While in New York this summer, and for the first time tried an vegan ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s. Surprisingly, it was as smooth and mellow as melting butter. Suddenly, colourful auspicious clouds like the ones in old Buddhist tales filled the sky. A chill, ran through my body and the music of customers placing their orders and pedestrians pattering the sidewalks were replaced with muffled chanting and the shuffling of feet.

Where there were skyscrapers there was now a large stone pagoda, each segment emerging from the other like a Russian doll. I stepped toward it tentatively, and a group of Saffron-robed monks appeared on the right. They walked in through its entrance – a huge floor-to-ceiling door. The wind blew the crimson curtains and their wide robes, and the centremost among them wrapped the left half of their body in red Gaza. Their steps were slow. They were approaching a large gold Buddha, plump body, huge earlobes, gaze turned downwards, eyes half closed to the brute defilements of the world, but half open to its light and the souls of sentient beings. Attracted by this mysterious ritual, I followed the procession in front of me, and suddenly, one of them turned back and began to walk out in the same way as when they came in. Coming out, their eyes shared a downward gaze, eyes half empty and half open, like the Buddha behind them, possessing a sight beyond sight.

I believe they sensed my presence, but they calmly walked past me with a knowing smile. I could not help following in their footsteps, and on our way through a ground level passage way that led to an underground palace where the fingerbone of Sakyamuni was kept and where, I was soon to learn, the monks kept their quarters. We came to a low, quiet room The space inside was not large, but there was a long black wooden table for a dozen people to eat together, and they sat down next to each other, all the while no one talked to each other or even made a noticeable sound. In a few moments, some men in long white robes came in from the side door, pushing wooden buckets and distributing food among the people. While I was watching, a man in a white robe spotted me at the door and beckoned in with a gesture from his eyes. As I was just about to walk into the house, someone put a heavy slap on my shoulder “Did you finished? We are leaving.”

What if, right there and then, seated amongst acolytes in Famen Temple, with the taste mushrooms and eggplants still lingering, a monk unveils from behind the Saffon folds of his robes, a cone of Ben & Jerry’s vegan ice cream? Letting a delicious cone of soft serve wash over one’s tastebuds would truly be a Zen-like union of apparent opposites, a combination of vegetarianism and umami, East and West, Buddhism and hedonism.