Interview with two nuns at the Tzu Chi Abode in Hualien. Tzu Chi is one of the three prominent Buddhist organizations in Taiwan (alongside Fo Guang and Dharma Drum), and its focus is charity and relief work.
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Who’s here right now?
1: So the ladies that received you guys, they are volunteers of the temple. I’m not sure if you know the whole…most of the time people know more about Tzu Chi, which is the foundation, which does charity work, medicine work, we build schools. All over the world we have volunteers doing charity work in their country. They are the volunteer part of Tzu Chi. Here is where Dharma Master created the foundation, and where the disciples live. Regularly we have about 100, if not more, volunteers who stay here. We have a hospital close to the train station and about 20 volunteers work there every day. They take shifts. More than 20. Anyway, a big number. In addition to the hospital volunteers, we have volunteers coming to give guided tours and we also have volunteers that help around the kitchen, that help around the bookstore, and other volunteers that do other tasks that either they are good at or they know someone who needs help – like the way you help at Dharma Drum – and they stay for a week, a month, three months. Some people are trying to get over a bump in their life, and so they come.
How big is this physical area?
I don’t know exactly, but for me to go from one point to any point at the Abode it takes less than 10 minutes. So it’s not very big. But we do have other facilities. The factory across the street.
What does the factory produce?
1: We are a self-sufficient monastery. That means we don’t take donations. So if someone were to donate to Tzu Chi, 100% of it goes to relief work. There are different options for you to make your donation. You can donate to support solely education. And there’s a reason behind that, because 50 years ago, when Master Zhen Yeng started this place, it struggled financially. So when she was going out seeking donations for charity work, people would say, “Oh, you can’t even support your own temple, why would you want to do charity work too.” So she made it a really big point to separate the finances. It’s like separation of church and state. It’s very, very separate here.
So we have a food factory and we have a soap factory. They account for a lot of our self-sustainability. We also have our own publishing house. We do books, we do DVDs, music, CDs, children books, Master’s Dharma talks. A lot of volunteers go overseas to carry out our work and then write about their experiences. Sometimes they give the copyright as a donation to the foundation. That’s not very common.
People don’t think of monastic people selling things. There’s a precept which is not to touch money. Don’t carry money. For example, our work, we do translations. We don’t have to do a lot of the business side, the transactions.
2: The thing is the precept of not carrying money is not applicable in modern day. Even when I went to ordination camp, the Dharma Master was explaining the precepts, and he didn’t even explain that precept about not carrying money.
1: He just skipped it?
2: Yeah, he said that it is impossible now. We do a lot of travel, and if you don’t have money, how can you get to places? The concept behind that precept is that we should not develop greed. That’s the essence. If you know the essence you can cultivate just that part.
1: So it doesn’t matter what type of task we’re assigned to. We all get the same allowance. It’s not like you get more money if you work in the finance department than if you work in the field. It’s all even.
This morning I helped get breakfast ready. This morning we set 46 tables. Each table seats 10 people. So we made close to 500 servings of breakfast. And today’s a light day. Our whole dining room seats 63 tables, so 600 people. During certain events, like a retreat camp, it’s quite easy for us to have over 1000 people. For Chinese New Year’s we had 3 or 4 thousand…it has a lot of holiday spirit. It’s very hectic, chaotic, but it’s fun.
And the food we serve is really different then. As we are promoting vegetarianism, we know that if you present very plain and bland dishes, people who are not vegetarian might not want to be vegetarian. But if you can present to them, “Hey, without meat products, we can still make very good meals,” people will be more open to taking on the idea of being vegetarian. So on certain holidays our dishes cater to that occasion.
If we have volunteers coming from Malaysia, oftentimes we make curry, we make something spicy. It’s more hospitable to them.
2: And when we have volunteers from Indonesia we prepare special chili sauce.
1: We always want people to come and not leave with an empty stomach. Because most of the people who come are volunteers. We want to create a spiritual home. We want to create a space that feels like coming home.
