I think i know what I want. I just don’t know if I have the will or the fortitude required. My desire to ordain as a monk has been strengthening over the last year and especially over the last six months.
I am reading Phra Farang, an English monk’s autobiographical account of his journey into Dhamma (Buddhism) and experiences as a monk in Thailand. In the initial couple of chapters he talks about how he discovered Dhamma and how deeply he identified with it. When he talks about why he so strongly felt the pull, I found I was completing his sentences.
I am not starting as an outsider to Buddhism or Dhamma like Phra Peter. Born in India as a Hindu, the concept of Dhamma (or Dharma in Sanskrit) is something sewn into the fabric of my soul. I am going off on a tangent here but I cringe from labeling myself a Buddhist or a Hindu because before the concept of ‘religion’ was brought to India, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism or the hundreds of strains of Hinduism were all just paths to the same thing - living a life of Dhamma and ultimately attaining Nibbana/Nirvana as Buddhists termed it or Moksha as Hindus termed it - release from the cycle of life and death by gradually attaining higher levels of understanding and enlightenment by living the right life.
In ancient India and to a relatively lesser extent in modern India, thousands of ascetics and monks still endeavor to find their own paths to Nibbana. Some grow long hair, cover their skin in ashes and practice extreme yoga, some meditate in dense forests or in the icy Himalayas, some starve themselves, some believe that experiencing and accepting extreme physical pain (like the very stereotypical yogi sitting on a bed of nails) will help take the mind to a higher plane…it goes on. They are all trying to find their path to the same thing. There is no Hinduism or Buddhism in India - just a million paths to Dhamma - and you are free to discover your own.
The Buddha through intense experimentation, meditation and introspection discovered one such path - The Eight fold path that we call Buddhism today. But before he did, he tried almost all the methods prevalent at the time for many years but reached the conclusion (the hard way) that self mutilation, starving oneself or other such extreme measures did little to elevate the mind. He experimented, he tried and failed repeatedly and he did not hesitate to change his mind if he felt his previous conclusions were wrong. in fact, his most devoted followers repeatedly left his side because they felt he wasn’t consistent. He was the consummate scientist and did not arrive at his conclusions lightly.
As far back as I can remember, whenever I have brushed against the Buddha’s teachings or the man himself in my history lessons or in books or during those beautiful anecdotes from the Buddha’s life that my grandma, my parents or relatives would tell us kids, I was struck by the simplicity of the teachings and the humanity of the stories. While Hindu mythology is full of stories gods and goddesses each meant to symbolize and represent a value, a moral or a flaw - and are also magical and beautiful, it’s difficult to relate to them as intimately precisely because of that reason. The Buddha never claimed to be anything more than human and the stories and anecdotes do not require a high level of suspension of belief.
Now, as I delve into the teachings and try to discover the path for myself, it evokes a very deep instinct in me - it is as if I have always known this is what I have always wanted but I just didn’t know it.
A reading of the Dhammapada or the biography of a monk or the teachings of an Ajahn (teacher) move me in a way that I have never experienced. I feel a tightness in my chest, a knot in my throat, a pull so intense that I might have termed it desire if that word wasn’t directly polar to the path of the Dhamma :).
Lest I get fanatical about following the Dhamma as is, the Buddha immediately forewarns against taking his or any other teacher’s words at face value and stresses the importance of questioning and discovering for oneself if any of the teachings or rules are indeed true and worthy of following. It is stressed by most Ajahns and the Buddha himself that one should only rely on a teacher for guidance and better illumination of the path but discovering one’s path is left to oneself.
This post has meandered miles away from what I intended to write about - I know I want to ordain as a monk but I fear I don’t have the fortitude or mental strength to go through with it. I want to ordain at least for a few months or years though my instinct is towards monkhood for the rest of my life.
But that’s such a big step no? Can I be actually thinking of it? Why do I do about my lust? What about my parents or my sister or my niece? What about my irrational burning love for that one person who probably doesn’t deserve it? My passion for food? How do I give up my job? Can I give it all up? Can I go through with this?
Do I actually want to? Can I live without these wants and desires? One one hand, the need to give it all up and go head first into understand the path is so attractive and exciting that it makes me unreasonably excited just thinking about it. But am I romanticizing it? The life of a monk is not easy but in a way, it is easy because it is what I feel is right for me.
I have been wondering what happened to the passion I had for my job or the fire that technology lit in my mind or the love of travel? It’s all gone. And I am just 30! My friends speak with such passion and live their lives with a determination that reminds me of myself just a couple of years ago. But I am no longer passionate about the same things. I still love the good things in life, I buy the latest gadgets, travel extensively and am trying to look after my body. I am not even going to mention my err…passion for the opposite sex. But I honestly feel that I could just as easily live without them though it will be difficult to overcome I am sure. Their loss won’t burn me as it once would have. But perhaps most pointedly, I feel any depth of emotion or passion only when I think about the Dhamma and the possibility of devoting my life or atleast a few months or years of my life to understanding it. And to think that the whole point of Dhamma is to get rid of this attachment to needs or wants or emotions :).
I have some thinking to do.
