Giving thanks

This afternoon, I was filled with gratitude for five blissful weeks just spent in Paris. A city where I feel grounded and elevated, diminished and expansive all at once.

Today was one of those perfect winter days in Sydney. The sun was warm, the leaves were still. Preparing to explore the neighbourhood where I am living for a while, and where I haven’t been for some years, I noticed a temple on the map. I made that my destination for an afternoon walk before I realised how ideal it was to receive the way I felt.

Before I reached the temple, I began sending out my thanks. When I arrived it felt like yet another gift to be thankful for. Here it was, tucked away on an inner-city side street, among homes, humble as you like. Many people were coming and going, keen to make it before closing time.

I hadn’t been to an operating temple before. I looked for signs to guide my behaviour. But then it occurred to me, the church I grew up attending had no such signs, so why should the temple?

Sze Yup Temple, Glebe. (Photography is permitted outside the temple.)

I asked a woman for guidance. Were there any protocols to observe? Was there anything I should or should not do? Was it appropriate to enter? (I was dressed in bushwalking trousers and a garish teal zip-up jacket.)

“Would you like to pray?”

“Yes.”

“Then please, go in.”

There was an archway just inside. I stepped around it rather than through it, unsure of myself. The two central tables were laden with offerings. Mostly fresh fruit. Someone had left a block of Cadbury’s chocolate. A bottle of water. Fresh flowers and colourful papers were everywhere. There were plentiful burning incense sticks and lanterns. It was a celebration of red. The human heart came vividly to mind.

In another room, people were wrapping up piles of the colourful papers: reds, pinks, golds. I stood before the altar, towards the back, off to the side, and watched as a woman lit an enormous bunch of incense sticks; she could barely hold them all in one hand. After she completed her prayer, she stepped aside and a young man moved forward. He lit two fat bright pink incense sticks before he prayed.

My chest heaved, my face on that shaky precipice before tears begin their descent. The reverence of the moment. It felt serendipitous, as though my desire to give thanks with all my consciousness had drawn me here, a mere 20-minute walk away. I’d had no idea this temple existed. And yet right now was the perfect moment to discover it.

Outside again, I took in the wafting thick air of incense, let it wash over me, cleanse me. There was a fire roaring in a large oven into which people were hurling all those papers I saw them wrapping up inside. Were they representations of all their troubles, being burned up into ash? All the things they needn’t carry anymore?

What a blessing to be there, give thanks.