Buddhism Continues

Today I had my second visit to a Buddhist place of study. It was at a teahouse very near to Beijing Daxue’s campus. Luckily one of the Chinese roommates accompanied me, or else I may have never found it.

There was a room in the back of the teahouse where everyone congregated. Every one had matching books, sort of like bibles, that had Buddhist sutras. A girl next to me shared hers, but I couldn’t read a word of it because it was in traditional characters and I had no idea what the context was or what some of the vocabulary was. I however did not understand very much of what went on in the study group, but I did understand when they were talking about not eating meat.

People were extremely nice to me and very welcoming. I met two people from Thailand who currently study at Beijing Daxue. In Thailand a lot of people are Buddhist. People read lines from the Buddhist sutras and then a teacher talked about what I am assuming was the meaning of it. Then she would ask certain people questions and they would respond. This was more like a Buddhist study group, which I have never experienced. I’ve only experienced Buddhist meditation classes and lecture classes.

After the class I made friends with the Thai students and a few of the people from the class asked us to join them for tea. Drinking tea is very formal here, one person pours the tea for everyone, it’s kind of like having a “dealer” for your tea. Then they gave us books about Buddhism and a movie about a famous monk, all for free.

Next weekend I am going to go to the English study group. I’m sure that it will be more beneficial for me because I will understand what people are talking about. But this was a good experience to have because I got to practice my listening skills for Chinese. As one can imagine, people talk really fast, or what seems to be really fast because I am such an amateur.