The Eight Stages of Monastic Life

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SF-03132
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Sunday Lecture - monastic way of wholeness, a sacred way, a sacred place, a clear pace that lives at the bottom of our hearts and is reflected back to us in a religious life.

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educators the truth the time of you huge morning everybody
the

yeah

well this morning
i want to do something a little bit a little bit different
i don't really
have a regular dharma talk to deliver this morning but
what i like to do is to share with you
an essay essay that i'm writing so you can tell me how i should fix it
the about the
the stages of monastic practice even though i know that
most of you are not monks living in monasteries
i still
i think
in your hearts your all looks and this
essay about the stages of life in monastic training might be of interest so i gotta try it out on you today okay
so be patient it might be longer than normal
religious texts make monastic life sound like something very deep and very constant
like some life that has been the same for thousand years timeless and seamless
in a way this is really true
underneath who any of us are is another person
the monk
who was living a true and a perfect life i believe that all of us have this monk in us
all of us want to live this life of silence and perfection
and this life does go on in us underneath our other life
when we're completely out of touch with this perfect life we suffer a lot
we run around looking for something we can't seem to find
and our lives don't work
and when we're in touch with it more or less as we are in a retreat
or even in a few moments of meditation practice
or maybe at the beach
we're on a long hike
or alone sometimes under the stars
we feel whole
then we can approach others and the complicated world with a measure of equanimity
so this is what i mean by the monastic life the way of wholeness a sacred way a sacred place a clear place an ideal in a sense that lives at the bottom of our hearts and is reflected back to us in religious experience and in religious literature
but as we all know ideals can be poison
if we take them in large quantities or if we take them incorrectly in other words if we take them not as ideals but as concrete realities
ideals should inspire us to surpass ourselves
which we need to aspire to do if we are to be truly human
and we can knit in which we can never actually do exactly because we are truly human
and that's what ideals are tools for inspiration not realities in and of themselves the fact that we have so often miss this point accounts i think for the sorry history of religion in human civilization
ideals become poison when we believe in them to literally when we berate ourselves and others for not measuring up no one measures up and no one ever will
that's the nature of ideals and that's their beauty
so at their best if rightly understood ideals ought to make us pretty light hearted
they give us a sense of direction which is company
and since they are by nature impossibilities why worry
just keep trying
the monastic life as it appears by implication in the texts of any religious tradition is this kind of ideal you know we stay in italy delighted obedience with our teacher forty years living peacefully day by day hearing the sounds of the bells deep in meditation or prayer in the
mountains among the clouds and forests live in a living in harmony and calmness well underneath that probably really is like this but up above in our conscious world where we live what we like to refer to as our lives
it actually never looks like this at all
what is monastic life really like
so as all of you i'm sure know i've been living in zen religious community for about twenty years
and so unnaturally i've developed some thoughts on the subject
and although our community isn't exactly the same as a monastic community it is a residential religious community and in part where people come to live for many years
and i think what we've experienced and come to understand over time turns out to be fairly typical of monastic or long term residential religious communities so now i'm gonna tell you what it's really like and
we never talk about this on sundays but
so you get to hear all the
while the dirt
so i want to speak of stages in monastic life as a way of describing what happens in that light and what kinds of problems come up
of course there are any stages or if there are the stage has happened simultaneously and that consecutively or in no particular order perhaps and one may go through the stages over and over and over again
furthermore people even people who are similar enough to share a taste for religious life for one reason or another still are very different from one another and know setting forth of status could possibly do justice to the variety of people's experiences on the path
and this is another sometimes violent
preconception that there is a definite delineated path and that things happen in the same way
and in the same order for everyone
still there is a virtue in systematic thinking
and there are some general tendencies most of us can notice and recognize at least to some extent so i'm going to speak about eight stages that i've
made up so you can tell where i am and to talk by what stage i met
is she get bored you'll know how long there is to go
so the eight stages or first of all the honeymoon
second this appointment and be trail
third the exploration of commitment
fourth
commitment and flight
fifth
the dry place
six the preciation seventh love and is letting go of monastic life altogether
so the first stage which is probably typical of the first stage of nearly anything is the honeymoon a time when we're really thrilled with the life of the monastery the contrast to what we're used to in the world or what we're flu
being from in the world is so great that we're in a constant state of ecstasy we see the people were living with as really kind and really wonderful
the sounds of the monastery bells the simple hearty food the early morning meditation the landscape the whether the peace and quiet the brilliant teachers than were marvelous teachings
really we can't think of anything that could possibly be better we're learning of about ourselves at a great rate and we're learning about the dharma to so much of what we hear in the talks and in the text seems to be absolutely true
seems to be what we have sensed inside ourselves all our lives without ever really being aware of it or having the words for it
we feel relieved and resolved and renewed
we feel as if suddenly and unexpectedly perhaps in the middle of a great sorrow we turned around one day right in the middle of our ordinary life and found to our amazement a brand new life in which all the assumptions and behaviors were different and fresh
this days can last for some time but usually not too long
then we enter the second stage the stage of disappointment or be trail
of course what happens here this begins when we lose our sense of contrast with the world at large
and now what's inside us becomes stronger than our perception of the newness of our surroundings
whatever festering problems we have known and unknown
that were held in abeyance while we marveled at the greatness of the religious life
now come out full-blown
in rather than seeing these problems for what they are our own internal contradictions we project them outward onto the community
we begin to see the truth
that there are plenty of imperfections actually
the food gets tiring
the people aren't as nice as they see in a few months ago
the many restrictions on our lifestyle that seems so cute now seem wearing
and we begin to notice a lack of creativity and energy in our fellow practitioners especially in some of the old timers
and we're sleep deprived and weary
then we begin to notice that there are many baffling and unacceptable aspects to the teachings in fact on the one hand at teaching sound purposely confusing and incomprehensible
and on the other hand they begin to sound suspiciously in many cases just like the religion we grew up with and fled from
and then the teachers turn out to be a lot less wonderful than we thought at first
we're seeing them stumble and make mistakes
and if we haven't seen it we've heard about it
and if we haven't heard about it or seen it
then the teachers or perhaps a little too perfect there's something suspicious
and even a little coercive
about their piety are they really serious
little by little a sense of disillusionment or be trail comes over us
now all these perceptions as disturbing as they are unfortunately i usually true
so when we bring them up no one can really talk us out of them
the old timers in a community may get defensive when we bring these things up but actually they can't really disagree with us
yet even though they may be true
they don't account for what we're really feeling cheated and disappointed
the only thing that accounts for that as her own pain
we were feeling for a moment better redeemed and now suddenly we feel even worse than when we came
eventually we realized that imperfect though the community is
and there may even be worse than that it may be toxic even
still is us not it that is the source of our present suffering
and it can take us awhile to come to this sometimes a very long time if there are as there have been in many communities of all religious traditions over the centuries flagrant cases of betrayal by teachers or other important community members
but will it come soon or only after many years and whether it's causes are spectacular or just quiet and internal it is something we have to come to on our own because when we're deeply disappointed with the community it's hard for long term committed community members to point out that it's our i and not the visual object that
cloudy
and they can't tell us this because they know we won't hear it they know that if they tell us they will only appear to us to be defending the status quo and we will miss trust them for it and besides many the old timers in the community don't understand it themselves anyway
many of them are themselves confused about the community and where it and they begin and end
so for all these reasons the older members of the community
tolerate us in our views and there's very little they can do to help us through this stage if we feel this sense of betrayal or disappointment acutely enough and especially if a difficult personal incident happens to us when we're in the midst of this stage we may very well lead the community in a huff which does happen
and although seldom and i feel like when it does happen it's really a tragedy because something important has been cut off too soon
but if it doesn't happen if you don't leave
then it's likely that after enough time goes by we will realize what's actually going on
and then we now gradually began to get the picture
that a lot has been going on on in our lives for a very long time that we were simply unaware of
we came to the community to find peace
to live in a kind of utopia expecting the that will make up for the fact that we ourselves are an entirely perfect human beings
