In March 2015, I had an experience that left a feeling in me that has always remained, like a treasure nestled deep inside me and reanimated as soon as I recall it. A few months earlier, I met Dong Mei, a university teacher, based in Beijing, who teaches literature. Her passion led her to give courses of Buddhism, 4 times a year, in a monastery lost in the Jiangxi Province, located in the South East of China. Every year, during the spring, the nuns she teaches, go to the surrounding mountains to pick wild tea leaves. The period of picking is very short and the nuns are few, so Dong Mei proposed to her group of students to come and help them. When she proposed me to participate, I answered yes, without any hesitation. That’s how I found myself in this monastery nestled in the hills. We had to change trains twice, then take a stony track to get to this newly built monastery, about 30 hours of travel from the capital.
Our group was also here to help for daily tasks, but we were not obliged to participate in the prayers and meditations. I wanted to immerge myslef in this experience, sharing as much as possible their daily life, so I did not miss any meditation, despite the 4:30 a.m. wake-up calls.
It was in these moments of silence that something germinated inside me. Something soothing, sweet, immense too, but it wasn’t just in me, I was connected with those around me, with the emptiness of the room that had a consistency.