An edited transcript of a talk given at Shasta in March 2024.

Last month I celebrated my 50th ordination anniversary as a monk. I don’t mention this because I think it was a big deal, a great accomplishment or anything like that. I’m glad I stuck with my vocation, and it’s not always been easy, to be totally honest with you. Time has gone by quickly; it seems like yesterday that my long hair and beard were shaved and I was ordained by Rev. Master Jiyu.

I feel fortunate that Rev. Master Jiyu was willing to teach me, and that the community has been willing to put up with me. That’s how I kind of look at those 50 years – I’m lucky. It was what I wanted to do as a very young person, and the adventure continues.

We don’t present someone who has been a monk for 50 years with a gold watch to mark the occasion (or silver, or whatever it should be). I was given a beautiful card and a gift certificate from the community. I think it’s the first gift certificate I’ve received in my life. I was sent cards by friends and disciples and I was given some statues – I like statues; I usually put them out at the Hermitage, in some nice place. And I was also taken out for a Thai lunch.

Oh yeah, and I got hearing aids the other day. And they honestly are really expensive(!) And they take some time to adjust to. So if I’m not audible, or I’m too loud, let me know, because I feel like I have an ocean in one ear. And in the other ear I don’t know what’s going on! And I didn’t think I had any hearing problems until I took a hearing test, but that’s the way it goes.

I had an opportunity to go to Latvia and Lithuania after our Monastic Gathering at Throssel. We met with meditation groups in both countries. I think it was in Latvia that someone asked me what advice I might have after years of training. My first reaction is usually, “Oh, I don’t know.” But instead I replied that anyone who wants to do this training can do it. If we apply ourselves to the practice, keep at it daily, we will succeed, and we will know the peace and happiness of Buddha. Buddhist practice is for ordinary people, like you and me. Not a lot of us are the Buddha, the Dalai Lama, or Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett, we’re just ordinary people. And that’s who it’s for. In Japan, Sōtō Zen is referred to as ‘Farmer Zen’ and it’s for hard-working, ordinary people. I really like that; that really attracted me to Sōtō Zen.

Around my 50th ordination anniversary I was also asked by lay practitioners and monks, what wisdom I might have to pass on. Again, I kind of thought, “Okay, maybe I have some wisdom there somewhere.” One of the things I said was that our training is only as good as it is in the present moment. It’s only as good as it is today, right now. In other words, we have to keep at the practice no matter how long we have been training. Training continues to be dynamic and challenging – at least it has been for me. The Buddha trained to his dying day, as did Rev. Master Jiyu. They never thought they were fully accomplished and all finished – they knew that there was more to do.

There is a resting place in the heart that we find when we train, when we make great effort in training. Training does get easier. I really struggled initially; being a monk was a very different way of life. I was 23 years old, and I had a lot to learn. I had somewhat, as a lay practitioner, learned that suffering was optional, which was actually a deep understanding for me – knowing that I didn’t have to suffer. But it was obvious when I came to the monastery that there was a lot more I needed to do in my practice. And that was challenging. The experience of years of practice builds a strong foundation to be rooted in; there’s no doubt about that. Faith and confidence grow strong with years of practice. Along the way, we make mistakes and we learn from our mistakes. And hopefully we don’t make them again. Everything is teaching us. Training, if done properly, will always challenge us. Training is done with other people. How could it not be challenging? The type of training we do is done every day with other people, and they’re all around you – and that’s not a problem.

We have to keep at the training of awareness, mindfulness, compassion, kindness and generosity. Wisdom comes from keeping at these things in our daily practice. That’s wisdom, kindness, generosity, compassion, patience. Training stretches us to be able to do more than we think we can do. Training for me has never been ‘one and done’. As Rev. Master Jiyu put it in The Scripture of Great Wisdom: “O Buddha going, going, going on beyond and always becoming Buddha.”¹ We’re always becoming Buddha.

I think with years of training, there is an ease and naturalness that comes to our practice. That happens when people do something for a long time. It comes for a monk if you’re comfortable in your own skin and in your robe. And I want to say here too that I think one of the nice benefits of training is you begin to like yourself. A lot of people don’t like themselves. We enjoy the training, and still we have to be on guard – not jumpy or anxious but just keeping our awareness up.

