Denpassar, Bali

Three days ago I arrived in the metropolis of Bali. No one seems to have anything good to say about Denpassar, and I would have never come here if it weren’t for the fact that a friend who spends a lot of time in Bali, who married a Balinese woman, recommended Dr. Sucipto, who works out of Denpassar.

I came to the city by car, with a driver from Candidasa named Made who just happened to go to school at the Gandhi Ashram.

Thanks to the Lonely Planet book, I located a very nice place to stay called Nekusa Familiar Inn. It’s run by Anon, a jovial, gangling big Japanese man and his family. It’s about $8 a night with the fan, and $11 with A/C, but there is no hot water. I told him I would be staying for a week, which reduces the cost of my room to about $10. “You stay for a week, you are now part of my family! Later I take you to museum, art gallery if you want.” Such a sweet man. He learns his English by watching language lessons for kids on TV.

The first night I was here I wandered over to the open-air market, which is enormous, and I was befriended by a young man named Wayan, who speaks very good English. He offered to be my translater, and just attached himself to me. Then he took me over to meet his wife, who sells beautiful fabric, and I was glad to buy some cloth from her. “Now,” she said, “we are family,” and she introduced me to their son. After that, Wayan’s wife urged him to take me all over town on his motorbike.

Every morning at 4 am I wake up to the sounds of chanting. I’m a sucker for chanting. Any kind of chanting. There’s some kind of church or something around here, and they have the chutzpah to pipe their devotional sounds out into the neighborhood on a very loud loudspeaker at 4 o’clock in the morning!

I’m loving it, but I’m not so sure I’d appreciate it if I lived next door to the loudspeaker! It sounds like it’s coming from fairly far away. I pulled myself out of bed and went to sit on the balcony to hear it better. I wondered if it was a recording, or if it was live? I decided to record it. I was disappointed that the second morning didn’t sound as good as the first because there’s a static sound. I couldn’t tell if it came from the recording, or from the speakers

On the second morning I woke up with a vision. I saw myself packing up my laptop and my mike and walking down the road to find out where the sounds were coming from. That was a little intimidating. I thought of asking my friend Wayan to meet me at 4 am and take me there on his motorcycle. But no, I think I would have to do this by myself. But not today.

On the third morning I woke up to the chanting and felt like it was time to follow my vision. I’ve always tried to follow my visions, no matter how irrational they seemed to my conscious mind. If I have the inspiration, it must be good! It was scary, in a way, to think of walking through the streets of Denpassar in the middle of the night. But it was also intriguing. Even if I found the place, I had no idea if they would let me go inside the building. I had no idea what to expect.

But it seemed like a good idea to wear a long skirt and to cover my arms and wear a shawl. A sarong didn’t seem appropriate, but I do have a long purple skirt. I’m not exactly well equipped with subtle clothing, but I managed to put together a disguise that seemed like I might be able to blend in. I put on my big round ugly glasses that I use for driving at night, and that made me feel very safe. I figured I could pass for an eccentric little old lady. I deliberately did not take my backpack; only schoolchildren wear backpacks in Bali. I put my small laptop into a shoulder-bag that I concealed beneath the shawl.

I slipped out of my room, hoping to pass quietly into the night. I walked down the stairs and out to the street, only to find that my host had closed and locked the gate for the night. Alas!

I stood at the gate, watching people walk by and drive by for about fifteen minutes. I felt strangely peaceful. I had a feeling I was going to be able to find a way out soon. Then a light came on from Anon’s compound. Through the window I could see an elderly woman walking around inside. I went to the door and knocked. When she opened the door she jumped back! I scared her in my disguise!

I quickly took off my glasses and pulled down my shawl and tried to communicate my desire to leave. She woke up her son who speaks a little English, who offered to drive me, but “No,” I said, “I want to walk.”

“Where you go?”

I point to my ears and then up into the air. “I want to find the church.”

“Oh! Mosque!”

“Yes, yes,” I say.

He points in the direction where the mosque is, which is what I figured, since that’s where the sound was coming from. Reluctantly (out of concern for me) he opened the gate and let me out. I asked him to leave it open for me, which he did, also reluctantly.