perhaps we were thinking in the midst of this utopia we will become enlightened and all our problems will end few of us actually think these thoughts quite this bodily but more or less we do have these kind of fuzzy and unexamined ideas that we bring with us into the community
so as i said instead of this though we find that we're living in an extremely flawed community and far from being not entirely perfect we see that we ourselves are are actually a raging mass of passion confusion bitterness hatred and contradiction that
and instead of anything even remotely looking like enlightenment or even you know a little bit of peace of mind is really far away in other words we're much off was much worse off now than when we started
and we now have to acknowledge the fact that the job that we've undertaken is a much much larger job than we thought at first and then it's going to take quite awhile
and part of what we have to do now is make up our minds that we're really going to do it we're really going to roll up our sleeves and stay in it for the long-haul one or two or three thousand lifetimes
so here's where we enter the third stage
and we begin to explore honestly and without too much idealism the actual nature of our commitment to the practice into the community and this is a very very difficult thing to do because now that we are really looking without too much distraction and ourselves we find so many attitudes in us
and these attitudes are not always consistent one with the other
we want to practice always to take vows as a lay or priest practitioner to devote ourselves completely to the path and we know there's absolutely nothing else that we could possibly do and many of us feel these things sometimes maybe just once in awhile and maybe a lot of the time
but how strongly do we feel them
and how do we know whether or not to act on them
but even if we do feel these things strongly
and even if we do if you're clear about a sense of commitment we also have to notice that at the same time there are many other strong feelings
we also want to find the perfect mating get married we need a house we feel we're now we're not complete without a nice place to live we need a career we need children we want to travel
it's very important to us to travel we want to serve others more directly than we can in a monastery
we are interested in other traditions we should want to go study there other teachers and so on and so on many many contradictory
feelings
so this is very difficult stage and this can go on for some time long time
an effect it should go on for a long time
if we make a determination to soon about how our commitment really is it's probably wrong
you probably haven't listened to ourselves enough
there are a lot of cases of people who live at this stage and really shouldn't have and there are cases to people who make commitments that they regret having made so it's good to take our time and to seek advice from teachers and other senior and junior students even though the advice doesn't help that much
because in fact we've got to come to what we come to on our own
that's the nature of it and sometimes following the view of someone else whom we admire can be a big problem
so our elders and teachers had to be very careful to be sensitive to what they're hearing from us and not to impose their wishes and views on us
nevertheless the advice can be useful and probably necessary as a mirror to see how we ourselves are thinking
so we cook with that for some time and then the fourth stage
i call commitment and flight which seems funny it seems like an oxymoron but i think that's a really accurate name for it
so finally we come to a place where we feel as solid ground underneath our commitment
we accept are wobbling and human mind but we know now that underneath it there finally something solid and reliable although we know we're often out of touch with it
looking back
we can see that even though we're still far from perfect that we have changed
we see how much where the same but we see that there's change too
we are more solid
we are calmer
we are quieter in our spirit and less apt to fly off the handle inside or outside at least with the kind of frequency that we did before
maybe we're not as solid or as com as quiet as we had hoped or expected to be but by now we've given up such vain hopes as unrealistic and we are more able to settle for how it actually is with us
and to find it good or at least acceptable
with a degree of joy
so we feel ready to make a commitment to the practice into the community
can only take one for
renunciation
a giving up of self and personal agenda
as we come to see that self and personal agenda don't in fact help us to get what we really want and really need in our lives they only causes suffering
and as this becomes more and more apparent to us we are more willing to enter into a serious commitment to the practice in fact after a while we feel that even without choosing to do so we have already done so
there isn't any other way we are committed we have already renounced our life
and this is the time when we may take a responsible position in the community or we may take initiation as a priest or lay practitioner and we feel went into the community and responsible for it
but as soon as we feel settled in this commitment
particularly if the commitment is marked by some particular event like going off to tassajara or taking ordination
and then the demons of confusion return with great force
immediately our old interests and desires come back with fire
probably something happens like we fall hopelessly in love the day before we are to go off to the monastery
which has happened more than once
or maybe we have become ordained as a priest and find ourselves a drunk on the floor of a bar a couple days later
with their head shaved which has also happened
and these things you know catch us by surprise
we thought we had to thing figured out
but what we hadn't counted on
was the fact that there were still a fair number of absolutely unopened doors in our heart
and the power of the commitment that we have now undertaken
is such
that it violently throws open these doors and we are shocked
and what we find inside
and we are humbled by the sheer power of our own and therefore of human passion
humbled and shocked and amazed reeling with this for some time more ashamed and confused than ever
i think it is unusual for people to enter the monastery for a long stay or to take ordination as a priest
without suffering some version of what i've just said in many cases it's a rude awakening sometimes when this happens we might notice that are teachers and elders seem very knowing when this happens sometimes i even chuckle over it
which can either be comforting are maddening
depending on our temperament
and again at some times that this days there again isn't a time when there might really be flight
people might disappear in the night
running off with a lover
walking off down the tassajara road
in the moonlight
this has all these things have happened
but they are becoming more rare and more often the drama is internal
and you can see it in people's faces
a kind of a grim determination
mixed with a very pure softness and innocence
even if the person is middle aged or older when this happens
because the power and the surprise of these strong feelings i come up is enough to send any of us back to square one
with almost no identity left at all
and it is in fact the work of this stage to reconstitute our identity
and this is why this time we often feel like children are like babies
which of course feels wonderful
and terrifying at the same time
because we thought we were grown up we thought that taking this step we were advancing and we find that we're starting even before the beginning
and this uncomfortable stage is cured only with the passage of time
time is the great healer
if only we will let it be
time will heal everything this is the nature of time
usually we hold onto the past that's the usual human way and because we hold onto the past we don't allow time to do it's real work in our lives
but those who get this far in the practice usually but not always have enough concentration inside and enough support outside to avoid the entrapment of holding onto the past too much and so they can allow time to work its magic
and after a while just by doing the practice
they settle into a new commitment
they go beyond the childlike stage and they begin to mature
the reconstitute their lives around their new commitments
they take on new practices new studies deepen their dime relationships they let go of all aspirations and fantasies and illusions in they are content to just go on day by day with the practice
and more time passes
and as it passes we begin to slide perhaps into the fifth stage
the dry place
and we get to this stage
bit by bit
without even noticing it
because it turns out we weren't exactly perfect in are letting go of
the past giving ourselves to the healing winds of time
in fact in a subtle way we have been holding onto our life even while we have given it up entirely and realization
and this time though this subtle fact is not necessarily announced to us in a dramatic way and we will not even notice it at all
we go on practicing sincerely seemingly going deeper and deeper with our renunciation becoming more and more settled in the life of the dharma
but this becomes exactly the problem
we are to settled
and we're getting a little bit dull
a little bit bored
we've lost the edge of are seeking and searching mind
and we're beginning to feel pretty comfortable and or new life we have a position in the community we are seen as an experienced person
a respected member
we have a good grasp of the teachings or at least we have heard them so often we seem to have a grasp of them
and here's where whether we notice it or not we are in a dry patch
the time of dullness and nothingness and lack
we can't go back to are all life it seems
and yet there seems nowhere to go forward to
and here we can't even believe in the notion of going backwards or forwards
where can we go forward to and how could you ever go back
so we are stuck
and out of this stuckness fear arises
fear of never realizing or even glimpsing the path
fear of the world
we have left behind
in fear of what we ourselves have become
and again sometimes none of this surfaces at all
we just go about our business in the monastery feeling quite self satisfied and actually dying a little bit more every day
up to this point our past may have been difficult at times
but it has always been positive and rewarding we have always been growing and learning
but at this point
we have actually stopped growing and learning
and this is the problem
and we have mistaken the laziness or dullness that cover our fear
for the calmness that comes a renunciation
it's true that our mind is calm but it's a dark than a bright com
our creativity our passion our humanness is beginning to leave us little by little
and as i say often we have no idea that this is happening to us
this is the hardest stage to appreciate and work with
and often no one not even the elders and teachers of the community can recognize
this is happening to us indeed even these very elders and teachers made themselves
be in the midst of such a stage and be unaware of it
in this stage where we have seen as the cure for our lives isn't what everyone in the community has affirmed has devoted their lives to
the poison
that is killing us off slowly

