man-child

When I first came into the saṅgha when I was younger, I came in with the feeling that I would be able to find community that was supportive and mature, and with people that respected and valued one another.

What the saṅgha is, is a collection of men and women (but I’ll be speaking about men), most of noble aspiration, who are seeking to solve their problems; the ultimate problem being that of existence itself.

Whatever the reason for ordaining, we inevitably import our problems into this new life, but now with a new agreed upon set of behavioural norms and a teaching and identity to help us navigate through them with the ideal of coming out of them entirely.

This vehicle can be a powerful ally, but there are definitely dangers to watch out for; a major one being that a trust-system such as the saṅgha often has less recourse for accountability in certain areas of problematic behaviour, with the added caveat that monastics also have a much longer leash with which to receive adulation and admiration for the behaviour they exhibit, as the laity will all too readily support their monks in good faith. This can be a tricky situation even for the most self-aware of people.

Sometimes it plays out well, with people over time growing and learning in the Dhamma, and becoming pillars in the community. These people are easy to bring to mind and there are many fine examples in the Buddhist communities we frequent.

However, I’ve also seen men shrivel into shadows of themselves, as a kind of ghost haunting their own life. Either that, or the hidden conceits and need for validation starts slowly seeping out of their pores until they lose all perspective on their station in life, which is essentially meant to be aimed at humble renunciation.

I’m not just talking about narcissists either. Narcissists are predictable and boring. I’m talking about a lack of emotional maturity that many men have on entering robes. These latent issues are given chance to to breed in the hothouse of monasteries which give men an often distorted feedback mechanism by which to judge problematic behaviour in themselves.

I’m in quite a unique position of having been a monk when I was younger, then stepping away and living lay life, and then coming back to robes. I’m meeting people again that I knew almost a decade earlier and seeing how they have grown, and who they have grown into. I must say, what I’m seeing is surprising, and I’m learning a lot from just witnessing it and seeing how the choices people have made have shaped them.

Monks who disrobe and then come back, although not uncommon, are uncommon in the monastery I’m staying in. I don’t know for sure, but I think many monastics probably assume that the time spent away from robes was a waste of time, and maybe indicative that the person involved didn’t have what it took to stay a monastic, became distracted, and left due to defilements getting on top of them.

There is an assumption amongst many monastics that lay life is an inferior path, and that monastic life is a more streamlined way to become fruitful in one’s practice. Although I wholesale agree that the fruits of monastic life have more to offer, I have nevertheless learnt an enormous amount about myself and my life in the interim between my former ordination and this one, that I couldn’t have otherwise learnt in robes.

I have been on both sides of the coin now, both a monk, returned to layman with the new perspective of a renunciant, and now ordained again. Most monks don’t have that context. The work I did on myself in terms of facing certain traumas through psychotherapy, healing destructive patterns of behaviour like pursuing unhealthy relationships, learning to find my voice and speak my mind with self-definition and compassion, as well as finding a way through the mire of addiction, which is never about substances and is always about releasing the pain fueling the pursuit - I could not have done in robes.

One of my discoveries in these various forms of healing I explored, was that in coming to Bodhinyana the first time, I was carrying a lot of pain with me, in the vain hope that if I just stayed in robes long enough, the destructive patterning, like addiction, which was symptomatic of that pain, would vanish along with the darkness inside of me. Many monks here now are, I’m sure, convinced that this is possible. That’s the party line - The Dhamma solves everything.

Except it doesn’t.

That vain certainty is public enemy number one. It’s the lie that we tell ourselves when we’re in robes. This lie is as insidious as it is false; it provides a buffer against the instability which these robes actually symbolise, and it’s the sugar pill for Peter Pan, the boy that never wants to grow up.

The conceit of certainty in this path is the enemy of true faith. This is what I see now that I didn’t see before. Certainty means there is no doubt. If there is no doubt, then there is no mystery. Without mystery, there is no faith, and so without the humility to realise the path we are holding is only as real as the truth we witness, the path hasn’t even begun.

The saṅgha hasn’t got your back as a monk. The reason for this is that many of the people in robes haven’t even got their own back. If they haven’t worked on their issues, how could they? They’re boys hiding, telling themselves they’re men vanishing. Even though I can see so much beauty in the cracks, it doesn’t take away the realisation that many are using robes as a bypass. Just like I was.

I see some turtle up and withdraw, choosing to try and run their own show by invisibilising themselves and reducing their external needs down to a minimum. All this ever does is produce people that may resurface years later and have no idea who they are, or what they stand for - through ducking and weaving every moment, they end up doing the same thing to themselves.

The other option, which is very popular here, is to get busy. I see some monks working their fingers to the cuticle, to make the ugly beautiful (or beautiful ugly, depending on the eye of the beholder). Although this kind of crazed, frenetic restlessness is apparently cause for celebration, it often seems to me more a kind of desperate cloy for distraction, or validation.

This is just more self-making, more ahaṁkāra, which is what we have come here to renounce. I’m not trying to pitch myself as above all this by any stretch. I’m just glad I’ve been around the block enough now to be able to see certain pitfalls and trappings that I may not have avoided if I had stayed here and continued to lie to myself that the work I needed to do could be done by not doing it and hedging the path would do it for me.

This maturity I now possess is a mixed blessing. On one hand I am eternally grateful for the growth in myself, as I am now a much more well-rounded and emotionally grounded person than I was when I came here the first time; and yet, at the same time, there is a loneliness that emerges when you realise that many of your brethren still have much growing up to do, and perhaps, because of the echo-chamber effect of monastic life, and a limited forum for objective feedback outside of starry-eyed faithful biting their tongues, perhaps they never will.

‘How can one be expected to grow in such environments?’, is the question I find myself asking myself almost on the daily since coming here. It’s an open-ended question, and I have the beautiful Dhamma of the Buddha, as well as the wisdom gained from other work I have done on myself to guide me, but it’s a challenge that I am still navigating in my early days in robes, and one I am sure I will speak about often as I continue to resolve it.

Does any of this speak to you too?

• Peace.