Pilgrims

Yesterday, after cake, our family went for a walk in the woods.

My oldest nephew and his dog led the way, pulling my mother along in their wake.  Four-year old nephew is eager to show his aunt the woods and the park near my grandmother’s house. The dog just wants to chase something.

My father is next with his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket. My former sister-in-law and her husband follow. It’s been a weekend of visiting relatives in the city and they have a long drive home ahead of them.

After that comes my sister and her husband. They are walking arm in arm, gently bickering about the logistics of their upcoming week.

There’s a significant gap in the procession after that.

Birds sing. The sun shines. The bare trees reach for the cloudless blue sky.

Finally, my youngest nephew and I appear. We are not moving quickly. Perhaps it’s because at three months shy of his second birthday, my nephew is still adapting to walking in snow. Or maybe it’s because of everybody in the family, my nephew and I are the only two with no particular inclination to be anywhere other than here.

My nephew walks slowly, but his slowness doesn’t come from hesitancy. Instead, his movements are filled with a deep completeness, as though the only thing that needs doing is the thing he is doing right now.  Face forward, he makes his way through the trees and snow, taking the world in anew with each step. When the hills get too steep or the ground under the snow becomes too uneven he reaches out with one navy mitten for my hand.

When I breathe in, my lungs fill with sun and snow and sky. Is this what I sit around in darkened meditation halls waiting for?

I emerge from the trees and my family is waiting at the top of a hill. Mom is sitting on a toboggan and bursts down the hill in a cloud of white while my oldest nephew shrieks in delight.

Side by side, my nephew and I walk towards them, making new tracks through a fresh filed of snow.

Quote

From Caitlin Moran's novel "How to Build A Girl"

"The plane starts to taxi along the runway. I had no idea they went so fast. This is the fastest I have ever gone. We are already going too fast--and then we accelerate...This speed is inhuman, and unholy. It's angry. Planes have to become furious before they can fly. They kick the ground away, and punch into the clouds, screaming. We are fighting our way into the sky."

"The windows go pale grey--we've flown into the clouds. Rainclouds are dirty, and wet--looking out the window at them makes you feel like you have temporarily gone blind. The inside of a raincloud is a bubble of night. And then the plane pulls up higher...and we suddenly burst out into the bright, bright brilliant sunshine.

     And in the same way my first does of adrenaline anxiety blasted through me, like black floodwater two years ago, this is now the opposite.

     Sitting in seat 14A, in the sun, I float on a full-moon, tidal joy unlike anything I have ever experienced. I am getting incredibly high on a single, astounding fact: that it's always sunny above the clouds. Always. That every day on earth--every day I have ever had--was secretly sunny after all. However shitty and rainy it is in Wolverhampton--on the days where the clouds feel low like a lid, and the swarf bubbles and the gutters churn to digest--it's always been sunny up here.

     I feel like I've flown 600 miles an hour head-on into the most beautiful metaphor of my life: If you fly high enough, if you get above the clouds, it's never-ending summer."

"I resolve that for the rest of my life, at least once a day, I will remember this. I think it the most cheering thought I've ever had. When we finally land in Dublin, and I go off to meet John Kite, I am essentially drunk on the sky."

V is For...

There are a lot of female monks in this order whose name starts with V: Vera, Vivian, Veronica, Valora (not to be confused with Valeria), Valeria (not to be confused with Valora).

I'm now imagining them running about in their robes and Guy Fawkes masks like the climax of V for Vendetta.

That was in  V for Vendetta, right? Or have I confused it with Three Amigos?

These are the things that go through my mind when I meditate.

People Are Sad

I’ve been telling people I’m leaving for the monastery. Many of them are sad about it.

I’m surprised about that, and I’m also surprised that I’m surprised.  I knew they might be sad...and I also never expected them to be sad.

I also feel guilty. The whole point of Mahayana Buddhism is to end the suffering of all beings. In the bodhisattva vows we take every couple weeks, we promise to remain in the world until all beings are saved. Being a source of sadness to those I care about most by leaving for the mountains seems like a step in the wrong direction.

That‘s the scary thing about impermanence. There truly is nothing to stand on.  It’s not just that that I’m subject to loss and change and grief, but so are the people I care about. They are also going to experience these things, and however much I might want to, there’s nothing I can do to change that.

Except that’s not true in this particular case, is it? There is indeed something I could do: I could stay. I might not be able to spare the people I love the experience of loss, but by remaining here I could spare them from this specific loss at this specific time.

Saving all beings, right? That’s the bodhisattva way. And what better beings to start with than the ones I love and will miss the most?

The answer, when I search my heart, is this: Because that is not the kind of saving any of us need.

On the surface the bodhisattva commitment to saving all beings in all times and all places for eternity appears like an impossible task. It probably would be impossible except for one small thing bodhisattvas have working in their favor: all beings are saved already.

In other words, we’re all doing okay. We just don’t know it, and as a consequence, we create suffering for ourselves trying to solve problems we don‘t actually have.

My loved ones don’t need me to make choices to stop them from feeling sad. Furthermore, I do not need to make choices to shield myself from feeling guilty. Sadness, guilt, second-guessing, worry…these are normal parts of the process. It might be more cause for concern if some of those feelings WEREN’T there.

I don’t like that people are sad. I don’t like that I am also sad. I also don’t like that I feel guilty that people are sad, and I don’t like that I’m also happy people are sad because it means they will miss me, and I don’t like that I am worrying about many many many things. It’s uncomfortable.

It’s uncomfortable and it is also where things are.

And none of us need saving from that.

The C-Word

Becoming a monk involves giving up big things and little things. Big things include my job, my condo, my independence, the clothes I wear, even my name.

