In the spring of 2022, I arrived at Incense Light Temple (香光寺; Xiang Guang Si), near the mountainous village of Neipu, half an hour outside of Chiayi, a midsize southern city on Taiwan’s western coast. Home to the Luminary order of Buddhist nuns, the temple was much as I remembered it. I had last been there in 2016 as a graduate student in social anthropology, and once earlier in 2014, as a MDiv student in Buddhism. 

My third uncle dropped me off shortly before noon. Upon my arrival, the same nun was at the front desk that had been there years before. Anticipating my arrival, the nuns had even saved lunch for me. I walked down to the dining hall, which was situated on the ground level of the monastery’s main building complex. It was a rather small room, and lunch was nearly over. There were about eight nuns still there, eating. Master Wuyin, the abbess of the Luminary organization—a prominent Buddhist academy in Taiwan known for their high percentage of nuns with advanced degrees and their active involvement in social service initiatives—was presiding over lunch, though she, too, was nearly finished.

Greeting me, she asked where I was studying now (“in California”) and about my research topic, which I told her was about Buddhist responses to physical pain. We chatted for a bit after she finished eating, and as she took her leave, she gave me a bunch of lychees and a banana. Master Wuyin was now in her 80s but still exuded the strength and confidence that I found intimidating the first time we met. After lunch, one of the nuns showed me around the monastery so that I could get my bearings once again, and took me to the room where I would be staying, along a hallway of empty rooms reserved for visiting laywomen, near the old Guanyin temple.

Over the course of the next seven months, I spent my days with the nuns at the temple, conducting more than two dozen interviews, volunteering as an English teacher, and participating in community work and events. I wrote weekly field notes, putting down on the page my observations of the nuns’ daily lives, actions, and the conversations that took place. I was there to understand what Buddhist monasticism teaches about transcending physical pain and suffering. It was through this fieldwork that I became introduced to Venerable Clear Peace and Venerable Der-chia. 

Now 65 years old, Ven. Clear Peace had taken ordination as a Buddhist nun when she was 25. As was the case with many of the older monastic women I encountered during my research, becoming a nun offered Ven. Clear Peace a path out of stifling familial and social expectations that were prevalent before Taiwan fully modernized, allowing women to focus on their spiritual and personal development at a time when they often faced great pressures to marry and settle down. Nuns sometimes had to overcome strenuous objections from their parents to leave home (chu-jia) and become Buddhist monastics.

Originally, Ven. Clear Peace was a meditation teacher. But later, when her health took a turn for the worse, she stepped down from her role as meditation teacher, shifting her focus to teaching general courses on Buddhism. What stopped her from teaching meditation classes was chronic stomach pain, which she attributed to the way they ate at the temple—where everyone eats the same food together at the same time. She’d often eat in a hurry, and the food was often heavy and greasy. She’d be uncomfortable after she ate, sometimes leading to an upset stomach. The other problem was her chronic back pain. Half of her body was frequently in pain, and she couldn’t raise her right hand. The pain also made it hard for her to sleep well. All these problems compounded to diminish her overall quality of life.

Over time, however, she reflected on what her experience with chronic pain had taught her and began to see it as a vehicle for an experiential understanding of Buddhist teachings. As a meditation teacher herself, she practiced equanimity and resilience in the face of her suffering, and she understood that pain was an experience that embodied the principles of impermanence, suffering, and not-self. “Through meditation,” she says, “you see that the pain is not a static thing.” As Ven. Clear Peace explains it:

In the practice of meditation, I began to be grateful. In the Buddha’s teachings, [he taught that all phenomena bear the mark of the three characteristics:] impermanence, suffering, [and] not-self. These are the teachings through which we can come to understand nirvana. Through these experiences, we understand what impermanence is, what suffering is, and within impermanence and suffering, if we can understand not-self, finally, we come to the stillness of liberation. This is the highest state of realization along the path. So I’m grateful for this opportunity to experience pain, [and] from there to truly understand and see the suffering of impermanence. 

When the worst of the pain would pass, Ven. Clear Peace says she would experience a feeling of freedom and liberation. In learning to cope with pain, she was, in fact, gaining insight into profound Buddhist truths. 

[If] you cannot understand not-self, and . . . take the pain and feel that it is “yours” then you will endure great suffering, unspeakable pain. So from the experience of pain, you truly come to understand impermanence. You see change and suffering, and then you desire to gain liberation. Then you have vigor, motivation to change. Through meditation, you see that the pain is not a static thing. Actually, it rises and passes away in each instant. So [my] pain taught me [the] three key principles of impermanence, suffering, and not-self very deeply, experientially. You have to see through it. When the pain is at its worst, [when] it reaches its most extreme moment, [it feels like it is exploding] like a nuclear bomb. [But] after that, it fades, and you feel a sudden coolness come over you. [It was then that] I thought, “Ah, this was the coolness they talk about, the stillness of liberation, the extinguishing.”

