A teacher amid this chaos
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By Michael McManus
Having been brought up as a Christian in my early life, it was unlikely that I would have had any knowledge of Buddha or what he was all about. But, at 22, as a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, I needed a course to graduate and it happened to be “Comparative Religions.” There were five students, some graduate students and some undergraduates like me. I learned an immense amount, more than my intuition had even projected. That was my first introduction to Buddha and who he was and what his ideas were. At the time, it seemed to strike a chord, but I was too busy with life, early marriage, family and job to seek more. If you do not seek the river of life, the river will come to you.
“Buddha means teacher,” the old man said. He said it as if he were alone talking into space, or someplace else. Yet, I was the only one there. He specifically said, “Buddha means enlightened one, teacher.” This was my next serious encounter with the river. It was a decade after I had taken the course to finish my degree in Philadelphia. I was simply walking into the grounds of the Byodo-In Temple, a non-denominational Buddhist temple located on the back side of the Ko’olau Mountains of Oahu, Hawaii. The temple is an exact replica of the original one in Japan, yet no scene of nature could be more majestic. The misty mountains of Hawaii as an immediate backdrop. The flora, including flowering ginger. The wildlife on the property, and a two-acre pond with tens of thousands of golden koi fish. You could almost walk on the water, the koi were so numerous.
The old man seemed not to know I was there. He stood at the pond and made quiet noises. The fish came over to him and he fed them. He said, “The fish listen to me. Buddha was a teacher.” I thanked him and just observed this remarkable scene. It was serene. It was quiet. I stayed longer than usual there and listened for more before I walked on. There were no more words; just his interaction with the fish.
Ever since that first time at that magical place in Hawaii, when I am in Hawaii that is always the first place I go. The Byodo-In Temple in the Valley of the Temples is a non-denominational Buddhist temple that is now used by many for marriages, funerals and spiritual gatherings. It draws you back. Nature speaks to you there and, if you are as lucky as me, you may come across a Buddhist who teaches you something, so small or so large.
In the mid 1990s, in my career of travels in the Taipei Regent Hotel, I found a book. It was in the bedside drawer along with the Bible. I have since found it in many other such places. It was a book, shorter than the Bible that had a similar format, but was about the teachings of Buddha. This was my next serious encounter with Buddha, the teacher. I read that we are all in the river of life. There are ways to move our life, but the river will take us. We need to observe many things. Each stone in the river has had a life. There are so many stones. Clearly, Buddha understood our modern life and what we see and what we miss. Buddha was a teacher. I started looking more closely at the river and the stones in it. The trees. The sky. Feeling the wind.
I went through no formal study, no serious reading program. But, for years, this all impacted me. It ends up having an effect. One of my dearest friends, who has read my books, has observed that my writings are quite Buddhist. From him, a senior American-Korean, I am honored. This whole experience could have been missed or taken some other form of my journey, I understand. But, in truth, I was deeply changed, and am continually reminded of the river and Buddha, as I live here in South Korea. I appreciate the small, versus the large. I look for the small. I appreciate the single stone on the beach. I seem to notice that trees are greener. I notice the poor, and go with my heart to them, not the privileged. As a Western-trained psychologist, I always appreciated “individual differences” in people, but now I understand even more. There are universal things in people.
Did I run into the old man at the Hawaii Temple, set in the mountains of Oahu, as an accident? Did I find the Buddha Teachings book in a five-star hotel in Taiwan just by chance? I guess that these things are what some call destiny. So, in all these years since, I have gone with friends and family to temples. I have lighted incense, prayed for ancestors and offered fruit. This is all connected. It touches my soul, as it is supposed to.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not a “Buddhist.” But, for sure, Buddha, the teacher, the enlightened one, has given me light where darkness was before. I appreciate the sound of silence, “nothingness,” the life of a stone and an old man talking to fish. I know we are in the river of life. And I look for more of the journey. It will be there for all of us.
Michael L. McManus is a bi-monthly writer for The Korea Times. He is a guest professor in Seoul at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Sookmyung Women’s University and Gachon University. You may reach him at mcmismism@aol.com.