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Tomorrow I’ll go to Blue Cliff Monastery. In the Catskills, in New York. I left Plum Village on August 25th 2010. And disrobed on that day (entered the monastic Zendo and left my Sanghati robe on the altar). Blue Cliff is a sister monastery to Plum Village. And tomorrow I will see some of the brothers and sisters I used to live with so very closely. Sunday I will see the teacher who has been so exceptionally important to me, Thich Nhat Hanh.
I was working with A today. Doing whatever that work we do together is called (energy work? life changing miracle work? two friends talking about stuff work?). We ended up sharing a lot about containers, since they have been so important and elusive to me these last years. As I quest for the container that will offer the best conditions for living my weird version of a meaningful life.
We also talked about some of the heretofore not quite fully reconciled seeming contradictions that I have carried around since finding deep happiness and meaning in monastic chapters; the tension between life as a man in the world and a monk in the monastery.
It was interesting, where we got to in the exploration; that (of course!) there is no perfect container and there is no static form that is just right. Instead there are values and essences and composites that resonate most deeply. We all want structure and maybe we need some kind of structure to make sense of our lives, to order ourselves and locate, whether we live in a ‘simple’ natural environment or a wild big city, full of overt complexities. And/but where we landed this evening was essence and values. Trust. Compassion. Faith. Integrity. Alignment. Love. I’ll say that last one again; love.
And as we were charting this path, I saw clearly that living any one of these values deeply means to live them all deeply (queue Buddhist teachings on emptiness). I was talking with A about an exercise I did years ago: Look up at the biggest screen in Times Square. And imagine the core of who you are flashing across that screen, in one word or in a simple phrase. When I did the exercise in 2006 the word was LOVE. It still is.
Since then I lived – fairly briefly – the monk form. In a robe I found that I could embody and offer love better and more than any other form that I had been before. And there is the possibility that I will move back into that form. But like all forms, particularly ones that come with a lot of structure (like the ‘Buddhist monk’ structure) – there are both freedoms and restrictions. Freedom from and freedom to etc.
So – what I am just beginning to figure on now is I guess what would be called formless form in Buddhism. Which can be a slippery slope to moral and spiritual relativism if one is not careful. Yes, anchoring in practice and values but not being bound by structure. Not looking for a safe place in a container of any kind. Instead taking refuge in and living solely from the values themselves. The part of me that is still weirdly idealistic sees the wisdom and beauty of this path. The part of me that gets bumped and bruised and ground by life in the world outside the monastery – that part of me can still just want a little bit of safe container to curl up in (like a quasi-normal job, or a piece of land I ‘own’ or something like that).
Anyway. Tomorrow I will step back into the monastic container if even just for a little while. I will hear the sound of the bell. I will drink really great tea with some dearly loved friends. I will open my heart and listen for what happens. What else to do?
The photo: from Santa Fe last week, where I was meeting with a few nuclear physicists on a pretty wild clean energy project. More on that another time.
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