Ordinary Light

After my monastic experience, you'd think I'd be suspicious of any self-proclaimed purveyors of Truth. You'd think I'd look first for the man behind the curtain. Still, I thought Amma was different - what with her free-hug darshan and "all money for charities" cant. Besides, many of my friends were Amma followers

True, her idea of karma was kindergarten simplistic & opposed to my own perceptions (people as completely separate and individually responsible for all positive or negative acts - which are totted up like a bank account). And of course, I never thought her some perfect, ego-less, goddess-on-earth or expected her organizations to be of pristine spiritual quality. Still I thought her a worthy guru, someone who channeled the divine energy more clearly than most

I was so desperate for help cutting through the fog so I could resonate with the divine light within. The way I had done in the monastery. The way I so thirsted for, but could not find in the world. Amma's darshan was thick with that energy. It rose from the crowd to fill the hall. I felt I could happily swim in it forever.

Amma's darshans were equally thick with buyers and sellers. The first time I saw Amma, my desire not to own stuff prevailed. I spent little and the marketplace atmosphere slid by unremarked. The second time...

That it was for charity bolstered my prickling desire for acquisition. The demon avarice overwhelmed me. Oh, not just to buy objects. I spent much on various forms of pure donation. Still... By American standards, I am a poor person. Yet, I spent all my pitiful savings. ALL.

This hit after I came home. To help myself feel okay, I decided to listen to people helped by Amma's charities, people much poorer than me, a homeless person who'd gotten a home, someone who couldn't afford school fees who'd been given an education. I searched the internet for the blogs, posts, notes, letters of real people whose real lives had been changed. I found...

Nada. Ziltch. Zip. Nothing but the glittering ads of the Amma organization, itself.

Huh? Given the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people her charities had served, surely some should have an independent web presence. Nope. Instead, I found disillusioned ex-devotees eager to tell the other side of the story. They gave massive evidence that Amma was but one more victim of the Guru Effect.

sigh.

Maybe people who truly have a larger opening to the universal, spiritual energy generally start out well. Yet more often than not, they get caught in the snare of pride. Followers are desperate for a divine savior. They want to worship the person, hang on her every word, etc. Glitz, hype & the need to appear as more than she is soon become irresistible. Pride opens the door. Soon all the little demons - desire for ownership, for relationships and for consumption (aka avarice, lust and gluttony) - are holding a rave in her house.

The 4th century, desert Amma, Syncletica, advised against teaching or leading others, saying, "As wax melts when it is near fire, the soul disintegrates in the face of praise."

She went on, "Pride attacks subtly and secretly a soul that considers itself zealous and diligent in discipline... The soul imagines that it has grasped matters incomprehensible to the majority, that it is superior. It forgets all its sins and mistakes. The soul is deluded with positions of command - with teaching posts and displays of healing. Thus deceived, the soul perishes and is destroyed."

In other words: the Guru Effect - when the clay that every guru has for feet rises to consume her or his whole being.

Does that mean there is no divine light, that there are no legit teachers or practices that can help us find that light in ourselves? No.

I've literally seen that light: in myself and in others. I know it is there. Waiting. Loving. Gentle. Eternal. Non-judgmental. Self, yet no-self. Reality. Ordinary.

Yet, there are no magic leaders who can take us there miraculously, cleaning out all our gunk without effort.

The Dalai Lama is another exalted spiritual leader with his own clay feet. He repeatedly says, "I am an ordinary man." It is important to get the message:

We are all equally ordinary. We are also all equally divine. Some folks are born more aware of their spiritual being - with a larger open channel to the universal energy. Some are diligent in practices that open their hearts to that energy through humility and compassion. Yet clay remains part of each and every one of us.

Clay and spirit. The balance goes one way. The balance goes another way. And there we are, doing and being life as a body and a spirit, as ordinary and as light.

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

A Dichotomy of Extremes: Obedience to Self or Community

“Remember, people are essentially good beings looking for safety to be who they are,” a friend sent in her 2006 Christmas message.

