San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
OASIS OF MINDFULNESS
Deer Park Monastery in Escondido celebrates 20 years of Zen
How 400 acres of rolling hills and a smattering of abandoned buildings above Escondido came to be Deer Park Monastery is a very Buddhist story. ■ The scouting party sent by renowned Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh to plant an addition to his international network of monasteries actually came here to look at another, much smaller parcel.
■ Later that day, their real estate agent took a developer who had come with the monks and nuns as a consultant to see these 400 acres because she thought he might want to buy them for his own business ventures. Instead, he suggested that this rustic site, once home to the California Conservation Corps, could make a perfect monastery.
The delegation went to see it, but the price was too high and the buildings were seriously run down. It also appeared the site had been frequently used for target practice, with spent shells scattered on the ground, shattered windows and walls scarred with bullet holes.
Still, they put in a bid at the land auction — and lost.
Then they heard that the person who won the bid was only trying to protect the land from developers. One of the nuns called the buyer, explained what they wanted the land for and promised to keep it as pristine as possible.
Sipping on a cup of tea, his brown robe and shaved head framed by a majestic oak tree, Brother Phap Dung, smiles into the Zoom screen as he recounts this story. So you see, he tells me, we did not choose the land. The land chose us.
Oh yeah, there’s also this: The property already was named Deer Park, which Phap Dung says just happens to be the name of an auspicious site in Buddhist history.
Vegan tacos, mindfully
Twenty years ago, Deer Park Monastery officially opened with the mission of spreading the spiritual practice of mindfulness and meditation to Southern California — and beyond. Bit by bit, the buildings were renovated, a meditation hall and nunnery were built, and the
land was cared for again.
Phap Dung, who was born in Vietnam and graduated from the University of Southern California, spent nine years as Deer Park’s abbot, from 2001 to 2010. He recently returned from Plum Village in France, Nhat Hanh’s main monastery, along with monks from Blue Cliff Monastery in New York, for a threemonth “Rains Retreat,” a monastic tradition that dates back to the Buddha’s practice of staying put during the monsoon season in India.
He is 51 now and has been spending his days back walking the land and greeting the boulders and trees like old familiar friends. “But of course the whole community has changed,” he says. “There are so many Western brothers. It’s incredible. It’s like a different place for me in terms of the faces of the community.”
He puts down his tea cup. “The new monks treated us to barbecued Beyond Burgers and tacos for lunch — vegan tacos,” he grins.
Another change is how popular mindfulness practices have become. “I remember 20 years ago we’d get like 40 visitors on a given Sunday. Now it’s 300 or 400.”
Indeed, before the pandemic forced the monastery’s closure to the public, so many people were attending the “Days of Mindfulness” that the monastery started a registration program so it would know how much food to prepare for lunch.
Celebrating 20 years — virtually
In the first months of COVID closure, the monastery turned inward, concentrating on building brotherhood and sisterhood and strengthening connections within the monastery, says Brother Ngo Khong. “It was very beautiful.”
But after awhile, he admits with an impish honesty, it became boring. “That is the point when we started saying we want to join our communities, our sanghas, our weekly meetings.”
So like the rest of the world, the monks and nuns of Deer Park went online. They recently finished their first online retreat, which celebrated the monastery’s 20th anniversary (they also produced a magazine, with photographs and testimonials).
A Croatian, Ngo Khong was born and raised in Germany as a Catholic. While the 50-year-old monk says he understood the teachings of Jesus — like turning the other cheek — he couldn’t figure out how to implement those teachings. “What Buddhism gave me was the how. It gave me instructions. It gave me a clear plan. You have to be compassionate, and this is how you get there.”
He explains: “By taking care of ourselves, we become more happy because we detach from that notion that we have to change the world. We change the world by changing ourselves.
While the three dozen or so monks and nuns who live at Deer Park are ordained in the tradition of their Zen master leader, their mission is not to convert other faiths. Instead, Nhat Hanh has made it his life’s work to teach the spiritual practices of mindfulness and meditation to complement other faiths, not replace them.
“We are not a community that’s based on beliefs but rather on practice,” says Brother Phap Luu, a Dartmouth-educated, American-born monk.
“Mindfulness is a quality we can find in every faith tradition and even in non-faith traditions,” says Phap Luu, who is 44. “Certainly in secular society, we value the capacity to be attentive and to be in the present moment. So whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, we all can get in touch with the present moment.”
What Deer Park has done is create a sacred space “where people can get out of the rat race, get out of the busyness of their lives and come and reconnect with themselves, reconnect with nature, reconnect with their breath. That’s what Buddhist communities have done for 2,600 years.”
Suffering and gratitude
Sister Dang Nghiem, or Sister D as she prefers to be called, was born in Vietnam and came to the U.S. as a teenager who spoke no English. She lived in foster homes and flourished in school — eventually graduating as a medical doctor from the University of California San Francisco.
After her partner died suddenly in a drowning accident, she quit medicine and joined the monastic life. She has written two books, one a memoir on her journey toward healing and the other about mindfulness as medicine. She gave a lecture on the latter at MIT last year.
I ask her about overcoming suffering, and she begins by
“We need to be able to say: ‘Hello, suffering. I’m here. Help me take good care of you. Help me to hold you.’ That is power. That is something that many of us have not done for ourselves.”
Sister Dang Nghiem
telling me about the rattlesnakes she encounters at Deer Park. “When I see the snakes, I will talk to them in such a loving, joyful way — not to have hatred for the snake but to remove it lightly. It doesn’t rattle. Animals only bite you or sting you when they are attacked or taken by surprise.”
When you can embrace it, you also can let it go. “We need to be able to say: ‘Hello, suffering. I’m here. Help me take good care of you. Help me to hold you.’ That is power. That is something that many of us have not done for ourselves.”
As the 52-year-old nun spoke, I remembered one of the monks telling me how he came to see his suffering and emotions as a river. Then he could sit on the bank and watch them flow away from him.
At the end of our Zoom session, I asked Sister D if she wanted to add anything. She told me how grateful she was for the support during this pandemic — from monetary donations to residents bringing fresh fruits and vegetables. Two young men, who used to attend teen retreats and are now a doctor and a pharmacist, recently returned to give the community flu shots.
Planting seeds
Looking back at these past 20 years, Brother Phap Luu says Deer Park has tried to be a spiritual home — although their real spiritual home, he adds, is within themselves.
“We’re just planting seeds,” he says. “That’s our emphasis. Because we know if we garden well, if we tend the soil well, there will be beautiful fruits and plants in the future. If we take good care of the present moment, we take good care of the future.”
Dolbee is the former religion and ethics editor of The San Diego Union-tribune and a former president of the Religion News Association. Email: sandidolbeecolumns@gmail.com