Great Compassion Repentance

Of all Bodhisattvas, I feel the deepest connection with Guan Yin; of all the Dharmas associated with her, the Great Compassion Repentance, or Da Bei Chan in Chinese, stands out for me as very special. I have done the ceremony in different ways: recite and bow along with a recording, attend it when I was at CTTB and, as a shorter variation, reciting just the vows and the mantra. When I had to write a paper on ritual for college, I immediately chose this ceremony to write on.

So when I heard a Chinese temple nearby was hosting the Da Bei Chan, my mind was quickly made up: I vowed to go there. So I went…
I entered the shrine at the temple and saw laywomen and laymen facing each other chattering excited Chinese. I stood still – where to go? I looked around and saw a place where it seemed proper to take my position and went there – no nods of agreement for this clearly desperate new face. Having stood still for some time (trying to be concentrate), a nun came in to explain in superfast and quick and excited Chinese how the ceremony was going to work, with short interludes in English.

Then, the nun stops talking; the laypeople face each other again; the drum and bell sound. More nuns come in, chanting Guan Yin’s name in an unknown melody. The ceremony was shockingly unfamiliar. I really do know the ceremony’, don’t I? What else did I attend so often this summer? What else did I write my paper on? The bowing cushions were so close to each other making bowing uncomfortable. My neighbor’s robes consistently ended up under my shoes (how on earth did he do that?!). I seemed to be one of the few having the Great Compassion Mantra memorize. The ceremony even excluded one of my favorite parts, where the assembly bows in turns.

Well, they were all wrong in my poor eyes. But, as I got tired of all my false thoughts, let go of my pride and anger, I realized there was no need to fight (Master Hua so compassionately advised us not to), the entire scene turned upside-down and inside-out. Perhaps more precisely: outside in. The nuns were just chanting the way they should, and the laypeople were earnestly sincere – why else would they have come? – and this opportunity to repent and reform in the Great Compassion Repentance is rarely met, especially here in Holland. Once again, I could take part in the Great Compassion Repentance; once again, I could see my mind criticizing all external conditions and how it creates my reality; and once again, I learned a precious lesson.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.