An important question for spiritual communities, and spiritual seekers, is this: where is the balance between group needs and individual inspiration? Can a healthy monastic community grow individual gifts - even though some will go against the plans of superiors, long-held group practices or a community’s stated mission? On the other side: can individuals be obedient to internal, divine inspiration and yet bow to the needs of a community?

My monastic experience raised this question in spades.

I entered community desperate to discover, and live as, who I truly was - a basic part of humility. That meant accepting my whole self: good, bad and indifferent. And that meant facing shameful parts of myself. I thought community would hold up an uncompromising mirror to show my deep flaws AND my wondrous divinity. Yet offer the support and loving acceptance of others engaged in the same work.

As I read Benedict, this seemed to be the main purpose of monasteries. Maybe other modern communities had this goal. Mine didn’t. For one thing, the old sisters were bound up in a superiority that derailed everything else.

They seemed to exemplify a flaw that Syncletica warned vehemently about. “Through pride [the Enemy] attacks subtly and secretly a soul that considers itself zealous and diligent in discipline. …The soul imagines that it has grasped matters that are incomprehensible to the majority and that it is superior in [spiritual practices]. He seduces it to forget all its sins… He steals from its mind the memory of its mistakes… He deludes this person with positions of command and high office… with teaching posts and displays of healing. Thus deceived, then, the soul perishes and is destroyed, smitten with a wound [pride] that is hard to heal.”

Of course I did my part with an excess of doubts, angry muttering in my head, and a fearful protectiveness when asked to forgo personally inspired, creative work.

The sisters said my negative thoughts were the resistance of an ego that refused to die. Submitting despite myself would lead to freedom.

They could also have quoted Syncletica: “Another evil precedes [pride in spiritual discipline]: disobedience… By means of the opposing virtue of obedience, it is possible to cleanse the festering cancer of the soul, for obedience, Scripture says, is better than sacrifice. (1 Sam 15:22).”

There was the rub. The Spirit in my heart demanded artistic obedience. Wasn’t it denying God to put a human authority above this? Or was I undermining my desire to be emptied by grasping after a personal need?

By the end of my first year, it felt like a knife was twisting in my guts. Breathing was hard and I rarely slept. Each morning I rose frantic to escape. But during morning meditation and prayer, joy would bubble up and I’d see amazing good in the place. If chanting had that effect in a year, I wanted to know what would happen after decades. So each day I committed to stay.

I just didn’t know. Did the pain come from old ego habits refusing to let go? Then persistence would bring me through. But if it was caused by going against my spirit, I didn’t belong, no matter how illuminated I felt in prayer.

I was in the midst of this struggle when the sisters kicked me out.

This monastery let in few new women. All had an intense call. All struggled to meet the old sisters' demands. Yet almost all were kicked out. We had different personalities and the reasons given varied widely.

Now I believe we were dumped because we brought too much SELF - too much individual gift. We just couldn't lose ourselves under the personalities, behavioral norms and control of the old sisters while staying true to the person our souls demanded we be.

This points to an interesting dichotomy of extremes. In most western monastic communities throughout history, group identity vastly overwhelmed individual identity. The point was to dissolve your self in group norms and habits. American Benedictine communities like mine grew up in the 1940s and 50s when hordes of teenage girls were strongly molded into group behavior by authoritarian, punitive methods.

Meanwhile, the rest of American culture moved toward extremes of individuality.

Neither extreme seems particularly healthy for individuals - spiritually or psychologically. And neither extreme seems healthy for communities.

We all are seeking safety to be ourselves. Warped by loss or fear of loss, as well as the sense of needing to please to deserve love, many people have no idea who they really are. And few have hope of a community that wants only to provide the safety for each to find out.

Could a new kind of monastery fulfill this desperate need?

Monastery for People of No Particular Tradition

One of the books I took into the monastery was Radical Spirit. My first blog - now folded into this one - was inspired by a quote in that book, in an essay by Georg Buehler. He bemoaned the lack of monasteries for open-minded spiritual seekers of no particular tradition.

I fit the no particular tradition bill - despite a nascent and eccentric Christianity. I did not doubt my call to community - it was so tactile and overwhelming. Yet it never made sense. Why would someone like me be led into a traditional, Benedictine monastery?