I made my way into the night, and I did in fact feel invisible. No one offered to sell me anything or drive me anywhere. I felt like the intrepid reporter, going out on his beat, into the seedy part of town.

I walked one block to the left, turned right and crossed the busy street (a bit challenging, even at this hour, with constant motor-scooters whizzing back-and-forth). I felt a bit concerned that my disguise would make me almost invisible to motorists. Then I walked about two full blocks, constantly closing in on the sounds, which sometimes grew louder and sometimes fell away altogether.

At first the chanting seemed to be coming from the building on the right. Then from the big structure on the left. It had on lights and a mosque, but no people. Then I came to the river, and the sounds were coming loud, echoing from both sides of the bridge, so I was completely confused. But I kept walking, over the bridge, ever more fascinated by this heartful chanting in an unknown language.

Just past the bridge, the sounds grew very loud and I knew I was close. I felt excited and happy that I had come. The sounds seemed to be coming from down a side lane. I walked down the lane, and there on the left was a big open temple with tall pillars, and you could actually see people inside, dressed in white, their heads wrapped in white, bowing and prostrating.

I found a little stoop in front of a storefront just across the lane from the mosque. I sat there quietly, watching and listening. One or two people nodded at me, but mostly I just faded into the background. There were many people going into the mosque. During the half hour, I must have seen 100 people going in.

During a lull in the chanting, I surrepticiously brought out my laptop, hooked up the mike, brought up the Final Vinyl program, and pressed Record. Making sure that it was in fact recording, I closed the lid most of the way, placed the small mike in an advantageous location, and tucked the whole apparatus under my shawl.

Soon I’ll post this here so that you can hear the chanting that was so intriguing to me. You can hear the chants and in the distance you can hear the response. It was not a recording! There were live people inside who were chanting in an antiphonal call-and-response.

You can also hear people driving by on their motorcycles, and some talking. There is the sound of water because there are 6 spickets out in front of the building, and before people go inside they stop and wash at the spickets. The women just tend to pull up their skirts a little and hold their feet under the water, sandals and all. Then they kick off their sandals into a big pile in front of the mosque and go inside where they obtain white costumes—except for one woman who wore a black head covering.

The men get more enthusiastic about washing their hands and arms and even their faces and necks. Near the end you can hear one man who drove right up to the spicket on his motorbike, parked it there, and proceeded to expectorate loudly as he washed himself. There’s another place that looks like a bathroom just to the left of the big doorway, and many men stopped in there. When they go inside, all the men sear caps and sarongs. There are lockers on the right, but I don’t see anyone using these.

Then I hear some sounds from inside the shop that I’m sitting in front of. Someone drives up in a van and almost runs me down. I have to pull up my legs to prevent my toes from being run over. The woman driving the van shoos me away. Obviously my disguise is working! (She would never treat a white woman like that!) I wonder what she thinks as I quickly put my laptop into my bag!

But it’s okay, because I’m able to step back over a little barrier, into an entryway for a small house just next to the shop. As I sit and absorb the vibrations of the chanting, I fully understand why so many people make their way here at the beginning of their mornings. I can feel the passion of their devotion. It helps me to feel more connected with muslims who choose to worship this way. I would have loved to have gone inside, and I would have been willing to do prostrations.

For me, soulful chanting in a foreign tongue is synonymous with spirituality. When I was a child, my mother would take me to the Synagogue in Chicago, and she would hold me in her lap while the Rabbi read from the Torah and the Cantor chanted the prayers in Hebrew. I am sure that she thought of her beloved father who had been both Rabbi and Cantor for his little village in Radontzyn, Poland, where there were very few Jews.(Just as here, these Moslem people are a distinct minority, surrounded by the mostly Hindu Balinese.)

I loved the sounds of the Cantor chanting! My mother had some old 78 Records that she kept in the basement rumpus room of our home in Chicago, of Cantors chanting. I would play those records over and over, and I was heartbroken when she left them behind when we moved to San Diego when
I was eight years old. There my parents joined a Reform Temple, and they did not have a Cantor. I refused to go to Temple! They could not make me go. I was a very willful child.

