Having decided to become a monk, I quit my job, sold my
house, left a life I had built for twelve years on the
west coast, and flew east. I had never set foot inside
the place where I had resolved to spend the next
several years, and possibly the rest of my life. I only
had the most general notion of what kind of lifestyle I
could expect.
But it didn’t matter. Some people said, “try the monk
lifestyle for a while, sit a few long retreats, and see
if you like it.” But LIKING the life had nothing to do
with my reasons for choosing it. I chose a monastic
path because it seemed like the only choice for me. The
path was to be my teacher, and what I liked and what I
disliked were only to be lessons along the path. So I
just did it. “Hail Mary!”
My parents drove me to the zen center on a dismal,
rainy afternoon. But the rain didn’t prevent me from
liking the place instantly. The site is notorious for
its large pagoda building, maybe 60 feet high; but I
immediately took to the sprawling main building.
Originally a nursing home, the building is part mansion
and part labyrinth. So many additions have been tacked
onto the structure that it wanders in several different
directions at once. It houses three different
meditation halls of various sizes (the smallest housed
at the base of the giant pagoda), many private rooms
for residents and guests, various lounges and dens, an
office wing, an industrial-sized kitchen and, yes, even
a sauna.
Two other buildings dominate the open space on one
corner of the 50-acre, and mostly wooded, property. A
guest house can be found nearby and, most notably, the
monastery sits behind the house, across the pond and up
on a ridge at the edge of the forest. Sporting a
Korean-style blue tiled roof and traditional Korean
beam structure, the monastery mostly consists of a
large meditation hall upstairs and sleeping quarters
downstairs. An extension of the building contains a
kitchen, bathrooms and some private rooms.
Most of the residents are not monastics and hold jobs
outside the zen center during the day. There are about
five monks who also live here. Most of the year
everybody, including the monastics (often both monks
and nuns), lives in the main building in private rooms.
Each year, however, two long retreats are held at the
monastery. One lasts for three months during the winter
(January through March); the other, a shorter one,
takes place during July and August. During the
retreats, all retreatants live in the monastery and
follow a strict and demanding schedule of sitting,
chanting, bowing and formal temple-style meals.
When I announced to the teachers here that I intended
to become a monk, they described the path. First, I
would have to sit a long retreat. Then I could become a
monk trainee, like a postulant monk in the Catholic
tradition (called a haengja in Korea). After two years,
I might ordain as a novice monk. After three years as a
novice, I might then ordain as a full monk (which they
call a bhikkhu, the sanskrit word).
Two teachers live at the zen center. Like all
monastics, they take Buddhist names when they ordain.
One is a zen master and
serves both as the senior teacher for this zen center,
but also as abbot of the whole school of affiliated zen
centers throughout the world. The other, with the title
Ji Do Poep Sa or
“master dharma teacher,” serves as the abbot of
this particular center.
A bhikkhu holds the position of Head
Dharma Teacher, and presides over all formal practice
sessions. A novice monk serves as kitchen
master, or head cook. And another novice monk is house
master, responsible for the
physical plant and all residents’ work assignments.
Monastics, including trainees, shave their heads, wear
a special outfit (gray for the ordained, brown for
trainees), and are expected to renounce many things,
most notably sexual relationships. The Buddha laid down
more than 200 guidelines, called precepts, for the
community of monks (nuns actually ended up with about a
hundred more!). Different orders practice these
precepts with varying degrees of strictness. Our school
is relatively relaxed about the letter of these laws,
focusing on the real point: how do you keep your mind,
moment to moment?
Nonetheless, zen practice works directly against the
five major temptations: desire for wealth, fame, sex,
food, and sleep. Monastic life emphasizes, instead,
poverty, humility, chastity, eating only for
nourishment, and sleeping only for maintaining a
healthy body.
The basis of monasticism is to devote your life to all
beings. A monk or nun exists solely to help this world,
moment to moment. The function of renunciation is to
replace self-indulgent impulses with a clear mind able
to perceive how best to help right now.
I arrived in the first part of May. In two months I
would enter the summer retreat–seven weeks of silence,
all-day meditation practice, and a real test of my
resolve to practice zen as my main job. In the
meantime, I would sample the life of a monk on a
schedule you might call “monk lite.”
As it turns out, when monastics aren’t meditating,
they’re working. Because monastic
life is so simple, however, there remain many
opportunities to
recharge. (Short naps are popular here, an initial sign
that
I will fit in nicely). For the most part, monastics
tend to be more joyful in their work. Working is not
something one does merely to raise funds for “real
life.” The work, as well as many other aspects of life,
IS life (which isn’t true only of monastics, of course,
but let’s keep that ugly fact hush-hush). When working,
we practice how to be helpful moment by moment.
When not in retreat, the schedule begins with a wake-up
bell at 4:45. After we sleepily wander into the
meditation hall (called the dharma room), we do our
morning bows, 108 full prostrations to the floor. After
a short break to catch our breath, and perhaps a few
yoga poses to limber up, we begin chanting. Forty
minutes later our voices go silent and we meditate,
usually for 30 minutes. After hanging up the robes we
wear in the dharma room, we file down to the dining
room and, maintaining our silence, eat a formal
breakfast in the Asian four-bowl temple style. To the
uninitiated, this way of eating seems hopelessly
elaborate and arbitrary. Like most rituals, however,
after a short time it becomes a simple, elegant and
beautiful way to share a community meal.
After a break of about an hour, at 8:30 the bell rings
to summon those of us staying at the zen center
throughout the day to our work meeting. Thereafter, we
work. The monks work to 3:30, with an hour off for
lunch. But most monks have daily responsibilities that
keep them busy throughout the day, like the monk who
rings the wake-up bell at 4:45 in the morning and often
makes runs to deliver people to and from the local
airport well into the night hours, or the crew that
washes the dinner dishes, or the monk who leads morning
and evening practice.
Starting at 6:30, after dinner, we chant for about an
hour, sit for one or two half-hour periods (separated
by 10 minutes of walking meditation), and then head off
to bed (or the nearest ice cream parlor, depending on
the temperature).
Morning and evening practice occurs seven days a week
and monastics are expected to attend all of them,
unless they have official responsibilities that
conflict with them. On Saturdays there is no official
work period, but when things need to be done the monks
are expected to do them, which is almost every
Saturday. On Sunday, there is only a morning work
period, and everyone, including the non-monastic
residents, is expected to participate.
On Wednesday evenings, we invite all the community
members of the zen center (called the sangha) for
dinner and evening practice. There is also meditation
instruction for newcomers. We are always swarmed with
folks on that evening, filling our large dharma room to
capacity. If I have forgotten, chanting the Heart Sutra
with 50 people in that beautiful hall with its hardwood
floor, big, rough-hewn beams, presided over by an
enormous gold buddha–all this reminds me of the power
of zen practice to bring people together, to renew the
spirit, and thereby to help the world.
How often I look at my fellow practitioners–some have
been at it for 20 or 30 years–and especially at the
monks, in their strange robes: bald-headed, intent,
sincere, and, I must conclude, utterly mad! What is
this bowing till our quadracepts are burning, this
chanting
ourselves hoarse, and this sitting until our knees ache?
Have we lost our minds?
So often I want only to weep with gratitude at such
madness. We have not lost our minds, exactly. We have
simply come to realize that we all lost our minds a
long, long time ago. This practice is our way to
recover our true mind once more. The very act of
sitting in meditation, some might say, is recovery
itself.
Parke Burgess
Rudolf's Diner 