On new and full moon days bhikkhus met in the chapter house for a review of the Patimokkha, preceded by a confession of faults. The room beneath the library had been set aside for meetings of the Sangha. We met there in the afternoon, several hours after dana. So on the new moon following the upasampada I returned after dana to my kuti and privately read through the copy of the Patimokkha that had been given me. I wanted to discover what might need to be confessed.
For one thing there had been the bushes. One evening after pirith, when returning along the narrow path that led to my hut, some branches had brushed against my face. Without considering, I'd reached out and snapped them back. There'd been no need to do that. I could have pushed them aside, or even just let them be. They weren't in my way any more than I was in theirs. But I'd snapped the branches back and left them hanging by a few threads of bark. Already the leaves were withered, evidence of my transgression. In damaging plants there is a case involving expiation: number 11 of the category pacittiya dhamma.
Just as bad: I'd taken life. Those damned mosquitoes. There was the one at the well, and that other one I'd slapped at during pirith. Both of those had been intentional: they counted. Should any bhikkhu purposely deprive a living thing of life it involves expiation. Number 61 of the same category.
Then there were a number of rules of conduct to be dealt with. True, they were the least important of the Patimokkha rules, but even they were to be observed. I still made exceptions of the dana-food and picked and chose among the less spicy offerings, setting aside all animal protein and all sweets. That might have been allowable before, but it was a fault now, and I'd have to change. I was a bhikkhu now, no longer just a samanera.
I was a one-mealer now, too, and by 11:00 pangs of expectancy were assailing me strongly. At dana maintaining mindfulness while eating sometimes required more effort than I could manage. That was also counted as a fault. I gathered the list of faults together in my memory when the bell summoned the bhikkhus to the chapter house for the gathering of the Sangha.
The idea, as I understood it, was not that through confession one obtained absolution, but rather that first, the prospect of having to confess to a fault was a useful deterrent, and second that faults brought out into the open were less likely to be repeated. Confession was a device for becoming more aware of those problems and propensities which were serious enough to result in a lack of accord with the Vinaya. To see a transgression as a transgression and to confess it was an encouragement to self-restraint in the future. For it is through perceiving one's faults that one comes to growth and development in this Dhamma-Vinaya.
Outside the chapter house the bhikkhus gathered. Now we were eight.
"How do we do this?" I asked 'Rasa. I'd memorized the formulary for confessions, but wasn't sure of the procedure.
'Rasa took me aside, where we would be out of hearing of others. Confession was made only to one other monk except in serious cases called sanghadisesa. One confessed serious faults to the whole (local) Sangha. Those offences included masturbation and other sex-related acts, except for actual intercourse. That was beyond the pale, entailing defeat, whereby one was no longer entitled to be a member of the Sangha. Three other offences entailing defeat were taking human life, theft, and falsely claiming to have attained to supernormal states.
We arranged our robes in the semi-formal fashion and squatted facing each other, hands in namaste.
"Who goes first?" I asked.
"You do. The less senior bhikkhu always goes first."
"Okay, but I don't know how to specify the faults in Pali. Can we use English for that?"
"For what?"
"I don't know the Pali for the faults I'm confessing."
"Didn't you get a copy of the formularies? I know several copies were made."
"I got one; but it's just a general guideline, isn't it? Doesn't it have to be modified according to circumstance?"
"No, no, you just say it. Do you have it memorized?"
"Yes, but ..."
"... then just repeat it. It starts, Aham bhante sabbapattiyo arocemi. Don't you remember it?"
"Yes, but ..."
"... then just repeat it. Go ahead. That's how we all do it. You don't have to list your faults. You know what they are."
"I thought that we'd talk for a while about it. I thought confession would be more than repetition of a stock formula."
"That's the way we've always done it. Do you want to start doing it differently?"
"No, of course not." And in Pali we proceeded: "Sir, I will declare all my faults."
"You're supposed to say it three times."
"For the second time: sir I will declare all my faults. For the third time: sir, I will declare all my faults."
"That's good. That's good."