So with my grandfather’s blood running through my veins, it is not surprising that so many shamans from the other side have chosen me as a willing and enthusiastic channel for their sounds, especially in a healing context. You can hear an excerpt of my Shamanic Sounding from my CD, Altered States of Planet, on the home page of my website at http://highvibrations.net

Meanwhile, my adventure for the morning was now complete, and I could return incognito to my little apartment for my morning meditation.

May 9, 2007

I have been having a hard time following along with the chants, not just because they are in several different languages (including English), and not just because the chants are often so fast, but also because they skip around from place to place in the chant book. So Chisan is coaching me about them. Today she gave me a book called Manual of Zen Buddhism by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (Yes, my first Zen teacher, D.T. Suzuki!) because it contains the translations of the Sutras that we have been chanting.

This morning, for the first time, while we were chanting, The Roshi lectured us energetically about how to chant. I will attempt to paraphrase (based on Chisan’s translation): “You must bring up the energy from the tanden (third chakra) forcefully, and send it from the bottom of your throat (fifth chakra), and project it out into the universe. Otherwise, it is useless. If it just comes from the lips, you are only feeding your ego.”

I have watched him chanting. He puts so much force into it that with each syllable his whole head jerks forward. He is the smallest person here, probably just about my height which is five feet two inches, yet his voice is more forceful than anyone’s.

So I have begun chanting from my tanden. Throwing out each syllable forcefully. Maybe that has something to do with what I experienced afterwards, doing zazen this morning. During the first hour, it was a good meditation, lighting up my crown chakra. As usual, when it’s good, I feel a blissful buzzing in my crown chakra for five or ten minutes, then it dissipates. But during the second hour, that sensation stayed with me the whole hour and never dissipated. Then, just before the break (when we return to our rooms to change clothes and go to work outdoors) my tanden started vibrating.

I could feel the kundalini rumbling around in my middle chakras. My whole body started trembling and I could feel the light streaming through my head. This was the first time I had such a dramatic kundalini experience. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. I knew I was expected to stand up and leave zazen along with everyone else, but this was what I came here to experience, and I wasn’t going to walk out on it. So I sat there while everyone filed past me.

I sat there until the last monk remained. He whispered, “Now we will return to our rooms and change clothes and go to work,” and then he departed. I trusted these people to understand what I was experiencing, and the importance of it, and to put that above the rules, and they did. I stayed where I was, and allowed my body to quiver and tremble, and I felt the joy streaming through me as I entered a state of deep bliss.

After about a half hour, I got up and I went and changed clothes and got my rake and my broom, and I swept leaves and I did not speak, nor did I need to speak. I felt completely supported and happy to be of service while holding the milk, as Yogananda once said, when speaking about how meditation is like milking a cow; if you speak afterwards, it is like spilling the milk.

It has been many hours since that happened. I came up to my room to take a nap after eating breakfast and doing more raking and sweeping, and when I awoke from my nap, the energy was again so strong at my head, as if it never went away.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Someone’s alarm goes off at 3:30 a.m. and the six of us (men and women) scurry into the one small bathroom where we brush our teeth, use the separate toilet, slip into our jackets and hakumas (it is still very cold, so I put on my purple sweater and my black sweat pants and socks underneath, and because I have passed menopause, I will even be allowed to wear my socks in the zendo if necessary), and we’re out the door by 3:50. We switch on the outdoor light and make our way down the steep stone path, and along the flat stone path until we arrive at the central building where we kick off our sandals (always in perfect alignment, toes toward the door) and pad up the stairs, bow before entering the big room, and then wait against the wall, hands folded at our waists, while one of the monks goes into a little room and sounds the big gong several times, which nearly knocks out my eardrums.

