A Single Thread.net

Monastic Obedience

The first step on the way to humility is to obey an order without delaying for a moment.  That is a response which comes easily to those who hold nothing dearer than Christ himself.

In this passage from his Rule, Benedict instructs monks to aspire toward humility. Obedience paves the way, and love of Christ is fuel for the journey.

To compare and contrast this Christian message with Zen, we can take a look at an ancient Zen chant

To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.”

Students of Zen aspire to be actualized by myriad things. Forgetting the self paves the way, and studying the self is fuel for the journey.

To be “actualized by myriad things” is to be so free of desire that we can be in the world without doing harm to anything or anyone, wanting nothing for ourselves, needing nothing from others.  No pushing, no grasping, no knowing.  No suffering.  Everything just as it is.  Allowing the great unfolding of time and space and myriad things to proceed, unhindered by our tiny, inconsequential minds, Awake to it all.

You might find that as you read, or hear, these words, you have reactions. Perhaps you feel judgment, confusion or disbelief. Maybe it’s inspiration or a disconnect you feel. Whatever your reaction, the path is to recognize these reactions and examine them.  More than obedience to the way, Buddhists aspire to study our responses to the Way, and to life as it is, and find out for ourselves.

Turn around the light to shine within…” says another Zen chant,
“then just return.”

Return, that is, back to reading this essay, back to living your life. Then, shine the light again on your actions and reactions, over and over, bringing the light of awareness to body, speech and mind.

At the Art Institute in Chicago is a huge stone Buddha that I visit when I am there.  He exudes a dynamic but restful ease as he sits in silent meditation. He concentrates deeply to hold everything he feels and thinks in his awareness. He receives it all within the embrace of his open, allowing presence. Nothing is excluded. Nothing is grasped.

This iconic Buddha, and the one on my altar, remind me to continually recognize that my thoughts and feelings become my suffering. My pain is also my human condition.  I practice holding it with an open heart.  And so, I study myself, shining the light of my awareness, being Buddha. This Buddha, this awareness of all that is present, is what I most dearly love.  It is fuel for my journey toward forgetting the self.

When we shine the light within, we look to see if what Buddha taught is true; that our pride and greed, our emotionality and the constant stream of thoughts are born of an identity. We have cultivated a person who we think is solid, but this person is only in our mind.  We come to know Buddha’s rest and ease, the result when we stop believing in the self we thought we were.

 It’s no use to seek the truth,
just let false views cease.”

With consistent self-study and the help of a teacher, we grow in our ability to forget this false self.  We learn not to construct another identity, not to replace pride with humility, anger with passivity, or greed with indifference.

We learn the Buddha way, to not attach to any fixed views, but to walk through the world with hearts and minds open, responsive, flexible, and authentic, at one with the Buddha in everyone and everything. It includes obedience and goes beyond it.

Quotes in order of appearance

“Genjokoan” by Eihei Dogen  https://www.asinglethread.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/A-Single-Thread-Chant-Book-rev-2.pdf.

“Song of the Grass-Roof Hermitage,” by Shitou Xiqian, https://www.asinglethread.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/A-Single-Thread-Chant-Book-rev-2.pdf

“Faith In Mind,” by Kanchi Sosan,  https://www.asinglethread.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/A-Single-Thread-Chant-Book-rev-2.pdf.

Vow to Train

“No one should aspire to gain a reputation for holiness.  First of all, we must actually become holy then there would be some truth in having a reputation for it.  The way to become holy is faithfully to fulfill God’s commandments every day by loving chastity, by hating no one, by avoiding envy and hostile rivalry, by not becoming full of self but showing due respect for our elders and love for those who are younger, by praying in the love of Christ for those who are hostile to us, by seeking reconciliation and peace before the sun goes down whenever we have a quarrel with another, and finally by never despairing of the mercy of God.”

Eleven years ago I received the Buddhist Precepts and vowed to train to keep them for the rest of my life: to do good, to do no harm and to benefit all beings.  These are expressed in actual practice as in: do not kill, steal, lie, misuse sexuality or intoxicate. I emphasize ‘train’ for to keep them perfectly is impossible.  The Precepts are guides, instructions to inform my heart/mind on how to live daily.  They lead me in the direction to ‘wholly-ness’. I may lose sight of them but they are always there.

