ALMS companion

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Find more video, pictures and info about ALMS here: stimulate discussion and add extra depth to your exploration of the film.



PINDAPATA - 2 minute video-short of monks in Myanmar collecting alms, a practice called Pindapata. Video was recorded by photographer Jeff Holt.


I named this film “ALMS” as a kind of reference to this very practice. Because the Chan monks tell me they take their food as a symbolic “nod” to this traditional practice. Sakyamuni and his early disciples did Pindapata and it survives still in Theravada Buddhist countries. This practice was replaced very early in Chinese Buddhist history because the Confucian cultural landscape simply could not accept it. However, in the minds of the monks we see in ALMS, they are in fact receiving “Alms,” in the spirit of Pindapata, as offered to them from the land they live on.


Notice a few basic rules of the Alms Round you see above:

  1. 1.Monks are barefoot.

  2. 2.Monks do not look at the donors, but rather gaze at the top of the bowl and road ahead (though younger monks seem easily distracted).

  3. 3.The robes are worn in the formal fashion, covering both shoulders.


Sometimes whole families come out to line up in front of their homes to offer alms. Young novice monks (with only 10 precepts) are at the back of the line, and an elder monk seems to be trailing behind them, making sure no one wanders off.


If individual monks do Pindapata, they receive rice and food and find a quiet place to eat it, but now monks in large groups like this one often take the food back to the monastery where it is re-distributed to their brothers.


What elements of the practices in ALMS do you see mirror the practice of Pindapata in this COMPANION video-short?

 

One question which many are already raising about ALMS is, “Do the monks working the various jobs around the monastery ever rotate into the Meditation Hall to become one of the cloistered monks?”


The answer is “Yes.” In fact it is a very fluid and natural rotation process. At least at Zhenru Monastery, there is no formal schedule or rules regarding when and who should act in either capacity as a member of the community. If a monk wants to practice in or out of the meditation hall, they must simply request it from officer monks. Though, it seems that entering the Meditation Hall is easier done than exiting. Once I was with a Zhike Officer Monk when a monk requested leaving the Meditation Hall to work in the kitchen. The Zhike said to him, “Leaving the Chantang is like pealing off a layer of skin!” I’m not entirely sure what he meant by that. But I gather he means you lose a lot of momentum in your practice that is very difficult to gain back again, like growing back a layer of skin. In the end the monk returned to his sitting.


The monks at Zhenru Monastery, and all Chan monasteries in China, are strict vegetarians. These oxen were given to the monastery by well-meaning lay people to spare them from slaughter or a life of labor. This practice is wide-spread in China, though typically with fish and turtles, not large mammals. It’s called fang-sheng, which means to “let live”.


How might the practice of Fang-sheng work like other Buddhist practices like meditation and mindfulness as a cultivation method? How does this spiritual act shape the mind of the practitioner?

 

Fresh vegetables grown in the high mountain basin soil at Zhenru Monastery are cared for mindfully in the garden and in the kitchen.





Here a monk washes vegetables from the garden. Hygiene is very important in the monastic kitchen - respect for the health of the community is foremost, as is the mindful care for food preparation.

 

Why does the Dianzuo call the evening meal “medicine”?

In the early monastic tradition that we see alive in Theravada Buddhist countries today, monastics do not consume food after the noon hour each day. However, if a monk falls ill, he is allowed to eat an evening meal. Therefore it is considered “medicine” for the monk. Chan monks often eat an evening meal, which is prepared and served in the Meal Hall, though in an informal fashion. Out of respect for the early tradition, he calls it “medicine.” Eating in the evening in Chinese monasteries has been explained to me in many ways. Most often the explanation is that the labor-intensive life of a Chan monk makes an evening meal necessary for health.