"Sir, I've committed numerous faults, based on various grounds, such as sanghadisesa. I will confess them in your presence. But listen, I didn't fall into any sanghadisesa offences. Are you sure it's right to include it in the formula?"
"I don't know what you mean. My Pali isn't good enough to understand the formulary."
"You mean you've said this every two weeks for so many years and you don't know what it means?"
"I've read translations. I just don't know the meaning word for word from the Pali, so I can't answer your question. I'm sorry. Look, do you want to do this, or what?"
"I guess so. I mean, sure. Go ahead. It's your turn."
"Friend, do you see these faults?"
"Yes sir, I do see them."
"Friend, restrain yourself in the future."
"Very well, sir. I'll restrain myself well."
I waited, uncertain whether there was anything to do at the end of the formulary. Should I bow down? But 'Rasa said, "And again."
"Again?"
"We say it three times."
I looked at him, trying to decide whether he was putting me on, and decided that he wasn't. "Really?"
"Yes, really, Ņanasuci. Really. Look, nobody's making you do this. I'm telling you how we do it because you asked me."
"Okay, okay, we'll do it three times. I was just surprised. I didn't expect it." And twice more we repeated the formulary. Then 'Rasa made his triple confession to me and we returned to the door of the chapter house. The others returned in pairs after having completed their own confessions. When we were gathered together we entered the chapter house for the recitation of an abridged version of the Patimokkha.
Just before we entered, 'Rasa turned to me and said, "Look, if it bothers you that much then next time, before we meet, come over to my kuti and we'll talk it over. If you want to tell someone all the gory details I'll listen to you then. Okay?"
"Okay." And we went inside for the recitation.
Full moon was fifteen days later. This evening we would formally declare our residency for the Vas season. After dana I again reviewed the bhikkhu's rules. I prepared my new list of transgressions and set off for Ņanarasa's kuti.
As a samanera there hadn't been these problems. Each new and full moon day we repeated our dasa sila vows; but if I'd killed a mosquito, told a lie, or broken other sila there was no confession to make, no expiation. It had been easy to be heedless. Life had been simpler then; now I felt constrained by the fastidiousness of the Patimokkha.
After some polite talk 'Rasa came to the point. "So, you don't like confession, do you?"
"I think the idea of confession is fine. What I don't like is the non-confession we seem to have nowadays."
"Another sign of our decadent times."
"You said it, I didn't."
"So what do you want to do?"
"I've thought about the formula for confession, and it seems to me that in the place where it says, you know, 'sambahula nanavatthuka sanghadisesadayo,' and so on, that that's meant as a blank spot to be filled in."
"Sorry, my Pali's not good enough."
"It means, 'numerous faults based on various grounds, such as sanghadisesa,' and so on. But if I haven't fallen into a sanghadisesa why should I confess to it? You know what I think? That in the Buddha's day when a bhikkhu confessed he changed the wording right there to suit his needs."
"That could be. But we don't do it that way at the Hermitage. Here we always repeat it just like it is."
"You know what else I think? That a monk is supposed to confess when he's got something to confess to. He shouldn't have to repeat the words every two weeks whether or not he's broken any rules. But if he has done something that should be confessed to he should correct his position right away, and not conceal it until the next recitation of the Patimokkha."
"Of course. Only that's not the way we do it here. For a few months I lived with some other monks up near Kandy. That's beautiful up there, by the way. Next time you go on carika you should go up that way. Anyway, up by Kandy every evening we'd meet and talk. There were four of us, and if anybody had anything to say about his conduct for that day, well, that was when it got said. But we don't do it that way here."
"Would you like to get something like that together here? It could be apart from the formal confession."
"I'm satisfied with what we have."
"But it's so meaningless! How can you be satisfied by repeating formularies?"
"If it's so meaningless why do you care so much about it?"
"Because purification isn't achieved by ritual. The words we recite should be the basis for discussing faults, not just a formula. Then we can become more aware of whatever problems there are. A good idea has been reduced to ritualism, and I'd like to see it become a good idea again."
But I didn't tell him that repeating a mere formulary was as sandpaper on my skin, and that I hoped the fortnightly confession of faults wouldn't cease in time to grate merely because it had become familiar, callused tissue, as had happened by now with the nightly pirith and bowing down. I'd stopped going to that.
