Monk chat: Questions about monastic and community life

Questions covered:

• How do you facilitate harmony between monastics with different vocations?
• Is learning how to live with others essential to awakening?
• Questions about Vinaya rules on depending on a teacher
• What do you think of limiting the use of electronics and the internet for monastics?
• How might we foster communal harmony without compromising on our values?
• What can male monastics do to support female monastics?
• Why did you establish a gender-equal monastery?

How do you facilitate harmony between monastics with different vocations?

• Rejoice at what everybody else in the monastery does to actualize motivations shared by the community
• Everybody is creating merit and doing something worthwhile
• Certain rituals and meditation sessions everybody participates

Is learning how to live with others essential to awakening?

• From a Mahayana perspective, you want to share teachings and help living beings most effectively
• Realize how flexible you need to be to benefit others
• Analogy of rocks in a tumbler, chipping away each other’s sharp edges

Questions about Vinaya rules on depending on a teacher

• Problems with students managing their own practice: “making soup”
• Teachers make your ego squirm
• When it is acceptable to resist or negotiate your teacher’s direction
• Practicing at an appropriate level for your spiritual development

What do you think of limiting the use of electronics and the internet for monastics?

• Important to limit this because things like smart phones are addicting
• Using the internet is important, especially to enable others to access Dharma teachings
• At Sravasti Abbey, try to make it so internet is used in a public setting
• There need to be rules and when they are transgressed, things need to be confessed

How might we foster communal harmony without compromising on our values?

• Not every monastery will be suitable for everybody
• As individuals, we need to have some flexibility to live in community
• A monastery needs to have a way of keeping the Vinaya and be very clear about how it is being interpreted and the rules of the monastery

What can male monastics do to support female monastics?

• Recognize that female monastics are human beings and have the same intelligence and aspirations as male monastics
• Don’t create artificial boundaries that exclude people from following their spiritual aspirations or learning the Dharma
• Don’t discriminate opportunities to give talks or serve the community based on gender

Why did you establish a gender-equal monastery?

• Having experienced exclusion, set an intention to include others so as not to create more exclusion karma
• For Buddhism to spread in the west, we have to have gender equality