Is food important in Buddhism? Are cooking and eating important or distinct in Buddhism? What is Buddhist food like, if there’s such a thing?
1: I don’t think so… From the Buddhist perspective, food is just to keep the body alive. In fact dinner is called yao xi, which is medicine. Because back in the Buddha’s time, they only ate one meal a day. Which was lunch. It used to be more but then something happened. So the Buddha changed the rule.
2: It’s a funny story!
1: There was a monk. With very very dark skin. And one day he was going out with his elm bowl and going from house to house to get food for the evening meal. And it was dark out and about to rain, so when he went to house, it happened to be a lady who was pregnant. And because it was dark and about to rain, at that time thunder struck. And so this woman got scared.
2. She opened the door, and thunder struck.
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1: And because the monk was very dark, it scared the woman so that she had a miscarriage. Because it seemed like he was just having floating eyes and teeth. In the dark night. He blended in.
2: I think she fell and she had a miscarriage. And the Buddha heard this and said, “Ok, from now on we just eat one meal a day. So that the monks don’t go out at night.
1: The saying is to not eat past noon.
So that you don’t frighten people?
1: So that… you don’t go out at night? But we are working monks so we eat dinner. But actually in the Buddha’s time, the rules were not so strict because if a monk is ill, then the Buddha allowed the monk to eat even if it’s past dinnertime because it’s for the body.
But I really don’t think we’re very big on food, and eating…
But there are specific rules. Vegetarianism, the Five Pungent Spices? What are the theories behind these rules?
1: I’ve heard several different theories. One is that the five pungent spices have such a strong smell that the gods come over and they smell it and they leave you. It’s like we have spiritual guardians floating around protecting cultivators and they don’t like the smell. To me they sound silly.
And there’s another one that talks about with the 5 pungent spices, they are things that elicit your desire to want to eat more. For example, garlic and green onions. They are things that make you greedy in a way. You want more, you eat more. One of the things that we are learning to do, practicing, is to let go of all desires.
There’s another one about how when you eat raw garlic and onion, it’s…they kind of increase someone’s sexual urges. And monks are supposed to be celibate. So..
I had a fellow cultivator share with me that he thinks when you eat these things you smell so strongly that you feel bad and you have garlic breath so people don’t want to get close to you. So you don’t keep harmony. He also joked then, “Well, what about stinky tofu?”
Are you vegan?
1: It’s a personal choice here. You can choose. But a lot of the vegetarian meats have milk in them. A year ago, you were vegan.. Here the funny thing is vegans can eat honey in Taiwan. Not in western culture.
I think food choices and preferences are something very personal. My definition of vegan is something very different than yours maybe.
Most of the Dharma Masters here don’t eat eggs. They don’t drink milk, but if it’s cooked in the food some of them will be okay with it. A lot of Tzu Chi volunteers are vegetarian but not vegan.
In the past, all of the products made in our factory were completely vegan. But now we have a new line, which is the probiotics, which have milk powder.
Where do you sell your products?
1: We have bookstores around Taiwan. We have instant rice, dehydrated rice that you add hot water and wait for 20 minutes. We also have different kind of powders. It’s disaster food. It’s tied into the charity rice.
Recently there was a tsunami in Indonesia. We shipped lots of instant rice there. I think that’s the most recent relief aid we’ve shipped out.
The powder we’ve shipped recently to Haiti, and Sierra Leone.
We always try to find tastes that are suitable to the culture. So we have a Italian tomato-y rice that’s more popular with Western cultures. With the Syrian refugees staying in Serbia, we gave them that instant rice. And they ate it with sour cream and pickles.
We also have a curry flavor, a seaweed flavor, a garden vegetable flavor. All vegetarian. All vegan. And they come with brown or white rice.
Why are Buddhists vegetarian?
1: Because we don’t kill. That is one of the precepts. I think that is the precept.
Do you fast here?