i have tried to discern the stages that this the signs of this stage in my own life
and in the lives of others and believe me this is not an easy thing to do
it's not easy in oneself because it's very subtle and self deception is always tempting
and it's not easy and others because it's subtle in them to but also because they don't want to hear about it
because to overcome the stage to go beyond it
might very well take leaving the community
or otherwise doing something very radical to shift the ground
it
and most of us have a hard time
after giving in of after going in a particular direction for ten or twelve or fifteen or twenty years a direction that has involved great effort and sacrifice may have a hard time changing direction
our fear acknowledge it or not holds us back
and we may stay this way
for a long time
maybe even for the rest of our lives
no i know this happens to anyone
in any walk of life
and it may be no better or worse when it happens within the context of religious community
but a religious community holds very strongly to a commitment to awareness and truthfulness
and so when this happens within a religious community even if only to a few individuals
and it's not seen and not explored
then it becomes a disease
in that community
in the effect of this disease can be felt in many ways and on many levels
there can be a subtle occlusion in the flow of communication and almost imperceptible and unintended dishonesty
a jarring or not so jarring sense of disjunction and even though no one may recognize that a failure to discern the effects of this stage in a few community members is the cause of the disjunction people who come can very suddenly feel after a while
that the disjunction is there
so it is very very very important i feel for each individual to remain open to the possibility
that this dry place maybe arising in his or her life and to have the courage to address it when it comes
because it will come
and it must come
and it will come again and again
and if one is willing to address it it becomes an opportunity to go deeper
a chance to let go a little more
to open up a little bit more to times healing power
and the love that will come into one's life only through this way
so if one can do it
and it has never done alone it has always done in the company of and with the help of others
then there is a great although a quiet opening
into the simple joy
of living the religious life day by day
the monastery may have great controversies and problems as any group of people will have
but these no longer have a stickiness that will catch us
we can enjoy being with the others but we don't need if you're compelled by them
the simple things of the daily round and quiet meditation periods
sounds at the bell
daily work
the sky and air and earth of the place where we live in practice
all of these things take on a great depth of peacefulness and contentment
we come to a very we've come to very much appreciate
the tradition to which we now truly belong
we feel a personal relationship to the ancients
and see the very much as people like ourselves texts that formerly seemed arcane are luminous now just seem autobiographical
we have a great gratitude for the place where the monastery is located for the whole planet that supports it
in our life becomes marked by gratitude
which we delight in expressing in whatever way we can
and this is the sixth stage the stage and appreciation
little by little this appreciation becomes
more ordinary more normal
and we begin to take a greater interest in the ordinary practicalities of caring for the monastery and in doing so
we begin to notice gradually how wonderful really wonderful are all the people that were practicing with
we see of course there are many faults
as we see your own faults which remained very numerous
but as we forgive and are even grateful for our own faults we forgive and are grateful for the faults of others
we see others exactly as they are but despite this or maybe exactly because of this we really loved him deeply and we are as amazed
by the foibles and
doings of our own community members as we are by the sky and the trees in the wisdom of the tradition itself in fact after a while you can't tell the difference
this is a different kind of love from the love that we usually think of
because this law doesn't include very much attachment haven't we are willing to let people go in fact
this willingness to let people go is part and parcel of what the love we feel is
because this law doesn't include jealousy or attachment of any kind
and we know that we will be with these people forever
and that we it wherever we go
we will see only these same people
so we don't need to fear or worry and we are willing even
to see these people grow old
or ill or die
and to care for them and bury them
and take joy in the doing of this to cover the grey with some dirt and chant sutra
and walk away for the joy of knowing that even in the midst of our sadness
nothing has in fact been lost
no one has gone anywhere
only a beautiful life
that was beautiful in the beginning and in the middle has become even more beautiful in the end
even to the point of an ineffable perfection
that the brother or sister that we are burying his exactly buddha
and how privileged we have been for so long
to have lived with her
and to be able to continue to live with her in memory
and in a tiny acts of our own lives in the monastery
and we know to very clearly that we go that way as well
and very soon
and that in doing so we can benefit others and give to others what we have been given in the passing of this brother or sister
and this is a seven stage the stage of love
so the eighth and final stage and i have to repeat here what i said in the beginning that there are in fact no stages there is in fact no ending that the stages are simultaneous spiraling overlapping both continuous and discontinuous
this a stage is the stage of letting go of everything even of the practice
and at this stage we really don't see any practice or teaching or monastery or dharma brothers and sisters there's only life
in all it's unexpected see and color
and we can leave the monastery or stay it doesn't matter that much
we can be with these people are other people or nobody we can live or die
we clearly have a commitment to benefit others
but what could one possibly do that would not benefit others
and we certainly have plenty of problems
a body
a mind a world
but we know that these problems are the media of our lives as we live it
and so there isn't much to say or do we just go on
seeing what will happen next we have no idea
so these stages of monastic life are perhaps not only stages for a monastic life but stages for the human heart
in his journey to wholeness whether we live in a monastery or not
monasteries however to help to bring all of this into focus
to bring it up into consciousness
and that's why i believe that monasteries should be open to all of us
for at least some time in our lives because i said all of us have this monk inside of us
and that's why i hope that we can continue to make green got to place where any of you would think of coming to live for one month or two weeks or six weeks or six years
because once you spent time in a monastery
enough time to where you internalize and make completely around the schedule and around of monastic life
then you take that deep human pattern and rhythm with you wherever you go
in the world itself can really be your monastery when the monastery is within your heart
but this takes time
it takes patience
it takes some luck
and also a little help from your friends
so this is my essay on stage as the monastic life i hope it wasn't
entirely irrelevant or too long