Of course, it was very, very, very liberal... to a Roman Catholic. But that was hardly liberal at all to me. I had to keep reminding myself of the courage it took for Catholic sisters to make the changes they had made - a gender neutral liturgy, an ask-no-questions, open Eucharist, and an ecumenical community. (In fact, soon after they kicked me out, the local Bishop and told them, "Either be Catholic or be ecumenical. You can't be both." To the sisters' credit, they choose ecumenical.)

I wondered if the Spirit called me into the monastery to open it a little bit to something beyond the narrow "ecumenism" they'd envisioned. Then one day, a monastery for people of any (or no) tradition might grow there. A traditional community has a strength that comes from roots sunk deep in centuries of experience. Wouldn't it be great if those roots could support a new kind of monasticism that welcomed all, without any theological litmus tests?

If I had to be silent about much of my spiritual experience in the meantime, then o.k. "Prefer silence" was an important monastic directive. Besides, for someone with my total lack of background and love of history, it was fascinating to study monastic and Christian sources.

Maybe the Spirit was trying to grow a new branch from that monastery. Maybe not. Either way, the sisters were uninterested.

So there went my one shot at the easy road of traditional, monastic life in community. I'm certainly grateful for the experience, now I'm out on the MUCH harder road of monastic-in-the-world... although grief for that way of life rises up and swamps me on a regular basis.

And out here, the original question gains greater significance. Why aren't there monasteries for people of no particular religious tradition?

There seem to be a growing number of liberal, interfaith or no faith folks who are drawn to monastic community, yet can't fit into one of the traditional faiths. I've met some online, read similar musings in other blogs, and noticed a plethora of on and off line communities.

How do we go from speculation to foundation?

And how do we find the strength, not to mention the gonzo-ameliorating customs, of a traditional community - especially norms that prevent the so-easy slide into personality cult?

If you follow this label, you'll find posts on some of the issues a no-tradition monastery might face. Most are issues any monastery has that would be heightened by lack of a common Rule or Guru or whatever to set the norms. Success with that lack will mean more conscious, relationship work, more tolerance of mistakes and emotional uproar... and lots more humility.

One Spiritual Size Does Not Fit All

I want to better distinguish between the voice(s) of my personality self (or ego or whatever you call it) and those from my core Self (that I call my soul). Then I'll be able to note, observe and unhook personality desires when they arise, rather than letting them rule me. By living more out of my soul - which is a lovely, dancing-joy light - I can use my personality traits to do my work in the world... but my work will be more effective, and apt to increase love and understanding rather adding noise, aggravation and confusion.

I've been impressed by the changes a good friend made in this regard after a year-long, intuitive guidance seminar at a local, spiritual training center. If I can find the money, I want to go through the same program. This last weekend, I went to a workshop which was the precursor.

Like the history of the center's founder and main teacher, the workshop techniques were a little idiosyncratic, but I found them very effective. And it struck me once again: we're all trying to get to the same place, using very similar spiritual practices. Our spiritual aspirations and practices only appear different because of varying religious trappings and terminology.

This was really obvious soon after I left the monastery when I went to Al Anon. The meeting I started with read through each step and each tradition in order... then started over - sort of like how we read the Rule in monastic "chapter." (For those who don't know, Al Anon is for anyone with an alcoholic family member or friend, and uses the AA 12 steps.)

I kept crying at first because the similarities with Benedictine monasticism were so immediate. All the important pieces were there, except cut up and rearranged. It was like Bob S. and Bill W., the Big Book authors, had channeled Evagrius and other early desert hermits, as well as Benedict.

I thought, "My monastic community refused to help me get where I need to go, but I could find the exact same help in Al Anon, and they aren't going to kick me out."

12 step programs talk about "serenity," Benedictines about "humility," Evagrius about "apatheia" (dispassion), and Buddhists about "vulnerable heart." But these all seem to be the same state of open-hearted awareness - with a total absence of looking down on others or yourself - a state which naturally leads to upwelling compassion and happiness.

