The Forum is held at the beginning and end of the annual Buddhist Summer School (Melbourne) and it raises contemporary issues for discussion by teachers participating in the program.

Buddhist And Christian Monasticism In Dialogue

Father David Ransom and Venerable Tejadhammo Bhikku
Buddhist Summer School, 1996

Father David Ransom

I am part of a long tradition stretching back close to seventeen hundred years. For that length of time, Christian men and women have been searching for an experience of the Absolute, according to the memory of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, through means and priorities which have cross-culturally been defined as monastic.

I am known as a Cistercian monk; that is, a monk who belongs to the international family of monks and nuns who take their inspiration from a European monastic reform in the eleventh century. This reform was of a much older family, the Benedictine family of monks and nuns, who take their inspiration from the guidelines for monasteries written by Benedict of Nursia, in the sixth century. The Cistercian reform was a reform rather than an innovation and consequently, the Rule of St. Benedict remains the principal document upon which my own monastic life is lived.

The Rule of St. Benedict pivots on the believed presence of Jesus as the risen Lord. The Christian monk believes that the Divine Presence is everywhere and tries to truly seek God and to prefer nothing whatever to Christ. As the rule says, 'The love of Christ must come before all else.'

The monk engages in this search in a practical, rather than a dogmatic or creedal fashion. Importantly, he makes this search in and through the employment of the traditional monastic tools: obedience to a spiritual discipline and the teacher; celibacy; the esteem for silence and solitude; intentional simplicity of lifestyle; and the continuous application of the spiritual craft.

It is the cross-cultural, inter-religious engagement of these means for seeking spiritual enlightenment that makes dialogue between the traditions of Christianity and Buddhism both possible and desirable.

Christian monasticism is firstly, a process of inner transformation; secondly, a process of inner transformation lived within a community; thirdly, open to prayer; and fourthly, one which is self-sustaining. The heart of the Rule of St. Benedict lies in these four main tracts. A monk is a person called into a life of inner transformation within a community which is open to prayer, open in prayer, and self-sustaining.

I want to look at each of those four aspects and see how the Rule of St. Benedict weaves those four main aspects together. Cistercian Benedictine monks and nuns take a vow called conversatio morum. The Latin is not really translatable; which makes it a very flexible vow. Nonetheless, it expresses the monk's commitment to the dynamic personal process of spiritual growth through a continual use of the monastic practices. These practices are more than just attitudes of mind and heart, they have their own concrete demands and obligations, they have the ongoing conversion of the monk as their aim. According to St. Benedict's vision, the monk is caught up in a process of conversion, a process of transformation, to become more and more restored to the image of the God who made him. There are many different ways to describe this: a journey into full consciousness; an adventure into the heart of reality through the illusions that befog us; a pathway of realisation into human and divine maturity. According to Benedict, the monk is called into this project and responds in love; he is someone who believes he is called into this pathway, this journey into consciousness.

The principal means that the Rule offers for this call is the means of obedience. Obedience is so significant in monastic life that it is the second vow a monk or nun takes. The Rule seems to indicate that such obedience is principally about the individual monk abdicating his self-responsibility. In a contemporary culture, we may find this idea particularly disdainful. However, when we situate the different nuances that Benedict has for obedience, we begin to realise that it is a lot more than just doing what one is told. It is, more radically, about developing a deep attentiveness in life. This receptivity is essential in the process of conversion and transformation.
The Rule says that speaking and teaching are the Master's task; the disciple is to be silent and listen. So, obedience as a deep listening and silence become inseparable. Absolute silence is not a Benedictine ideal, although in different reforms through the centuries it did attain a great deal of prominence in Christian monastic life. For many centuries, Cistercian monks never spoke. They communicated through an elaborate sign language that only went out in the late 1960's. It went out because Cistercian monks realised that silence is not something to be sought for its own sake. It is, however, an outward manifestation of this deeply inward value of obedience, so the night is still a period of silence and we keep the night hours from eight PM until seven AM completely silent.

