Inspiring monk story!
In the first of a two-part interview in the San Francisco Gate, Buddhist monk Heng Sure talks about his 6-year vow of silence and his 2 1/2-year long walk from Los Angeles to Ukiah, during which he paused to bow to the ground every three steps. As someone who, with great hemming and hawing, is commencing a relationship with Buddhism, I find this story awe-inspiring and beautiful. His message of beginning with oneself also seems very relevant right now when there's so many things happening in the world one could expend all one's energy being angry about.
So, why did you go on the pilgrimage in the first place?
I decided that if I could transform my own greed, my anger, my delusions through walking, staying silent and doing the prostrations, then maybe I could do something to make the world more peaceful. I would work on the part of the unpeaceful world that I could control, my own thoughts and words. So the pilgrimage was for world peace, but starting with my own mind.
You mean that by controlling your own behavior, you were symbolically promoting world peace?
It was more than symbolic. You have to understand that I was very involved with politics as a college student. I saw my friends getting their heads broken during the Chicago police riots at the Democratic National Convention. I was in school when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and Robert Kennedy died. So here I was as a grad student, trying to figure out what in the world made sense to do, how I should respond to these events. And my thought was, "Well, the traditional Buddhist answer is that you work from the inside. You start from your own mind." Everything is made with the mind alone in Buddhism -- that's one of the idioms. I thought if I could actually understand my own confusion, then that's real. That's not theater. It's not trying to shake my fist at the military-industrial complex. It's not dropping out and getting stoned. It's actually getting to the root of the problem, my own thoughts of greed and delusion.
What was it like out there on the road? What kinds of people did you encounter?
We met every kind of person you can imagine. Many showed acts of kindness and generosity. Some were not so nice. We had guns held to our heads three times.
People held guns to your head? Were they hoping to rob you?
No. We were robbed half a dozen times, but not at gunpoint. Some people just decided to cock a gun at us -- I don't know why. Marty [the other monk] would say to them, "Hi, we're Buddhist monks on a pilgrimage for world peace. Can we offer you some literature?" And somehow they never pulled the trigger. But what happened much more often was that people would spontaneously offer to help us.
So, why did you go on the pilgrimage in the first place?
I decided that if I could transform my own greed, my anger, my delusions through walking, staying silent and doing the prostrations, then maybe I could do something to make the world more peaceful. I would work on the part of the unpeaceful world that I could control, my own thoughts and words. So the pilgrimage was for world peace, but starting with my own mind.
You mean that by controlling your own behavior, you were symbolically promoting world peace?
It was more than symbolic. You have to understand that I was very involved with politics as a college student. I saw my friends getting their heads broken during the Chicago police riots at the Democratic National Convention. I was in school when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and Robert Kennedy died. So here I was as a grad student, trying to figure out what in the world made sense to do, how I should respond to these events. And my thought was, "Well, the traditional Buddhist answer is that you work from the inside. You start from your own mind." Everything is made with the mind alone in Buddhism -- that's one of the idioms. I thought if I could actually understand my own confusion, then that's real. That's not theater. It's not trying to shake my fist at the military-industrial complex. It's not dropping out and getting stoned. It's actually getting to the root of the problem, my own thoughts of greed and delusion.
What was it like out there on the road? What kinds of people did you encounter?
We met every kind of person you can imagine. Many showed acts of kindness and generosity. Some were not so nice. We had guns held to our heads three times.
People held guns to your head? Were they hoping to rob you?
No. We were robbed half a dozen times, but not at gunpoint. Some people just decided to cock a gun at us -- I don't know why. Marty [the other monk] would say to them, "Hi, we're Buddhist monks on a pilgrimage for world peace. Can we offer you some literature?" And somehow they never pulled the trigger. But what happened much more often was that people would spontaneously offer to help us.
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