It doesn't really matter which one of these programs you or I follow. Whatever approach resonates with you and works for you is best... for you. Because it's not about finding the one correct belief, but about working out our issues... and receiving the gift of divine at-one-ment that follows. Whatever the shape of door that most easily takes me or you or her or him there is good.

One size does not fit all. So aren't we lucky that there are so many sizes available.

Unity Is Not Comfortable Or Safe

A few weeks ago, I listened to a speech by Abbot Primate Notker Wolf "the highest representative of Benedictine men and women worldwide." He had been asked to speak on "ecumenism in the 21st century." Being as I am almost entirely deaf to the nuances of Catholic culture, I may have misunderstood him, but what I thought I heard was very interesting.

Most of his speech argued that calls for religious "unity" were asking the impossible, given human diversity and nature. He supported this contention with personal experiences and global examples.

He pointed out that tolerance of diversity might be common in some areas, but religious tolerance was not "unity." Protestations that we "all get along" or "learn we all share the same faith" generally covered the expectation that everyone else would change to become just like one's self. An insidious hidden agenda of many calls for Christian unity, much less calls for unity with other faiths, this actually caused disunity. A similar expectation undermined the commonly stated Christian desire that we "all be one."

Yet after a long, torturous journey through disheartening realism, Notker Wolf's final message was uplifting. If we really care about "unity" we must learn to live together and love one another with all our differences intact. He mentioned that he meant really live together, not simply host one another as guests, and then go home to our separate communities (as Benedictines are so adept at doing.)

"Ecumenism" meant joining together, and learning to live together, despite old enmities, without first curing those enmities.

What a breath of fresh and bracing air.

Near the end of his rule, Benedict says that as monks grow in humility they learn to support with the greatest patience one another's weaknesses of character and body. Benedict expects monks to be full of weaknesses. The goal is not curing your own faults, much less your neighbor's, but learning to embrace each other - annoying weaknesses and all.

If real "unity" is a matter of joining across difference, it is not going to be safe or comfortable. It requires letting go of fear, letting go of the need to own and control, and being willing to open to those different enough to feel very dangerous - without expecting that they will change in any way.

Do I think I can do this? Not to any very great extent. But I desperately wish to try.

It's very heartening that a prominent Benedictine such as Abbot Primate Notker Wolf would set such a hard, realistic agenda for Benedictine communities. He makes me think some mainstream Benedictines might be ready to try also.

The Little House That Many Faiths Built

I mentioned in a previous post that last May I went to four dharma talks by the Dalai Lama. Before saying that all faiths had useful things to offer the world (though only understanding of emptiness and no-self led to liberation form suffering), he said it was dangerous to switch from your birth tradition. The big danger was confusion. Since every religion’s concepts grew out of cultural assumptions, anyone not raised in a similar culture could fail to understand the concepts.

I'm pretty sure the DL is right. I will never understand exactly what he means by emptiness as there are cultural nuances I cannot access. Although, as he also pointed out, it is only the understanding that comes from direct, personal experience that turns intellectual knowledge gained from study into wisdom.

I was raised by agnostic parents who originally came from different religions. They said, “go to services with your friends and then make up your own mind.” So we did. As my family traveled around the world, this became an interfaith experience.

From my global nomad background, I have my own peculiar, cultural basis for understanding. I also have my own path to knowledge from direct, personal experience. I trust the knowledge, cultural perspective and wisdom my path has brought. Will these bring me to the ultimate truth? Unlikely. But that is not my goal.

I like the metaphor of a little house. My perceptions and experiences (personal and cultural) open up a tiny window out of which I peer at the Beyond Vastness of ALL. I know I'm only getting a small and skewed glimpse. However, all around me are others whose different personal and cultural experiences open up other windows.

How much more I get to glimpse when I listen to the descriptions of those others – even if I can’t understand all the subtle nuances of their view.

The facets of the ALL that others perceive come to me as second-hand "concepts." Without my own direct experience, I can't judge their truth or authenticity. But if mine is legit, I like to assume theirs are also.

And anyway, inclusion makes for a much more fascinating universe.

