By Sasha Manu

I had the privilege of living in a Chan Buddhist monastery in Southern China for one month. Nestled deep in a bamboo forest, the Jin’e Temple became the home of eighty-five participants from around the globe. The Woodenfish program, founded by Venerable Yifa, is an experimental education program occurring once per year, giving anyone the opportunity to experience the joys and rigors of life in a monastery. This was by no means an easy experience, but, paradoxically, I found freedom through the restrictions of daily monastic life.

Our days began at sunrise and were filled with Tai Chi, Buddhist lectures, chanting and many kinds of meditation. At first, the schedule was difficult to adjust to. We had very little free time, and much of it was spent napping and doing laundry. Our days were formulaic and filled with regulations such as silence in certain areas, mealtime etiquette, and uniforms. We also kept the four postures of Zen wherever we went: walk like the wind, stand like a pine tree, sleep like a bow and sit like a bell. Despite the initial mental resistance, once these habits were well formed, I felt liberated and my mind began to calm. Throughout the program, we were visited by masters of all kinds, including Shaolin Monks, painters, calligraphers and musicians. Oftentimes, I felt as if I was in the middle of a Zen fable, as one day, the painting teacher, midway through one of his pieces said: “This painting is already finished, you just can’t see it.”

Meditation wasn’t confined to the cushion; every moment was seen as an opportunity to cultivate awareness, whether walking, eating, drinking tea or resting. An attitude we were made to adopt from the start was: “If you like it, it’s a blessing. If you don’t, it’s a cultivation.” Whether it relates to the strict protocols of mealtime, chanting, or evening Vespers, this mantra was a useful tool throughout. The daily routine of the monastery was adjusted as we entered a 7-day silent meditation retreat. I emerged with a renewed sense of purpose and some incredible insights into myself, and the world. The majority of my peers had similar experiences, while some carry mystical stories they won’t soon forget. After the retreat we set out to Mount Putuo, a sacred Buddhist mountain where we performed a truly transformative “three steps one prostration pilgrimage.” Over the course of the month, I met unique people, from diverse backgrounds, living all over the world. Yet, we all gathered in a small Chinese monastery for a singular purpose: to better ourselves. This common purpose created bonds of friendship that I’m certain will stand the test of time. Together, we developed habits and practices that will help us lead peaceful, joyous and compassionate lives.

By Rachelle Saruya

From September 2015 to April 2016 I had the opportunity to stay in Sagaing, Myanmar at a Buddhist nunnery.  Sagaing, which is near Mandalay in central Myanmar, is a major monastic center. As my research involves Buddhist nuns and their training, I was able to conduct preliminary research, figuring out future sites of interest and which research participants would help me.  This wasn’t my first trip to Myanmar but it was the longest.  Having received the University’s Less Commonly Taught Languages Grant, I was able to work on my Burmese language skills and focus on reading texts, traveling 2-3 times a week to nearby Mandalay and learn with a private tutor.  As the nuns with whom I was staying with couldn’t speak English, I had to use whatever Burmese I knew, which helped cement what I was learning. I also worked on part of Professor Emmrich’s project, Once the Buddha was a Girl, regarding nadwin (nā” thvaṅ’”) or ear boring.  I traveled to Mandalay and a couple of remote villages with Research Assistants Ma Swe Swe Thet Htoo and Ma Thet Linn Wai. There, we discussed with the locals their nadwin experiences as well as met with some astrologers in the Ponna community to understand more about these rituals and how they have had to adapt to the current conditions.

I had many memorable experiences but it was the simple things that became habitual that I miss most, such as taking walks with one of the nuns every evening to the river. There, we would pay respect to the Buddha statue and then I would play with the stray dogs at the river bank, making remarks about the different cruise boats that had docked.  When I would return, sometimes I joined the nuns chanting Paṭṭhāna in my building.  There was one child nun who I grew very attached to.  When I was homesick or having a bad day, her joyful presence would lighten my mood.  We would play, throwing a ball or balloon when the older nuns weren’t looking, and I would spoil her by bringing her stuffed animals.  I helped her learn English and I would ask her to show me which Pali verses she was memorizing at the time. Overall, my time in Myanmar was lovely and fruitful and I can’t wait to return again very soon.

