Liang Yun reappeared holding a cup of tea offered to Martin.
“It’s so good to have our teacher here,” he said beaming.
“It’s good to be here,” Martin replied. “When will the students come?”
“I don’t know if so early is good,” Liang Yun said in answer.
“I spoke to some of the students and they were hoping you could begin class later. Is that okay?”
“Yes. This hour is only temporary, until we know how many students are interested in an English class and what time is good for most of them.”
“Good.”
At that moment, Liang Zhuan walked into the room. She moved as quietly as the statues stood on the shelves of the altar. She, too, wore the red robes of a renunciate and her hair was also shaved.
She spoke no English and greeted Martin with “Amitofu.”
Martin put his palms together at the center of his chest, by his heart. “Amitofu,” he replied.
While the two monks discussed something in Chinese, Martin took the notebooks from his knapsack. He also removed sheets of paper on which he had typed the letters of the alphabet.
When Liang Zhuan saw the notebooks, she said something to Liang Yun and then looked at Martin and with her right fingers rolled into a fist and the thumb upward, she gave him to know that she approved of his gesture of generosity.
He smiled and brought out the pencils, to which action she gave him another thumb’s up.
When she saw the new blackboard, her face beamed with satisfaction.
Having decided to hold the first class in the first floor shrine room, Liang Yun went to get some nails upon which they would hang the board to the wall.
Before he could leave, two men knocked on the glass door. They shouted “nei hao” in greeting. They had packages in their hands and Liang Yun went to assist them. “Your students,” he said to Martin.
The men entered bringing with them the cold of the outdoors. They were brusque in their manners and did not greet Martin. They offered the packages to Liang Yun who bowed and gratefully accepted their gifts.
It turned out to be breakfast that the two men had brought. “Not your students,” Liang Yun told Martin. “Come, have something to eat.”
Martin declined. “I’ve already eaten,” he explained.
He went on with cutting the alphabets to fit into the notebooks and taping one inside each book.
The men led by the two monks disappeared into one of the back rooms to eat their breakfasts.
Martin was clipping sheets of paper when he looked up. Yu Shen was standing in the vestibule removing her shoes.
“Hey,” Martin said and then he noticed his wife’s beauty as if for the first time. He was taken aback for a moment.
She came over and stood above him looking at what he was doing. He showed her the alphabets he had made. “Good,” was all she said.
It was already 10:30 AM and no one had arrived.
“Too early, huh?”
“Looks like it. I’m glad, anyway. I’m feeling tired already.”
“Eleven to twelve-thirty I was thinking would be better.”
“I don’t know, Yu. People start to think of lunch at eleven o’clock. Besides, I’m so used to eating at twelve that I don’t think I can make it till twelve-thirty. Why not a one hour class from eleven to twelve?”
Yu Shen thought about it. “Yes, maybe.” She took a piece of scrap paper from the desk, a pen from a box on the table, and began to draw boxes. “Class from eleven to twelve or twelve-fifteen. Then some time for questions afterwards. Good.”
While they were discussing the class schedule, a woman came into the temple. She was wearing a fur coat and she waved as she passed them on her way to the lunchroom in the back. Her mind must have been divided, because she almost tripped as she half-turned to wave to Martin.
Before she had disappeared through the doorway, a man came in, nodding to Martin as he passed. “Another student,” Martin thought.
While Yu Shen drew boxes and hours on the sheet of paper, Martin went to get his coat. Yu Shen was so absorbed in what she was doing that she did not notice as Martin put his shoes back on and went outside the temple to smoke another cigarette.
He stood beside the entrance shivering in the cold. A car with three women in it slowed down. The women inside the car were well-dressed and Martin hazarded, judging from their appearance, that they were on their way to his class.
Sure enough, in a few minutes, three Chinese women were passing him on their way to the temple doorway. They each turned to him and greeted him with “nei hao,” to which he responded with “nei hao.”
The women were attractive and desire passed through his heart for a moment, then apprehension. “How am I going to get through this,” he thought. “I can’t very well be controlling my desires and at the same time be worrying about my performance as a teacher for an hour or two. Please, Buddha, help me with this.”
There was no response and the cigarette was not helping, either.
Martin went back inside the temple. More people entered while he was putting his coat back in the closet.
He felt fatigued and uncertain of himself.
“I have no energy. How am I going to get through this?”
He decided to go to the back of the temple, to the lunch-hall, and see if the breakfast was still there.