"So you'd like to make confession more meaningful?"
"That's right."
"How?"
"I'd like to tell you what things I've done, to confess to you here, in English."
"Okay. Go ahead."
"Let's see. I've killed several mosquitoes."
"Intentionally?"
"Oh, yes. It doesn't count if it's not intentional."
"That's true. So you killed some mosquitoes. Do you regret it?"
"I think one of those mosquitoes was totally unnecessary. I just got angry at it. It wasn't even biting me. I didn't like it buzzing at my ear."
"Do you see the fault?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then restrain yourself in the future."
"I will. And then two days ago I ate dana noisily because I was greedy and unmindful."
"Do you see that fault?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then restrain yourself in the future."
"I will. And then ..."
When I'd confessed to all my faults and had nothing further to say I took my leave of 'Rasa and returned to my kuti.
Why had I bothered? How had that confession been more meaningful than the one in Pali? It didn't even feel like a confession. Perhaps I'd really wanted to discuss the various entries in my Spiritual Savings Account at First Buddhist National, wherein I secretly kept track of my credits as well as my debits. Perhaps I'd wanted only to show the slightness of my faults ("Once," I confessed to 'Rasa, "I didn't wear my robes evenly all round") and to suggest thereby the extent to which I was one who fulfilled the obligations. Perhaps I'd just wanted to talk shop, to take a break from the hard work of inactivity by doing something.
I returned to my hut and waited for the bell to ring, teetering between efforts at concentration on the brooding verge of a cliff beyond which all prospects were distant, as I'd once brooded, with nothing else to do, on the sheer edge of a hill I'd shared with a bear.
* * * * *
I had a project. For the kuti I'd designed a piece of furniture which would serve all needs, and with lumber supplied by dayakas I pieced it together slowly.
A typewriter had been offered and ordered. As soon as government clearances were received for its import it would be delivered. I'd already filled out all the application forms and expected approval soon. Then I would use the typewriter to type a final draft of the Letters of Ven. Ņanavira: by now I thought of them with a capital L, as a book title.
With publication of the Letters I would fulfill my remaining worldly ambitions, I told myself. Then I could return to full-time meditation. I could again be Ven. Ņanavira's student rather than his editor. This was a debt I owed to the Sangha as well as to any Westerners who might someday find themselves trying to discover what relevance, if any, the Suttas might have to the problems that drove them. For the Suttas were a hundred generations old now, and imbued with a very different cultural outlook than ours. But the Letters were the product of a contemporary Westerner with understanding of Dhamma. And with directness and humor he steered me clear of muddled translations, scholastic irrelevancies, and mystical confusions.
How could I have been so foolish, in those first hectic months at the Hermitage, as to have destroyed my copy of that first botched transcript of the Letters? I'd fancied then that since I had to give up everything I'd start by chucking out whatever was nearest to hand, getting rid of things as quickly as possible. I'd leapt with enthusiasm from one decision to another.
Enough of books! It was all well and good to have guidance, charts for navigating unknown waters. They might show how to get from Here to There, pointing out the dangers that lay on the way. But one could study such charts all one's life and still never arrive at There unless one set sail.
The principal, I now decided, was right, but the method was faulty: things have to be given up in the right order. The charts for guidance to the safety of the thither shore were certainly to be abandoned and not carried about with one after having landed, refuge gained. But neither could one expect to find Sanctuary by abandoning one's pilot before one had sailed clear of the sea of want.
I had no idea how to use the Letters, or the Suttas, to get me beyond this flood of instability, of holding onto, of anger and clashes and jealousy and suffering and ambition and fear in which I saw all humanity drowning, like the beggars of Calcutta. We were all beggars of one sort or another, I hardly the least.
The piece of furniture -- a desk -- played a small part in that great imagined flight to safety and security. It was the desk that V built. The typewriter that would go on the desk would produce the manuscript that would produce the book that would yield the understanding that would liberate my mind from the bonds of attachment. I didn't hide the absurdity of it all from myself, but rather relished it, cultivated it, rolled in it, giggling, and kept on building the desk.
