Monks Honor Buddhism’s Birth

The congregation assembled in a small temple on a wind-swept patch of Ventura County’s remote Lockwood Valley on Sunday to celebrate the birth of Buddhism.

It was a quiet affair in a lonely place of scattered pines and tumbleweed. Buddhist monks in brown robes led the group in ancient chants and hymns. Later, they discussed karma and abandoning desire.

“Today is about the gratitude we have for the Buddha, it’s for finding us a way through the suffering we experience in life,” said Dee Press of Camarillo, a lay minister at the Pine Mountain Buddhist Temple and Meditation Retreat. “It brings a joy and a hope for peace and truth in the world.”

The festival is among the most significant in the Buddhist calendar, representing the day humanity learned the reason for suffering and the way to escape it.

Buddhists say enlightenment came 2,545 years ago when a young, conflicted ascetic in northern India named Gautama Siddhartha sat beneath a bodhi tree and meditated on the nature of human suffering. The answer came to him like a jolt of lightning: Flowers fell from heaven, fantastic visions enveloped him and he danced in ecstasy for seven days.

Suffering stems from desire; eliminate desire and you eliminate suffering, he said. On that day, Siddhartha became the Buddha or enlightened one, and formulated an eightfold path toward ending suffering that would become Buddhism.

“When you are content no one can hurt you,” said the Rev. Master Houn Phoebe, the monk who runs the tiny temple at the county’s northeastern edge with the Rev. Sekai Luebke.

Phoebe sat before a golden statue of the Buddha during Sunday’s ceremony. Curls of pungent smoke rose from a pot of burning frankincense on the altar. Candles and offerings of fruit, as well as two Christmas trees, had been placed beside the Buddha.

The ceremony began with an hour-long meditation and progressed much like a Christian church service, with an offertory and scripture readings. The group of about 17 sang hymns like “How Glorious Is Thy Dharma” and “Right Thought Will Lead Me On.”

Afterward they rang bells and walked silently to another house where Phoebe talked about enlightenment.

“At enlightenment one realizes that there is something unchanging in the universe,” said the 52-year-old Phoebe. “You can call it ‘God’ if you wish, or ‘that which is.’ ”

Center Supported by Members’ Donations

The monks follow the Zen school of Buddhism, stressing daily meditation. The temple and retreat center, made up of several low-slung houses nestled just below the snowy ridge of Pine Mountain, is an ideal setting to stir the soul.

The center, which relocated from Santa Barbara last year, is supported entirely by donations from the 30-member congregation. Monks receive no salaries and follow a strict disciplinary code. They are forbidden from having sex, marrying, drinking alcohol or using drugs. The closest human contact they have is shaving each other’s heads.

“The first few years you are lonely,” said Phoebe. “But the love between monks is much deeper than other kinds of love.”

Phoebe is legally blind but it’s nearly impossible to tell. She navigates the narrow paths through the weeds, thorns and mustard plants of the 20-acre property without so much as a stumble or snag in her brown robe. At each of the statues of gods and goddesses scattered across the landscape, she stops and bows.

“Hello Quan-Yi, how are you today?” she asks the goddess of compassion, who is sitting on a rusty barrel near a thicket. “She’s shy, which is why she’s hiding behind this tree.”

The monk gingerly picks her way through the path, her former guide dog, a golden retriever named Joey, trotting beside her.

“I can hear the buildings,” she said.

Her serene nature attracts others.

They come to learn meditation, talk about life or simply to sit quietly with her.

“The goal of Zen Buddhism is simply to be. Meditation is not something I do when I sit down. It’s ever-present, it’s the state of being in the universe,” she said. “You learn to let go of the little picture of the world and see the big picture. As long as you try to hold onto things, there is a problem of falling.”

One man with terminal cancer came simply to cry because he couldn’t do it in front of his family. A businessman sought advice on how to stop demeaning his employees.

“I give them mostly answers from my meditation experience and they fall within Buddhist doctrine because it makes a lot of sense to me,” Phoebe said.

Long Path From Lay Person to Zen Master

Originally from Amsterdam, Phoebe rose through the ranks in much the same way a person becomes a Catholic priest. She was accepted into an order, became a lay person and then a postulant at a temple near Mt. Shasta. Postulants cook, clean, cut wood and generally tend to the Zen master’s house. Phoebe then became a novice and, like an apprentice priest, learned to conduct ceremonies and counsel others.

In 1981, she was ordained a monk and then became a Zen master.

The Lockwood Valley center is spartan. Those who stay overnight sleep in a common room with folding beds. There is no entertainment and just one phone. They wake each day at 6 a.m. for a regimented schedule of meditation, cleaning and lectures. Women and men sleep in separate quarters. Overnight stays are free but donations are accepted.

Buddhist sayings hang wherever a person might pause.

A sign near a toothbrush rack says: “I take this toothbrush that all living things may profit. May I crush delusion as this toothbrush is being crushed in my mouth.”

Beside the toilet is this: “To the glorious peaceful One for whom there is no disaster whilst upon the water closet. Hail!”

Keith Baker, 43, of Ventura visits every weekend. He was a born-again Christian for 20 years but found the religion limiting.

“Buddhism encourages you to try their teachings and use what works,” Baker said. “With my Christian faith, I was in the dark about what worked. I couldn’t try anything.”

Baker said he believes modern society is similar in many ways to life at the time of Buddha’s enlightenment. People were conflicted and craving new religious experiences.

“Everyone had a little facet of the jewel,” he said. “But Buddha found the whole thing.”