Alone…

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.”
Octavio Paz…

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.”
Albert Schweitzer…

     
“We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”
 Orson Welles…
 
It is the season I know that highlights the being alone in my life. Christmas brings the loneliness from family with my children and grandchildren on my mind and the memories of Christmas past with stockings on the mantel, a big tree in the front room overlooking the fields and the valley. Santa impersonation for years with footprints on the hearth, sleigh bells around the farm, letter to the children from Santa and the excitement of Christmas morning. All that is years ago and far away but the lonely feeling at Christmas is to be expected and is understood.
New Years Eve is a time of much excitement and fireworks which fills up the night until the magic hour of midnight when everyone greets another year with great hopes, expectations and promises. Perfunctory kisses according to tradition and then everyone is walking hand in hand or hooking up also with great hopes, expectations and promises that most likely only last the rest of the night and not the rest of the year.
It is a couples time and the many memories of NYE past are fun filled times with much celebration as a pair or as a pair for the rest of the night. The rains came back this NYE after midnight so I went home with my umbrella and great hopes, few expectations and no promises.
This life now is a commitment. A commitment that takes discipline especially in this world of transient relationships, tropical paradise and the lifestyle that goes with both. The expectation is that you are above the human emotions, the feeling of being alone. It is as if monks are without human emotions and feelings like anger, sadness, intimacy, humor, longing. The image of the typical monk is Buddha like, devoid of all that worldly care. As if we didn’t laugh, cry, shout or even shit. We are capable of all and like the Buddha, we have to shit. Humanness is a requirement for wearing the robes as far as I know but we are to restrain ourselves, hold ourselves in check, repress those urges and emotions. If you spend your entire life as a monastic and are trained in restraint since childhood you have a better grip on it as you have no personal experience with a “regular life”. You are a witness to it but not a participant.
Almost all monks have the buffer, the protection of a sangha, the community of monks. You are one of many. You dress alike, study, eat, sleep, pray, work, experience the life together. If you start to falter there are many who will encourage you, strengthen your resolve, discipline you and smooth your life in the monastic tradition. As Thich Nhat Hanh has said;
“A real sangha always carries within itself the energy of love, the energy of brotherhood and sisterhood, hope and compassion. Our sangha is our home. Our sangha is our hope.”
-TNH, December 24, 2010
As an Enji (western monk) you come to the tradition later in life, full of the personal experience of secular living and full of memories of all that goes with it. All Buddhist monastic orders will make sure that you are prepared and committed to this life. That you don’t come to it to escape or runaway from your life out here to the insularity of the monastic sangha protected in the monastery. Enjis are more than capable of living the life we do. They can assimilate well into monastic living if they have the commitment and can surrender to the devotion to a guru or teacher and follow the teachings.
Being an Enji and a wandering monk has great risks they will tell you. Some of the life long older monks call us “White Crows” because the feeling is that an Enji can be a good monk when you find a white crow. Being alone without the protection and inspiration of the sangha is risky because it becomes easy to lose your way in the world of desires, hopes and expectations. In fact many of those western monks ordained do in fact disrobe figuratively and literally. It’s difficult to make your way in the world without financial support and a community that supports the sangha with alms support. It is difficult to live in this western world with it’s pace and promise and keep the commitment you have made especially with the people you meet. It seems that many of the Enjis who disrobe fall in love and that kindles those feelings of intimacy and longing for the warm companionship of another person that some define love by.
I love intimacy as much as anyone but view it differently now than before. I think we can define intimacy in a broader way and I spread my intimacy across many so that I can give and share myself with as many people as possible. Sure there is no sharing of some of the basic components that we understand to describe intimacy but the feeling of connectedness, human warmth and relationship can still happen. It is just not centered on one person.
The vows we take were established 2500 years ago in the teaching on The Fruits of the Homeless Life where the Buddha, it is said, gave the rules and obligations of being a monk and living in sangha. They were vows that were consistent with the era and geographic culture of the original monks who followed the Blessed One and lived according to his teaching. Being celibate, abstaining from intoxicants, right speech and all the other examples in The Eightfold Path had important meaning for an exemplary life. There were also many prohibitions like avoiding music, not wearing robes made on certain looms and avoiding high beds to sleep on. Well there are so many of the vows that would make living a wandering life in a secular world impossible that I have chosen the more important ones and not necessarily the easiest, convenient ones for this world I live in. It is the commitment I have made for the rest of this life and I honor it with respect and love of this life.
It’s just that sometimes you look around and remember what life was before, the warm touch, the sense of being loved in that way and the company of someone that you want to be with and share with.
And of the Christmas’s and New years in the past…