Some important person walks in, and we all rush over and grab two or three large, flat, square cushions (you can see the cushions on the left). We arrange our cushions according to our individual needs (my first arrangement is one flat and the second one folded in half on the back half of the first one), and then we sit (in the area on the right, under the eaves) in two rows, or two double rows (depending on how many people are there), facing each other, about twenty feet apart from each other. This arrangement undoubtedly increases the harmonics of our sounds. The instruments are in the middle, and the Roshi also sits and chants in the middle. Evan indicates that I should sit next to him so he can help me to find my place in the chant book.

One monk sits in full lotus in front of a huge metal bowl-like instrument that is by far the biggest Tibetan-type bowl I have ever seen. He or she will hold the mallet at a 45 degree angle, toward and slightly above the top lip, and strike it repeatedly for emphasis, with a very large mallet that has leather on the end of it and is sewn together with a tiny strip of leather and then probably glued. Then there is a smaller Tibetan-type bowl and

another mallet.

Another monk sits in full lotus in front of a huge red fish-drum that looks like an enormous clam. He or she will use a giant mallet to strike the top of this drum (you can see where the paint is worn off) repeatedly and methodically while we intone each syllable of the drone-like chants at various tempos and in several languages. Later Chisan tells me that a musicologist once visited and was utterly amazed by the sounds: “They’re chanting in NINTHS. NOBODY ever uses NINTHS!”

(When I took these photos (much later, with permission) I took the liberty of examining the fish drum mallet, and was amused to see a little tag with “Sony” written on it.)

It takes absolutely all my concentration to follow along in these foreign languages, and I usually fail, especially when they get going very fast.

But two of the chants are in English, and I make an attempt at joining in on these, and I am surprised to find that my voice comes out very low and raspy. I wonder if this is the voice of the Zen monk that I used to be?

For most Westerners (including a monk I talked to), these sounds are boring, without rhythm, meter, or tune. But for me they are deeply soothing and strangely familiar. Sometimes I feel as if I am standing in the midst of the Tibetan monks, but without the horns and without the overtones. There’s nothing pretty about these chants, but their power is awesome. I love being surrounded by them, inundated by them. I would be happy to close my eyes and just sink into them, but that is not appropriate.
The words are chanted just one syllable at a time, with no emphasis or intonation on any of the syllables, so you can barely distinquish the English chants from the Japanese ones, and the English ones aren’t much easier to understand. The drumming and monosyllabic chanting bypass the intellect and hammer the message directly and inexorably into the primitive brain. I’m glad that I can agree and resonate with most of what I’m reading (at least the part that’s in English).

Here is the Bosatsu Gangyo Mon, by Gassho, which we chant in Japanese and English.

Disciples.
When I humbly observe the
true nature of things,
all are the marvelous mani-
festation of the Tathagata’s
truth.
Atom by atom, instant by
instant, all are none other
than his mysterious radiance.
Becaue of this our virtuous
ancestors extended loving
care and reverence toward
even such being as birds
and beasts.
How then can we be but
humbly grateful for the food
drink and clothing that
nourishes and protects us
throughout the day.
These being in essence the
warm skin and flesh of the
great masters, the incarnate
compassion of the Buddha.
If it is so even with inanimate
objects, how much more
should we be kind and merci-
ful towards human beings,
even those who are foolish.
Though they become our
sworn enemies, reviling and
persecuting us, we should
regard them as bodhisattva
manifestations, who in their
great compassion are em-
ploying skillful means to help
emancipate us from the sinful
karma we have produced
over countless kalpas
through our biased self-centered views.
If we awaken in ourselves
this deep pure faith, offering
humble words and taking
sincere refuge in the Buddha,
then with every thought there
will bloom a lotus flower,
each with a Buddha.
These Buddhas will establish
pure Lands everywhere and
reveal the radiance of the
Tathagata beneath our very
feet.

May we extend this mind
throughout the universe,
so that we and all sentient
beings may equally bring to
fruition the seeds of wisdom.

But when we chant it, it sounds like this, without any intonation whatsoever:

di-sci-ples-when-I-hum-bly-ob-serve-the-true-na-ture-of-things-all-are-
the-mar-vel-ous-ma-ni-fes-ta-tion-of-the-ta-tha-ga-ta’s-truth-a-tom-by-
a-tom etc.

