Loving hearts are like the full moon. They illuminate suffering and heal it with their light.

Letter from my Bro, in Taiwan (he's the tall one):

Dear friends and family,

Greetings from Bangkok, and happy holidays. I have been meaning to get this email out much sooner, but this job is just so crazy. Anyway, here goes.

Taiwan was an intense two months. Of course I have learned a lot about religion and Chinese/Taiwanese culture. But the deepest and hardest lessons concern our life as a group: the nature of expectation, perspective, blind spots—in short, living together. This is a side of education I have never seen before, and I am learning so much from it. More traditional academic life sanitizes the educational environment of so much messiness. Everyone knows that the bright lights and orderly rows of students are symbols of wishful thinking on the part of the teaching institution. The fact is that romantic intrigues, problems at home, garden variety existential crises, organizational difficulties, academic challenges, illness (mental and physical) always mix together and influence one another. Here, with the addition of tight living conditions and the anxiety of being in a foreign culture and not speaking the language, those interrelationships are both more apparent and difficult to de cipher:
an exposed tangle of great depth.

And it’s not just the messiness. One might think that this tremendous opportunity to live and study in four countries would make it easier to satisfy desire, but one of the things I am learning is that stimulation only heightens desire. The students are so young, filled with such craving for stability, and so ambitious in their wish for understanding. The expectations and demands that result from this are sometimes, to my mind, insane. But the frustration that informs our experience is part of the learning process. I have learned so much—more than I can say—and I am so thankful to have the opportunity, at this advanced stage of my education, to be so challenged as a student even as I teach.

Speaking of expectations, I should tell you a little bit more about our experiences here. As expected, studying under Master Kuo Ping was an honor and a joy. But far from the wizened, diminutive Chinese man I had envisioned, we instead found a burly Slovak with a shaved head and a slow, even-toned, nasal voice. The son of a boxing champion, he came to China sixteen years ago to become a monk, moved into yoga and Chinese medicine, and eventually became a master in the Ba Gua Chang (Eight Trigrams) school of martial arts. Check out his website: www.trigram.blogspot.com. Also as expected, the week we spent at Fo Guang Shan monastery was an amazing experience. From 5:45 in the morning to 9:30 at night the nuns taught us about Buddhism through chanting, meditation, study, work, and meals. But perhaps the most profound lessons they taught me concerned education, specifically, the importance of discipline for understanding. For them, learning isn’t just absorption of an idea—it is something that takes physical form in posture, gesture, timing, and coordination. Mindfulness can only be learned, they insisted, through disciplining one’s actions. And for all the difficulties I allude to above, I should also note the surprising and beautiful displays of precocious maturity on the part of my students. In a paper, one student quoted Master Cheng Yen, the founder of the Buddhist charity organization, Tzu Chi: “Loving hearts are like the full moon. They illuminate suffering and heal it with their light.” I’ve been repeating that to myself for weeks now, and thinking about love as awareness of the fragility of human life. Appreciating that is harder than it looks, and watching my student embrace that challenge has been inspiring.

Of course there is so much more to say, and I look forward to sharing more of my experience with you. I am doing what I can to carve out time for reflection and writing. I think of you often and look forward to seeing you again. Sometime in May I should make it back to the States. Until then,

Love,

Kerry