* * * * *
The increased U.S. presence in Viet Nam produced a corresponding increase in the U.S. presence at the Hermitage. A number of Americans trickled in, motivated in part, I gathered, by a desire to avoid involvement in the war. I was sorry that the war could affect a place as remote as the Island.
When, eventually, a group of seven Westerners, mostly Yanks, was ordained everyone (but me) was excited about it. People kept trying to find in us evidence to support the belief popular in Ceylon that after 2,500 years the Sangha would have a renaissance. I didn't dispute that such a renaissance was needed, but saw discouragingly little real evidence of it.
Since I'd been around for a few years now it was natural that the new samaneras who wandered the footpaths of the Hermitage should sometimes find their way to my kuti for advice and conversation. Sometimes I felt self-satisfied to be in the position of counselor to those less knowledgeable than me; other times I considered it a bad commentary on the Sangha today that anyone as conceited as me could be so placed.
"I used to do the same thing as you," I told them. "I used to discover a problem or invent a question about the Teaching. Then I'd worry about it and call it 'Dhamma-thought,' and finally I'd bring it to one of the senior monks. But I never wanted to talk about the real problem, which is the need to have problems. What I really wanted was to talk about the Teaching so I wouldn't have to face the hard work of practicing it. All the talk was just a smokescreen to hide from that fact. It took a long time to realize that."
And my comrade-in-renunciation would leave to return to the practice, or he would leave to seek out someone more open to conversation, or he would try harder to involve me in talk. Sometimes I permitted the chatter to continue; sometimes the problems were real.
"Maybe I rushed into this too fast," Crackers speculated. "Maybe I need more time to get ready for the monk's life."
"You want to prepare for the monk's life by leaving it?"
Crackers laughed, then turned serious. "Those first few months were great, V. I couldn't give up things fast enough. It felt like there were no obstacles between me and nibbana, only distance."
"And then something happened?"
"First meditation got more and more difficult, and now I'm plagued by thoughts about home and travels and mostly sex. And I don't know what to do about it."
"So you've been thinking about disrobing."
"Not exclusively. I've also been thinking about women."
"Does thinking about women make you any happier?"
"It makes me hornier. But I just can't help it. I get involved in sexual fantasies without realizing it. Sometimes I get a hard-on when I'm not even thinking about sex. If I don't get some relief soon I'll wind up in the hospital with blue balls."
"The renunciation blues; I wrote that song when I was in the hospital a few years ago. I had the same thing as you, except it was my liver that was blue. It's a bad case of withdrawal symptoms."
"Oh-oh. Is that fatal?"
"A few years back there was a German here who drove himself so hard he broke his health completely and had to be sent home. But it doesn't have to be that difficult."
"I'm all in favor of avoiding difficulties."
"I don't know how to avoid them, but maybe talking about them can make them less important. Keeping a sense of proportion can be hard when you're plagued with a sex drive."
Crackers clenched his fist and raised his arm at the elbow. "Sometimes it just pops up, completely unexpected.'
"Maybe it's useful to know that you're reacting the same as everyone who comes here."
"I'm not unique?"
"You'll see it happen to these new samaneras too. They'll drive themselves until they're so overextended in terms of their real capacity for calmness and insight that they can't handle it any more."
"That's what's happening to me."
"I used to feel that a minute not spent in meditation was a minute wasted. I established the same sort of impossible regimen nearly everyone tries when be first gets here. It took me four months to wind up in the hospital."
"I'd be embarrassed to tell a doctor I had blue balls."
"But the Hermitage is a sort of hospital itself. Only it specializes in diseases like desire."
"I don't know if I can manage the cure."
"Everyone goes through that. First the practice breaks down, then a lot of old itches start up again, then thoughts of leaving begin. Some go; some don't. When I went through it I didn't know it was a pattern, so it worried me more than it needed to. But just knowing it's all predictable might make it easier for you to get through it.
"I still miss lots of things. Don't you?"
"Of course. But the big things, like family and friends, stuff from the past, that's seldom thought of."
