I met Venerable Dhammadipa with my family years ago at the Fa Yun Prajna Monastery. The sisters who live at the monastery called me asking if I might have time to help one of their favorite meditation teachers, because he was in pain and not able to sit in lotus position.

Read how we met the Sisters from Fa Yun Prajna Monastery here.

My family has always enjoyed “running up to the monastery” for the weekend, where I would massage some of the Buddhist nuns there while my family went hiking, read a book, learned how to meditate, cook vegan, write in Mandarin or make snowmen.

We accepted and I obliged to come help their teacher.

It was cold and snowing the day we drove the 3 hours it takes to get to Penasco, New Mexico, just north or Espanola. We arrived after dark, and needed heavy coats, boots and hats as we walked across the monastery campus to the large & warm meditation hall within which a class was going on.

When we arrived, the nuns who greeted us didn’t speak English, and were not aware of why we were there. Soon it was clear that most of the people didn’t know why we were there. We were very late—if we had been students of this class—and the nuns escorted us: me, my husband and our 2 kids, 9 & 6, into the huge meditation hall.

It was completely quiet as we walked in, and the mere commotion of the doors opening and shuffling in was enough to disturb the deepest of meditations. To add to our disturbing noise, the kids were “whispering” as loud as kids whisper, about where to put their shoes, hat and coats.