A few weekends ago, in an effort to escape the dramas of life (at least temporarily), I decided to go on a meditation retreat at the Nan Hua Buddhist temple in Bronkhorstspruit. Nan Hua, meaning southern flower or splendour, is now allegedly the largest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere. The golden mielie fields of Bronkhosrspruit might be an unexpected setting for a Buddhist temple, but the unconventional location emphasizes its splendour.

The Temple has a meditation centre and offers Zen retreats to the public. I am not necessarily Buddhist nor well trained in meditation, but I thought a weekend away from everything familiar at a Taiwanese facility in the middle of nowhere in Africa might just be what I needed. While staying there the food provided was completely vegetarian (which took some getting used to), the chalets had no TVs, the temple had a certain dress code (like no exposure of knees or shoulders) and one had to get up at incredibly early hours of the morning to meditate. Meditation also occurred about five times each day. For someone with very little meditation experience this was quite out of my comfort zone, but worth it none the less.

That Sunday we met one of the monk master teachers who guided us through a tea meditation and allowed for some questions and answers afterwards. He spoke Mandarin which was translated into English by a Tanzanian ex-monk. To me this was the highlight of the excursion as the master’s teaching style was through Socratic Method in which he asks contemplative questions. He also enjoyed setting up some mind traps which challenged the audience to think a little deeper before answering. In one example he picked up his mug (not a cup) of tea and asked “What do you see?” to which many replied “A mug.” He then asked “Is that all that you see? What about this rock and these trees? What about the sky and the clouds? Why is this mug the only thing you see? I’ll, ask again. What do you see?” This made the audience think a bit deeper about the question. I hazarded equivocally “The light that enters my eyes”, which fortunately turned out to be the answer he was looking for. He continued to compare visual sight to how we form perceptions of our own lives, sometimes forgetting that there is usually a bigger picture and that we are ultimately in control of what we focus on. An example would be craving for the love and attention from a significant other, but turning a blind eye to kindness received from family and friends and making a personal value based judgment based on this perception.

Indulging ambiguity might seem to be counter-intuitive, but being merely aware of reality’s ambiguous nature could make it easier to be objective about how to use judgements and conclusions. Indeed, one of my favourite quotes comes from a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by R. M. Pirsig in which the author states “The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite.”

This method of teaching inspires people to find and take responsibility for their own truth. Introspective contemplation of the human consciousness and strict disciplining of one’s own mind have taken a back seat in modern society as we become more attention deficit thanks to intrusive technologies like television, cellphones and the internet. Yet Buddhists have been practicing to achieve these goals for thousands of years.

Although we are beginning to understand how the brain works thanks to progress made in psychology and neurology (and even have ideas on improving it), this effort completely overshadows any effort into developing better skills for actually driving it . This is like souping up cars for drunk drivers.

But the most fascinating thing the monk made me think of is the concept of “Forever.” Buddhists, at least those at Nan Hua, speak of living forever. I didn’t give this much attention as I saw it as metaphysical speculation, until he asked us if we knew what forever was. To me, the concept of forever is almost impossible to imagine. How does one measure the duration of forever? How do we conceive a measurement that cannot be quantified? Forever is merely a keyword representing an inconceivable concept. So of course I couldn’t say that I KNEW what forever was.

According to the monk, to understand forever, one has to realize the nature of yesterday, tomorrow and consequently our perception of time. Time is relative as it progresses at completely different speeds during R.E.M. sleep when compared to alert waking states. It also appears to pass more quickly as one gets older. Using an example from Wikipedia’s article on Time, a year for a five-year-old child is 20% of his entire life so far, however for a 50 year old adult a year is only 2% of his entire life so far; so with increasing age, each segment of time is a decreasing percentage of the person’s total experience. Yesterday and tomorrow, the future and the past are merely projections made or thoughts generated based on what we consider to be our memory. In a more extreme example, the Aymara people, indigenous to South America, have a reverse concept of time embedded within their language where to them the past is straight ahead!

All of this is possible because we are ultimately in control of our perception of time, yet in truth neither the past nor the future truly exists AS time. Both can merely exist as projections of different perspectives. The only time that truly exists, is the time that is really happening- right now. This moment. And if one can completely clear ones mind of thoughts of the past and the future, just for a moment, then that moment is forever. This could be one of the reasons Buddhist seek to live in the “now,” because when they do… they become immortal.

This line of reasoning attempts to qualify “Forever” and time as opposed to quantifying it and I find the value of cherishing the moment priceless.

Speaking of the quality of time (you have made it this far), I would like to wish you a HAPPY and PROSPEROUS 2007!

See also:
My Flickr photoset of the Nun Hua temple
Nun Hua Buddhist Temple Official website
Backs to the Future: Aymara Language and Gesture Point to Mirror-Image View of Time
Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge
Wikipedia on Time

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 27th, 2006 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Philosophy, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.