My Introduction to Chinese Chan

My Introduction to Chinese Chan
I encountered Buddhism at the age of 18 and fell in love “head-over-heels” with it. I was struck by its logical approach to life and most of all its intellectual faith. I spent the next few years studying Buddhism under several renowned Therivada teachers like Venerable Mahathera Dhammaratana and Venerable S Dhammika.  I learned sutta, abdhidhamma, meditations and the whole works of a devout lay follower.
When I first met my Chan master, he did not give me a good impression. Venerable Yu Tang was a small little Chinese man. His cotton robe hangs on him.  The colors of his robes I could never quite figure out because all his robes were so faded and most distinctly his robes were all patched over and over. If I had met him on a studio set I would have believed he was the grandmaster of the beggar clan rather then a Buddhist monk.  When he spoke, he did not have the intellectual air of my Theravada teachers. He spoke no English so I conversed with him in mandarin.  Even then, he spoke with such a heavy Zhenjiang accent that I had to focus my mind to understand him.
I was introduced to Grandmaster through a mutual friend. My friend happened to be a wealthy patron of his temple.  She thought that my temperament would tempt the Grandmaster to keep me as a trophy disciple.
The next day, Grandmaster paged and asked to see me. I reached his temple at about 6pm. He asked me to the kitchen and sat me down.
“Come! Let’s eat! You must be hungry!”
So he brought out a big soup bowl filled with vegetables and some instant noodles. Eating it was a strange and surreal experience. I had this very old monk(eight-one years old!) watching me eat!
After the instant noodle soup he said, “Good, you can be my disciple! You have no fear. Good for Chan!”  He then read my palms, asked my birth date, then dismissed me with a cryptic sentence saying, “ You will go very far, I will see you everyday.”
After a week of eating instant noodle soup I told him I was going bankrupt taking a cab to his temple every evening. I asked, “Why don’t I come once a week and eat the noodles?”  That evening he gave me a fifty dollar note and told me never to worry about money.
The next day the same thing happened. Vegetable instant noodles followed by some cryptic comments and another fifty dollar note.
Weeks turn to months when I finally asked him “What is it? Surely you are not just a bowl of soup noodles!”
Old monk answered, “ Then what you have been doing?”
I replied, frankly quite irritated, “ Eating bowl of instant noodle soup!”
Old Monk(he referred to himself as old monk), “Good, you passed!”
The routine continued and after soup he will sit me down in his meditation room.  Half expecting some esoteric teachings, I sat myself down cross-legged on the floor.
Old monk said, “Sit properly! Why do you cross yours legs? There is a chair over there; you are Chinese so sit on the chair! Don’t tell me there are no chairs in your house?”
Next few months we sat together in silence in his meditation room. Not doing anything, just sitting. No annapanasati, no mantra, no chanting, none whatsoever.
Sometimes he would break the silence and ask me some “dharma” question.
Old monk would ask, “Tell me something about of heart sutra.”
I would launch into a half hour exposition on the theory, philosophy and historical critique of the sutra.
He would sit there expressionless. Looking quite bored, he would say,
“Very good, but you know what? It is a load of horse shit!”
Another time with the diamond sutra, he replied, “more horse manure!”
On weekends our meeting started after lunch. Sometimes he would ask me to come earlier, other times, later.  This was to coincide with visiting guests. It dawned on me quite quickly that these visitors were all the rich, influential and powerful people in the Buddhist world.  Whenever a senior monk or famous monk visited him he would ask me to stand on his side while he received the guest. Old monk would smile or grin gleefully and tell me this was so and so who just kow-towed to me! If the visiting monk failed to start bowing at the doorway, Grandmaster would say, “Where are your manners? Who was your teacher? Didn’t you learn anything from him?”
The shamed monk would have to start from the doorway again.
If the monk stood up from the kneeling position without his permission, he would say, “where are your knees?”
Old monk would pass some more cryptic remarks like, “What was your face before you were born?” After taking the ang pows, he would say, “You stench of money!”
For lay visitors he was more generous. He would sit them down and ask the servants to serve tea.  If there were any dharma question he would turn to me and say, “This young doctor/fat bodhisattva will explain it to you!” After the visitor had left he would turn to me and say, “that was good horse shit!”
Some nights he would call me at 10pm to come and see him.  After I arrived we would just sit! Seemingly unsympathetic that on the following day I would still have to turn up at work with a mere one or two hours of sleep!
One day he asked me, “ What have you learned from me?”
I answered, “I did not know there were so many vulgar words in mandarin till I met you!”
Old monk, “Good, the old monk is a vulgar monk!”
Another day he would ask me, “Is there anything you don’t understand?”
Seizing the chance, I would launch into a long list of Dharma dilemmas, like the position of cittamantra, the consciousness of alaya, rebirth consciousness, the different schools of madymikas, the culamadymika karikas…
Sometimes he would just laugh or say, “That is shit and I hope you know that!”
Other times the old monk would say, “Hai! That would be worth a few large ang pows!”
Old monk passed away 3 years later and his constant refrain for me in the last months of his life was: “Put it down, put it all down!”  On his last day he said, “Where I go, none can follow! See you there!”
His funeral was a grand affair. With a special committee formed: politicians, media, famous monks, rich people; they all wanted to be part of the action. He left behind a pair of shoes, 3 patched robes and his broken begging bowl.
It has been twenty years since the Old monk’s passing. I wonder how many really knew him? I count my blessing that I met this Old monk. If he read my writing today he would probably say, “You are full of shit!”

Dr Tan