Many Dishes Make a Meal

I MADE A VOW to my ordination master, Songnian, that I would rebuild Mahabodhi monastery after his passing on. I have done that. It’s a beautiful building. Every detail reflects the Dharma, and our calendar is packed with programs organized by our sangha.

The way the monastery is structured represents the interwoven strands of my own practice. Upstairs on the third floor is a Chan hall for sitting meditation. The second floor has a tantra hall for rituals that have to do with the Mantrayana Buddhism that I have been studying in Taiwan. The main hall is designed after the Xian Shou school of Chinese Buddhism — another of the lineages in which I have received transmission — which is largely based on the Avatamsaka Sutra. This sutra is about the interdependence and inter-being of all things.

Chinese Buddhism is unique in this way; it has a tradition of combining and blending different Buddhist schools, and it embodies the cultural diversity of China. It is a lot like the way we eat in China. Lots of small plates, which everyone shares. A little bit from here, a little bit from there. A harmonious combination of different flavors. There is no “main course.”

In Chinese food we balance different tastes: sour, sweet, spicy, bitter, salty, and plain. We like our cooking to reflect life itself! Life is never easy — it has all these flavors. Most of us will have the full range of experiences.

Our experience is always relative. When you taste a spoonful of honey and then bite into an apple, what do you taste? Sour. When you suck on a lemon and then have a bite of the same apple, how does it taste? Sweet!

Sweet, sour, spicy, salty, bitter, plain. Many dishes make a meal. Missing any of these flavors — even the bitter or sour — diminishes life. Life that is always sweet is not real life. We want to taste all of life’s different flavors, no matter if sometimes they are difficult to swallow.