Category Archives: Zen

Shi Yongxin, “CEO Monk” and abbot of the Shaolin Temple

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Buddhism is the dominant religion in China, with as many as 300 million believers across the country. Like other forms of Buddhism, Zen emphasizes letting go of worldly cares and working toward enlightenment through meditation and practice of the Buddha’s teachings, which include a ban on harming any sentient beings. As its home, and the centerpiece of many kung fu novels and films, the Shaolin Temple has become an integral part of Chinese popular culture. In fact, it is probably one of the most famous global brands to have come out of China in any industry, thanks in no small part to the abbot, whom Chinese media have dubbed the “CEO monk.”

via Lunch with Shi Yongxin, the abbot of the Shaolin Temple. – By Jamil Anderlini – Slate Magazine.

Monks for life? « Madhushala

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Madhushala asks about the length and permanence of monastic vows in different traditions, and gets some interesting responses:

Monks for life?

There was a discussion on Twitter recently about the topic of monks disrobing. It is commonly thought that once monastic vows are taken they are for life. I did not think this was so as pretty well all the the temples of any Buddhist sect I have been to in Asia have a large number of younger people and very few older people.

My view was that a lot of the younger people come to get an education and many disrobe after that or as their families direct, hence the reason there are children there, and that many older people who do not become teachers retire.

So I put the question on Facebook to various monastic and priestly people and here are the responses I got.

Read more at Monks for life?

Disrobing “Big Mind”

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I don’t know what kind of monk Genpo Roshi actually intended to be, but his recent disrobing brings up some good issues around a few of the elements of monasticism I’ve been writing about.

  • Celibacy & Sexuality (can monks be sexually active? how ’bout unfaithfully so? polyamorous?)
  • Vows (where do marriage vows and monastic vows overlap?)
  • Hierarchy (what happens when unfaithful sex is with your intended successor?)
  • Renunciation (as Brad Warner points out below, poverty clearly wasn’t one of Genpo Roshi’s vows. Can/should monks make money? Can/should they charge lots and lots of money for their spiritual services?).

Brad Warner, author of “Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between“ writes at Elephant Journal (via @duffmcduffee):

Look. I am not insisting all Zen monks take a vow of absolute poverty and live on just what they can carry in a knapsack slung over their backs like the monks in ancient China did. I know we’re living in a completely different society than they were. I own three bass guitars, a used PT Cruiser, and a ten-speed bike. I wouldn’t want to have to stuff those in a knapsack. But three houses? For the love of God, who needs three houses? I don’t even have one!

To weigh in on the matter: I’ve tried out Hal and Sidra Stone’s ”voice dialogue” technique, which forms the basis of Genpo Roshi’s (now Genpo Merzel’s) Big Mind Big Heart process, and have found it genuinely interesting and psychologically revealling, especially in a community setting. I look forward to exploring voice dialogue further, on its own (therapeutic) terms. I have a hard time with Genpo’s claims that the process can lead to genuine experiences of enlightenment in a few hours, but I don’t rule out the possibility that people are having subjectively very powerful spiritual experiences.

In the end, though, there is something deeply disturbing about the fact that Genpo has been able to charge as much as he does (allegedly $50,000 a session, at one point) for his process. With that kind of price tag, it starts to smell like people’s desperate spiritual cravings are being taken advantage of.

Insofar as what happened was a sexual tryst, I agree with Warner (see Elephant article linked to above) that it really is “between him, his wife, and his lover.” Insofar as what happened broke his personal monastic vow, it’s between him and… himself. But insofar as it violated his responsibility to his successor (e.g. to not contaminate a professional power dynamic with sexual energy) and thereby his community, it is problematic.

Warner points out one of the greatest benefits to being a part of a community: accountability.

By leaving the Buddhist community, Genpo has now put himself beyond the reach of the only people who could legitimately criticize Big Mind®. I expect to see Big Mind® get even bigger and cause more destruction. Even absent the Big Mind® nonsense, remaining in the Buddhist order would have been the best way to address the other matters.

If the community’s way of holding Genpo accountable for his actions is to remove him from the community, to whom will he now be accountable? His customers?

Shambhala Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown on Monasticism

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Shambhala Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown, in Buddhist Geeks, Episode 146 “Investing in the Future of American Buddhism”:

Vince: So before we close, maybe if I could ask a little bit about monasticism, where you see it heading. This is something you said you wanted to come back to.

Judith: I think the returns are not in on monasticism. I personally think that monasticism does need to be established in this country. It may never play the role it did in Asia, where it was the major force in all the Buddhist traditions, but there is some precious gem that monasticism has always been for Buddhism. And I think that having authentic monasteries in our traditions is really, really important in the West. So that there’s some kind of a repository of a certain lineage of practice and study and mentorship that we otherwise could lose. So even though there are many who pooh-pooh monasticism in American Buddhism, I wanted to put a plug in there. Because I think it’s really much too precious to just shelve and say, “It’s not American.” That’s subject for more conversation perhaps at another time.

Vince: No, actually I think we should maybe go into that a little more.

Judith: Okay.

Vince: I think it would be interesting and it’s really relevant, especially because when we look around, or I look around, I don’t really see many monastic communities that are working, that are convert Buddhists, that are Western Buddhists. I know of one Theravada group in California. Ajahn Amaro.

Judith: Ajahn Amaro

Vince: But very few.

Judith: Yes. There are very few and there may always be very few. But my experience of monasteries first began at Tassajara when I was a Zen student. And it’s a real monastery. It’s a Zen monastery. And it’s an amazing place. And I learned something in my bones about practice being at Tassajara, learning how to cook in the kitchen, learning how to slice mushrooms, learning how to lead a monastic day getting up at four in the morning for zazen and then, during sesshin doing long days. And the whole cradle of monastic training at Tassajara is just absolutely amazing.

