March 22 was the 10th anniversary of my ordination. I planned to post this on the actual anniversary, but I’ve been sick for five weeks with a viral infection that is still with me, so motivation and energy have been close to nil.
They say that all priests are monks but not all monks are priests. I’ve struggled with some basic monastic duties; the public/priestly duties (aside from the occasional Dharma talk or writing such as this blog) have been even closer to nil.
A monk was once asked just what it was he did all day.
He replied “I fall down, and I get up. A similar story from the Vajrayana tradition has the monk answering, “I farm the clouds and go to bed when I’m done.”
Fall down nine times, get up ten.
One minute of meditation, one minute Buddha.
There are other lines that speak to the difficulties of practice, and of the benefits of persistence. Aside from the short and moving “A Monk with Dysentery” from the Vinaya, there are few references to the challenges of being chronically ill and practicing, mostly because a sick monk is a useless monk. Monastic hagiographies tend to stress the heroic and hardcore; a sick monk was either on his own or placed in a spare room so as not to disturb the others’ practice.
The spirit is more “A Day without work is a day without food,” not “A Day without work sometimes can’t be helped.”
Great Faith
Great Doubt
Great Effort
There they are. The great pillars of Koren Zen. Aside from my monastic vows, these are the heart of my practice, and the essence of all human questioning and striving beyond it.
My health struggles have made frustrated with my practice, doubting my effectiveness, but not shaking the faith that the teachings can truly help everyone wake up, even when the body calls the shots. “A Day without effort is my choice,” no matter my condition.
Great Effort.
Great Owning of What You Vowed to Do.
No one asked me to ordain. No one is waiting for me to help them. No one will miss my contributions if they remain mostly aspirational. And if you believe in rebirth, maybe this is just one karmic biyatch of a life I need to experience before moving forward. Somedays I think of how limited and erratic I am now, and about what my health will look like when I get older. Those are the days or short seated meditation and daily liturgy recited in my head while lying down. Even in those hours, I still know that the next hour or day may be better.
The problem with that last paragraph is that it is all about me. My karma. My illness. My aspiration, my worth in my and others’ eyes.
It took vulnerability and candor, effort, write those things. But Great effort is something different.
Great Effort looks beyond the Self and its delusions, fears and hesitations. Great Effort recognizes the suffering which is in all of us, both common and uniquely specific.
Compassion begins at home but moves out and beyond. If you will, compassion begins when you recognize that no one is home.
The “I” in I’m hurting is different from the one in “How can I help you?”
There’s a reason the Sangha is placed in the same esteemed company as the Dharma and Buddha himself. Companions and cohorts along the way—teachers, colleagues, fellow meditators—are vital presences for often lonely road of paying attention to your mind and waking up to its barriers and blinders.
While my health has prevented me from consistently participating in that vital connection, friendships find you despite yourself sometimes, especially when you are open to in the way in which it arrives, not in the way you might have envisioned it arriving. I have a few brothers and sisters from my Order, other clergy through social media and, of course, the informal sangha we all rely on: partner, friends, pets, neighbors, beings animate and inanimate within and beyond the neighborhood.
Life is impermanent and constantly subject to change. I know that bit of simple wisdom a bit more viscerally than I did in the past, when they were just words. I’ve lost friends, career, house, car, vision, sense of smell, independence. I’ve also regained some of those things, and each day wrestle to varying degrees of accepting the loss of the rest. And through it all I’ve kept sone friends, had a great marriage, and have never taken it so seriously that I have t been able to keep laughing and learning.
Life is interdependent. More people than I thought cared about me shared what they could to help us, reminded me that they still needed my friendship and sympathetic ear no matter my trials. I have also been able to see and feel suffering in areas I previously ignored or to which I was indifferent. I’ve been given food, and shared food.
There is no fixed, constant self. Two of the big questions upon which to meditate in Korean Zen are “Who am I?” and “What is this?” Their great importance, and….have been made clear to me on days when I didn’t know who I was, what would happen to me, or even why such and such had always been so important to me.
I received a Masters in Buddhist Doctrine from a now defunct university. I was ordained into an order that no longer exists, having fragmented at the death of our Guiding Teacher, the Ven. Wonji Dharma. The monastic vows given to me (in addition to the Bodhisattva Precepts—they are for another time):
Humility
Poverty
Piety
Stability
Simplicity
Of those, Piety is the hardest to wrap my head around. What the hell is Piety?
An aloof, detached worldview, “in it but not of it? It sure has been abused this way, ever since human put on robes, looked up at the sky, and just knew they were chosen for something BIG…and you weren’t.
It can certainly be self-righteous and satisfied, this focus on the “one pure and clear thing” or “the one thing needful,” or however you choose to see the Bigger Picture; but Piety can also be just that: a focus, or a constantly mindful awareness of the fact that the one thing needful is nothing other than the mess of the world. It is not escape nor Holy Blind Eye; the one thing needful is engaging in the world, being in the world, Being. Piety is taking knowledge of suffering and need into the mess suffering and need, like a firefighter walking toward death as throngs run the other way to safety.
On my ordination certificate is printed the gatha from The Gateless Gate, Case 19:
春有百花秋有月 The spring flowers, the autumn moon;
夏有涼風冬有雪 Summer breezes, winter snow.
若無閑事挂心頭 If useless things do not clutter your mind,
更是人間好時節 You have the best days of your life.
On my shittiest day I can still practice, still shoot a text to a friend, still pay attention to the useless things that clutter my mind. A great day from the past or great dream of the future are part of that clutter. The best day of my life has to be today, no matter how I feel. It is always today.