In the process of conversion and transformation, the values of obedience and silence are complemented by the value of humility. The chapter on humility is one of the longest and most complex in the Rule. In some ways, it provides the very heart of the Rule, for it presents the way of perfection for the monk in terms of a ladder of descent. In the Christian perspective, following the example of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, spiritual ascent is always through descent. The monk begins his journey in fear and apprehension and ends at the perfect love of God which casts out all fear.
Step one is this beginning in apprehension; step twelve of the ladder of humility is this perfect love. The intervening ten steps take the monk in very practical, threshold ways into a radical confrontation with his own self and lead him into the experience of utter dependency on the love and the mercy of God. This dependency on God, by the fourth step, has become pervasive in the monk's whole being, which the Rule says is evident of the work of God. So the monastery is a workshop, a school, where this journey of the spirit is embarked upon in a single-minded way, and the journey becomes a whole way of life for the monk.

The second main trait of Benedict's vision is that this process of conversion, this process of transformation, is lived within a community. The third vow that the Christian Benedictine monk takes is a vow of stability, which bonds him to a particular community, in a particular place, for life. It is in community, with all of its sociality that the process of inner transformation takes place. From the first to the last chapter, the Rule of Benedict is concerned with the establishment of a communal way of life that has mutuality as its currency.

Much of the Rule is dedicated to the ordering of relationships within the community, so that this ideal might be realised. This is where the Rule's concept of obedience takes its most interesting characteristic. As it says, 'Obedience is a blessing to be shown by all, not only to the Abbot, but also to one another as brothers, since we know that it is by this way of obedience that we go to God.' In other words, it's by the way of listening to each other that we go to God.

This whole theme of mutual service is very strong in the Rule, yet it is given very practical expression in my own monastery where, as a novice, you are not allowed to wash up. In fact, you are only allowed to wash up once you have made your life commitment, which is some seven or eight years down the track. The old serve the young rather than the young serving the old. It is the cardinal offence to murmur or to grumble about somebody else in the community. The warmth and the compassion and the sensitivity that comes through these passages gives the Rule its distinctive note of moderation. They also have as their natural consequence a welcome to the stranger and so hospitality is thus a very important dimension of Christian monastic life.
That is the second main aspect of Christian Benedictine monasticism. The journey of transformation takes place within the environment of community, which has as its currency, mutuality and obedience, not just to a superior but, most importantly and most radically, to one another.

he third aspect is that this is a community open in prayer. The Christian monk, according to Benedict's vision, is one who has set his gaze firmly on the heavenly and sees the presence of Jesus in all of his encounters. As we have already mentioned, this sensitivity to the presence of Christ permeates all his dealings. Even the utensils and the goods of the monastery are to be regarded as sacred vessels of the altar.
Such a perception as this is maintained by the rhythm of prayer, which constitutes the monastic day. Seven times a day the community gathers in mindfulness of God's saving activity in history, through the chanting of scriptural poetry, the psalms, listening to scriptural texts and those of the tradition, and by making prayer of intercession on behalf of all people. This seven-fold gathering together, throughout the course of each day, is called the Liturgy of the Hours and a goodly portion of the Monastic Rule of St. Benedict is taken up with its organisation.

At Tarrawarra Abbey, we begin at four o'clock in the morning and end at eight in the night. The day is also punctuated by times of communal prayer. In the night, the monk waits for the dawn, which is the great symbol for him of the resurrection of Jesus whom he believes to be the light of the world. At sunrise, Christ's resurrection is celebrated and, at sunset, his self-surrender in trust is brought to mind. This rhythm is one of the principal ways the Benedictine monk meditates and, for this reason, the Rule states that nothing should be preferred to these times of gathering.
At other times, the monks spend time meditatively, reflecting on the scriptural texts themselves. It is a technique of reading in such a way as to be open, to be struck by a word or a phrase in the text which may open new horizons in the monk's journey of transformation. Then, once a day, the community gathers together to celebrate the Eucharist, which is the chief form of Christian prayer. In word and action, this ritual celebrates the memory of Jesus' death and resurrection and makes the power of that mystery present in the life of the community.

The prayer of silent, imageless meditation is allowed to develop spontaneously, rather than in any prescribed fashion. In this regard, the Rule advocates that this kind of prayer should be short and pure unless it is prolonged under the inspiration of the Divine Grace. Prayer is to be infused throughout the whole day and, particularly, that prayer is to emerge through the rhythm of the life rather than through long hours spent in the practice formally.