"What about dope? I still miss that."
"There were times in the first year or so when if I'd had dope I'd have taken it. I'm glad there wasn't any. I don't miss it. But I do miss some things, and giving them up is when the difficulties start."
"What do you miss?"
"Sex."
"Food?"
"All sensual things. But when you've said sex you've said it all. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder."
"People? Don't you ever get lonely?"
"We use other people to distract us from facing our own reality. Sure, I've felt loneliness, but even harder than loneliness is inactivity."
"That's the hard one for me. There's not enough to do around here."
"The Buddha tells us about stopping and we chase after it as fast as we can. He tells us about quietness and every time the mind thinks it's found a bit of silence it cheers."
"But the Dhamma is supposed to be about ending suffering, not making more. How come I'm finding so much misery from it."
"The Teaching doesn't produce the misery. You do. You always have. The Teaching is making you face that misery for the first time. You're used to getting your ego fixes. Sensuality, activity, assertion, all the things being feeds on. Now that you're cutting way back you're going through withdrawal symptoms. All those black uglies you feel, that's just your addiction calling for its fix."
"It's so hard!"
"Of course it's hard. If it were easy anyone could do it."
"There must be an easier way."
"If there is I don't know it. I'd never have considered the idea of renunciation if I'd ever found any other escape from dissatisfaction."
"It's as bad as when I gave up opium."
"They have a lot in common. The symptoms are the same, the treatments are the same, and the progress of the treatments are the same. Don't you remember what it was like when you stopped taking opium?"
"Sure. There was a little voice inside my head that began talking to me about dope. How long it had been since I'd had a fix, and where I could get some, and whether I really wanted to quit, and how nice a fix would be right now. It just nagged and nagged until all I wanted to do was to shut it up. And the only way to shut it up was to take a fix."
"And when you still didn't take a fix it turned out there was more than a voice in your head, wasn't there? Something began kicking around in there and making you unhappy."
Crackers sighed and looked pained. "Yeah, that's what's happening."
"You've got to find your level. You can't go cold turkey. This is what happens to everyone who tried to give up addiction to self."
"But it leaves me back where I started from."
"Don't try to judge your progress by how good your meditation is going at the moment. You can't take an outside view of what changes are happening to you. But it's apparent to me that you've developed greater calmness. Of course you're not very happy about what you're going through. Who would be? But you're able to observe it from a certain distance now instead of being caught up in it. That's a change that comes with meditation."
"You can see a difference?" Crackers was pleased. "Maybe you're right."
"Addiction to being is more fundamental than addiction to opium, but they're both addictions. The treatments correspond."
Crackers thought about it. "I remember a lot of times when I was giving up opium when I didn't see how it could be any worse, and then it was. And I can remember times when I thought it was all over, that I'd kicked it, and then it came on again."
"In this practice I don't say that you'll find worse to come. I only say that I did, and 'Rasa and other monks say they've had similar experiences. We're talking here about the most fundamental addiction we've got, the conceit 'I am.' That conceit has only begun to fight, and believe me, it's going to fight you all the way, just like your opium habit."
"You make it sound formidable."
"It's a good thing we've got the Dhamma as a guide. It tells us that this is a gradual teaching, and that we can't do it all at once. So why don't you find a measure that's right for you? Decide what you can handle on a day-to-day basis without driving yourself beyond your capacity. Put sila first, even if you can't do anything else. But whatever you do, do it mindfully. Don't let those black uglies catch you unaware."
There was a knock on the door and I let in Ņanapasata, one of the new American samaneras.
"I thought I heard voices, so I figured you weren't meditating," he explained.
I looked outside and noticed the sun approaching the horizon. It wouldn't be long until the pirith bell would put an end to this gathering, so I let it proceed.
"What were you talking about?"
"You mean you'll talk about anything?"
"Actually, I want to complain about the Dhamma. It's too hard."
"Practicing the Dhamma is the hardest thing I know of."
"The practice is easy. It's the philosophy I'm having trouble with. I'm working on it, but it sure is complicated."
"How are you working on it?"