and now
i want to tell you about a few more thing
i won't have time to be just justice to them but just let me mention them first of all there is a
saintly catholic nun conservancy's go name sister bernie
who runs an organization called witness for the homeless or witness with the homeless she's been working very hard and trying to prevent the government from tearing down the housing in the presidio
beautiful housing
which is being raised
she feels as if homeless people could live in that housing
and she's been organizing strongly and i've been to some of her events and i would just want to tell you that october the thirteenth
which is a sunday a few weeks from now
there will be another protest and it will begin at the synagogue called beth shalom
at two o'clock on that day that synagogue is at fourteenth
inclement street in san francisco it's run by a rabbi who is my closest friend and has been participating with sister bernie
so i don't know you feel about this issue i'm sure it's complicated but
to me three simple why would you tear down for free housing in a city where there's last year something like one hundred and fifty people died on the street
from exposure so i bring that to your attention
among the many other important things going on this is something that we could pay attention to
also i want to mention that dumb
ah something that we are wanting to do
now in this next month is too
change our traditional very very old very very traditional
daily service
which we do with great trepidation and fear because one doesn't mess with traditions you know
a change the service to reflect the fact that
i even though
in asia it has not been explicitly the case in reality
a women have always been at the heart of buddhist practice and this is not acknowledged in the liturgy
of our daily service so we're going to
try to make some radical changes in the service and include a lineage of women enlightened women
in our daily service and along with that we have felt as if we should also have a figure a statue in our zendo
i'm a female figure that really looks like a female person
so when you leave today you'll see such a statue on the main altar statue of the green tara
who are sits now beside shakyamuni buddha she has one foot
ready to stand up from her meditation seat
and help the world
so i'm telling you this because it's a beautiful statue and i hope you'll appreciate it i'm also telling you this because the statute cost two thousand dollars
and
and if any of you who for whom this is moving particularly moving to you are important for you would like to make a contribution we would be very very happy to receive it it when it would affirm all we're doing here and so maybe the way to do that i wasn't quite prepared to bring this up today but maybe the way to do it it's just go into the all
office and
write a check or give something to the person the office and i'll keep it separate fun for the green tara statue and i'm sure it will have an announcement of this
once or twice more
if two or three people wanted to get together and just between two or three of you
i purchased the statue for us this would be even better