After a half-hour of chanting, everyone suddenly stands up and grabs their cushions. I had just begun to shut my eyes and go into la-la-land with the chanting, so I’m caught off-guard. I awkwardly stagger to my feet, which are totally asleep with pins-and-needles so they barely hold me up. Then everyone is bowing and getting down on their knees, and then doing a full prostration, which is highly challenging for me with these feet! But I tag along clumsily, and then they’re doing another one, and then Another One.

Then there’s another deep bow, and suddenly everyone is running over to put their cushions on the pile, and then running down the hall to the doorway to slip their sandals on, and going very quickly down the stone walkway (it is now dawn, so we can see where we’re walking) with hands folded in front of us.

I follow quickly in line, and make the left turn with the others, as we file silently into the zendo. I know I’m expected to make my moves soon, but I’m less nervous about it since there are four of us to do it together now, and I can follow along because Nancy and Paul have done it before. We go through the moves without any mistakes, and then we follow one of the monks into the outer corridor, to the cushions that will become our sitting places for the rest of the time we are there. We are now literally on the outside, looking in. There are some just some posts between us and the rest of the group, so we can see and hear everything that goes on inside. But this slight division gives us the luxury of being able to move, if necessary, or to make adjustments that are not generally allowed inside, because they would distract the others. Nevertheless, the pressure is tangible for us to do the very best we possibly can.

Now it is time for me to sit with my legs folded for the next two hours. I have already been coached; I know when the breaks are; in 30 minutes we can stretch in place, and in one hour we will do a walking meditation for ten minutes, during which we can bow first and then step out of line to use the bathroom (American or Japanese style, which is for squatting on the ground) or use the individual teacup assigned to us for hot water or tea. Then we can bow again as we re-enter the line, staying in the same order as we were when we were sitting.

I keep making little mistakes, like forgetting to bow, but I find it comforting to remember what one of the monks said to me, in passing: “Don’t worry about making mistakes. Things are kind of boring around here, and we enjoy getting a laugh!”

Normally I just meditate for 15 or 20 minutes each morning, so I’m wondering what it will be like to meditate for two hours. I find that it is a great luxury to be able to throw myself into long meditations without any concern about meeting other deadlines or responsibilities. My only concern is whether my legs will hold up, and for how long, and will I be able to wait until the thirty-minute break before I shift my position so I won’t bother other people and won’t look like an undisciplined failure?

So I get through the two hours and someone makes the clacking noises that indicate that we are done. Everyone stands up (this is always a challenge for me) and files out. I always seem to be disoriented about what to do and when to do it, but I follow along with everyone else and soon we are all rushing down the path and into the kitchen area, where excellent smells are awaiting us, slipping off our sandals, and walking up the few steps to grab our bowls and sit down at the bench and prepare for yet another Ritual Meal.

April 30, 2007

In the morning I make sure to get myself up by 6:30 because I definitely don’t want to miss breakfast. I get there at 6:50, but no one has arrived for breakfast. I offer to help, but they don’t need my help, so I wander off, kind of watching and waiting to see when people will arrive, but I don’t see anyone. At 7, I wander back, and Chisan is there, waiting for me, and she gives me a big hug and tells me to hurry up the few stairs into the kitchen.

I am a bit horrified to walk up the stairs and see that there is a long table with about twenty large and very imposing, mostly bald, mostly men, sitting there apparently waiting for me, in absolute silence. Chisan whispers as she quickly introduces me to Evan (I’ve changed the names), a handsome young monk with shaved head. She says, “He will tell you what to do. That’s his job,” as she rushes off to the other side of the long table.

The monk tells me where to sit and he sits alongside me on the bench and hands me something. There is a sense of urgency in the air. No sooner do we sit down than the whole kitchen full of men and women with great booming voices start chanting in a loud, cold, monosyllabic chant reminiscent of the Tibetan monks without horns or overtones, and while they’re chanting, they are methodically unwrapping their packets and my monk is rapidly showing me how to unwrap my packet like he is doing, and place the three black lacquer bowls in front of me, no, they have to be in a row like this, from small to large, and take the chopsticks out of their little cloth envelope and place them alongside the bowls, but this is no tea party! They are chanting like militant madmen.

