Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA
Finally, we're hitting 80 degree weather! 80 degrees and I start to get happy. Days are lolling by with lots of work meditation scheduled in preparation for Thich Nhat Hanh's visit in September for the West Coast leg of his North American speaking tour. A huge crowd is expected, including retreatants and a good chunk of monastics coming from Plum Village and Maple Forest Monastery in Vermont. Work has included patching potholes on the mile-long road leading up the mountain to the monastery, and clearing out junk to make space for trailers to house the huge influx of people. The trailers are mostly for retreatants. Apparently, the monks will all double and triple and quadruple up in the two existing monks buildings. Apparently it worked out during last year's massive three-month Winter retreat, but I'm not sure I would want to go anywhere near monks' quarters with four in a room in San Diego Summer heat! Geez, I can almost smell it from here.

I'm working for the preparations, but I'm not sure I'll be here when the tour gets here. The monks have begun discussions about what to do with me and the other guy claiming to be an aspirant here, and they decided to send him to the root monastery at Plum Village straight off to continue his aspirant training in earnest. If the monks at Plum Village agree to it, he should be off by the end of this month. They also want me to go as soon as possible, but I'm putting in a request to stay here until my brother's wedding in July. I'm hoping they will let me stay until July, at which time I will fly to New Jersey for between a week and a half to three weeks, and then I'm proposing flying to Plum Village directly from there. I would be there for just a few weeks before their monks, including Thich Nhat Hanh, left for the tour. How's that for timing? I'm not into teacher-worship, but it looks like I'm being downright avoidant. I can just see it now if I get ordained: rows of smiling aspirants prepared to get their hair lopped off in front of Thich Nhat Hanh, when he looks at me and says, "who's he?". Perfect.

But quite honestly, I'm not looking that far ahead. I'm not looking towards ordination. I'm not looking towards not ordaining, either. I just don't know what I'll end up doing, so I'm not thinking about it. I'm just here practicing now, and as time goes by and as doorways I go through, I'll find if I will ordain or not. The only important thing right now is that I'm here right now, and that's all anyone needs to know. Very Zen, eh?

The question asked in regard to ordination is, are you sure? In dramatic fashion of tradition, I imagine it being asked three times. The way I see it is if I'm asked are you sure? three times, and I answer yes three times, then it's time to ordain. The determination for not going through with this is: if I'm not there anymore, I'm not ordaining. Pretty straight-forward, I think.