The final installment of Temple Arts. As someone who once made my living putting on leadership trainings, my job was mocked by a friend who said, “Do you end the workshop with putting it all together? Facilitators love saying that. Putting it all together.” Yes, that is true. Now that I’ve shared my training at three temple schools, in temple arts, it all came together, like a pulled thread binding strips of cloth into clothing. Quite unexpectedly yet quite naturally too. My ending here is the starting point for my next collection of vignettes that focuses on arts, community, and work - economics to be explicit. I look forward to sharing with you soon. Thank you for following me and for reading this longer form writing.
Remembering
Norma says that lost forms are another generation’s loss to rediscover. Eight years into my Taiji training, I had practiced at rec centers, tennis courts, and parking lots – wherever my teacher could hold his classes. Longing for a change of scenery, I did Taiji along bayside marshlands, and by doing so, loosened my urban arrogance that blocked me from seeing that nature was more than a pleasing backdrop. I practiced in a particular spot for more than one season, at sunset and moonrise when possible, until I became a part of the landscape. Seals surfaced, birds flew closer, mice scurried, pill bugs emerged – no longer avoiding the human walking through. I was one being exchanging energy in an ecosystem of beings. I saw a snowy egret land to find its lunch just as I executed the posture, “white crane spreads its wings.” Oh, so this is how Taiji masters named their postures. My Thai ancestors traveled by water along the flood-prone river delta. They too observed their chopstick-legged crane and egret neighbors like I did, and designed their homes on raised stilts, at one with natural surroundings rather than building on top of them. How far we have strayed from ancestral engineering. Practice at three different schools for me to arrive at this one basic remembering. And from this one point, there is still so far and so vast an expanse to go.
The future is a story that is about more than the fate of temple schools and the arts they pass on. If temple "work" does not find its next form, it will grow into an unanswered longing when the next generation sets out in search of somewhere to "hang around" for answered and posed questions. There are so many wandering, elder-less, teacher-less people out there, and so many lonely elders with uninterested kids. I see people, myself included, chasing after modern-day degrees and certifications, hungry for training and deepening. Now I realize that what I was really seeking were elders and teachers to show me the way. The teachers who live as if the walls between the temple and the rest of life don't exist. The borders between professional and personal, between engineering and the natural world, between youth and senior, between work and family – all just protocols to work through and flow around.
At these temples, I know these elders love me like I was their own – unconditionally. And thus, school extends beyond graduations. The legacy of temple schools running deeper than economics and employment. Lifelong enrollment, or up to the 30th grade, at least. Over half a lifetime. What is at the heart of education if it is not the heart? The continual testing and cultivation of character and community. Over cups of tea. When it’s showtime. At opening of the temple gates.