One monastic aspiration is transparency – behaving the same everywhere, alone or with others, not hiding “shameful” parts or preferentially displaying “good” parts. As one old desert Abba, Poemen, said, “Teach your mouth to say that which you have in your heart.”
A strict divide between lay people and “professional religious” grew up in Christianity after it became a state religion in the 300s. Christians weren’t to kill. How could Constantine, the first Christian ruler, control his empire without soldiers? Yet all his soldiers were required to be Christians. A solution was to let most folks follow a lax version of Christian practices while professional religious kept all the precepts for everyone.
One side effect is that lay people are shut out of the messy, human reality of monastic life. The sisters I knew donned "monastic habits" in public, acting out ideals of serenity, kindness and welcome. Yet they were like anyone off the street in private, often uncritically indulging destructive behaviors. This need to act like monks to guests damaged the sisters and deluded guests, at least those desperate to find holy people to follow. Other guests became cynical on glimpsing the underlying clay of the sisters’ feet.
Such an “invisible cloister” exists within communities as well. As a novice, I rarely had emotionally honest exchanges with the fully professed sisters. I don’t know if they had honest emotional relationships with each other. Like anyone, they were often jealous, impatient, frightened and angry - but I only saw them flame certain targets, e.g. “evil others,” such as Bush and his cohorts, or those of less status, such as novices.
Most of us don a public face outside the privacy of our homes. The monastic desire for transparency seems easily lost in the all-too-human desire to look good to “outsiders.” Could we stand to let guests into the whole thing – to display the farts and short tempers alongside the generous hearts and soothing voices? This would be healthier for all concerned. Would we still need private spaces for members to relax and “be themselves” or could we live with guests everywhere in our home at all times? How would that feel?
Enclosure also separates monks from the distractions of society. Is a physical or emotional barrier necessary for that? Does separation from people less focused on practice have other benefits (or harms)?
How can a community support each other in displaying their whole selves, flaws and all?
copyright R. Elena Tabachnick, November 2006
"Would we still need private spaces for members to relax and “be themselves” or could we live with guests everywhere in our home at all times? How would that feel?"
ReplyDeleteThe times I've had guests stay a long time in my home, I've found the experience to be very tiring. Aside from the public/private face, there's also the problem that guests typically require more care than members of the community. So when guests are around all the time, the face I wear most is my "host" face, and eventually it's tiring to do that, because it leaves little time for my own habits.
On a side tangent, I wonder if enclosure affects men and women differently. Your experience of the monastery from a female point of view has similarities to Karen Armstrong's experience. But my impression of monks in community is that things are often a bit less ... dramatic. I don't know if that's just me seeing their public face instead of the private one, though. It certainly was the case that my experience from college was that mixed gender and all-male living groups were less excitable than all-female groups.
You're right. No one can maintain hostess energy over the long haul. Pure exhaustion would do in our desire to wear a "company face," and our ability care-take guests on top of normal duties. But as Benedict says, no monastery is without guests.
ReplyDeleteHis community design let only a few members, well practiced in humility, have contact with guests. If the work required it, more would be assigned so no one would be exhausted by it, but only have to deal with the more important dangers to growth in humility. As Syncletica (one of the few, well-known women from among the desert hermits) said, even strong “souls...disintegrate in the face of praise.” her antidote was to keep spiritual gains hidden and highlight failures to anyone who came seeking. She even said to talk up invented failures “thus rejecting the good esteem of people while concealing good acts.”
Benedict seems to have been too realistic to expect any of us to have the courage to do that. Instead he used the cloister – keeping community members from contact with the outside - even preventing talk about it.
Everyone in the community lived, worked, ate and slept together. It would have been difficult to hide anything about one’s self in such close quarters. Leaders were to live the exact same life in the same quarters as everyone else. Exposure, and acceptance of one another’s foibles was a tool to foster transparency and humility. Since everyone would know that everyone else was equally messed up, all would have to learn to support “with the greatest patience one another’s weaknesses of body or behavior,” as Benedict instructs at the end of his Rule.
(Interestingly, in his day this was a cushy life for most members. They got regular meals with two dishes plus seasonal fruits and vegetables, decent clothes and a whole bed all to themselves - with blankets. Very high living for people of poor and laboring backgrounds.)
Unfortunately, monastic life seems to have rarely followed Benedict’s organization. Pursuit of true, inner, humility for everyone was dropped in favor of civic and religious power, economic stability and/or wealth, power hierarchies and class stratification within communities, and focus on outside works from guest-houses and hospitals to universities.
So who knows if his design works. I suspect that cloistering – visible or invisible - undermines the development of humility. Will uncontrolled exposure work? I don’t know. I’m probably too idealistic. Yet the very exhaustion you describe would be the key. Community members couldn’t keep up a company front if they had no cloister to retreat to and rest.
On your tangent: I haven't experienced the gender disparity you describe… Can you give some examples?
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, men are more “excitable” than women. I worked for years in a heavily male, scientific field. Famous male scientists came to actual physical blows over stupid things like the name of an obscure critter that had been extinct for millions of years. Two thirds of any working session was always wasted on male-male, hierarchy, dominance displays - most people confused jockeying for position with “work.” And most woman I know have had at least one experience of a man going into crazy rage when rejected - often over some impersonal thing like buying a product - screaming, calling her “bitch” or worse, etc. This usually happens when the man is alone with one woman, so they can keep up appearances.
My experience of male Benedictine monks is that they run the gamut, just like women – exhibiting a full range of personality weaknesses and strengths. Some value the development of humility; others just want to get along. Some are arrogant and controlling; others are gentle and compassionate. Some spew self-righteous anger all over the place; others laugh at themselves and their own foibles. So male Benedictine community seems no better at fostering development of serenity, humility, selflessness or compassion, etc. for the preponderance of members.
There's a comic comment I heard at a Benedictine conference. A (male) monk said, “the only reason we haven't yet murdered each other is the silence at breakfast.” Suggests men are as apt to get caught up in their personality, teapot tempests as women. And I’ve spoken to young male monks disillusioned that elder monks were no more likely to be spiritual greats than non-monastic elders. So that is not gender-specific.
I don’t know if this is equally true of modern Buddhist or Hindu monastics. However, Buddhist rules for monks prohibit all kinds of normal human behaviors, so these must be common – like influencing someone to donate better food to you or taking community resources for personal use or procuring special items, or maligning or alienating others in the community.
I have noticed that some women’s communities have more humble physical plants than associated male communities. For instance, Assumption Abbey in North Dakota has old stone cloister walks, high ceilings and huge picture windows in the dining room. The nearby, Sacred Heart women’s community looks like a 1960’s elementary school. Also men seem to have more non-monastic servants cooking and cleaning for them.
I’ve also wondered if men’s and mixed communities allow more time for personal, monastic practices - like lectio. Are they equally workaholic? It seems like there are cultural assumptions that women religious - whether nominally “contemplative” or “apostolic” (organized to do a mission in the world) – must be workhorses. Is that why there is so little time for spiritual practices that do not overtly “serve others?”