Tradition Speaks: The Dalai Lama On Interfaith Practice

About a week ago, I attended four dharma talks by the Dalai Lama. Immediately afterwards I went to a weekend retreat with a well-known Benedictine teacher.

Before I get into the topic of this post, let me say that both were illuminating. The combination applied directly to my personal journey and was very healing. No one will be surprised if I say that the Dalai Lama blew me away - in the very best sense of that term.

However, what I want to address here is a similar statement both teachers made about interfaith practice.

What I heard from the Dalai Lama was that switching from the tradition in which you were raised was dangerous. You would be prone to confusion. The concepts in Buddhism (or any other faith) grow out of cultural assumptions. Not raised in an Asian culture, a westerner following Buddhism could fail to understand the concepts. Confused by her misinterpretations, instead of gaining liberation, she would become mired in further illusion.

He didn't say not to switch, but that switching had a specific danger: confusion.

Of course, he also took the time to honor other paths. Final liberation from suffering only comes out of understanding, and experiencing the truth of, emptiness and no-self. But one from a tradition of faith (in a teacher or God), love or compassion, could cultivate those traits. And that is of great usefulness.

The Benedictine also spoke of not straying from an original tradition. Not surprisingly, she was a bit more dogmatic. For example, she told a woman who'd practiced Buddhism for awhile but returned to Catholicism that she'd been "lucky" to "escape unharmed." This teacher trotted out the ol' spiritual mountain metaphor, assuming that any interfaith practice was a cover for dalliance in the foothills - with leaps to a new path every time the previous one demanded hard work - and so meant no real spiritual growth.

My response (despite my admiration for the Benedictine teacher, and the whole world's admiration for the Dalai Lama - which he clearly earns as an exemplar of monastic practice, presence and humility): These are old paradigm views.

There is no place in this philosophy for people like me who were raised without religion or spiritual tradition of any kind.

There is no place in this philosophy for people like one of my best friends - a long time participant in Buddhist and Benedictine communities. She says neither faith is broad enough to hold her entire experience.

There is no spiritual good in making my agnostic, humanistic upbringing a straight-jacket that I am somehow "not allowed" to leave - either for fear of "confusion" or "harm?" It was delightfully useful to grow up in, but it no longer fits. I'd cripple myself if I clung to it now. Jesus - to cite one spiritual teacher - repeatedly said, "Do not fear." I'm not going to let fear of harm or confusion or anything else turn me from the adventure of spiritual exploration.

Besides, my inner spirit is a better guide than that.

A last observation to consider: My spiritual guide is a Dominican in her late 70s. She mentioned that many serious spiritual seekers she's met recently seem not to need to climb the mountain. Somehow they are simply getting through without that.

Monastic Dictators

I met a lot of Benedictines, from my community and others. Outside the cloister, guests tended to receive a show of preternatural serenity from the monastics. Inside the cloister, this behavior evaporated as if everyone took their monastics habit off when away from public scrutiny.

It slowly dawned that Benedictine life had not brought these folks anywhere in particular. They weren’t good or bad, but just ordinary, indistinguishable from everyone else. A few took seriously the call to grow in humility. Many paid little attention to monastic practices, caught up in everyday fears, ambitions and desires.

Because I spent a lot of time at the monastery before I entered the community, I knew the sisters were little different from the rest of us. Fear, anger or prejudice ruled them on occasion, just as such passions sometimes ruled me. I thought that was a good thing. We were all beginners, as Benedict expected for those who used his Rule. We could support each other as we walked side-by-side on the same road. The older sisters had spent more time walking it and so could offer advice from their struggles. I looked forward to hearing how they managed the journey. Even though I knew I'd resist, I looked forward getting help looking at myself.

Most of us have a hard time holding a mirror up to ourselves - taking a searching and fearless moral inventory (in the words of AA) that honestly lists both our actual weaknesses and our actual strengths. Like in AA, this is a necessary monastic step. Like in AA, we need the support of peers traveling the road with us. Monastic community is supposed to offer this. As Benedict says, we learn, out of love, to support with the greatest patience each other's weaknesses of body and personality. In that way everyone draws closer to God.