Through meditation, Ven. Clear Peace tells me, she observes that pain is pain, not “I” am in pain. The “I” makes the pain worse. “I’m” in pain. “I” hurt. Why “me”? When you resist, when you add a “me,” then you have an identity and a problem. If you observe it as a phenomenon, it’s different—you see it objectively.

After taking my leave of the Incense Light Temple, I went to the Great Compassion Institute (大悲學院; Dabei Xueyuan) in Taipei. As one of Taiwan’s leading Buddhist end-of-life care organizations, the Great Compassion Institute is unique, as it is where members of the Hospice and Palliative Care Unit of the National Taiwan University Hospital teach a group of volunteer chaplains how to provide spiritual care for the dying. The institute’s work is centered in a four-story concrete building, situated on a bustling street in the central Zhongzheng District, with room for events and classes. With Taiwan still in the throes of the pandemic, I had to make special accommodations to arrange the visit, including scheduling an appointment ahead of time, wearing a mask throughout my stay, and agreeing to a temperature check upon my arrival.

Near the end of my time there, I was able to coordinate an interview with Venerable Der-chia, one of the founders of the Great Compassion Institute and a Buddhist nun. A vigorous, earthy nun with a warm and engaging smile, she spoke briskly and informally throughout our hour-and-a-half-long conversation. As she tells it, she found her way to the temple after witnessing her mother’s death. The experience motivated her to want to help people to die in peace and to train volunteers in providing spiritual end-of-life care for the patients who request their services.

I tell her all about my research—that my topic of interest is pain, specifically chronic physical pain, and how monastics might face or respond to pain differently from others using Buddhist understandings about the body. I tell her that I have asked many Buddhist monastics in Taiwan if they think monastics behave differently in their approach to dealing with pain, and whether they believe that they have a greater tolerance or acceptance of it. I tell her that the monastics that I’ve interviewed tend to agree that the way of life and the training they undergo do seem to cultivate a kind of tolerance or acceptance of pain and a greater degree of resilience than the average person. To my surprise, Venerable Der-chia tells me that she disagrees.

I thought suffering was the greatest teacher in Buddhism, but it is death that reveals the most.

I take a moment to process this. Venerable Der-chia says the fear of facing death is the same for monastics as it is for laypeople. She acknowledges that she’s cared for many more laypeople than monastics, if only because there are greater numbers of laypeople in the population. But she urges me to set aside the “should” in how monastics should behave. She’s seen many laypeople who, when faced with death and pain, demonstrate equanimity. They are peaceful. They aren’t overcome by their emotions, which causes physical discomfort, among other problems. She’s also seen many Buddhist monastics who exhibit many different emotions, which are similar to those of the laypeople she’s cared for—because we’re all human beings. She tells me she cannot distinguish between the two.

Venerable Der-chia tells me to think of the differences between monastics and laypeople like an iceberg: The visible part floating above the water (which is maybe 5 percent) might be different, but the much larger bottom part is the same. On the surface, Buddhist monastics might seem different from laypeople in many visible ways. Underneath, however, there is much more shared humanity. The resistance, the refusal to let go, the questions of “Why me?” and the unease that she’s seen displayed by monastics is no less intense than that exhibited by laypeople. There is no distinction when it comes to death.

Here, the difference between theory and practice becomes clear. In theory, Buddhist monastics would have an attitude of acceptance, a willingness to let go, some greater measure of peace in the face of death, as a direct result of their long years of religious practice and training. Surely, one who fully dedicates themselves to a life of the spirit is less attached to their body when it comes to the last moments of their life. But Venerable Der-chia tells me that from her extensive experience as a hospice and hospital chaplain being with patients at the end of life, she doesn’t consider titles like monastic or layperson to be defining categories. Rather than looking at external forms, Ven. Der-chia says, look at where the individual person is in terms of their journey. She points out that it is human to experience powerful emotions. She doesn’t believe in repressing them but believes in acknowledging them and letting them be what they are. 

A few days later, I left Taiwan unsettled, with more questions than when I arrived. My flight back to San Francisco took me across the Pacific Ocean, away from the mountains in the south and the bustling city of Taipei in the north. As the plane took off, I bid goodbye to the nuns I had lived with for over seven months, knowing their lives would continue on in the quiet rhythms I had come to know and love. The pandemic had peaked and was on the wane. 

After my return, I thought about what my time with Taiwan’s Buddhist nuns had taught me. Seeking difference, I had found commonality. Looking for how Buddhist monastics were different from the rest of us, I discovered instead how much more we are all alike. As Ven. Der-chia said in our interview, Buddhist monastics are defined more by their humanity than they are by their monasticism. When facing death, monastics are not exempt from the most difficult human emotions, nor are they any less vulnerable to the pain we all share. I thought suffering was the greatest teacher in Buddhism, but it is death that reveals the most. Whether Buddhist or not, lay or monastic, when it comes to the end of our lives, we are ultimately the same.