well as they used to say any old days
thank you brothers and sisters you have been sitting a long time
the our intention
yes
you talk tonight i rate it
a
the i got from my mom
and read somewhere i can rip with that passionate
the which passion now just can learn
can you work on investment
i myself my house
that has gripped my novel
as couple of months i've been going with it and not enjoy know
you know i'm i'm grown growth
but it's taken me away
the elephants has been wrong before intense
it's still in my life
so you're kind of go back and forth for her isn't going on
yeah i can't i really related to what you were talking about i feel like i'm a little economy isn't all those places
yeah well i think many of us could share that i want you to said
because we're all many cited you know how many sides to us and that's what i was saying that it's very difficult to keep it all straight and to know where is the proper balance and what does it
right to do now and is it that doing something is a way to bring our practice forward and where is it that doing something as a way to avoid our practice and really and truly there are no
easy rules are you know ways to recognize us we have to really look within ourselves and be honest with ourselves and sometimes we have dharma friends that we talk this over with that's what i was saying that sometimes the advice that we get while we don't take it in or we shouldn't take it can be a kind of a mirror you know for what
for looking for ourselves and what we're doing and this is you know it's just hard to be the human being and have all the different in a way we are blessed and cursed with numerous options in our lives in their different ways to articulate our lives and different ways to be so we just don't have to struggle with our own our own hearts and see
where is it that
the real energy of our lives usually lies and for me if there's any
at all
it's it's the motivation to benefit others for me that's the only rule of thumb that really matters so if i look at what i want to do and i and i see that
it's purely for my own self
benefit
and i don't have a spirit within it and you know sometimes something that looks very self benefiting can you can actually do with a spirit of doing it for the benefit of others which means with some freedom
but if i look at it and i see that it really is for self benefit and there isn't a sense of freedom there's a sense of obsession and desperation in it
then i figure out that that's probably
something that i'm using as a and blind for what's really there
so i make actually continue with it but i'm aware in the doing of it that that it may not be
quite what i need and so i'm really observing and then the watching so to meet us and this is a complicated itself but if there is any any rule of thumb it would be the spirit of benefiting others the spirit of freedom and letting go within what we're going and you know as you know yourself there's a way of doing investment that's obsessed
live and and selfish and grabby and then there's a way of doing it that really is concerned with benefiting others so you have to look and see and you know it's not like you it's so clear cut but are we more or less going in that way and how are we doing so we have to
i think constantly be looking and trying to discern how it is with us in our practice and we all have that problem whether we're living in the world at large or whether we're living in the temple is it's the same yes

and now
yes
help me
hell i the world
yes
yeah
i consider
come here
yes
that's really helpful
don't like when to stop
no matter
and
now
three days
many my life

