i think time is better spent developing anapanasati and other pereptions, becoming well versed in sutta, vinayas, abhidhammas, texts of other early schools, later commentaries whilst also learning Pali, chanting and being otherwise occupied developing the Path for the benefit of oneself and the many. This isn’t easily done in one lifetime according to my estimates.
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Congratulations, Bhante, on your higher ordination and thanks for asking a great question.
Also thanks to Ajahn Brahmali, Bhante Sujato and others for their considered answers.
I too have recently gone forth, at the moment as a novice and am greatful for these answers. It has allowed me to reflect on what are the contributing factors which bring joy to my practice and what detracts from it.
I really love working on grubby physical projects during work period, discussing the sutta brings me clarity and worrying about what a monastic ‘should’ be like and what others think about me is the biggest killer. When I see people writing about idealised shoulds it makes me sad. So I’m trying to take my teacher’s advice to not try so hard and ‘not give an fff…, I mean cluck, what other people think’.
I’m sure some people will take this the wrong way and say this is a lack of hiri-otappa, but this is not at all what I am getting at. I’m just talking about what leads to peace, gentleness and non-ill will. A life time of critical thinking creates a judgemental mind.
Mettā
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Well, that would seem an excellent point at which to apply your teacher’s advice!
Nevertheless, I just wanted to say that at least this particular person (and I suspect many others, too) reads your post as the gleaming gem that it is. It’s such a valuable reflection that I wish more in the community (robed and lay) would heed—my hypothesis is that all would benefit greatly. Thanks so much for sharing.
While I’m at it, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank Ajahn Brahmali for his beautiful, uplifting response and also to the OP.
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Many thanks to the venerable seniors for sharing their informative replies.
This is more in the realm of “anecdote” and more humble comment.
On a practical level, I didn’t actually end up taking a lot of the things I did during nissaya with me after I left the place I did nissaya. The place I live now has very little in common in terms of weather, setup, expectations, and roles. The things that I’m finding beneficial (especially the use of mobile phone blockers and timers as a meditation scheduling aid) are things I just didn’t do while I was under nissaya. The type of material setup has no relation at all; the demographics are different.
The most important thing has really been the friendships & what very few practices I internalised (I learned to chant, for example, under another teacher, but it could have theoretically also have been taught during nissaya), and a few practical skills like looking after guests. I don’t know how you would learn things like that guests might leave the heaters on and forget to return the keys except by running around after a lot of guests, so that was useful. I also didn’t know you could wash electric blankets in the washing machine before nissaya as well, so there you go. I could probably convert my nissaya into some kind of qualification in guest-house management, haha.
Besides giving me a second career as an unpaid hotelier, nissaya also gave a supportive environment to make a proper transition from relationships from lay life. From time to time, I’d still get contacted by former friends and employers, who mightn’t have necessarily realised that anything had changed with me- having something I was committed to (i.e. completing nissaya) in monastic life meant I wasn’t being pulled around by the past cropping back up. To me, this was actually the no.1 most important thing- TBH sometimes your friends and country neighbours want you to do very innocent things, like “go to the Festival of Tibet”, “help feed the chickens”, “barter some lemons” etc, stuff that kind of looks ok, but unless you have done a proper nissaya, it’s just a bit hard to know that not everything that is innocent is something you should actually do. When the demands that people were making of me from outside the monastery got a bit, um, demanding, being able to use the strength of the structure to push back against that really helped.
Also, I managed to clear up at least a handful of random vinaya misconceptions I had (like why juice is a 7 day allowable in the Ajahn Chah tradition, and why it’s not ok to eat after midday as long as you start before noon (!)…and that the word “korwat” is katikavata, not kor wat=temple). I think the thing about misconceptions is that you don’t know you have them until they are pointed out, in retrospect, I’m shocked that I didn’t know such simple things…so there clearly must have been some learning happening. One of the big differences you see between people educated in an actual vinaya place vs at random city temple is that people normally get their misconceptions educated out of them fairly quickly under an actual vinaya teacher…whereas I have seen city monastics with 10-20 vassas still holding really random “folk” vinaya beliefs like they are gospel truth. People without vinaya education do some very unusual and questionable things. So vinaya-based education probably does make a real difference.
I also found that I couldn’t really predict the circumstances that would crop up in a new place since I left nissaya: it wouldn’t have been enough to simply try to replicate a model, you kind of really need to know vinaya in some depth. For example, after I finished nissaya, on my bus line, there was a blind man who got on and off at my stop every day at the same time as me. He often required me to physically guide him by the arm to the station (a short walk that the staff didn’t assist with- his normal strategy was to indiscriminately grab the only nearby passenger, that being me- I was happy to help). While the prospect of having to very publicly walk arm-in-arm with a random man on a daily basis would have been the sort of thing that sounds like a vinaya class hypothetical, this actually happened to me, in an area with a substantial Lao minority. Having a more controlled environment while under nissaya means you likely aren’t getting this sort of thing thrown at you from day one, or if you do, your decision-making is being supported. The thing about judgement calls is that they take…well…judgement about what is contextually appropriate, which is precisely the thing that nissaya gives you some time to develop. I have also seen monastics go slightly off the rail/eccentric as soon as they leave nissaya, so it is not always easy.
The same could likely be said for sutta-based education, I couldn’t really put a value on the MN program we did over 4-5 years. I might have been able to study the MN by myself, but doing the program highlighted a much greater degree of nuance.
Anyway, just some reflections! In any case, the shared understandings and models of having been through a community structure are valuable, may everyone have a great nissaya!
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