...Four Kinds of Cinnamon for the Monk

About ten years ago, I found myself curled up on the floor of a large closet of an old monastery in the mountains of Korea with a bad case of kim-chee-induced food poisoning. Because of the way the retreat was set up, we practiced, ate and slept in the meditation hall, and for those who were too sick to practice, we had to rest in the changing room.

During the breaks people would roll through the changing room, folding and unfolding monkish garbs, and I would lie and watch them. But there was one monk from Vietnam who was practicing there and when he came to change his robes, he always bent over and asked me how I was doing, patted me gently, and offered me various kinds of herbs and vitamins. That touched me.



He had been a monk since he was a young boy, and there was always something innocent and child-like in him. I remember for example at a dharma talk one day when the teacher explained a fine point of zen which perplexed my friend. He raised and his hand, and asked "But when you throw something up in the air, it always comes back down." I remember laughing quite a bit at the simplicity of the way he perceived the world.

So it was great pleasure that I heard from a mutual friend that this monk was visiting Vietnam. He had come to seek help with an incurable medical condition related to a parasite of some kind - or one deemed so by his western doctors in California. I had heard that he was actually so weak he could not go outside, and that he was close to dying.

Here, through the typical "i know someone who knows someone" network used by everyone in Vietnam, he found a mysterious sounding traditional doctor, who asked for his date and year of birth and his symptoms through an intermediary. Based on that information, the doctor told the monk to bathe in four kinds of cinnamon and then go bathe in the sea.

On Sunday, I had lunch with him and his neice, a nun. (See photo). He could not stop repeating the word "unbelievable." His symptoms had vanished. He was full of energy. We ate a small park near my home, and the water was brimming with fish. The same innocence led him to be more interested in the activities of the fish than anything I could say or do in our conversation.

"Why don't poor people come here and catch these fish and sell them at the market?" he asked, a question for which I had no answer. From there he launched into a quite sophisticated (and child-like) explanation of the difference between zen meditation techniques in Korea and Vietnam, and how they relate to buddhist metaphysics. He was clearly "back" to use a tired sports metaphor.

Through another set of coincidences he had read a book I had given to our mutual friend in the US called "Fourth Uncle in the Mountain" (see post). He said he wanted to visit the area and meet some of the mystics, madmen, monks and medicine men that lived in that area (or used to, depending on who you ask.) Given my recent trip there, I gave him the coordinates of a temple, a teacher (Chi), and a few towns to pass through to get there.

This morning, I spoke with him on the phone. His voice was radiant. "Unbelievable," he kept saying. "Unbelievable." He had arrived at Forbidden Mountain, and was visiting the Matireya Buddha statue. The day before he had visited Chi. He sounded like a fish returning to water, which of course, for a pure-minded monk is the next best thing after nirvana.