Then suddenly, deadly silence. It looks like prayer. Heads bowed, hands in prayer position. Then I realize that all this is being orchestrated by the Roshi, with his huge booming voice, at the farthest end of the table. It’s all so enormous and intimidating that I don’t dare raise my eyes and look up to see what he looks like. Especially since everybody else has their eyes downcast. It’s hard enough just to follow along with what Evan is doing.

Then there’s more noise—I mean chanting—and my monk shows me a little folded plastic card with the the words on it, and there’s no way that I can follow along with this rapid chanting in a foreign language, but then I realize that now they are chanting in English, but with no intonation whatsoever, just one loud syllable at a time, but it’s too overwhelming and intimidating for me to pay any attention to what they are saying.

Now they are chanting some more and huge vats of food are being passed along the length of the table on long wooden boards. My monk tells me to nod if I don’t want something and to put my hands in the prayer position and bow if I do want something. The food looks good and I am hungry, so I bow a lot and I take plenty.

Soon, thank Goddess, the chanting is over, and the eating has begun. It’s nice that they are eating in silence. I like that. I’m SO grateful that I know how to use chopsticks, because there is no other option. I am enjoying the food, which is gratefully vegetarian, but soon I notice that everyone else is eating very fast and all of their three bowls are nearly empty while mine are nearly full. Now I’m eating faster and faster and Oh Jesus, they are all waiting for me!! And all their bowls are totally empty, so that means I’ve gotta eat everything on my plate while they all watch!

Eventually I get through that ordeal, and the second I finish my last bite, there’s a loud CLAP! from a piece of wood, and instantly everyone goes into high gear, chanting like crazy while they pass all those vats of food along the wooden boards once again, and some people take seconds (if I’d have only known!) and some don’t, and my monk tells me to take a slice of pickle to clean my bowl later, and pretty soon all the eating is done and now they’re passing a kettle of tea, and he tells me to bow and to pour some tea in my big bowl, and use it to clean all the bowls, moving the pickle slice around with my chopsticks, and then I will drink that tea after I bow and pour a little tea in one of the big brown vases that is being passed along each side the table while they’re chanting again.

My monk is showing me how to use my little white napkin to dry the bowls and how to put the bowls in the center of the big brown napkin upside down, and how to fold two sides of the big napkin over all that, then put the chopsticks and the white napkin and the verses-in-the-plastic on top of that, and now the big wooden tray is being passed along the wooden planks and we are putting our packets in the tray, and we’re bowing our heads in silence, and someone is muttering something in Japanese, and then, and thank Goddess, it is Done!

Just as I’m getting up from my bench, one of the monks grins at me and says, “Well, I see you survived your first meal!”

Everyone else goes out to work on the temple grounds, but Chisan invites me to come into the tea-room and join her for a formal cup of tea.

As we sat across from each other in what appeared to be a perfectly-ordered English tea parlor, my bald and bubbly friend put some dark green powder into a delicate pale-gray tea-bowl, adding hot water and stirring it with a bamboo whisk. She smiled as she offered me this very special brew, and I politely declined, saying that I really couldn’t handle caffeine.

She suggested that in the future I could say, “O-YU” which means “Just hot water, please,” (I think I’ve got that right), and any Japanese person would not be offended and would think it was perfectly proper.

Meanwhile, she kept the green tea for herself she offered me some seaweed tea with tiny round “crackers” floating on top, which I gladly accepted, and it was delicious.

During our short visit, I mentioned that when my suitcases arrived, I didn’t want to lug them up to the guesthouse since I wouldn’t be needing them there anyway (you don’t need too many clothes in a monastery!), and could I store them somewhere? She said I was welcome to put them in her potting studio. Would I like to go there? So off we went to her potting studio, where she showed me the lovely and very Zen-looking tea-bowls was throwing.

Evidently, in the Zen tradition, one sips tea from a small bowl rather than a teacup.