To you, who is spending sleepless nights trying to decide between your family and ordination
by Hoko, with a wink at my 20th century ancestors
There is no reason for ordination to be the end of your life with your family or work outside of the temple. Celibacy hasn’t been required of Soto Zen clergy since the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
I am sometimes contacted by those who have created anguish for themselves by conceiving an incompatibility between life as Soto Zen clergy and life with a family and career outside of the temple. Many sleepless nights are spent trying to reconcile the heartbreak of abandoning loved ones with the imagined fulfillment of a cloistered life of immersion in the dharma, as though the karmic conditions of our lives as they are are not a complete immersion in and expression of practice.. It is not necessary for us to recreate the Buddha’s experience of kissing his wife and son goodbye and sneaking over the palace wall in the night in order to ordain as novices.
This thing American people call Soto Zen “monasticism” is a Western construct. While time in a training temple is a requirement for authorization, it’s comparable to being in the seminary. One goes to the training temple for a period of time and then returns to the world -- in Japan, likely to take over the family temple, and in the West, likely to start or work in a Zen center. The only “Zen monasteries” where people might enter to lead a permanently cloistered existence are in the West and are a hybrid of Judeo-Christian expectations and the Japanese training model. Sotoshu does not require one to give up family life, and most of us (here and in Japan) have homes, families and careers or work outside of the temple -- largely because it’s very difficult to make a living otherwise. One’s practice leadership becomes the priority over career but does not become the only expression of that practice.
Before ending your relationships and quitting your job, please talk with your teacher as someone who is actually living this life and can tell you the whole story.
by Hoko, with a wink at my 20th century ancestors
There is no reason for ordination to be the end of your life with your family or work outside of the temple. Celibacy hasn’t been required of Soto Zen clergy since the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
I am sometimes contacted by those who have created anguish for themselves by conceiving an incompatibility between life as Soto Zen clergy and life with a family and career outside of the temple. Many sleepless nights are spent trying to reconcile the heartbreak of abandoning loved ones with the imagined fulfillment of a cloistered life of immersion in the dharma, as though the karmic conditions of our lives as they are are not a complete immersion in and expression of practice.. It is not necessary for us to recreate the Buddha’s experience of kissing his wife and son goodbye and sneaking over the palace wall in the night in order to ordain as novices.
This thing American people call Soto Zen “monasticism” is a Western construct. While time in a training temple is a requirement for authorization, it’s comparable to being in the seminary. One goes to the training temple for a period of time and then returns to the world -- in Japan, likely to take over the family temple, and in the West, likely to start or work in a Zen center. The only “Zen monasteries” where people might enter to lead a permanently cloistered existence are in the West and are a hybrid of Judeo-Christian expectations and the Japanese training model. Sotoshu does not require one to give up family life, and most of us (here and in Japan) have homes, families and careers or work outside of the temple -- largely because it’s very difficult to make a living otherwise. One’s practice leadership becomes the priority over career but does not become the only expression of that practice.
Before ending your relationships and quitting your job, please talk with your teacher as someone who is actually living this life and can tell you the whole story.
