|
||||
|
My first groupies deserted me… Here’s a note from WeLoveMonk: Hi yuttadhammo! We’re fans, as you can tell. Sorry about the kiss mark. :P We really couldn’t find clip art of a heart, so we figured a silly lip mark will communicate our admiration. (I mean, we don’t wanna kiss you on the lips [...] Buddhism is certainly the hardest pill to swallow. Everything about us screams out against the middle way, trying always to find some way to make things permanent, satisfying or controllable. We push and pull, trying to make things go our way, never realizing that we are but dust in the wind, tossed about by storms of our own making. The middle way forces you to give up everything about who and what you are. This is the hardest pill to swallow. It is hard not because it is wrong, but because you are wrong. Everything you cling to is painful, everything you stand for falls over, everything that has meaning to you is meaningless. It is the ultimate test of selflessness. All of that is very dramatic, I suppose, when relating to the events of today… we did manage to compromise on the issue of opening a new center in North Hollywood under Wat Thai. I think the solution is really the best… it didn’t seem right anyway to make such a young monk the head of the meditation department at such a big monastery with such big and powerful monks, and a couple of times at the meeting I suggested that the best thing for me would be to just leave and find a place more suited to my way of practice. So, we swung back and forth, me trying to explain how difficult it is to run a meditation center when you are nothing more than a resident teacher under the authority of people who know very little about meditation centers in general, and they trying to tell me that everything would be just fine doing exactly that. More fun with Buddhist Monasticism. So I really did think a bit about the whole woman ordination thing while in the forests of Thailand… here’s some more thoughts: It seems pretty clear in my mind that we (men monks) shouldn’t be eager to ordain women; it doesn’t say much of an ascetic that he [...] Here’s my opinion on the Bhikkhuni thing: I think we should look at the options… breaking rules is not cool, ever. But there are ways of changing the rules I think, at least temporarily… the Buddha left the sangha in charge and, as I said, I don’t see any reason for not putting it [...] On my ordination day, I thought, “I’m the perfect monk.” After about a month of messing up, I realized that I really had been mistaken, but now I was a really good monk, after one month. Then, a year later, I realized I’d really been naive. But now, one year into it, I was [...] |
  |
|||
|
Copyright © 2010 Truth Is Within - All Rights Reserved |
||||
Recent Comments