Fourthly, this community is self-sustaining. The community which the monk is bonded to is to have a self-sustaining economy in which all the monks participate as workers. The Rule says it quite forcefully: 'When they live by the labour of their hands, as our fathers and the Apostles did, then they are really monks. Yet all things are to be done with moderation on account of the faint-hearted.' Four to six hours are given over to work each day, each monk assuming responsibility appropriate to his age and to his capacities. At Tarrawarra Abbey, we run a thousand-acre property with beef and dairy cattle, which is completely managed and worked by the monks themselves. Further, the ordinary domestic responsibilities of the house and community are also engaged in by the monks themselves. It is the task of the Abbot to ensure that all the community's needs are met and that the monks involved have all the help they need in whatever responsibility they are assigned.

The establishment of a viable economy for the community is not intended for the purposes of creating wealth. Work does, however, provide the opportunity for a certain independence for the monastic community and the monastic community has always been very sensitive to outside interference by those who may not appreciate the monastic project fully enough.

The Monastic Rule of Benedict has been lived now by people in almost every culture, for nearly fifteen hundred years. It has endured and continues to be a vibrant spiritual pathway for many women and men. The enduring quality of the Rule lies in its non-ideological and non-infallible tone. The Rule trusts people with a patient realism that is sensitive to the process that they are engaged in. It is careful without being fussy, yet maintains a controlled passion about the project that it is writing on.

Ven. Tejadhammo

Buddhist monasticism is extremely old. In fact, it is probably the oldest continuous monastic form in the world. It is older than the monasticism of Hinduism and it is certainly older than the Christian tradition. There have been some very interesting interactions in past times between Christian monasticism and Buddhist monasticism and there is a lot of research being conducted at the moment regarding their interconnections and influences, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.
Buddhist monasticism is based on the Buddha's own experience. If we want to look for a model for the Buddhist monk or for the Buddhist nun, it is the Buddha himself. The Buddha's monastic 'vocation' - to use a Christian term - comes precisely out of his own experience of duhkha, his discovery or his waking up to duhkha and his various attempts to deal with that duhkha - with that unsatisfactoriness.

The first monks were simply invited to become monks. There was no formal ordination ceremony. A group of people began to grow around the Buddha and became the first or the primitive monastic community. With time, more and more people began to be drawn to the Buddha's teaching and the Buddha's way. The Buddha clearly had to formalise this whole process. This period was very turbulent; if you look at the early texts, the Buddha faced constant complaints from people.

The lay community made all sorts of complaints at different times. The Buddha made various rules in response to the different situations that arose. These rules eventually became codified in what we know today as the Vinaya, which simply means 'discipline.' The Vinaya is one of the Three Baskets. The Buddhist scriptures are divided into three 'baskets:' the Sutta Pitaka or sutra basket, the Vinaya Pitaka or basket of the monastic rule and the Abhidhamma Pitaka or the basket concerned with the philosophical development of the teachings.

The monastic rule consists of three main sections: the Suttavibhanga, the Khandhaka and the Parivara. The Pattimokkha, which is the core of the monastic rule, comes from the first section, the Sutta-vibhanga. The Mahavagga and Cullavagga contain lots of stories explaining where the rules came from.

The most important thing however, has always been that the spiritual life, the monastic life, is about freedom, is about vimutti, which is freedom from dukkha. In the Majjhima Nikaya, the Buddha is recorded as saying,

Monks, the aim of the religious life, the aim of the monks' life, is not to gain material profit, nor is it to win veneration nor to reach the highest morality, nor is it to be capable of the highest mental concentration. Monks, the ultimate end of the religious life, the spiritual life, is the unshakeable freedom of the heart and mind. This is the essence. This is the core.

As far as the Buddha is concerned, all of these rules and regulations and structures that are now in place, are there only inasmuch as they lead to or are conducive to the 'unshakeable freedom of the heart and mind.' It is very important that we do not lose sight of that because, like any organisation, the sangha can very easily lose its way and get caught up in the institution itself.

There are two hundred and twenty-seven rules. There were at one stage, only five or six rules; had the Buddha gone on instituting rules, there could be five hundred of them. In the contemporary world some of them are no longer applicable, but they are still in the Rule. For instance, there is a rule about not accepting a black goatskin rug. I live for the day when someone offers me one so I can say, 'No I can't accept that.' However, many of the other rules still have application.

If you commit a parajika offence - a 'defeat' offence - you are no longer a monk or nun in the eyes of the Buddhist community. The four parajika offences are: intercourse, because monks are meant to be celibate; theft; depriving a human being of life; and going around displaying special powers, displaying the siddhis. Strictly speaking, according to the texts, anyone who has committed one of these offences cannot become a monk and a nun again in this lifetime.

