Sinks & Surfaces

(Originally posted on August 3, 2015)

In a monastery, especially at first, little mistakes feel like big ones. I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s because when we’re self conscious when we first arrive. The atmosphere is so ordered and quiet that we feel clumsy and out of place. We don’t want to be the ones screw it up.

Or maybe it’s because without big things to worry about the mind latches onto what it can. Instead of calming down, it just becomes anxious about smaller and more immediate things.

Whatever the reason, I hold this phenomenon responsible for The Great Bowl Crisis of 2015 that nobody but me ever knew happened. Here’s the story:

It is morning and I am in the kitchen putting away dishes. I am doing this because I know it is a job that needs to be done. More importantly, unlike many of the other monastery tasks, it is a job I know how to do. I can just go ahead and start instead of standing around waiting for instructions while wondering what to do with my hands.

There are many things in this monastery I don’t know how to do. There are also things I thought I knew how to do, but the monks want them done in such a specific, methodical way that that I am questioning if I ever knew how to do those things in the first place. Something as simple as wiping down the kitchen after mealtime--a job the monks call ‘sinks and surfaces’ is fraught with unexpected details.

As a consequence, I have been living most of these first few days in a state of constant uncertainty. My daily routine is endless variations of a) asking what I should do next b) being told exactly how to do that thing or c) standing around waiting for someone to tell me what to do next. I feel helpless and that feeling is grinding against my not-so-strong-to-begin-with sense of competency.

I want to be useful, damnit. Partly because I hate feeling like I’m a burden on people and partly because I’m flirting with the ideal of being a monk and contributing to the functioning of the monastery is my pre-postulancy equivalent of batting my eyelashes and wearing low-cut tops.  Look how good a monk I would be. I show up on time and do what’s asked and accept what’s offered and never ever volunteer opinions.

Sadly, I flirt like a junior high school student--enthusiastic but without really knowing what I’m doing and completely unable to discern whether it’s having the desired effect.  I compensate by hiding my self-consciousness under a mask of feigned indifference. I’m a forty-one year old teenager.

It doesn’t help that some of the tasks they give me are ones I’m completely unfamiliar with.  I spend one morning sanding a large piece of unfinished wood. I have no idea how long this is supposed to take or how I will know when I’m finished. Alone in the workshop, I rub the wood in vague circles with my sandpaper wondering how I’ll know when to stop.  Is this job supposed to take twenty minutes? An hour? Am I supposed sand forever until somebody finds me?  What if no one comes?

My god, I think as the second hand of the clock sweeps past the eight. What if I get so caught up in sanding I forget to go to lunch? Or I miss a crucial afternoon service? Can I be excommunicated for that? Do Buddhists even have excommunication? Isn’t that what happened to that one guy? Diva or David or something. Oh God, what time is it? Have I already missed lunch?

I look at the clock. The second hand is now passing between the ten and the eleven.

None of the other hands have moved.

Well, that’s a relief….wait, no, it’s a source of renewed agony: I’ve only been sanding twelve seconds?

Maybe the clock is broken. Hopefully, the clock is broken.

Oh no! What if the clock is broken! Late for service! Shame! Excommunication! Dishonoring the ancestral line! Disappproval transmitted across a hundred million myriad kalpas. 

Devadatta. That was his name.

Maybe I should pop up to the guest house and check the clock there.

Experiences like this are why I like putting dishes away.

Putting away dishes is my rock amidst a sea of uncertainty. I know these dishes need to be put away. I know where they go, and I know I’m just the man to put them there. I am a Dish-Putting-Away champion.

So that‘s what I‘m doing. I’m getting a nice rhythm going and thinking, I hope the monks are noticing how mindfully I‘m putting away the dishes, when the plastic tray I’m pulling out of the rack catches the edge of a heretofore unnoticed bowl and sends it spinning off counter towards the floor.

Here are the three thoughts that go through my head.

1) Maybe no one will notice.

2) Maybe the bowl won’t break.

3) If the bowl does break, maybe it won’t be that big a deal.

Here are the three things that actually occur:

The bowl (1) hits the floor with a resounding BANG and (2) vanishes (3) leaving the entire corner of the kitchen lightly blanketed in tiny, razor-sharp ceramic shards.

I blink confusedly at the space-formerly-occupied-by-bowl(I’ll be damned--form really IS emptiness) and then turn to see everybody in the kitchen looking at me.

On the outside, I say in my junior high school nonchalance/equanimous novice voice: “Does anyone know where I might find a broom?”

On the inside, the junior high school student in my brain runs out of the room, locks itself in a bathroom stall inside my skull and bursts into tears.

And so instead of helping put dishes away or making breakfast, I spend most of my morning picking up shards of glass with the help of a novice monk. It’s slow and painstaking work. We have to pull plastic containers full of utensils from the shelves and go through them looking for bits of ceramic.

I am humiliated. Not only am I not being useful, I‘ve dragged a monk into my uselessness. Instead of doing what she‘s supposed to be doing, she‘s stuck helping me. I am worse than useless. I am a net negative. Not only am I bringing nothing to the table, I‘m taking the things people are bringing to the table and sprinkling broken glass onto  them. They make merit; I season it with murder-dust.

This is not the only awkward thing I do during my three week stay. I drop tools and mishandle wheelbarrows. Cleaning the counters, I use the wrong soap, which I’m told is very bad. One day I forget to close the curtains in my room before doing my morning yoga stretches which leads to a correction from one of the novice monks that I imagine is as embarrassing for him as it is for me.

Over time though, I notice I’m not alone.

The monks and lay people make mistakes just like I do. They drop things, lose their place in chants, and fill the kitchen with smoke because they forgot to check which windows were open and which ones were closed before lighting the dining hall fireplace.

I notice two things from all this. One thing I notice watching the monks make errors isn’t that they make mistakes, but how they make mistakes.

They admit their errors. They ask for help. They apologize when necessary. They move on. They treat each mistake as a thing to learn from or not to do again as opposed to a reflection of their personal worth or competence.

The second thing I start to notice is that the world is bigger than our victories and failures. We are neither the Hero nor the Villain of the Universe. To get caught up in our personal stories is to lose sight of the way we‘re a thread in a larger tapestry. Being able to see past that, even a little bit, transforms my life from massive and overwhelming to a part of something richer and more complete. In those moments, I feel both smaller and vaster. My life is less important, but more meaningful.

Those moments don’t last forever. Whether it’s seconds, minutes, or hours later, eventually my brain latches on to some new source of excitement or terror.

I’m okay with it. There was a time I believed in enlightenment--that one day I would suddenly ‘get it’ and be forever free of fear, doubt, and insecurity. Now I’m starting to recognize those fears, doubts, and insecurities as being as much a part of my life’s rhythm as peace, faith, and serenity. I will be fine as long as I remember just because I experience them, doesn’t mean I have to let them drown me.

This is training. Remembering and forgetting what is important. Stormy seas and calm waters. Sinking and surfacing.

For as many kalpas as it takes.