Day 10

Yesterday my two aunts, my uncle, my mom and I went to the DDMBA headquarters in Taiwan, about an hour north of Taipei and close to the Taiwan Strait. On the way there, we drove along the ocean and passed by this scenic view, and I hopped out of the car and took a picture. That is the Taiwan Strait through the arch. The arch is standing alone and not part of a rock wall or anything, very strange.

The headquarters are perched on top of a mountain and surrounded by a garden, so the views are all picturesque. There is also a school at the headquarters for people to become monks or nuns. We went to Dharma Drum Mountain to donate money from the Chicago chapter to help build a university, so they treated us really nicely and gave us a tour. At the headquarters, everyone says "Amitofoh" when they see you, it is a Buddha's name. Everyone at the headquarters was also eerily nice and calm, it was sort of creepy.

The headquarters has different statues of Buddhas that are set up to prostrate to. One that I really liked was surrounded on either side by a wall of little tiny glowing Buddhas. Here is a picture of another one with water flowing behind it.

Our guide took us out on one of the balconies where there was a pool. The stones on the bottom of the pool were all dark gray about the size of a fist, and they looked like they had each been individually placed on the bottom of the pool because none of them were overlapping। The balcony shows off another great view of the valley below, and the pool paired with the view was amazing.

While we were on one of the balconies, I also caught a praying mantis! We were walking with a pretty big group because some people we know from Chicago just happened to be visiting DDMBA at the same time, and the people were also eerily nice so I was on my best behavior. But when I saw that strange green bug, I had to see what it was, so I got really excited and hopped around trying to catch it. It was so worth it though, because it was interesting to see a praying mantis. Although the one other praying mantis I have seen was on my driveway at home and was much larger.

We had lunch there, which is silent and men and women are split up. Splitting up men and women is supposed to allow people to be more peaceful and help prevent people's thoughts from straying. However, the men and women are facing each other, so I don't think it is very effective. The whole time I kept thinking how weirded out my aunts and uncle must have felt because I don't think they have ever eaten there before. After lunch we went up to the top of the mountain where there is a park with a really large statue of Guanyin Buddha. When you reach the Guanyin Buddha, you are supposed to chant a mantra; I have no idea why we didn't. Maybe people didn't know about it, but there was a sign with instructions and the text of the mantra। We did however circle the Buddha three times। I think we were supposed to prostrate too though, and I don't think anyone did. Hehe, oops.

We saw an exhibit of the recently deceased Master Shen Yen, and they had a wax figure of him sitting in a room made to look like one he solitarily meditated in in the mountains when he was young. Only we couldn't tell if it was real or fake at first and everyone got really freaked out before they realized it was not real. :)

One sort of silly thing I found interesting was a sign at DDMBA which prohibited certain things। Most things were normal, like food and drink, but I thought the Betel nut would be interesting to explain. Betel nuts are addictive red things that people chew and spit, sort of like chewing tobacco. These scantily-clad girls sell them on the side of the road. Betel nuts also cause cancer. So people are prohibited from chewing them on DDMBA premises, here is a picture of the sign. The second thing from the right it the no Betel nut chewing sign.

When we left, we stopped by this huge bell that they had. They had knee pads to prostrate to the bell set up, but we didn't prostrate to it. I don't know why you would prostrate to a bell, I will have to ask my mom. It is covered in Buddhist writing, so it may be holy for that reason. It takes six men to ring it with the wooden mallet you can see in the picture behind it. That is my uncle's finger at the top.