When I first read today’s given passage of St. Benedict’s Rule those precepts came to my mind and I set the two teachings side by side.  Both ask the same generosity of disciples- to not harm, to do good and to care for all beings. I began to work the two together but decided to reread the whole of chapter 4. The chapter burst open. It took on an intimacy I had not seen before.  It hit me that I am still so much the center of my life. I felt a sorrow with the flash of recognition that I hold so much back and give so little.

There also arose delight as I read the whole chapter.  It was as if among all the guidelines, Divinity popped up and said, “Here I am!” and I was surprised into thinking, “Oh, I didn’t see you at first.” It was almost as if I met the Divine face to face.

I picked out lines in the chapter that particularly spoke to me and chose to reflect on one that challenges me. That one tells me to throw my failings down at the feet of the Divine. To do this is to take refuge in the mercy of God for, as St. Benedict reminds us, we are never to despair of that mercy.  It’s letting go of the failings which is the challenge; to just drop the selfish and harmful actions at those feet and not take them back to be gone over again and again; wallowing in guilt and refusing mercy. This letting go also touches my everyday living.

I am practiced in defending myself and making excuses for my mistakes and negligence and of covering up my vulnerability. Again the challenge is to see it, to recognize it without blame and then, change.

You Think You Are More Holy Than You Are

No one should aspire to gain a reputation for holiness.  First of all, we must actually become holy; then there would be some truth in having a reputation for it.  The way to become holy is faithfully to fulfill God’s commandments every day by loving chastity, by hating no one, by avoiding envy and hostile rivalry, by not becoming full of self but showing due respect for our elders and love for those who are younger, by praying in the love of Christ for those who are hostile to us, by seeking reconciliation and peace before the sun goes down whenever we have a quarrel with another, and finally by never despairing of the mercy of God.

While these essays were being composed, I received from my teacher, also the editor of the essay, a recommendation that I scrap the piece I had written to accompany this quote from Benedict, and begin again.  Her advice was accompanied by thoughtful comments, the gist of which were, “You think you are more holy than you are.”

My mood plummeted.  How could I have been so self-important as to declare myself holy in any way?  I did not like being someone whose ideas were seemingly rejected wholesale.  My teacher suggested that my next attempt focus on my experience of being re-directed. I felt exposed, and daunted by the task ahead.  I wanted to disappear into a hole and not come out until spring.

Instead, I got out my knitting.  I willed myself not to think, just to knit, focusing on each stitch as it made its way from one needle to the other, on the jeweled colors in the yarn as they emerged from the skein. After a few rows, it became clear that I was feeling humiliation, not humility.  OK, I thought, I am caught in my ego.  This clear-seeing was a little beacon of light in the darkness.  I began to trust what was happening.

In the middle of the night, I awoke, already deep in contemplation about the essay.  My first thought: Gratitude for the instructions, “You are still operating from your ego.”  More gratitude for the specific feedback that detailed how the first draft was riddled with self-absorption.  I would have these teachings to work with in the weeks ahead.  More gratitude for my teacher’s mercy, her willingness to instruct me despite my failures. The gratitude was another beacon of light within the darkness I felt.  Gradually, through the hours before dawn, more was seen and understood.

Spiritual practice is primarily a deconstruction project.  We aspire to let go of everything, to know nothing.  We write these essays to show the how of this deconstruction, the how of the Way toward holiness. We want to be holy, yet the eyes we see with, the mind we think with are  SELF absorbed.  We need a way out of the familiar conceptual territory that locks us into the ego.  Sometimes we have to get the rug pulled out, the road blocked.  Having my essay returned with a “false holiness, start over” stamp was such an opportunity.

Past experience with this bottom-dropping-out state has provided me with some tolerance for it, though it remains excruciating in its emptiness, its dark and desolate-ness.  It is uncomfortable there, where what one has always known and relied upon is gone.  Could I continue to trust it?

Over the next few days, the sense of being without a compass returned several times.  It was always unnerving.  I wrote some paragraphs, then discarded them.  Perhaps I needed help.   One morning as I sat with my eyes glued to the computer screen, trying to find a way forward, my eyes came back to the words I had used to describe this lost place as “empty” and “desolate.”  Something inside came together.  This place isn’t dark or desolate; it’s just empty of my thinking about my ego.  I embraced the emptiness, entered into it.  It felt as though my head expanded as my mind too became spacious and open, but also settled and still.

