Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

No Coming, No Going
There’s a lay friend here at the monastery who is a bona fide Plum Village aspirant, and he leaves tomorrow to go to Plum Village to continue his aspirant training. I’m not an aspirant because I couldn’t put the request to be an aspirant down in words for them to decide whether to accept me as an aspirant or not. I instigated and facilitated a “tea meditation” for him this evening which people thought was sweet and weren’t a little bit surprised about because the general perception among the community is that I can’t stand him. And I can’t, but that’s not the whole story. It might not even be a glimmer of the whole story between me and him. I don’t understand it, but things come up and out at the monastery, and even though the outward perception that I can’t stand him is correct, the reality is not so straightforward.

I don’t volunteer to facilitate things very often, but when I do, voluntarily or not, I like to be a little focused, give a little suggestion of a direction, an idea, a thought, a topic, maybe a quote. That’s not the usual style here for discussions. Usually discussions during gatherings are pretty free-form with people saying whatever comes to mind whenever they’re ready, and that works fine, I’m just a renegade. But I “hosted” the tea meditation, and opened with a spiel inviting the gathering to send him off with positive energy, solidity, and confidence. I invited people to reflect on what they’ve observed about him during his time here and to let him know from the heart whatever they wanted to tell him. I was trying to avoid general, banal farewell platitudes, so I suggested that specifics were better. I invited the monastics who came (more than I thought would come) to reflect on their experience right before going to Plum Village and share what they might have wished to have heard.

It turned out to be a pretty successful, feel-good tea meditation, I think. Not because of anything I did, aside from instigating it. It was just the nature of the gathering and the atmosphere. Almost 20 people showed, more than twice what I expected, and it went pretty easily to more than an hour and a half. Even I shared, and I turned my months of coldness and callousness towards him into a lesson not to judge things by their appearance. Clever, eh? I’m a clever bad guy who can make himself look like the good guy in the end. He did look a little blown away at what I was saying, he was looking me straight in the eye like he couldn’t believe I was saying those things and was trying to discern whether I meant them. I did. It was a good act. But all of this is a good act.

Afterwards, I ended up in the tea room with two monks and we chatted and goofed for almost an hour, way into Noble Silence. It’s been a long while since I’ve gotten into a good, quality tea room discourse, and we mixed between goofing off and joking and being serious. We touched on my decision to leave the community for 3-5 months to get clear on my aspirancy, and that felt good to finally discuss it with someone, and even better for them to express doubts about my doing it. But the more I see myself reflected in conversations with other people, the more of an enigma I become to myself. It’s like I can’t give a straight answer to anything. Any way they try to understand my situation comes back to me as inaccurate and incomplete, and any way I try to explain it ends up with raging, opposing dichotomies. And everything ends up pointing to me leaving, except Sister Susan sitting me down and telling me plainly not to leave, go directly to Plum Village after the wedding. Guess you had to be there.