the time
yeah thank you for mentioning that the point about and then repeating it cause i'm sonia asked me to tearing under repeated so that they can be undertake was people bring up so you're bringing up
this issue of the monk within and how we all have that and how even though we live in the world we can really had the heart of a monk and that we can come into the monastery and know that it's foreign can be part of our lives to even though we don't live there for a long time and to me this is a very very important point and
it seems to me in my observation of
monasticism in the present time in off all the different traditions and all over the world in so far as monasticism is a very special self contained thing
it's dying
insofar as monasticism recognizes that everyone has a monk within themselves and is willing to share both for the internal community and to actually keep the doors open for people on the outside in so far as that's true monasticism is flourishing as never before and both those things are true at the same time
so for me it's a very important point i remember a number of years ago you know green got used to be maybe none of you remember this but gringo just to be a very close place we have the sunday program but basically during the rest of the week no one was ever here
you know we didn't have conferences we didn't have retreats we didn't have didn't know programs other than the sunday lecture which was really supposed to be for the residents and residents would come from the city centre to the lecture and some other people would come but the idea was that you can come but if you weren't a resident are about to be a resident than
yeah
that's how it used to be and i've ever in a minute or that we had a total collapse of everything and remember we were sad if we could actually hired a
a business consultant to help us i mean he wasn't he was also very good on psychology and interpersonal relationships and all that and we just had various people were trying to get to help us to try to understand what we're going through and i really remember so well we were all sitting around in a group all the leaders and old timers
and he said
what is it that really makes you feel positive and happy about your life here in your practice here
and we had never really thought about it you know and everybody said the same thing more or less they said well you know it really makes us happy when people come
because when people come they bring great energy to us and we see in them how wonderful it is what we're doing and we forgot when we when they didn't come and we didn't notice it so much but when they kind of they make us see you know how wonderful the practices and they also bring a lot of energy to it so that really makes us happy and really kind of
seems like a great thing so we realized then that that's what we had to do that we had to open up green gulch more and more in at first the idea was we would open it up so people to come on sunday and retreats and all that and now we realized that we should open it up so people can actually be residents you know for short periods of time we've always had
that possibility that we always have a guest student program but we've never really gone out and said the people you know it looked like the gets to the program was only for people who saw themselves as becoming full time residence nobody else would think of doing it but now we're going to pay
apple and say no no this is for you it's for everyone you can come for a week and so on and you'll hear more about this when we start raising funds to build housing because we don't have much space right now but what we would like to do is clear out the more or less this cloud hall area
and have all that regular staff living in little modest little places here and there they do now but there's not enough of them
and then hopefully we'll get to the place where they won't be a problem for space where there will be war they so people can come in the a guest student for a weaker or two weeks or come for a practice period we've now begun having last year we started having a brief practice period three and a half weeks
so that you know someone could actually imagine arranging their lives so they could come for three and a half weeks and do the whole thing from beginning to end and we do that now in january and will do it again in nineteen ninety seven this upcoming january
then we have a six week or seven-week practice periods october through december and february through
think end of march early april and you become for those are just come anytime and spend a week or two weeks or whatever as a resident of gringotts just get up in the morning of the wake up bound to the schedule we also have the guest house where you can come
and be more on your own schedule in other words if you stay in the guesthouse payable a bit more and you have a much nicer room and you then can join us for whatever activities you like or know
not join us at all or join this partially because people do need our and are know in the india the monastic schedule is a little demanding because it starts early in ends you know
nine at night generally
so there's that possibility to
and but before you she had something yeah i feel like mean i don't know this isn't a cat request
in your essay today you
what affected me was that it was so intimate and so global so specific and so not and then
there isn't anyone who could follow that a stage trip on in element of their lives from relationship to work to family and that if you couldn't stand back and see that every
a thing you enter into is just a manifestation of that eight phase process it helps you remove yourself from see it as a of becoming who the journey of the heart the and that so my mind it's just it's more than practice period where the discussion her yeah
yes yes and then ultimately and i left i thought well what am i there's so much i want to say or ask her sane and normal but what i'm left with isn't feeling that with most of your talk so many i'm left with completely undefended and the you talk
the a sweet to kill i don't need to defend myself
get raw emotion her
i always feel that with you
that when you are and a well is kinds
imagine
i thank you for that
the dalai lama is fond of as fond of saying my religion is kindness different era him say that are see that he writes that and
i feel that that's really just good bodhidharma had that is buddha dharma is to come to a real
ah true acceptance of what we are
an acceptance which is not a resignation like all well but seeing that you know any one of us is
the nexus point of the whole universe than it had to be this way you know it's just perfect even though we know and i certainly know very well on my own limitations and faults and so on
so and i just feel like as i understand it that is that is buddha dharma it's not easy to come to that in our lives but we have to come to that and if we do we can really be happy and then we in a quiet way we really want to benefit others
so i think that's the whole thing that's why we sit that's where we offer incense that's why we hurl ourselves to the ground bowing and chanting in studying texts i'm getting a class and in this very complicated text called the hockey osama which is all about the mind only school of buddhism and the and the and the dialectic between the relative and the app
salute and blah blah etc etc on and on and it's only about that that's all it is you know saying the same thing over and over again
recognizing that our very limitations as the people that we are is are perfection is our buddhahood that's all it really saying and and it's all that zen as i understand it is saying over and over again in various ways
yeah thanks for the i didn't realize many people have said this and i i thought that these eight stages would be have some relevance i thought maybe they would get some relevance to your lives as non resident residents and i thought that there was a chance that you might be able to really relate to it but it sounds like more than i thought people can relate to it which is good
let's be great to hear that
yes first and than than patricia
what you're not at the very end of the make sure that you can read that they're gonna be any innovation that they point to name women who like am
that's taking off with that the other aspect that attract me to gringo the fact that prefer to get married and have fuel and because i feel that when they are that sort of relationship they're really close to feed and felt because you feed yourself through your name and and
also i'd like to ask your question you been married and have been at this stage in your practice that you are as you talk about late stages and with relating
with a relationship with a woman over you know maybe a woman could think of our memes you know the earth a know each other the honeymoon and a i mean this enemy so if they're seeing a parallel and i was wondering you have having done on wouldn't you think about yeah somebody else mentioned that too
that this at those stages in in in a relationship and i hadn't thought of it that way but yes i think that really is true
and maybe
i'll make a few comments more about the changing the liturgy and also about being married in relationships
i'm
it's hard to change the tradition it should be hard traditions i should be very conservative i think religion is inherently conservative and that's good and so even though i'm i'm personally not so conservative i think that then who knows
i really think that the tradition should be conservative but in this time i've just gotten all agitated about this one particular thing because
a young woman came to see me
and a really nice way without any
blame or
complaining and at all just express expressed her sorrow and pain
and tears over chanting this lineage that we chant every single day which is all men
and suddenly i was transformed in that encounter
because although i knew this and so on and i'd always thought well we ought to change and everything never before i did i really kind of like have my heart turn and i remember it was quite hilarious when i said this in the board of directors meeting at the zen center and which has many women on the board and i said this i forget how i put it
but all the women on the board burst out laughing
because i was making this profound thing like what i notice that
and they burst out laughing like on you finally notice this
we've noticed the for thirty years and i'm glad that you've finally are so intelligent that you find your is something that we've seen in over thirty years
so
now it's
this is that this is getting into maybe a little too much detail but this is the controversy of it is that
that there a lineage you know zen is very big on lineage really big on a very you know we change the way patriarch the ancestor but still it's very big on lineage notes that the buddha's before a buddha and buddha and and this person that person and every we actually name every single person from buddha to the present day
day that passed the lineage down and that that isn't a very important and central part of in
so what i'm proposing to do and i letting people know that i'm going to do it no matter what even if it's just an experiment that's why i'm getting away with it was just an experiment trial for six weeks we can always change it back when i'm going to do is stop the lineage this gentle image then stop in the middle
and say have a chance to say and to the many enlightened women known and unknown whose courageous practice sustains us to this day they'll chant that and then will recite a lineage of women enlightened women from early days of booze time
as if it was the same lineage as if these women were actually in our lineage
and this is the part that people have probably because they say well it isn't our lineage it's lamentable that there are women and and our lineage and so we should have another dedication to women over here on the side and acknowledge important women but you can't say that those women are in our lineage
but my argument is that you can
because first of all we know from historical scholarship that many of the names in that lineage or fake it's true that that because it was so important for the zan people that there be an unbroken lineage from shakyamuni buddha to the present were there are some breaks they actually stuck people in there that's true
another that's just a historical fact why do they stick those people in there they stuck those people in there for spiritual reasons because spiritually it was really true to the zen ancestors that the lineage was unbroken that that this was really true and even though they couldn't say here they were what bridged the gap
from this person to that person they knew that it was unbroken so they added names to so that it would be they could channel as if it were an open and so for the same reason
i would say that the lineage in really in reality spiritually has always included women that there are women who are whose teachings are completely unknown that have been actually in that lineage and of influenced and been pending the dharma down and then there all the women who
who have practiced side-by-side with men enabling them to beat a big shots like if you're going to japan and any any small temple including the temple of suzuki roshi the presence of the hiroshi whose are my dharma grandfather you will see that suzuki roshi is like a little child his wife wines em up and
you know there's other things
but his wife runs a temple
so if we're going gonna share you know his put him and i have to a targeted we say that he was there without you know her it's really the truth they are like one so therefore i say on the same argument that it is permissible to do that and what i want us to do is begin to steady the teachings of these women and is a really good book which i recommend to you i think it's called early buddhist with
one by susan mirka and it's a translation of the poems enlightenment poems of these women whose names were going to be chatting in our lineage and we're going to make those teachings not only their names but their teachings part of our bring them up and have classes in them and talk about them and so on so that we will see them side-by-side with
our mail than ancestors so that's so i'm really excited about this because i think it's going to really make a difference to the way that are we practice in the way we understand our practice as far as the
the very big problem
it's really hard
to be married anyway
and it's hard not to be married
to the is and it's hard especially hard to try to practice
buddha dharma and be married and do justice to be married and to justice to practicing at least in a way that your practice as a resident of the temple
it's just a big problem and i mean to being human is a big problem i don't see any way around it no there isn't a perfect way i would say that you know wallet is true that that that you do learn some things about yourself
and the diver and how the world is and how you know what a loving kindness isn't and all that from being in an intimate relationship i think that's very true i certainly could say that for myself and i consider my wife to be one of my most important dharma friends and most important teachers and i always go to her with
the things that are really important to me and she gives me good advice and she really understands
but you can't say that's true for everyone
know and i think there is also a place that i honor very much for celibacy and it's rare that people have that talent
but for those who who can really be solve it without becoming a sour puss which is what often happens to sell of people they become million or were cut off huge parts of themselves and i hear you know all we have to do is ask anybody to tell us their favorite two or three horror stories about what happened to them when they went to calf
click school and so on at the hands of celibate monks or nuns who were mean they're a good stories to but they're also negative stories we know that that's true and the history of celibate monasticism throughout the world is a very checkered history full of things like
you in male monasteries pretty young boy acolytes who were actually more than acolytes and to the older monks and so on prostitution etc etc you know this is
and then celibacy being kept but it's being twisted in people's lives however i have also met
monastics who are celibate who are wonderful people loving people who whose love for for everyone that they meet come from the fact that they don't have an intimate relationship with one person in their lives in that's true and there's a there's more freedom which gives me freedom
in a certain way in that kind of lifestyle than there is when you married their limitations
when one is married to you know one's ability to be with with students and be with others because you will have to it's my wife and i have to have meetings to make a calendar to where we can have dates together so that we can actually see that we're spending time together because if we didn't do that than we would hardly ever see each other
because that's what it's like to live in a religious community and then i'm sure that the fact that we do that in fact that emotionally there's that
for me and my life may i mean i've never asked them about and much but i'm sure some gold students would feel well but you're not really available to us now or as much as you could be either in terms of time or emotionally if you didn't have this relationship in your life when he did that's true
so there's problems you know either way
but for me i was given to that life and
we have children to and i've never had a moment's regret
over over that in a wonderful experience
their children in it's difficult and does call forth you know one's resources
it's a lot easier to be you know this wonderful person the people that you see occasionally
then it is to be a wonderful person to someone that sees you all the time and it
this is for me a great area where i work to work very hard
reach down and find real compassion
thank you yes
patricia say
education
your somewhere wearing
know
similarities between monastic life in prison life
yeah just a similar in a way