And then in my time as a Tibetan Buddhist I’ve spent a lot of time at Gampo Abbey in northern Nova Scotia. Pema Chodron is the abbess of Gampo Abbey. And it’s an amazing community. Again, very remote, very deep practice. Practice in one’s bones, so that the routines and practices of the day are so potent and the study part is so rich as well.

I also have had a number of monastic students at Naropa, and its been very difficult for them being solitary monastics in the US. But at Naropa they’ve been able to find something that is at least a little bit like monastic community. My feeling is that the monastic vocation is not something that many people will hold. But there are those for whom it is deep in who they are. Pema Chodron’s a very close friend. She has monasticism deeply embodied in her. And her life as a monastic has produced such incredible benefit for many, many people. She would not be beloved the way she is if she were not monastic. It’s just very clear. There’s been a kind of purification of her, over the decades that I’ve known her, that comes from her monastic discipline and training. So that didn’t come from nowhere. That came from exertion and blessing and commitment and practice and study.

So I think we need to make a place and endow monasteries to continue. And there will be different kinds. You know, it took Thubten Chodron’s monasteries, the strictest in the Tibetan tradition here; she follows the most strict version of the vows. Gampo Abbey has a slightly altered thing. There may be different kinds of monasteries. Zen monasteries are very different from Theravada or Tibetan ones. But I think we need to have those places in our culture, as part of the mosaic, what makes up American Buddhism. And I don’t think they are the same as our practice centers where we go for a short-term retreat–like a month or three months. And those are short term compared to the monastic life that goes on for years.

Celibacy: the View of a Zen Monk from Japan

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A zen precedent for married monks, from Celibacy: the View of a Zen Monk from Japan:

Examples of the marriage of monks in Japan can be found as early as the Heian period (794-1185). Moreover, beginning from the time of Shinran (1173-1262) and Ippen (1239-1289), who were known as hijiri, or wandering mendicants, there are many examples of the marriage of monks during the Kamakura (1185-1333), Muromachi (1336-1570), and Edo periods (1600-1867). So from the point of view of ordinary Japanese people, the marriage of monks was not regarded as something out of the ordinary.

An edict, number 133, issued by the new Meiji government in 1872 ordered that monks should be free to «eat meat, take wives, and shave their heads» as they chose. From that time, the secularization of monks proceeded rapidly. In Taisho in 1920 the Jodo (Pure Land) School of Buddhism issued a set of Regulations for Temple Families. From this time, the treatment of temple families became an important issue. In this way, the marriage of monks, instead of being viewed as a question of doctrine or the precepts of monastic life, came to be taken up as a problem of personal attraction of temple management, or as a matter affecting the lives of temple families. The problem, then, became less a strictly religious one, and more a matter of how to deal with the inheritance of temple headships and the social status, rights, and property of temple families.

The issue of monastic celibacy differs for each sect of Japanese Buddhism and for each individual monk. We cannot say that the social issues I have outlined above reflect the definitive state of contemporary Japanese Buddhism but it is true that where these various problems do exist, they arise from the marriage of monks. Moreover, in thinking about this question, we should not overlook the fact that nuns are usually neglected and that an exclusively male-centred point of view is argued.

…

When the Japanese Buddhist Saint Hônen (1133-1212) was asked whether a Buddhist religious person should be celibate or not, he said: «If it is easier for him or her to express faith by reciting the Buddha’s name alone, he or she should be celibate. If it is easier to do that with a spouse, it is better to marry. What is important is only how one expresses one’s faith in reciting the Buddha’s name.»


Getting the questions right

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Examples of the secular world learning from the world’s ancient contemplative and spiritual traditions abound.  Neuroscientists, psychologists, doctors, cognitive scientists and cosmologists are learning from inner technologies of meditation and contemplative practice.

But what of the outer, visible, measurable technologies of those traditions? How are we learning from those technologies that fit into what is broadly called monasticism? And how are we impacting them? This blog asks the question:

What can the secular world learn from monasticism?

and

What can the secular world do for monastic traditions?

Some interfaith and secular groups are already learning from monasticism.  For example, I live in an ex-Franciscan convent in Labro, Italy with a community of artists called the Art Monastery, where we live together as “artmonks”.  We are growing our own monastic order: the International Otherhood of Artmonks.

Why can’t anyone build or be part of an “otherhood”? Any community or movement—whether seculary, interfaith, or of a single spiritual tradition—can choose to benefit from the wide array of monastic technologies that humanity has produced in the past 3000+ years.

This blog is about:

  • secular monasticism,
  • and high-tech monasticism,
  • and art monasticism,
  • and religious monasticism,
  • and interfaith monasticism,
  • and scientific monasticism
  • and integral monasticism
  • and more…

This is for:

  • Artmonks and other Creative contemplatives
  • “Re-monks” (part of the Christian “new monasticism” movement)
  • Co-ops, cohousing and other intentional communities (member of intentional communities around the world)
  • Benedictine, Augustine, Franciscan monks
  • Neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, information scientists
  • Doctors and medical professionals
  • Secular buddhists
  • Regular folks who want to add a little order to their lives
  • Sufi fakirs
  • Theravadan monks, Tibetan buddhist monks, Zen monks
  • Advaita Vedantan monks, etc.
  • …

Have an idea for an otherhood you want to start?

Monasticize your community’s future. Add a little order to your life. Grow your own Otherhood.

About the author

Nathan Rosquist is a writer and composer living as an artmonk at the Art Monastery in Labro, Italy.  He has a MBA in Sustainable Community Economic Development from Bainbridge Graduate Intitute.