Laughter comes easily to Reverend Houn Phoebe. Her laughter is not related to "funny" conversation, but rather it bubbles up to the surface as if emanating from an underground river of natural joy.

      When I asked her, "How did you happen to become a Buddhist?" She smiled and answered, "It was basically meditation that attracted me. I was thirty and thinking that religion really was not at all interesting. (laughter) It would have been the last place I'd look for my answers. And I was looking for answers to what are religious questions: Why am I alive? Why is the world the way it is?"

      "I heard about a place where you could go for a meditation retreat in England. At the time I lived in Amsterdam. So I went for a weekend, and stayed for a week. And I didn't like it one bit. (laughter) I did not like it except whenever there was a meditation period I felt right at home. In between the meditation periods I was gearing up to run away to the nearest hotel, and get a bottle of wine and a good book, and forget all about this nonsense." (laughter)

      She continued, "Then there would be another meditation period, and I thought, oh well, I'll just stay for that, and that way I stayed for a whole week. At the end of the week I decided, very firmly, to never, ever come back. But I did make a mistake to carry on meditation at home, which is a grave mistake if you don't want to be hooked." (laughter)

      "I didn't really connect much with Buddhism then. About half a year later I heard a tape of Reverend Master Jiyu-Kennett giving a lecture, and just hearing her voice did something to me, and I wanted to be with her. So I basically packed up my stuff and took off to America to study with her at Shasta Temple in Northern California."

      I asked Rev. Phoebe, "So what do you do to live the Buddhist life?"

      "Mostly the way we practice is you just live your life and apply the meditation that you do quietly for half an hour in the morning to the whole rest of the day. So you learn to talk whilst meditating, drive the car whilst meditating, and watch TV whilst meditating."

      I said, "I didn't think you could do that!" (laughter) "I didn't think you could watch television and be meditating. I mean, I thought you had to tune your brain out, or shut it off or something to watch TV."

      "Oh, no," she replied. "You begin to see that the electrical little flashes on the TV are nothing until I make them into images, and those images I immediately interpret, and likes and dislikes arise. I get involved and I get carried away. (laughter) I learned after a while to be able to sit in front of the TV and not get so carried away, whilst paying attention."

      "When you gave us a tour of the grounds, you mentioned the three ways of practicing Buddhism. What were they?'

      "The three traditional ways are: first, doing good works, that is what we do, teaching, looking after people, building a sangha. The second way is studying the Dharma (the scriptures) and learning to explain them. The third way is meditation. Meditation is my job. That's what has helped me learn to cope with physical difficulties and now it is my great joy in life."

      "Can someone besides a monk practice Buddhism, you know, like a housewife, or a corporate executive?"

      "Sure. What you do is meditate at least once a day, in your own house."

      "For how long?"

      "At least five minutes in the morning, and we crank it up to 30, but no more than 40 minutes at a time. You practice the precepts and you live your life, and wherever you are, you bring to bear the fruits of meditation which are compassion, love and wisdom. So you treat everything with compassion. You do the best you can."

      "People find after a while that they begin to change. Not because I tell them to change, or because it is written somewhere that you shall behave differently. But just because your own meditation feels the disturbance if you are unkind. Your meditation is disturbed if you lose your temper and shout at someone. And by realizing that, you're actually already back practicing meditation because what tells you, 'hey, you're losing it a little bit now' is the mind of meditation."

      "That's unhelpful behavior and the effect of unhelpful behavior is pain. If you get cross with somebody else, even if you are completely right abut the reasons for getting cross, afterwards, you feel lousy about it. If you feel lousy enough, you'll want to change that. And we don't change these pains by changing other people. We all try, you know; we say, 'If you could just shape up a little, I would feel better.' (laughter) We try that for awhile and it doesn't work. What does work is to do something about your own reaction."

      "It doesn't matter what happens to us, because we have little control over what happens, but we do have control over what we do with it. When the Dalai Lama does a talk, he says it much better than I do, but it comes down to the same things: meditate and be compassionate. Our simple credo is 'cease from evil; do only good; do good to others'."

      I answer, "That's really easy. (laughter) It sounds simple, but it's not that easy to do, is it?"

      "Well, evil in Buddhism is not just murder and mayhem. Evil is anything that is not in harmony with the mind of meditation. So to be worrying is a form of evil. Or to sit in the meditation hall and be daydreaming is a form of evil. As long as there is anger in my heart that is allowed to come out in thoughts, words or actions, there will be war somewhere. So the first and most important thing for me to do is to eradicate all that in my own self. That way it takes it out of the system of the universe."

      Interrupting, I ask, "Yes, but how do we protect you from people who are not caring about that kind of thing?"

      "Sometimes you cannot. There are Buddhist monks who have been slaughtered. The way we look at it is: you do the best you can with the circumstances. Sometimes it might be good to prevent killing and sometimes it may not be possible to prevent it. And then what is good, is to die in the best possible way, without engendering more hatred or fear. If a Buddhist monk can die without cursing his killer, then a little bit of that anger has just been purified and taken out of the universe."

      "You mean, like when Gandhi was shot?"

      "Exactly."

      "What was it he said?"

      "What I read was that he said the three homages: homage to the Buddha, homage to the Dharma, homage to the Sangha. And that actually to me is a great inspiration, that somebody in a moment of panic and pain is still enough to come out with that. I hope I'll be able to do that. And during the day, there are many moments of panic and upset, and that is how you practice this."

      "Speaking of panic and upset: you went through a retinal disorder and a loss of sight a few years ago. How did you deal with that?"

      "Well, you see Buddhism teaches the law of cause and effect. It doesn't actually matter what happens to us. What matters is what we do with it. Losing your sight, most people think is going to be the most horrible thing in the world, but actually it isn't really. It wasn't to me, once I sat down quietly after the first upset, of course. Because there are a lot of advantages. I can walk clear through a Kmart and not be distracted by anything, (laughter) which is a great relief. Because of this experience, much more gentleness and kindness came into my being that otherwise might never have come out."

      "One last question: what does gassho' mean?"

      "The gassho' is a gesture of respect, gratitude and joy. When you press the palms of the two hands together, it symbolizes the bringing together of the opposites in life. It is also an embrace or greeting that we use at the beginning and end of meditation to help center ourselves. So with the gesture of gassho' you embrace or greet joyfully whatever it is that comes to you."

      "Well, my hands and heart are saying gassho' to you, Reverend Phoebe, and thank you very much for sharing with us today."

      "Gassho"