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Talking Story  by Polo

Ms. Liang, left, and Mr. Wu hold a Tzu Chi Foundation disaster blanket made of all recycled materials. "Warm body, warm heart," Liang said about the blankets. (AR Photo/Polo)

From The Asian Reporter, V18, #24 (June 17, 2008), page 7.

Oregon’s reorienting. Check it out. Ask anyone. And almost everyone’ll tell you, our shift’s good news. My Riverplace café table has regular Heinz but also jalapeño Tabasco, Viet Sriracha, and Thai Mae Ploy. All for my sunny eggs.

Portland’s changing. Check us out. There’re now more red-hot eastside taquarias than not-so-cool Taco Bells. S.W. Barbur’s Safeway sells four brands of tortillas. Of both corn and wheat.

Last year, the Oregon Vietnamese Community Association floated off with the Rose Parade’s Clayton Hannon Award and Oregon’s Philippine American Chamber of Commerce took the Golden Rose. The Portland-Kaohsiung Sister City Association float won the Mayor’s Award and our neighbors from Ulsan, Korea walked away with the Rose Festival Director’s Award.

This year, Shu-Te High School students won first place in the high school marching band competition, out-of-state category. They’re from Taiwan. From the same families and from that same sister city a few stops west on our grand loop of cold clockwise North Pacific current. The same folks who sent us those ferocious Dragon Boats digging up and down swollen River Willamette this time of year. We’re all changing.

This year, we didn’t make downtown’s splendid Rose Festivities, though the Cambodian-American Association of Oregon’s past-president did. They say he sauntered along that parade route, one dapper Royal Rosarian. Natural as can be. Like, we belong here.

No, on this Portland spring morning we went instead to eastside’s Harmony in the Park. Actually, we first dashed into leafy Ladd’s Safeway’s just-warming deli. They keep a Chinese chef in there. We went there grabbing fried noodles and mellowed melons and bagged California Rose Rice. For venerable monks.

Buddha dharma masters, clerics, and teachers from 26 local sanga communities were gathering at Colonel Summers Park for sai bard — communing on morning sidewalks. They walk silent for alms. Alms in food and donations. And we give them what we can. And they give what they do: spiritual merit, family blessings for those living and those not. An open-hearted expression of communal interdependence. A good trade.

It’s an old-old tradition in little villages and super cities from the chilly Korean peninsula to hot and humid Sri Lanka. Now in Oregon. Another transplanted Teaching of the Compassionate Buddha. It’s what a thousand residents and 21 smiling Portland Thai restaurateurs did that Saturday morning.

Under a bright blue tarp held high for the inevitability of cold Northwest rain, along a long narrow table, Buddha dharma teachers robed in Tibetan maroon and saffron yellow, in sunset ochre and somber black, settled shoulder to shoulder and chanted a Pali prayer. Passing our charity to those we cherish. They blended octaves and a dozen accents drawn from that grand circulatory sweep of Pacific sea just beyond Oregon’s breakers. That same system bringing our early summer rain, that same current bringing us Asians and Islanders, our sacred texts and fried rice and raucous voices, here. All that, right here. That morning.

Under their green logo of a compassing ship, Tzu Chi Foundation volunteers, Mr. Kenney Wu and Michelle Liang talked quietly with festival visitors. Tzu Chi founder, Dharma Master Cheng Yen, they explained, started 42 years ago with 30 housewives saving grocery money to help even poorer people. Today, Tzu Chi Foundation’s medical, educational, and housing project networks are active in 45 countries. Volunteers serve their communities, like Portland. They promote environmental stewardship and respond to international disasters.

"By acting with compassion, loving each other," said Mr. Wu, "we spread the seeds of love." We clarify our hearts of selfishness and clear our world of sorrow.

"One kind deed makes one good day. One good day at a time," Ms. Liang smiled. "It’s really so simple."

Expanding on this primary principle, Mr. Wu explained how foundation volunteers all pay their own way as an affirmative act of compassion. "Because we pay our own airline fare and expenses, and give our own time, public donations go directly to suffering families. Our goals are helping victims immediately, directly, practically, and respectfully."

Tzu Chi volunteers served hot corn soup to rescue workers and consolation to families after New York’s al-Qaeda attack. After floods in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Indonesia, after earthquakes in India and El Salvador, Tzu Chi volunteers brought medical supplies, distributed clean water and clothes, and helped build thousands of replacement homes. They’re doing it now in China’s Sichuan province. Simply serving.

"Volunteers all pay their own way," said Mr. Wu. Tzu Chi members also practice their founder’s principles of kind acts at several Portland area assisted-care and hospital facilities.

"Mind-ful-ness," articulated one of Harmony in the Park organizers, Ven. Fa Thai, abbot of southeast Portland’s Miao Fa Chan Temple. "This is how we live a happy life for ourselves, for our families. How we live a good life for all others." One kindness, one day at a time.

And mindfulness is also fun. Of course Saturday’s lectures on Buddha teachings, workshops on meditation, ceremonies for the faithful and the searching; scattered conversations among a vigorous world of Chinese and Japanese; Vietnamese, Burmese, and Korean; Thai and Tibetan and Western Buddhist, traditions and innovations — all of that was important.

Indeed, they are essential to our auspicious times, to this promising place. To Portland.

But just as good that lovely Saturday in the park, was playing at the children’s pavilion. And eating.

Our city’s best Thai restaurants rolled out a mile-long table of savory green, yellow, and red curries; chunky soups of steaming coconut milk, galangal, and lemongrass; mountains of fried flat, round fat, and glassy rice noodles; crunchy krupuk of taro, tempeh and tofu; a pyramid of fragrant Xinjiang Korla Pears next to a stack of obscene apple bananas. Someone even set out an off-center cheeseburger, limp fries on the side. Another anonymously offered a sandwich bag of slightly damaged Oreos. We all give what we can. All kindness counts.

After our seated venerable masters, clerics, and teachers blessed the feast and those in whose hearts and memories it all was offered — the rest of us got to eat ourselves silly.

Said Saturday’s event organizer, Heidi Enji Hoogstra: "This is the fifth year of bringing everyone together because there’s such a strong local Buddhist presence in Portland.

"There are so many Buddhist communities," she noted, sheltered from a chilly sprinkle by Portland’s Harmony in the Park. "This is a celebration of how much Buddhism has to offer. We have so many ways of thinking about Buddhism, so this is not just a presentation of our diversity, but it’s also a very good way to get to know each other."

Victor Mektrakul, owner of northeast Broadway’s Chai Yo Thai Restaurant, agreed with Ms. Hoogstra’s assessment and was actually charmed by our slim moments of rain. "This is a good sign," he said looking up at Saturday’s silver-lined, iron-gray clouds. "A little rain is like a little blessing."