| A warehouse building in a southeast Calgary industrial park has its loading bay door half open on a hot summer evening. Sounds and smells come from the interior, but where one would expect the roar of engines or the stench of industry, instead the soft music of Chinese chanting and the scent of burning incense float through the air.
Inside, a small group of Calgary Buddhists are chanting scriptures and mantras in a ceremony that happens every day at this time. Fluorescent lights and a large ventilation fan hang from the ceiling, and the painted floor is scuffed with tire marks. The large room is also adorned with golden Buddhas and altars. Wedged between truck yards and mechanic garages, this is the temporary location of Calgary’s Avatamsaka Monastery.
Participating in the ceremony are two Buddhist monks clad in gold-coloured robes. The two monks live in the monastery. Every morning, they wake up at 3:30 or earlier to begin their day of practice, a day that includes several ceremonies, one vegetarian meal before noon, and times for meditation and listening to Sutra lectures. Every day they keep this disciplined schedule while the madness of city life roars on around them.
Does the busyness of the city disrupt this spiritual routine or make it hard to keep? Not really, says monk Heng Tso.
"The environment has something to do with it, that’s true, but the main thing is your mind," he says. "The kind of Buddhism we follow – Mahayana Buddhism – has the ideal that you’re in the middle of all of the defilement, chaos and unrest, but you’re still concentrating."
In an age of suburban churches that look more like big-box retailers than centres of worship, the Avatamsaka Monastery is a very unique religious community. Far from replicating the excesses of materialism that are prevalent in cities like Calgary, the monastery seems to represent the more modest values of simplicity and humility.
The Avatamsaka Monastery has been in Calgary for over 15 years. It was started because Vietnamese and Chinese refugees in Calgary wanted to have monks maintain a Buddhist temple in town. More than 10 monks have resided in the monastery since its creation, but there are usually just two living and working there at any given time. Right now, Heng Tso lives there with another monk from Taiwan.
The permanent monastery site, currently being renovated, is located downtown – a modest building dwarfed by office towers. Yet it is in this humble monastery that some of the people who work in those towers are seeking spiritual guidance.
Long-time Calgary resident Philomena Nolan says that the monastery "piqued her interest" because she wanted a place to practise meditation.
"Having the monastery close by and being able to cultivate (my practice), helps me get through what I go through in a day at the office," says Nolan, who works for oil giant ExxonMobil. "It’s never far from your mind, even though you’re in the midst of chaos."
Nolan says that since she’s started going to the monastery, she’s learned to look at Calgary differently.
"If I’m out riding my bicycle – I ride down to Fish Creek often – nature is more beautiful to me," she says. "I see it differently. The trees are greener, the grass is greener, those sorts of things. I hear the birds more. I just appreciate all those things more."
Practising the monastic life in the middle of the city is nothing new for Heng Tso, who grew up in southern California and spent more than 10 years living in monasteries in San Francisco and Seattle. In fact, he considers Calgary a small town compared to these urban centres. Having lived here for 15 years, Heng Tso believes the spiritual practices that occur within the monastery definitely have an impact on the city as a whole.
"For example, we do a lot of contemplation on the Buddha’s name for a week at a time," he says. "We’ll recite the Buddha’s name out loud for a half-hour while walking around, and while sitting for a half-hour, and quietly for another half-hour. The influence on the people inside is great but it also influences the whole city."
Another religious community in Calgary, the Catholic sisters of the Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJ), also gives people a chance to explore the contemplative side of life in the city.
The sisters run the FCJ Centre, offering sessions on Christian meditation and biospirituality, among other things. The centre is located behind St. Mary's Cathedral and beside the Sacred Heart Convent, a building that is more than 110 years old. Twelve FCJ sisters are now living in the convent, some of whom are involved in the work of the centre.
As someone who has long practised the contemplative life, FCJ sister Mary Rose Rawlinson says that people who "make space" in their lives and meditate do make a difference in a city of busyness.
"I think that it makes a difference in the world that there are people all over the world in the middle of cities thinking peacefully, thinking reflectively, asking themselves what really matters," Rawlinson says. "How any one of us lives makes a difference. I think that humans are far more interrelated than we realize.
"‘We pattern the world with our consciousness,’" she adds, quoting French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Strictly speaking, her order is not monastic, but the sisters of the FCJ community incorporate a lot of monastic elements into their daily lives.
"One of the things that’s key in monastic life is the order of the day, or schedule," she says. "There’s a rhythm of prayer. For most of us, I think it’s looking at our lives – whether it’s as a sister, or a student, or someone who works as a professional downtown – and asking, ‘Where in my life is there space? Where in my life can I make time to be quiet, and to allow myself to really see? To really hear? To know what’s going on inside of me?’"
Rawlinson says that contemplative awareness also fosters social conscience and compassion. For FCJ sisters, spirituality and justice are inseparable. Many of them were present at last year’s Iraq war protests, much to the surprise of some other protesters.
"I remember talking to someone who was on the protest march," Rawlinson says. "She couldn’t quite figure out what a Catholic sister was doing there. I tried to explore with her what she was doing there as well. Couldn’t we both be there for the same reason?"
Likewise, the Avatamsaka community responded in their own way to the threat of war by increasing the time they spent in prayer.
As is the case with most spiritual things, it’s impossible to say with certainty the extent of these communities’ influence. There isn’t a lot of fanfare surrounding them, and a lot of people don’t even know they exist. There are no attention-seeking billboards out front of the buildings with lame slogans like "God answers knee-mail" or "What would Buddha do?" Simplicity is a value held by both relatively low-profile communities.
But they do indeed affect the city, if only by being oases of peace amid chaotic frenzy. They may not have the lights, sound systems and space that other local religious centres have, but they do have a serenity and peacefulness that people notice.
"One of the things that people mention all the time when they come in is how peaceful the place is," Heng Tso says of the monastery.
Rawlinson says that people say the same thing when they come into the FCJ Centre.
"Some people come here because they feel alienated in church settings," she says, adding that many people in the city are simply looking for a space to explore their spirituality.
Rawlinson’s order has its heritage in the Catholic Jesuit tradition that was founded by Saint Ignatius Loyola. Ignatius taught that God is in all things and, for Rawlinson, the city is part of "all things." And what is important in the city or anywhere else is "really seeing and really hearing," she says. "It’s much more about that than being quiet or looking holy." |
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