Rachelle Saruya is a doctoral student in Buddhist Studies.

By Daigengna Duoer

This year, I was incredibly fortunate to have the chance to participate in a field trip to Dunhuang, China as one of the lucky students enrolled in the ‘Making Pictures in Medieval China’ course offered at the Art History Department of the University of Toronto. Led by professor Jenny Purtle and funded by the Getty Foundation and as part of the ‘Global and Postglobal Perspectives on Medieval Art and Art History’, a three-year collaborative initiative that aims to connect art histories and increase international intellectual exchange, the field trip to Dunhuang was the perfect way to wrap up the amazing learning experience.

Taught by guest professor Yudong Wang of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA) in China, who was also one of the supervising scholars on the trip, the course ‘Making Pictures in Medieval China’ covered diverse topics on Medieval Chinese Art, from early medieval funerary objects in Central China to late medieval Buddhist art on the Silk Road. Dunhuang, as one of the most significant sites of Buddhism and Buddhist art in China, was of course the main focus of the course and the destination of our class field trip.

Under the supervision and guidance of U of T scholars Jenny Purtle, Jill Caskey, Linda Safran and Adam Cohen along with GAFA scholars Yudong Wang, Qingquan Li, and Qingquan Zou, students from U of T lived, studied, and collaborated with students from GAFA over the course of ten days from May 15 to 25 in Dunhuang. We visited more than thirty caves at the Mogao Grottoes and at the Yulin Grottoes, many of which were not often open to the public. Students from U of T and GAFA prepared presentations everyday to be given on site. For each cave that we visited, two or more presentations were performed on different aspects of the cave, such as its history, painting technique, iconography and religious significance. In addition, the students from U of T also presented their final term papers in the specific caves that they researched on. Another M.A. student from our department and my fellow colleague in Buddhist Studies, Shum Cheuk Shing also participated in the field trip and presented his paper on the Hindu deities painted on both sides of the main Buddha sculpture in Mogao cave 285. I presented my paper “Patrons of the Steppes: A Look into the Mongol Presence at the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes” on one of the most esoteric caves at Mogao – cave 465. I was supremely honored to be able to share my research with my peers right inside the cave, which has not been opened to the public since the 1980s due to its sensitive content and history. In my paper and presentation, I problematized the conventional dating of cave 465 to the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and suggested that it was a cave maintained in a combination of efforts of different cultures of people from different dynasties but under the same politico-religious agendas. I clarified the relationship between the Xixia Kingdom (when the cave was first constructed) and the Mongol Yuan Empire (when additional donor paintings and inscriptions were added to the cave) and focused on how Tibetan Buddhism became a highly politically practical tool for the making and ruling of both imperial states.

The students on the trip from both institutions of U of T and GAFA came from different disciplines. While most participants on the trip were graduate students of Medieval Art History, there were also a few participants from different disciplines such East Asian Studies and Religious Studies who work on Chinese Art and/or Buddhism. It was incredibly interesting and invaluable to see the various approaches to methodology taken by students of different academic backgrounds. Out of impassioned discussions and our collaborative efforts to construct global and postglobal perspectives on Art History, Dunhuang emerged at the end as a perfect site to negotiate issues of the global vs. the postglobal and as a remarkably relevant field in which more interdisciplinary collaborations between international scholars of history, art, and religion should be encouraged.

Daigengna Duoer is a second year M.A. student at the Department for the Study of Religion. She studies Mongolian Buddhism and is interested in the relationship between Buddhism, politics, and ethnic identities in modern and contemporary Inner Mongolia.