So it wasn't a shock to discover that under the hyper-monastic habits the sisters wore for guests, lived some very ordinary women. What hurt was discovering that the older sisters thought they'd already reached the pinnacle of monastic wisdom. They were "free of ego," and so needed to do no further work on themselves. Even an inadvertent challenge to this view of their achievement could not be tolerated.

How did the monastic promise fall so far short? How could people so easily twist it to support self-indulgence?

12-step programs are a very effective way to gain serenity, which is also the promise of monasticism. In both, we give up the illusion that we are in control. In exchange we gain knowledge and acceptance of our actually weaknesses and strengths.

All the parts of monasticism - from the insights of the old desert hermits to Benedict - are present in the 12 steps and 12 traditions. They are just cut up and rearranged. But Benedictine monasticism has one glaring difference. The monastery is a strict dictatorship. 12-step programs are insistently non-hierarchical, non-organized peer groups. The experience of peers provides a teaching resource, but the only authority is one's own Higher Power.

Benedictines are hardly the only group to found monastic practice on a dictatorial authority. Yet the problems with this approach are all too clear in the arrogance that was the downfall of the sisters I knew. The effectiveness of a non-hierarchical, unprofessional approach is equally clear in the success of 12-step programs in bringing people along the monastic road. But those in 12 step programs mostly go home to their separate lives after meetings. They are not trying to create an enduring, economically-interdependent family, such as is a monastery.

Is there a functional middle ground between these that would foster monastic community?

Post-Modern Monastery

Another woman rejected by a Benedictine monastery suggested we need a "post-modern" community. That sounded good, or at least interesting, but what does it mean?

Wikipedia first notes that the term “post-modern” defies easy definition, then says post-modern expression:

• Is a reaction against grand, absolute values, & establishments.
• Accepts that all communication contains myth, metaphor, cultural bias and political content.
• Challenges the legitimacy of knowledge and identity.
• Is based on personal experience and individually created meaning.
• Often uses parody, satire, self-reference and wit.
• Replaces dominant power centers with cultural pluralism and profound interconnection.
• Denies absolute, original referents in favor of inter-referential representations.

Hmmmmmm…

What would a post-modern monasticism look like?

O.k. Here are some features of post-modern art and possible monastic community equivalents.

P-M Art
Dissolves distinctions between fine art and craft

P-M Monasticism
Dissolves distinctions between lay and professed. Realizes we are all ordinary schlepers in one and the same boat.

P-M Art
Uses any and all material as media

P-M Monasticism
Plays creatively with organizational & ritual forms... not to mention vows and promises, perhaps in the spirit of Rumi "Even if you have broken your vow a hundred times, come, yet again, come."

P-M Art
Both challenges and freely expresses cultural identity

P-M Monasticism
Equally honors multi-faith and tradition-centered practice

P-M Art
Holds a fearless and searching mirror to cultural norms

P-M Monasticism
Makes no assumptions on the “proper” interpretation of monastic practices, openly sharing personal experience and responses, without judgment.

copyright R. Elena Tabachnick, April 2007

Transparency and Enclosure

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

Monastery Guests

In monastic community does there have to be a strict divide between “members” and “guests?” What would be the advantages and difficulties of more permeable membership – if people came and went, moved from core to peripheral or vice versa? What about partnerships? Could a community hold through the tensions of forming or dissolving pairs?

Monastic Practice: One Path or Many

All spiritual paths may lead up the same mountain, but most traditional practitioners insist it is essential to focus on one path. Obviously, I don't believe this or I wouldn't write this blog. Yet I've heard really good reasons to focus on a single tradition

Interfaith folks are like generalists who see the big picture and commonalities across local differences. Those committed to a single tradition are like specialists who see all the nuances and details in their area of focus. These are each legitimate ways of perceiving, and they compliment each other. For solid, spiritually useful reasons, the range of human diversity includes generalists, specialists and people in the middle. We all have good work to contribute to the whole.