"By thinking Dhamma-thoughts and trying to visualize the Dhamma. I'm trying straight insight meditation, because that's the way to burst through the bonds of illusion right away. I don't want to take that calmness meditation, because that's the long way 'round. The real reason I came by was to tell you about this wonderful new meditation technique they've just discovered in Burma. They say you can get enlightened in seven days."
"How many days have you been doing it?" Crackers asked.
"They don't say for sure you get enlightened in seven days. Maybe for most people it takes longer. But it can be in as little as seven days."
"That's just about a week."
"Do you get a money-back guarantee?"
"You can laugh if you want to, you two, but you're missing a rare chance. It doesn't take long, so it's worth giving it a try, isn't it? Instead of spending years on that meditation you're doing, and maybe then you still won't be enlightened."
"I'm always suspicious of teachings that promise fast results."
"You can wait if you like, but I can't. I intend to open a ministry in Florida and spread the Teaching, and it's for the sake of those people in Florida that I'm taking the fast way, even if it is more of a challenge."
"Florida?"
"That's where I think the need is greatest. That's why I'm in a hurry."
"Don't be in such a hurry with your right foot that you forget to move your left."
"Don't you think I know how to walk?"
"The Buddha says that insight and calmness are developed in tandem. You can't progress in one and lag in the other."
"But with insight meditation you can see the world as it really is, always changing from instant to instant."
"Who says it's changing from instant to instant?"
"The Buddha. I shouldn't have to tell you that, you've been a monk so long already."
"I read where the Buddha talked about change, and about impermanence, but I don't remember anything about flux."
"Flux and impermanence are the same thing. That's obvious."
"Not to me. Flux means continuous change, but impermanence means eventual change. Fuzzy thinkers confuse the two."
"You must get that from Ņanavira."
"Certainly not from the commentaries."
"Why do you think the Buddha talked about not-self, then? If a thing doesn't stay the same for even an instant you can't say it exists. And if it doesn't exist, it's not-self."
"Not-self has to do with ego, not with the suppositious non-existence of things."
"Not according to this new meditation method."
"I know the idea of flux is popular today, and I suspect that it's because it's such an easy explanation. But the Dhamma is perception, not explanation."
"What this meditation method does is sharpen your perception so you can see how fast everything is changing. Once you see how fast it's changing you give up attachment to it. That's why it's called penetration through insight."
"I don't cling to things because I think they're unchanging. I cling to them because they do change. If I didn't already perceive their impermanence I wouldn't need to cling to them. Take this desk, for instance."
We looked at the desk for which the typewriter was soon expected. It was nearly finished.
"If that desk were to get smashed, or catch fire, or something, that would be for me a cause of unhappiness."
"Even knowing that it's possible is already a source of unhappiness," Crackers said.
"But the supposition that the desk is in flux is no cause for dissatisfaction. If it's in flux then it's always in flux, and yet it remains the same unchanged desk. So what do I have to worry about flux for?"
"You don't understand because you haven't seen the universal flux. But those who practice insight meditation know what's meant by change."
"The kind of change the Buddha spoke of is the change that undermines attachment, and shows us that our effort to possess has been in vain."
"You and your existentialism! Do you really think it's necessary to be so philosophical about the Dhamma to understand it?"
"Maybe you mean analytical rather than philosophical. But no, I don't think it's necessary to be analytical. That's one of several possible approaches. But I do think it's necessary to refuse to accept every easy explanation that comes along. I'm skeptical of those easy doctrines that people find comfort in and think they've learned something."
"You have to get your comfort somewhere," said Crackers.
The bell rang for pirith and the conversation ended.
It seemed, from what the new samaneras told me, that something was happening back in the States, something called "The Sixties," and I was missing it. And I sometimes felt, when I listened to their gossip, a sense of impoverishment to be missing such a vast number of potential Golden Times, until I caught the feeling, flipped it over on its back, and saw that the creature was made entirely of absurdity. I turned from the seductive charms of a life of accumulating back to that quiet and subtle involvement in oblivion which raggedly edged every experience.
"Get thee gone," I commanded that sense of impoverishment, and was chagrined to find myself unobeyed.
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