"Ah-mi-to-fo."

Those are the characters that I chanted for about an hour and a half today. I'm currently in the South of Taiwan, where everyone is wearing green shirts in support of Chen Shui Bian and my family lives. As when I usually come here, my aunt takes me up to a large temple built into a mountain. After driving to this temple, getting out, and trekking up the mountain for a few minutes, we arrived at the tiny tin house of a Buddhist master, a spindly little man with incredibly long eyebrow hairs who my aunt visits and brings food to several times a week. Completely bald, with random tufts of hair sprouting from unlikely places on his body (like his wrist), this man served us tea and sat placidly as mosquitoes feasted on his forehead... of course, as a devout Buddhist he doesn't kill them, although I did see him cut down several trees while I was visiting. I've gone to see him before with my aunt, but never before has he taken me on two of the spiritual excersises that he did today: chanting and barefoot hiking.

Barefoot hiking:
is quite painful, but in some ways did feel like an engightening experience. It's feeling the earth, through pain, through the balls of your feet. We walked through mud, through wet grasses, and on paths, stopping every so often to whack at overgrowth and chop off young bamboo shoots (which we ate for lunch later).

Chanting:
Amitofo (Buddha). This is what I chanted, over and over again, at varying speeds, with varying melodies, for about an hour and 30 minutes. We began by reading passages of Chinese (I mouthed) in a sing-song repetetive manner, then stopped and began to slowly walk around the room where the master lives, singing "Ahhhhh.... Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiii....Tooo...Fooooooooo" extremely slowly, lifting our feet with each second syllable and clasping our hands in different fashions. I think I phased out, but by the time we were done with this section 30 minutes had passed by. We then sat down in front of his house shrine and chanted Amitofo very quickly with crossed (and numb) legs for another 30, then lapsed into something of a meditative silence, before finally standing up and shaking our limbs back to life.

To a novice, which I am, spiritual englightenment is physically painful. But as silly as I felt singing the same four syllables and walking in step as my shoulders fell asleep, it does seem to have something to it. In fact, I felt as if it would be nearly impossible not to find some sort of trance while chanting for an hour and a half.... I felt as if I lapsed into nothingness... which, I guess, is the essence of understanding Buddhism.