Days 4-5: Bev and Dharma Drum Mountain

Feb 2-3

My first morning, Saturday Feb 2nd. I awoke pretty early, so things were quiet around the hostel. There was a good internet connection, so I decided to try skyping using my Nokia N800 mini computer. The timing was right (13 hours earlier, in Philadelphia, it was early evening the day before), and I was able to get my parents on the phone, calling them for two cents per minute. It was incredible how clear and instantaneous the connection was, maybe better than my cell phone connection normally. I called my brother after.


The Taipei metro is very easy to navigate, and I took it to meet with Bev at 10am. It was great to meet with a familiar face in a foreign land. She took me to eat some breakfast, and we caught up. Bev was a resident tutor in Cabot for pretty much the whole time I lived there, and we played ultimate frisbee together among other things. She is an East Asian Studies PhD student, studying East Asian religions, and is on a one-year Fulbright in Taiwan, studying Buddhist self-retribution practices in particular. She showed me the famous Longshan Temple and explained about the various gods and worship practices. We walked around a little more, and then we took the bus to Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM), a Buddhist monastery complex where she is currently living in a professor's vacant apartment. It was a two-hour ride into increasingly lush, green mountains, though still very overcast and damp like Taipei.

Upon arriving, we were greeted by a DDM volunteer who put her hands together in front of her chin in a prayer-like fashion and bowed her head. We did the same in return, and to most other people we passed. It's the Buddhist way of saying "Hello there" to passers by. Since she was not wearing the monk brown and black robe, and her head was not shaved, it was clear that our guide was a lay person and not a monk. She spoke very good English and began giving us an introduction to the compound. Even though Bev was living there, she had never had a tour, so we agreed we would like a one. Our guide took us to a few sites and explained to us some of the basic beliefs and practices of this monastery.

After the tour, Bev and I went to her apartment to drop off our bags, and then she showed me around the compound some more. We visited a large sculpture of the Buddha on the top of a hill, and then went to the main space of worship where there was a service going on. The space was impressive: large and open, with three large Buddha sculptures watching over. The monks chanted in unison, singing an ever rising and falling line. Bev and I sat and watched for about 20 minutes.

As we headed the dining hall for dinner, Bev gave me some instructions: women sit apart from men, eat everything you take, bow to the statue of the Buddha before you sit down, and eat in silence. The dining hall was a basic, low-ceiling room with rows of metal table tops with small plastic stools facing the center where a self-service food line was. I grabbed a metal bowl and served myself a little of everything: whole grain rice, long-steamed carrot, yam, sprouts, green (like chard) and tomato, fresh orange quarters, and a tofu-derived substance. Buddhists believe in not hurting living things, hence the vegetarian meal, and also in keeping things very simple, hence no spices or intrusive foods like onions or garlic. While I used metal chop sticks to eat my delicious meal in silence, with only the sound of metal hitting metal, chewing, and slurping, I considered what it would be like to be a monk.

After the first course, you returned to the food isle to serve yourself soup with noodles and other goodies like mushroom. This was a nice way to close the meal, since the liquid of the soup, which you slurp from the bowl, fills whatever space you have left.

After the meal, we walked around the grounds some more and then returned to Bev's apartment. Still getting over jet lag, I went to bed on her comfy couch in her warm sleeping bag.


The next morning, we had breakfast at 7:30am and then Bev brought me to the main entrance where I caught the bus back to Taipei.