although opposite in a way to you know yeah what we're doing
i say we but it's a few individuals are working in the
county prison in san mateo county prison in san bruno
and the
i guess the county jail in san francisco
ah to have ongoing meditation class with prisoners
and i've been there myself to participate in a class once and it's pretty incredible
pretty amazing
and the people in prison really get it they really understand that if you take care of your mind good consequences could come from this in if you fail to take care of your mind disastrous consequences could come it and particularly working with anger and how to contain themselves because they know that you know
getting angry at it and an inmate and a fellow inmate or a guard could really be bad for them so we do the sitting practice and we discuss the dharma and particularly as it really relate relates these kinds of issues try to understand and have the diamond most of the people in those jails the vast majority
are in jail for drug abuse and one sort or another
and so we talk about that and how it relates to being be able to find a space within your own self of actually looking at what's going on in your life rather than running away from what's going on in your life with substances which is what happens in their case because they have conditions in their lives many than that are
perfectly worth running away from so how do you admit and look at difficult difficult conditions in fully without having to run away and can you some men have difficult time but it's really moving actually to see that kind of talk that goes down and what happens and i really admire are people who are going in there and doing that work
and there's much more but that could be done but so far far as i know that's the one project that's been going on for a while and it has been very very successful
in the prisoner yeah patricia

