[I just started posting this online when I found out that something in it was no longer applicable with regard to my potential future situation. Of course, all things change and we can never truly predict the future, but sometimes we get to maintain that illusion for a while. This version supercedes the version previously sent out.]
I hated ending my last post on the subject of money. When I was Christian clergy, I always had trouble asking for money and always let someone else handle it for me when any was received. Attachment to it is such a powerful force that it corrupts many good people. Nevertheless, money is necessary to supply essentials for most of us. From now until the ordination is accomplished, my PayPal account will be used exclusively for the necessities for that ordination whether it may be robes or travel. I might even need to share the travel expenses for the monks who will participate in it, although I have been told that the requirement of five monastics is for the ordination of a fully ordained monk (bhikku/gelong).
Furthermore, I must again stress that anything that I have written about the precepts that will govern my life as a novice monk are my own opinions and in no way a genuine commentary. Indeed they are small words on a great subject. However, my own experiences of life may particularly inform that opinion although it may differ strikingly from the perspective of others.
One may see the precepts/samayas/vows as rules which prevent nonvirtue together with the accompanying accumulation of negative karma and indeed they do just that. However, I also see much about them as particularly liberating. In the West, we are so accustomed to all the decisions that are normal parts of life that we are unaware of them. However, I saw refugees from the Soviet Union fail to adapt to American life so profoundly that they had to return to that totalitarian state rather than handle the vast number of choices that America gave them but the Soviet system denied them.
For me the removal of so many decisions by the prescriptions of the Vinaya is liberating and serves to focus my thought and effort and energy on what truly matters. I don't have to choose what to wear, how to fix my hair, what entertainment to attend, or any of a lot of other things. For these things I have either a specific precept spelling it out for me or a “yard stick” by which I may measure the appropriateness of each option before me. The way is cleared for me to devote time, energy and attention to what really matters: study and daily practice.
I realize that one reason that we have the two different levels of ordination, sramranera/getsul and bhikku/gelong, is that some may enter on ordination and then leave it. This sometimes results from the particularly difficult circumstances faced by monastics where there is no tradition of support for monasticism. Nevertheless, I enter upon this with a full commitment such that I would take the full vows of the bhikku/gelong if that were possible. Nonetheless, I accept that another aspect of the two levels of vows allows others to evaluate my commitment and indeed my suitability to be a monk. The need for this I understand, particularly in the West.
Here and now in Florida, like may other places, we don't have any kind of monastic residence, only single novice monks living at and/or serving a Dharma Center. When I am ordained, I shall have to continue to live in my current residence until some other option exists. If I were living in a country with active monasteries, I would more likely begin in one of them. Nevertheless, my military experience and Christian monastic experience both give me a basis for living a disciplined life under a set of rules that I accepted from the beginning. Furthermore, it is my hope that with these younger monks, who shall be my senior, we can start for ourselves the practice of gathering together and reviewing our samayas regularly and repairing any infraction against them which is repairable, much as full monks do in monasteries with regard to the larger set of precepts which they must observe. This of course is not mine to decide, but I believe that even a solitary review would be beneficial, much as I already do at irregular intervals in conjunction with my Vajrasattva practice.
All this may seem to be about my personal life and striving for my own enlightenment, but it is really for the benefit of all sentient beings. As I have written elsewhere, there is no enlightenment without compassion. One way that my monasticism can benefit others is that it continues something begun so many centuries ago by Lord Shakyamuni Buddha. Furthermore, the wearing of robes can give a specific opportunity to share the Dharma. Even the shaving off of my lovely gray beard to which I have been so attached for so long can be a similar opportunity to share the Dharma, because it has been seen for so long by so many that its absence will be quite noticeable. I have been thinking of that first shave after all these years because I feel that my face needs time to become accustomed to shaving again. The removal of such a strong attachment in itself can benefit me as well as all sentient beings
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