could really help them with this. I can understand that they want us to alternate meditation with work and then study, reading, eating, rest, and work. This constant shifting of focus keeps us a bit off balance and open. This makes us resort to using different energies and abilities.
I am very comfortable with my brilliant, albeit silent, comments.
But there are flaws in the schedule. Don’t they see how difficult it is to run halfway around the abbey, take a sink bath, change into a skirt and slipper shoes, race back to the classroom, bowing en route, remove shoes, bow, and arrive fresh and on time?
Trainees and monks turn the cloisters into the Indianapolis Speedway and make scheduled events loosely on time. Of course, everywhere, at every shrine, I have to bow. I also learned that as I went through the day, whenever the spirit moved me, it was a good idea to bow. I wanted to do my very best to follow the bowing rules.
Let’s not forget that no one asked for my opinion on scheduling. They’re certainly missing out on a lot of valuable expertise here. I’ve been organizing therapeutic communities since 1967. Boy, I sound like all the nursing director patients who came through HOPE House and wanted to devise new charting procedures to make things more “efficient.” It is so difficult to move from the helper role to that of the person being helped.
The mind likes its comforts.
Mine quickly races to its lowest common denominator during meditation sessions: “What am I going to wear?”
Quickly surmising that three-quarters of what I’ve brought is unacceptable—loud, sexy, or inadequate—I have to juggle what I have left for classes, meditation, meals, and work assignments. There are also the rest and reading periods to consider, as well as the hourly weather changes that go from sweltering heat to foggy, cold, and damp. Even more complex than what to wear is how to transport the changes from the luggage room around the cloister to the bathhouse cubicle in as few return steps as possible. Timing is everything. Each outfit has varying requirements and necessitates alternative advanced planning.
If only I had my own room with a closet, I could really settle down to meditating.
On the third day the temperature drops below freezing, forcing me to bring out my suede, fur-lined hunting jacket. Why hadn’t I considered that these vegetarian, “do no harm to any living thing” monks might find this jacket ghastly and offensive? I’d never given that a thought as I’d packed, instead musing that the jacket had a rugged and mountaineering feel to it.
It’s always about image. Would it help if I told them I bought the jacket used at the Rose Bowl swap meet, that I was not the first owner or initial purchaser, and that I would never custom-order such carnage? Wrapped sheepishly in dead hide, I wend my way around the cloisters. No one says a word to me, but I cringe whenever I catch anyone glancing at my furry lapels.
Don’t some of them wear leather shoes? Isn’t that a real fur hat covering that shaved dome?
I grasp for straws.
Who cares? It’s not about me. No one has time to sit in judgment of me. All monks seem to have a busy schedule, getting quickly from one place to the next, their robes swishing along the path, hopefully not brushing any bugs to imminent doom. All are busy racing around the cloister, chasing their own enlightenment.
Part of the morning’s class session deteriorates, as so many do, into a heady debate about male-female issues. The conflict is introduced by an elderly woman, dowdy, with scraggly hair, and awful beige “wedgie” shoes.
With raised brow, she peers down the tip of her nose through wire-rimmed spectacles and starts speaking through pinched lips. “I take offense at the scripture’s description of ‘woman as temptress.’”
Even on this mountaintop, do we have to find yet another campaigner for the women’s cause?
I’m livid.
If I didn’t feel so new, little, and scared, I’d rejoinder with “Shaved heads, all monks look alike, each is sworn to celibacy, and we’re all sleeping on the same temple floor. Do we care at all about sex? Who the hell cares about temptation at a time like this?”
Well, I guess the dowdy old windbag does. I prefer to let these issues lie. I find myself letting the discussion go by rather than attaching myself to any position.
Am I above such attachment? I think it’s more that with all my shoveling of real dirt in the ditch, I’m just too tired to transport any more.
After lunch, I have a new job and a new partner. My coworker is Larry, Maureen’s husband, who is tall, with reddish hair, and possessed of her same contented, sweet smile that seems to project a “let’s wait and see” attitude. I’m more the “jump in and do” type. Our job is demolition. Now we’re into something that can well utilize my talents as well as my defects. Let’s destroy whatever it is.
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