ah well i
why

i'm getting at all
how
i'm out with bret hart i was
oh and the only time i ever
now that's true
oh never mind that
that was the man cause mass destruction who has
softly
home is very hot
have a great company
ah no
hi
now yeah space
that's true
nigerian
i am
credit has happened
that not interested anymore
a child
by now
my mother
the guy
and
and yet
you are
i guess
that sounds of tripoli
and
i was me

yes
no you are yes i know i appreciate that bringing up the side of solitude and in aloneness and certainly merton speaks of this a lot and
the and i agree with you completely i think that the nature of monastic life is aloneness
even though we live together we each one of us
i mean when we really look at who we are that is alone that's already because as long as we're on the social level yakking with each other and making our mutual concerns the focal point of our lives and not also looking within we're missing something we're not going deep enough
so i think that that is very very true
now this is a fine point if i can
see there's a difference between true solitude and aloneness
cause long can be
this i don't want anybody touching me
because i don't want to really express who am i don't really want to look at that so to it can really look like that and but true solitude to me is the opposite that to solitude is everything is included in my aloneness and so we don't really come to true we could say in this case we can say true solid
jude is the same as enlightenment
i think you know so in the enlightenment always comes with a sudden
recognition that the other is ourselves and we are the other in that sense it always takes another person another something maybe not a person even but as the sky or a bird or something because it's it takes our recognition that we are not separate and alone so in that sense monasticism always involved
others but it has to involve solitude and in there are two style have an ass the system
aeromedical and cinematic and aeromedical is the model of that is the desert fathers and christianity who live by themselves in caves in practice alone and this is repeated in some kinds of catholic monasteries and in some kind of buddhist monasteries were people practice on their own in huts by themselves
usually with some relationship to a teacher or guidance but basically the practice of solitary then there's of vidic
monasticism in which the lifestyle is to live together and do everything together which is more more zen style
but either way there's always relationship to others and there's always gonna be some solitude and i think we really we are really suffering you know for a lack of solitude in general and as a as a human community and everybody needs that's why i think we love a nature so much
you know because if you go into nature long enough you quiet your alone
we're going to hike if you hike one enough pretty soon nobody talks anymore and you don't even see the person who's behind you in front of you you're just walking by yourself endlessly in the quiet and so that's why we like to hike that's why i like to hike and i like to be alone and i seldom get to be alone but yesterday i was alone that's how come i wrote that essay and finished
route because i started three months ago in a moment of being alone and then for three months i wasn't alone and i had a day alone and i thought well i could write a dharma talk or i could finish this essay if i don't finish the usa today i may never finish it so i'll finish the essay and give it as an amateur but i had the most wonderful
day now just their can mean completely lost in being alone
so it's wonderful and very very important we need those kind of days to recharge our batteries and i think that the rules are kind of equation between what we call religious experience in those moments of being alone and after all even when we're sitting on our cushion you know facing the wall were alone even if the room was full of p
people when we really come down to concentration were really alone
so i agree with you and that's a good point maybe bring out more in the essay the the whole issue of of aloneness because of solitude yeah yeah and of course as you know for mertens career he struggled mightily because he was in the senate vidic monastic tradition and he struggled mightily to have a hermitage but
he thought so interesting
don't believe what you read in books you know
because merton was constantly you know going to louisville and i'm sitting in coffee shops and
having visitors all the time yeah yeah so he in the midst of solitude
he basically know a lot of people in his life

yeah yeah
know
yeah that's right seasons in our day and in our life and his hermitage is
about one minute away from the monastery very close it's right there you walk out the monastery and across the field narrative
hmm
oh

yes would be interesting
i've been doing a series on poetry to that's an i did mention that one
but that would be interesting to do here
yeah you're welcome and let's see if somebody who hasn't spoken

now