It's the little impending losses I feel more sharply. Moving away from my friends and family is too abstract to wrap my head around right now. The realization that I might never know how Game Of Thrones ends, on the other hand….that gets me. I’ve been reading those books since the late-nineties.

The elephant in the renunciation room though, is celibacy. It’s subject about which people are both deeply curious and ashamed to ask.

It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of our attitudes about celibacy--and sex in general--come from our culture. For example my father grew up in a Catholic neighbourhood. Priests and nuns were an active part of his community. In that era, celibacy was an accepted choice within society. Being gay or non-monogamous, on the other hand, was seen as abnormal, perhaps even a sign of mental disorder.

Over the last sixty years, it seems like there has been a societal shift. Thankfully, we are becoming more comfortable with alternative sexual lifestyles and orientations. In fact, we are so comfortable with sex--perhaps even sex-obsessed--that now celibacy is perceived as freakish, weird, unhealthy, or against the laws of man and nature.

And yet have any of these things really changed? There have always been gay people, straight people, and those who are interested in a little of both. There have always been people who have done monogamy, non-monogamy, and celibacy--admittedly with varying degrees of success. But our attitude towards these lifestyles seems to ebb and flow.

Of course, maybe these people aren’t thinking of celibacy on a cultural level. Maybe they are wondering about celibacy and me particularly. It’s a reasonable question to ask given that I spent four years giving advice on sex and dating, and much of that advice was drawn from my own experience.

All I can say is, I can be sex-positive without being celibacy-negative. At this point, I don’t see any spiritual advantage to celibacy, but I can get behind it for a lot of practical reasons. So while I don’t expect to wake up each morning and burst into song about not being allowed to feel the curve of a woman’s hip under my palm, it isn’t a deal-breaker either.

I admit, there’s irony at work. After failed relationship after failed relationship, my romantic life in the couple years before I made the decision to try monasticism has been a happy one. I’m finally at the point where I’m confident in my ability to be a good romantic partner…and now I’m seeking a vocation that asks me to give that up.

Here’s another irony though. My romantically adventurous life has actually left me more confident in my ability to maintain celibacy. I don’t have any unfinished business--I know what I’m giving up. My sex life has been rich enough that I can move on without feeling like I‘ve missed out on anything.

Over the course of those active years, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I also know what I’m attracted to, what my triggers are, and what situations are risky for me and how to avoid them. I know what might tempt me and I know what to do to prevent the situation before it gets out of hand.

So, in conclusion, celibacy will not be a problem for me, and I am not at all nervous about it. Not even a little bit. I don't know why I even brought it up.

So...how about that Game of Thrones?

The Four-Fold Sangha

I sometimes feel the term four-fold sangha is misleading.

For those of you haven’t heard the term, the four-fold sangha is something we talk about in the OBC, comprised of 1) Male monks 2) Female monks 3) Female laypeople. 4) Male laypeople.

Gender essentialism notwithstanding, I can see how that division might be useful from a monastic perspective. But from a lay person‘s point of view, I think the term can be misleading, because it implies the world is divided into monks and everybody else.

Not so. The world is not just monks and laypeople. The world is monks and electricians and stay-at-home parents and firefighters and strippers and middle management. It’s divorcees and professional wrestlers. It‘s chronically ill senior citizens and child prodigies.

As laypeople, it is tempting to compare ourselves to monks. I think its also tempting for a lot of us to project things onto the screen of their robes, of seeing, not a person, but something special to  either aspire to or to condemn ourselves for our inability to emulate.

I remember talking to a monk once and being frustrated by her inability to understand what I was saying and give me the right feedback to me. It wasn’t her fault; she was doing the best she could. But there was no way she could live up to the image of wise counselor I had built in my head. Looking back, I think that was a good thing for both of us.

We also need to remember, one monk is not the same as another. One size robes does not fit all. It is more than just monks and laypeople. It’s this monk specifically, and that one and the other one over there. It’s the most experienced master and most junior novice. It’s this layperson and that one, and, yes, even that one, the one who always shows up late and the monopolizes any conversation and makes it about themselves.

I notice another thing about us self-proclaimed ‘serious practioners,’ particularly those of us who have considered monkhood. For some of us, there is a sense of all-or-nothing…we either go all the way, or we consider ourselves failed.

And sometimes, for whatever reason, we aren’t able to do it. Our health prevents it. Or we have family responsibilities--young children, old parents, even business or financial ties that cannot easily be severed. It’s not that we fail at monasticism--it’s that we never get the opportunity to try. As a result, like spiritual failures.

To those people, I offer this: just because we can’t be monks, doesn’t mean we have to continue the way we always have.

All-acceptance trips us up sometimes. We can misinterpret it as telling us to put up with all manner of things that leave us unhealthy or unhappy. Suck it up, Buttercup.

We have choices. It is okay to make them. In fact, we have to make them.

Monks take action every day. When the chief cook arrives in the kitchen and sees breakfast has not made itself in the night, he does not accept since food has not prepared itself, the monks must all-acceptingly accede to not eating. When a sacristan arrives in a darkened meditation hall, he or she does not see the unlit candles and accept that this means there will be no ceremonies this morning.

Monks are making choices every moment of every day. Sometimes, the choice is simply not to leave. I know lay people who also know what it’s like to make that decision.

One hand, the four-fold sangha is a million-fold sangha, made up of each and every one of us. And yet, all of us, male and female, monk and insurance adjustor and washed-up sitcom star and social worker and chemical engineer, must make the same kind of decisions, make the choice to do what we can to find a life that brings happiness to ourselves and others.

Maybe the four-fold sangha is best described from a lay perspective  as a million-fold sangha. But it’s also possible splitting it into four is four too many.

Ode To My First Day Folding In A Monastery Laundry

Fuck you, fitted sheets!