Anagārika in Avalon

Well, lately my e-mail responses have been unequivocally sluggish. Is it too starry-eyed to hope that you will be magnanimous in accepting my alibi? Writing one-on-one to so many (How favoured to be nestled within the snug phratry of so many kindred hearts) has dreadfully impounded my free time.

That notwithstanding, I still very much want to sustain, even strengthen affinities with friends and acquaintances yet without needing to sacrifice personal time. What to do? Resuscitating this blog seemed the noetic path to tread.

Last week, Ajahn Vajiro words that I would soon be received into the basal monastic tier as an anagārika exhilarated me to my core. The last time that I experienced such exultation involved having earned tenure as a high school teacher. Although the analogy isn't wholly homologous; however, because it will be only in two years' time that the tantamount monastic status will have been conferred.

Becoming a fully ordained monk in the Theravada (Southern) Buddhist tradition and specifically in the Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah stipulates three levels of training: anagārika, samanera and bhikkhu.

Clearly, an anagārika occupies the most rudimentary tier. During this period of usually one year, one lives the monastic life following the Eight Precepts and assesses how monastic life suits one. The Eight Precepts are:

1. Pānātipātā veramaņī sikkhāpadaŋ samādiyāmi

I undertake the precept to refrain from destroying living creatures.

2. Adinnādānā veramaņī sikkhāpadaŋ samādiyāmi

I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not given.

3. Abrahmacariyā veramaņī sikkhāpadaŋ samādiyāmi

I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual activity.

4. Musāvādā veramaņī sikkhāpadaŋ samādiyāmi

I undertake the precept to refrain from incorrect speech.

5. Surāmeraya majja pamādaţţhānā veramaņī sikkhāpadaŋ samādiyāmi

I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness.

6. Vikālabhojanā veramaņī sikkhāpadaŋ samādiyāmi

I undertake the precept to refrain from eating at the forbidden time (i.e., after noon).

7. Nacca-gita-vādita-visūkkadassanā mālā-gandha-vilepana-dhāraņa-maņdana-vibhūsanaţţhānā veramaņī sikkhāpadaŋ samādiyāmi

I undertake the precept to refrain from dancing, singing, music, going to see entertainments, wearing garlands, using perfumes, and beautifying the body with cosmetics.

8. Uccāsayana-mahāsayanā veramaņī sikkhāpadaŋ samādiyāmi

I undertake the precept to refrain from lying on a high or luxurious sleeping place.

Being a samanera constitutes the medium tier, at which point one wears the bhikkhu ochre-coloured robes and observes 10 precepts. These Ten include neither handling nor engaging in any financial matters: no money, credit cards, cash and no buying and selling. Usually one is a samanera for about a year, as well.

The third and final stage is bhikkhu ordination: at that point one takes on 227 Precepts, which more often than not merely refine the samanera's Ten Precepts. These Precepts support the bhikkhus in pursuing lives of renunciation and simplicity. That's the process in a nutshell. :-)

Besides my anāgārika vows, I'll be shaving off not only my beard and head hair but also my eyebrows! As an anāgārika, I'll wear only white. I'll also take part in special Dhamma classes. Otherwise, my daily routine will be the same.

Daily monasterial schedule

04:00 wake-up and shower
05:00 morning meditation and puja
06:30 chores
07:15 gruel
08:30 ca. 2½ hours of work [5 days only)
11:00 meal
17:00 tea time
19:30 evening meditation and puja

Mentioning of the daily schedule, Thursday I performed the duties of head cook for the very first time. I was personally in charge of feeding some 50-60 people. Solely considerations of maximum nutrition value overrode all other thoughts. Thus, I made a mildly spicy, chickpea dal, a huge 7-vegetable green salad, a Brobdingnagian :-) bowl of fruit salad composed of 6 fruits as well as some steamed cauliflower and cabbage. It goes without saying that rice was also made. Moreover, we can count on people being food donations (dāna) to supplement what we've cooked.

Everyone passed along to me exclusively supportive observations. However, exercising some self-critique, any trenchant observer would have recognised that I'd cooked much too much. I must learn to appraise suitable measures. Oh, well, it was my first time.

Friday afternoon it was a joy to go on a meandering, brisk stroll along some of the monastery’s flanking rustic roads with two newly arrived guests: a bloke from Manchester and a Czech lad from Prague. The former chatted about how proliferating thoughts doggedly nagged him to the point that he on occasion believed he was going barmy. Crestfallen, he moaned that from the hour he roused himself at daybreak until he lay down to doze at night, well-nigh identical ruminations unremittingly beset his psyche. He conceded that at times his awareness was so cramped “within his head” that he “lost contact” with his physical surroundings. I reassured him that it is our genetic lot to be doomed to this endless conceptualisation. Typically, Buddhists often dub it “papañca”. I cautioned him that such prolific thinking is as involuntarily and natural to homo sapiens as the emersion of an itch on the skin, the eyes blinking, or the mouth watering: it befalls us all. BUT, I asserted forcefully that Sartre had it wrong: there IS a way out and that “exit” is meditation.

It is certainly surprising that that bare counsel amounted to such a startling newsflash to this twenty-something, sharp-witted, Northern chap. Quite inconsistent with the austerity of such a titbit of advice, those simple words frankly magnetised the young Mancunian. A mere down-to-earth account of how spot on meditation is in soothing and unfettering the mind did not seem worthy of his copious thanks. Meditation does not relate whatsoever to any Abrahamic doctrinaire moralism but rather to a hands-on know-how that encourages folks to look autonomously into the self-same breadth and depth of their very lives. Having for themselves thus swept open the gateway onto the all-embracing vastness and yawning profundity of Anattā (non-self), with self-confidence born of insight they can sovereignly plot their own path to freedom.