Bringing it Back to the Roots

By Lily Ng

For some odd reason, I felt extremely cultural and festive this year and volunteered to go to the Buddhist temple with my mom on Lunar New Year Day. My mom would make it a habit to go at least twice a year, not necessarily on the day of a Chinese holiday. In my mind, I knew it was going to be crowded and loud, however, my anticipation for the festivities were so great that it totally overshadowed the hassle that I purposely put myself through.

After heading to Chinatown (lower Manhattan) in two minivans from Brooklyn with my 3 uncles, 3 aunts, 2 grandparents, 4 younger cousins, my mom and one of my two younger sisters, we prepped for our trip to the temple. By the way, that one group is probably only 75% of my mom’s side of the family. I got to the temple at about 11:30 a.m., and I think I recall my jaw dropping as I stepped into the room. In every direction you turn, there would be a line. There was a line for people to burn incense, a line to receive a vegetarian meal, a line to talk to the monk about your fortune that you randomly shook out of a wooden tumbler, and of course, a line for the two available bathrooms. I think it was about ten times worse than how I imagined it to be when I made plans with my mom originally.

Aside from the pushy crowd and semi-exhausting experience, I pretty much saw that my grandparents, aunts, uncles and mom had a specific regimen of what to do inside the temple and how my generation in the family was totally oblivious of what to do without the guidance of our elders. For example, how many sticks of incense do we each offer to Buddha? How many oranges do we have to have to put on the red plate? Where do we even get the red plate? Why are we praying and bowing to only one part of the temple, but not other parts like everyone else? And this type of “guidance” pretty much extends to how we traditionally celebrate our other holidays.

So, the primary questions I want to ask in this blog post are: How do we, as the next generation of leaders of our immediate Asian families, carry over the history, values, and traditions of our elders when there is an obvious disconnect and miscommunication amongst some of our practices now? These family practices obviously shaped us when growing up, but can we truly say we can do the same for the next generation? Can it be as simple as opening up and asking our parents what to do? Or, will there always be a wall separating our understanding of significance?