The next category of penalties are what are called sanghadisesa. This literally means 'getting a group of the community together,' calling a community meeting and deciding what is to be done in response to the offence. These meetings are for very serious things. You would not have a sanghadisesa offence, for instance, for eating after midday - although not eating after midday is in the monastic rule. It would have to be something very, very serious. A penalty would be given to the person so they can make up for what they did. It may be a penalty with, for example, a forfeiture. If the offending person had something they ought not to have, or if he had accepted a gift that a monk cannot accept, then he has to give it up, give it away, get rid of it.
The next category, the thullaccaya, are called 'grave offences' and these require confession to another monk. There are numerous such grave offences. They are taken care of simply by going to another monk' going through a small ritualised confession, where you tell the other monk what it is that you have done. You must be specific, this is the important thing. You have got to say exactly what your offence was and then you ask his forgiveness and you admit that you did it. He then acknowledges that and says to you, 'I've heard you and I ask that you also forgive anything that I might have done with regard to you or with regard to the community' and so on.

This is very common in the Theravadin tradition. When I first became a monk, I used to wonder, 'What on earth are these people doing?' I would see two monks walking along a pathway and then, suddenly, one would give some kind of indication and they would both squat down and would kind of whisper to each other. Then they would bow and turn around and go off. It took some time before it was explained to me that this is what was happening, that when they broke a particular rule there was a duty and a need to do something about it in this way.

The next category, the pacittiya, is a very large category, and concerns offences that requires expiation of some kind. In other words, something has to actually be done about what you have done. It might be giving back something. You might have accepted a set of robes that you ought not to accept. You might have exceeded a limit on something. There are what are called confessable offences; they are like the grave offences requiring confession to another monk. There are things called dukkata, which are literally 'things that give rise to suffering.' In English, we would simply call them 'wrongdoings.' They are kind of mindless things that you might do. A lot of them are to do with etiquette. One of the rules says, 'I will not sit in a public place swinging my legs.' 'I will not go into town with my arms akimbo.' The last group, the dubbhasita has to do with the incorrect use of speech.

The Rule is very important in the Buddhist monastic tradition and is meant to facilitate the living of the spiritual life. It is meant to make it easier to live in a community of other monks or other nuns and it is meant to make it easier if you are not living in a community of other monks and other nuns. It is also meant to be flexible and adaptable.

Many people seem to have an image of Buddhist monks being kind of remote and hermit-like. This is not found in the earliest texts. In fact, we find the Buddha actively discouraging people from going off and living in really secluded and isolated places on their own. By insisting that monks remain almsmen - going on alms round for their food - the Buddha largely prevented that from happening. You can not live on the top of a mountain that takes you eight hours to walk up, if you have got to come down to the village every day to collect food. The Buddha also says that you cannot keep food at the monastery. They are allowed to keep certain foodstuffs there, but to keep whole food and so on is actually an offence in the monastic Rule.

I would like to finish with the suggestion that the Buddha deliberately made a monk into someone who is useless. The monk traditionally does not produce anything. The monk does not, in a sense, even have a function within society. In other words, society could get on quite well without monks. And yet, there is a kind of reciprocal dependency that arises between the Buddhist monastic tradition and the society which supports it.

If we take the roses out here in the garden, that rose plant is, in some ways, like Buddhist monasticism. Like a Buddhist monk or nun, it does not really have a use. If you appreciate it for its beauty however, you can say that beauty is a useful thing. If you try and imagine what it would be like with no rose plants in your world, it would be rather strange. The rose plant also has a number of features that are similar to the Buddhist monk or nun. First of all, it is grafted onto something else and the Buddhist monk, the Buddhist nun, is always grafted onto a rootstock. That rootstock is the Buddha himself. This does not mean that there cannot be variations; there are hundreds of varieties of roses. The rose also has a perfume, and a monastic sangha which lives well - which lives according to the Buddha's aim for the monastic life as directed towards freedom - is a bit like the perfume of the rose. It can have a very pleasant and very beneficial effect on those who come into contact with it, those who are around it.

I do not think it is possible to imagine Buddhism without some kind of monastic expression. It may not always look like this or that; like the Tibetan expression or like the Chinese expression or whatever it is. It seems to me however, that the monastic tradition is actually at the very heart of the experience of Buddhism, of the experience of the Buddha himself.