yifa

Venerable Yifa is the hawk of the Fo Guang Shan animal kingdom. She founded the Woodenfish program, and, before we met her, was something of a whispered-about legend. My friend who participated in the program last year didn’t tell me much about it, in the hopes that I would keep my mind clear of preconceptions and expectations—but she did tell me one thing. Watch out for Yifa.

She has the ferocity of either a woman who has spent her entire life standing up for herself—or a lawyer. She happens to be both. The first time we met her was during a “talk session”—one of our evening post-dinner classes, so to speak. Expecting a very tall, powerful figure, I almost laughed out loud when she walked in. She is tiny, about 4 feet three inches tall, but stout, like a resilient tree stump (her brown robes didn’t help this image) that refuses to be uprooted by the wild winds around her when the rest of the forest has fallen.

She invited the staff to sit with her at the front, and spent the first hour of her talk asking each one of us where we were from, why we were here, and where we expected to go. Within moments she had us laughing with her wicked and inappropriate humor.

“So many of you say you are lost, you don’t know what to do with your life. You have no job. But you are smart. Do what I did. Create your own job!” She grins toothily at us. “I didn’t have a job. I saw an opportunity. Woodenfish is my job now. And it pays nice. Easy!”

She looked around at all of us. “A lot of you came here with expectations. You already had ideas about what you will be doing here. Let me tell you a story.”

We all exchange glances with knowing smiles. We’ve already come to look forward to and love the venerables’ stories.

“One day a scholar visited a Zen master. The scholar was knowledgeable , no doubt, but he thought his knowledge enough. He lacked humility. His mind was not open.

The Zen master offered him some tea. The scholar accepted, though his cup was already mostly full. The master tipped the teapot and poured the tea, and did not stop, even when the cup was full. It overflowed onto the table. Still, he kept pouring. The scholar gave a shout. ‘Why did you do that?!?’

The master smiled. ‘You came to me with your head full of thoughts, ideas, assumptions, yet you want to learn from me. My tea is very good, but how can I share my tea with you when your cup is already full?’”

Yifa smiled at us. “Empty your cup. Open your minds. If you do those things, the time you spend here will not have been wasted. I promise you that.”

***

In one of our lectures with Yifa, we managed to touch on the subject of love. I tipped my head up from my mindless doodles, suddenly interested. I had been having a discussion earlier with my roommate about how Yifa was decidedly un-nun-like. We’d had a good laugh trying to picture her with normal hair, with normal clothes on, walking around in the city.

All of the monastics had such fascinating stories, and I still wish we’d had more time with each of them to hear their personal accounts and stories about why they joined the order. The one I was most interested in was Yifa, probably because I identified the most with her. How could such a firecracker find the minimalist (and unsuitably quiet) life of a monastic appealing?

She looked around. “People always ask, ‘Yifa, what about love? You say there is joy in monastic life. But there is so much joy in love too. Can you really deny that?’

But I am much too lazy for that. Having to decide what to wear, how to do your hair. Relationships are a lot of work. ‘There is joy in love,’ they say.

I say, 'you think I don’t know that?'”

As she gives us a wry smile, and we chuckle, I finally see a bit of emotion on her usually stoic face.

***

“So now I have a serious question. Master Huei-feng has been inundating you with rules. How does this feel? Restrictive? Liberating?” We all look at her with nervous smiles. “Let me tell you something.

Some people don’t like New York. Okay, maybe only old people like me. Young people, like you, like it. But I don’t. Too much noise. Too much crime.”

Her beady eyes twinkled.

“But when I fly above, in an airplane, it is beautiful. So many pretty lights. I like New York from the sky.

So you see, I think about life like this. Some things you may not like. But everything has a purpose. Everything and every life is beautiful. Sometimes you just need to have the right perspective to see it.”

I smiled to myself. Not only because of what this word, perspective, means to me—or because of the truth and wisdom in her words. I smiled because I quite agree with Yifa.

There really is nothing quite like the view from an airplane.