The room was empty and frigid. There was a container of rice porridge and a container of fine rice noodles left over on one of the tables. Martin decided on the noodles and before he knew it, he finished the dish.
He didn’t feel particularly emboldened with the food in his stomach, but he did feel a little bit more solid than he had before.
He went back to the main shrine room to see what was happening.
People filled the small room. Some were talking to Liang Zhuan. Some were speaking with Liang Yun. Some were holding burning incense sticks in their hands, waiting for their turn to approach the buddhas at the altar.
Martin felt unnerved.
Yu Shen came up to him. “They want to know if you can begin the class after the New Year. Can you?”
“Of course,” Martin said surprised and relieved.
“All these people have come for the New Year. Some are registering the names of their deceased relatives with the monks, for prayer services. Others are here to donate to the temple for the upcoming year.”
“Oh,” was all Martin could muster in reply. “Fine,” he added.
He turned and headed towards the rickety stairs that led to the upstairs prayer room. He felt s lightly elated.
The upstairs room seemed spacious compared to the small, crowded room downstairs. He took two cushions from the back wall and placed them directly in front of the altar. He took his prayer beads from his pocket and put them around his neck.
He looked up at the shelves on the altar. The were crammed with buddhas of bronze, gold, and wood. He recognized some of them and felt a kinship from years of devotion. In the center, taller than the other statues, stood Guan Yin Bodhisattva, she who hears all voices. Necklaces adorned her neck, gifts from some of the devotees. Beside her was Ksitigargbha Boddhistva, he of great vows. Shakyamuni Buddha was there, too, as were many fierce dieties, some with the heads of birds of prey and some with the faces of animals. A replica of the temple’s root guru was atop all, Liang Shen, the living Buddha.
A tranquility arose in Martin as he began to invoke the purity of all the buddhas of the three times and six directions by calling on the name of Vajrasattva.
Then, he visualized a large white lotus in space before him. From within the lotus a white moon disc appeared. Within the disc was the Tibetan seed syllable “Hum.” Then, this syllable transformed into a brilliantly lit deity wearing silken robes and adorned with gold bracelets, earrings, crowned.
The diety became light as brilliant as the light of a thousand suns. This light entered Martin through the crown of his head and traveled through his central channel. It lodged in his heart and resumed its form there.
Martin took the prayer beads in his hands. He chanted devotion to the guru.
When he was finished he entered a deep meditative state.
A woman walked in while he was meditating. She placed a food offering to the buddhas before the altar and then left.
Martin remained in a state of meditation as long as he could.
Then he opened his eyes. He washed himself off of the accumulated energy by rubbing his face and arms and then went back downstairs to collect his things.
The room was broken into small clutches of people exchanging information.
Yu Shen was in a corner speaking with one of the three women who had earlier walked into the temple together. The woman was showing Yu Shen how to cast her fortune. Martin walked over to watch.
Yu Shen took in her hands many carved, wooden sticks and silently asked a question. She dropped the heavy load of sticks into a drum and one stood up from the rest. She then went over to the altar and took two kidney shaped pieces of wood which she cast to the floor, asking if the stick that had stood up was for her. The two small pieces of wood fell to the floor and one lay flat and the other lay on its rounded side. This meant “yes.”
She then looked at the number on the large, carved stick and opened the drawer of the octagonal box in which the sticks were assembled. Inside the drawer was a slip of paper which contained the answer to her question.
Yu Shen had asked about her father, who had recently developed a growth on his elbow. She wanted to know if it was malign. She took the sheet of paper to Liang Yun and he gave her instructions as to what prayers to offer the buddhas for their help.
After they finished discussing the prayers, Martin asked Yu Shen if she wanted to go. She nodded.
She got her things slowly together and then the two of them bid the monks farewell.
“See you in a couple of weeks,” Martin said.
“Goodbye,” Liang Yun and Liang Zhuan said. “Thank you so much for coming today.”
When they walked along the street to the bus stop, Martin couldn’t help but notice how clear and bright everything looked.
He noticed the depth of the pale sky and the brightness of the winter sun on the bricks of the poor neighborhood walls. The windows of the houses and the stores shone with the exquisite brightness of the sun. Even the people seemed to shine brightly as they made their ways in the cold, to do laundry, or to shop for food.
Though he wasn’t consciously thinking it, everything looked to him like the visualization of a god who in no time at all dissolves into light and enters the heart, and once having entered the heart stays there.
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