2: No, because we are a working monastery. When we try to follow the Buddha’s rule of eating before noon, the Master actually went against that. She said we need strength to do our work. If you don’t have strength, how can you do the work? So she’s not actually supportive of that rule.
What are reasons people do fast if they’re not in a working monastery?
[silence]
1: We don’t know!
2: Well, monks who cultivated very very well, they would go into the mountains, and just meditate. They don’t need food. Their bodies go into a sleeplike state.
I was also curious about food offerings. What do your food offerings look like here?
1: Fruits. Oftentimes they are stacked. Only on special occasions do we do dishes. Fruits every day. But the 1sand 15th of lunar calendar we do dishes. And then other special holidays, like the bodhisattva’s birthdays. Little dishes of single color vegetables. Not mixed together. I don’t know why. That’s just how it is.
One thing the Master pushes us to practice is to have good manners. To have things be orderly and in unison. That’s one thing about our monastery when we do offerings to Buddha. We put the foods in a specific order so that they look neat like a mountain. I’m assuming the little dishes with one color are because it looks neater that way.
We never asked! A lot of the time you don’t ask so many questions. You kind of just follow. And perhaps you are curious and you ask, but a lot of the time we just learn from our masters. Like for the pungent spices, I don’t know, but I know my personal reason, which is that I don’t want to have onion breath. A lot of times with religion, there’s a precept that you follow. And Master Zhen Yeng always tells us to know the meaning behind the precept and not just blindly follow the rules. So we do look up into that. And a lot of the times it’s to be compassionate in the same way as you’re trying to live out your life according to certain rules.
Recently we had bread and another staff asked me if I was okay with having milk. And recently I have decided that when people offer me food, I will try my best not to turn them away. Because I realize that whenever I offer someone food, whatever reason they give for rejecting me, I still feel a little hurt! Even though I know it’s not personal, and I didn’t make the food. It’s the heart of.. you wanted to share this and you get rejected. So, I actually cited one event where a staff member’s daughter brought chocolates to the office. And when she came over to the desk, her mom just said “Oh, they won’t want it!” And she pushed the little girl away. And the little girl looked at me with a “Why wouldn’t you want it?” expression. And I didn’t have time to tell her, “Oh, there’s milk in it, blah blah blah.’ Her expression really shook me. So I am now trying to take a little bit, say thank you.
Why did you become vegan in the first place?
2: It’s because of protecting animals, chickens and cows. Nowadays, the way they’re raised is actually very very cruel. And I decided I didn’t want to be part of that.
Do males and females sit separately here?
1: Yes and no. We only have nuns here. Our Master’s female and so she can only teach females. We all sit together on one side of the dining hall. And the other side is volunteers. They are encouraged to eat lunch with us. Because also we are trying to encourage people to eat vegetarian in general and we can provide that for them.
Staff members do have the female/male rule. However because we have so many people sometimes they eat according to their work and then it’s not so strict. They can sit wherever they want.
Do you eat in silence?
Yes, for the first round. But not for the buffet round. We want staff to feel comfortable when they’re eating. They’re not cultivators. People do eat really quickly the first round so some people just wait for the buffet because they feel more at ease. But we the monks are supposed to show up for the first round to eat with the Master.
Food is definitely a big part of the monastery. We grow all our own vegetables. More than half our products are food-related. Sometimes we grow surplus. This summer in fact we had an over harvest of pineapple. So we went and made a bunch of dried pineapple slices. And it took way too much time and effort, since we’re not in the dry food industry. It was a disaster!
2: Back in the Buddha’s time, food was not a big issue. They just ate what they got begging from elms. But here in Tzu Chi the Master’s idea about food is that we do not waste food. I think it is a rule that you are supposed to finish everything.
1: You need to finish everything, be frugal. We rarely have scraps. Just fruit peels and nonedible parts.
2: They always try to make it so that if we have leftovers it’s re-served at the next meal.