What about monastic practice? Is this the one arena where specialization is required? The great 14th century Hindu mystic, Lal Ded, said, “On the way to God the difficulties / feel like being ground by a millstone, / like night coming at noon, like / lightening through the clouds.” It can feel awful, like a journey through wasteland, to let go of obsessions - with things, bodily wants, relationships, anger, pride and even of concepts of God. Traditionalists expect generalists to endlessly circle the lower reaches of the mountain hopping from one path to the next when the going gets steep.

Of course, specialists have their own way of holding off the hard work.

Where would an interfaith/no faith community find guidance for the strenuous task of daily life in community, as well as individual struggles with practice? Could we trust the spirit speaking through each intellect and heart to leads us where we need to go? Would it work to draw from all sources as desired (as UUs are wont to do)? Traditional practitioners insist this results in a shallow understanding that cannot lead into real, spiritual depths. Alternatively, could individuals focus on a specific tradition - albeit not one shared across the community?

Without the interpretations, inspirations and goads of a single, shared, religion how would community members help each other walk the tough parts of the monastic way?

copyright R. Elena Tabachnick, May 2006

How Would a Monastry of No Tradition Work?

What would a monastery of practitioners without a shared faith look like?

Interfaith explorers of Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism practice have found the same group of effective spiritual practices in all these. One purpose of practice is growing detachment from binding & blinding emotions (anger, pride, depression, bodily obsession, obsession with things, etc.). These practices include silence or restraint of speech, group prayer &/or meditation, group chanting, simplicity (minimizing the amount of stuff & activities, and the time/energy spent making choices), enclosure (minimizing social interactions), selflessness (some kind of giving up of personal agendas/needs/will), service. So surely a group of people can support each other in these practice by group living without belonging to a specific tradition.

Yet some dangers of start-up, nontraditional, spiritual group living are immediately apparent. As Carol Lee Flinders points out in At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst, these same practices are favorite tools of oppression commonly used by power hierarchies. Silence, enclosure, putting aside personal needs and serving others are all used to kill women’s living spirit. Similarly, ANY leadership group or individual, no matter how good their intentions, can quickly fall into the trap of using these practices to manipulate and oppress followers.

Of course the problem is rife in traditional religious organizations. This was exactly my experience of the leadership in the little monastery I tried to join. And those women sincerely believed their own PR that they were only doing what was needed to lead others in spiritual development.

Yet traditional monastic lineages grow from founders or guidebooks that worked. They worked because they include some kind of balancing wisdom. For example, in Benedict's Rule the Prioress is given dictatorial authority to make decisions and the population is not allowed to grumble about it afterwards. BUT there are several very anti-hierarchical injunctions in the Rule that balance this power. Everyone is to be involved in decision making in all but the most minor decisions. (Benedict doesn’t care in the least for getting the world’s business done efficiently - even care for the poor.) Also the leadership is enjoined to pay particular attention to the opinions of the "youngest" (in the Rule, "youngest"="newest") as, "the Spirit often reveals what is best to the youngest." OFTEN, not sometimes, not occasionally, but often the newest members have the right of it even when their views counter those of an old, entrenched leadership. How radical for a hierarchical organization!

Also, leaders are chosen because they are living examples of humility. This includes: seeing only your own faults, preferring silence, always speaking gently, modestly and kindly, and expressing humility with your whole being, all the time, whatever you are doing. Again, administrative ability is not a criterion for leadership. The business of the monastery is to bring all the members to God through love of each other. Getting other work done is never the point.

Without checks on power, any such group could easily devolve into a cult of personality - even
if the personalities involved had no such intention.

In a monastery without a Rule where are the checks and balances on power?

