spoke in broken English, but I could understand everything he said. At that point, I seriously thought about these questions and then finally answered, “The mind doesn’t have any shape or form. It does not have any color.” Then the Master exclaimed, “So what’s the problem?!” And then immediately walked out the door and left.

So that was the very first time I had ever broken one of my vows, one of the moral precepts that I formally promised to keep. Several years later, when I was a Bhikshu, and no longer nervous or afraid of the Venerable Master, the Venerable Master had me tell this story “many” times in various public lectures. In fact, one time in the late 1980’s when my father was visiting, the Master was giving a lecture to a group of disciples in the San Jose area. The Master told me to tell this story and then afterwards I turned to my father who was visiting from Chicago, and asked him how he liked the story. My father said, “Oh, I’ve heard that story before already.” I had told it so many times, that my father had heard it more than once, even though he only visited me in California about four or five times in the last 15 years.

So, to me, this story was a reminder of the importance of never breaking the moral precepts, never going against the vows that you had made and promised to keep. It also is an indication that the Venerable Master certainly did have spiritual abilities, although he would never say he did publicly. The idea that a truly enlightened Master who has great spiritual abilities, is very humble and would never claim to have any special abilities or powers is another important lesson to take from this story.