The defeat of the ego is a precious gift.  Both the Buddhist precepts and Christian commandments, as articulated by Benedict, above, are opportunities to hand the ego more moments of defeat.  They are, when faithfully executed, a disengagement from our conceptual mind with its sticky feelings of right and wrong, good and bad; a clear map for how to pull the rug out.

Aspire to Be Holy

No one should aspire to gain a reputation for holiness.  First of all we must actually become holy then there would be some truth in having a reputation for it.  The way to become holy is faithfully to fulfill God’s commandments every day by loving chastity, by hating no one, by avoiding envy and hostile rivalry, by not becoming full of self but showing respect for our elders and love for those younger, by praying in the love of Christ for those who are hostile to us, by seeking reconciliation and peace before the sun goes down whenever we have a quarrel with another, and finally never despairing of the mercy of God.

Benedict’s Rule Chapter 4 – Guidelines for Christian and Monastic Good Practice, Section 11

The longest Chapter in Benedicts Rule is Chapter 4 on Guidelines for Christian and Monastic Good Practice.  In this chapter he is trying to help a group of people learn to live together.  The chapter is full of good counsel:  control your body with self discipline, refrain from speaking evil, don’t be lazy, keep the reality of death always before your eyes, avoid empty talk, confess to God with real repentance.  People in monasteries or in lay-life could be well-served to follow his counsel.  There is a deep morality in what he is offering.

In Buddhist teaching moral conduct (sila), is a first step to having a calm mind.  Without this, spiritual practice is impossible.  And I think that this is what Benedict is getting at.  In the section quoted above, he finally gets to holiness.  He says that the only way to holiness is to follow God’s commandments every day.  Again, probably good advice…but here is the problem I see and the problem Benedict saw.  We can gain a reputation for holiness, we can do all the right things and not be holy.  A reputation can be faked or polished or enhanced.  We can look good and still hold back.  Our doing good can be self-serving, as in we want to look good.

Holiness comes from the word whole.  Being holy takes whole-hearted effort.  Not half-hearted effort or effort when we can get something in return.  One can’t do holiness, one must be holy.

Let me give you an example.  When I was ten, we flew to New York City to attend my Jewish grandparent’s 50^th wedding anniversary.  We stayed with my father’s sister in the biggest house I had ever been in.  The house had a formal dining room, more bedrooms and bathrooms that I could imagine and they had a live-in cook.  The anniversary party was in March, the middle of Lent.  My Mother, a practicing Catholic, was fasting.  I remember getting up early one morning and going to look for her.  I found her in the kitchen having a conversation with the cook while she ate a soft boiled egg and one piece of toast.  She skipped the big breakfast we all had in the dining room.  I also remember her coming into the house early on the one Sunday morning we were in New York.  She called for a taxi to take her to Mass.  She gave me, my sister and brother a dispensation, but she got herself to Mass.

In my memory, my Mother was wholly committed to practicing her catholic faith in what must have been a difficult situation.  It seems to me that she lived and practiced her faith, not because she had to abide by all the rules, not because she was afraid of falling into mortal sin, not because she was trying to impress someone else.  She just lived and practiced her faith.  What is surprising to me, some sixty years later I remember these two scenes.

A lot happened the ten days we were in New York, a lot that I don’t remember.  I do remember seeing my Mother eating in the kitchen.  What was it about this that I understood as a 10-year old?  After reflecting on Benedict’s quote, I would say it was holiness…not someone seeking a reputation for holiness, but the real thing.

Following commandments or precepts can help us find wholeness.  This practice of following rules is one step on a long journey that can lead to holiness. When we experience wholeness in ourselves or see it in someone else we can know when it is honest, when it is without pretense.  But if we are looking for holiness/wholeness as a destination, a result for following rules, we miss the boat.  As I said, I always thought of my mother as a practicing Catholic.  What I saw that morning in New Rochelle was a glimpse of my mother’s practice…honest and without pretense.  Honest, steadfast, without pretense were qualities she exemplified. And today as an adult….I see similar qualities of holiness exemplified here at St. Nick’s in the faithful, steadfast, and never give up qualities of Sister Christina. When she’s in town she’s at daily Mass. Time and time again I have seen her steadfast, never give up practice of her faith. Neither of them aspired to become holy, they lived faithful to their path. This is what seems to be the message of Benedict….for all of us.