How can we ensure respect for each voice, especially the least powerful or most critical?

copyright R. Elena Tabachnick, May 2006

Interfaith Belief Criteria

Raised agnostic, I’m still fairly agnostic on religious doctrine. I seem to operate on two “faith criteria”: 1) Like Thomas the Doubter, I only believe a statement of divine-human relationship that matches my own experience and rings true in my heart. I entertain the possibility of explanations describing others’ experiences that I haven’t shared, but I don’t “believe” them, 2) I believe statements that are outside my experience if they are robust (as in statistical robustness, i.e., the result persists despite change in populations sampled). In other words, I believe religious observations or explanations that are found across faiths and cultures. This is why I often cite similarities across religions as a belief criterion. Although different religions emphasize different aspects of the divine-human relationship, most major tenants are present in some form in all major faiths. I tend to give weight to those. I consider theological postulates and doctrines that are unique to one religion to be expressions of local culture and not generally applicable to all humans, much less to "the universe" as a whole. However these are interesting in that they illuminated the diversity with which humans experience and interpret relationship with the larger non-human universe.

copyright R. Elena Tabachnick, May 2006

Benedictine Fly-by

In 2003 I entered a Benedictine monastery. Little more than a year later they kicked me out again. When I entered I expected to stay longer. I expected to stay my whole life. But by the end of a year it was clear I wasn’t going to make it. They said new members should fit into the existing community like “a hand in a glove.” We could all see my hand and their glove did not even have the same number of fingers.

They were a tiny community. The two older sisters had been together 40 years. A younger sister had just been fully professed after six years. That’s not much diversity, but it was all they were willing to embrace.

From a distance their inability to accept me is unsurprising. Our joining meant crossing an enormous cultural and theological divide. The old sisters were from devoutly Catholic, mid-western farm families and had entered Benedictine life as very young adults in the 50s. I was raised by committed agnostics with formative years in Muslim Northern Nigeria, an Quaker boarding school in England, and an Israeli kibbutz. Also I was born an eccentric, universalist pantheist who not only talked to trees, birds and rocks but believed they were talking back – and one day she would understand what they were saying.

Yet my call to enter this monastery had been unassailable. It came all at once during a social gathering on a retreat weekend. I felt as if my heart had been split open and filled with an intense light. Worse than the worse sort of head-over-heels falling in love, from then on a thick rope of light ran from my heart deep into the land of the monastery. What could I do but follow that directive and trust the Spirit to work things out?

It wasn’t easy. They called their community “ecumenical” but by that included only traditional Christians who fit easily into liberal Catholicism. Although I’d begun to imagine Jesus was my guru, I was far from a traditional Christian. After a long, arduous, two year process of examination they let me in. It seemed the Spirit had working things out.

All went well for a while, but the honeymoon didn’t last.

I’ve explored a lot of interests – from research science to sculpture to writing. Yet through it all, my primary road to spiritual illumination has been gazing vacuously into space while lying in a field, on a mountain, in an arroyo. Although I can overwork with the best of them when in the throes of creative passion, I am also an idler. I want time to play, read without agenda, or do nothing – for hours. By contemplative I meant one who merely sat and listened. They meant one who busied selflessly from one duty to the next administering the monastic environment for guests.

As young nuns, the two older sisters spent 12 hours days nursing or teaching under the minute direction of strict workaholics. For “leisure” they shelled peas or cleaned. From their point of view our work load was relaxed. From mine it was driven. Far more than theology, it was this cultural chasm that separated me from the other sisters. It was also the reason they gave for not wanting me.

It tore my heart apart to leave. I loved monastic life: the rhythm of daily meditation and prayer, the concentrated spiritual study, the other sisters, the land, the guests, and, after a long inner battle, the liturgy. Despite continuous struggles, I often felt buoyed up in a sea of divine presence, light and love. But after leaving, I slept well for the first time in months and no longer felt vaguely queasy all the time. I hated to admit it but I was no more able to eat their spiritual food than they were able to share it with me.

So here I am – having been perhaps the most unsuitable Benedictine novice in modern monastic history. Sometimes I'm simply thankful I got to try it for that one year. Other times I want to shout angrily in their faces, “Look at yourselves! Just look at yourselves and stop blaming all your problems on the new people that come.”

Healing will take time.

Meanwhile, I can’t simply take up the reins of job and house and car and social life that kept me busy before I entered the monastery. I want monastic life, with all the challenge and all the joy it brings. But I do not want to live behind a mask of dissembling as I translate my real spiritual perceptions into someone else’s traditional language.

Where is the monastery for people like me?

Where is the monastery for open-minded seekers of no particular tradition?

copyright R. Elena Tabachnick, May 2006