We don’t graduate from keeping the Precepts, that’s essential. The Buddha said the Precepts were the same for him as for us. In fact, with the Precepts, we take them on an ever-deepening level. We greet each new day with appreciation, joy and gratitude for another opportunity to follow the Buddha’s teachings. It’s kind of like Groundhog Day – we keep getting opportunities to get it right.

To another group of people who asked me for advice for some perspective on training as a Buddhist monk for 50 years, I replied, “Continue to work on your practice of not being selfish.” If we are honest with ourselves, we know it’s a human tendency to be self-centred and sometimes downright selfish. It’s not that we don’t need to take care of ourselves, and in some circumstances, protect and maybe even defend ourselves. Sometimes selfishness is necessary – if we constantly gave away everything we had, we’d end up giving away things we need, and then we’d become a burden for other people because we’d have nothing, and you need some things to be able to survive as a human being. If we ran around helping people, working hard all the time, never taking time to eat, exercise and rest properly, we would get sick and again we’d be a burden for others. We have to find a balance – a balance of giving and receiving, activity and stillness.

Selfishness is when thoughts of I, me and mine are the primary motivation for our lives. When we hold so tightly to ‘I, me and mine’ that it puts us out of balance with other beings, that’s a problem. If we’re not careful, we then create divisions, barriers and walls between us and others. Mental divisions and barriers can develop into physical walls. We create a mind that is jealous, petty, hurtful, and vengeful. And it can go beyond that to violent because we’re defending something, and then we think others are to be feared, disrespected and kept at a safe distance. Humankind has fought countless battles and wars because of the grasping and pushing away mentality of I, me and mine. And as we know, this continues in the 21^st century. You’d think we would have learned by now, but we tend to not study history so we don’t see how things unfold, and then we just keep doing it again.

In Buddhism, we talk about letting go of the self. Sometimes this is called ‘no self’; no separate self (or not-self or some other things – whatever works for us is a good phrase). And regardless of how we look at ‘no self’, we can’t deny that there’s a person here, a personality. There is something here, not a nothing. We are not trying, through training, to annihilate the self – that’s a big misunderstanding about Buddhism. We’re just finding its proper place and expression.

To be honest, I find this a little confusing, so an easy way for me to understand these concepts is the simple phrase, “Don’t be selfish.” Rev. Master Jiyu used to say that when you first come to training, we train for self, and after a while, that changes to ‘training for self and other’. As we progress further, we train just for training’s sake. It’s just a very natural process. And I think it’s one of the benefits of staying at something. In The Scripture of the Buddha’s Last Teachings the Buddha says, “The teaching that to spiritually benefit yourself by training benefits others contains all.” ²

To help others – this is something we can do. To help others we also have to be always training ourselves. Because if we don’t train ourselves, and we’re just trying to fix everything and do everything, it’s not going to be as well-rounded as if it would be if we were training ourselves too. It’s not selfish to take time out of your daily routine to do some meditation, or study the teachings of the Buddhas and Ancestors, or just to have some quiet time. If you’re a parent, and it’s your meditation time and all of a sudden your baby is crying, then taking care of your baby is your form of meditation right then. It would not be a good thing to say, “Oh no, it’s my time to meditate, so I’ll just let the child cry.” Of course not. To not be selfish is to be fluid, and move with the causes and conditions of our lives. Sometimes I miss a meditation or a service because of something that needs doing. It just kind of comes with the responsibility. The thing is not to be doing that frequently. That’s where the problem arises. Because then we would get out of balance.

I think the best teachings that I have received in my life come from the example of other people living their everyday life. Just living it by the Precepts, from meditation, following the Buddha’s teachings. This to me, is not fancy or verbose, it’s practical, clear and down-to-earth. Just keeping the Precepts and doing what needs to be done in our daily lives actually changes our world for the better. It really does.

I want to read from a book, More Than Mindfulness: Widening The Field of Practice, which I got from Abhayagiri Monastery down towards Ukiah, it’s in Strawberry Valley or something like that. And the article I’m going to read from is by Ajahn Pasanno who just had his 50th anniversary too, so we’re very close in age and ordination. I have great respect for him. I just want to read a few paragraphs from this article that he entitled, Don’t Be Selfish.

The other day I was thinking about an occasion years ago when I was still living in Thailand. It’s a story I’ve told from time to time but it’s a story that stuck with me. It was when I went to pay respects to Ajahn Buddhadasa.

Ajahn Chah (who was Ajahn Pasanno’s teacher) and Ajahn Buddhadasa were two very famous Buddhist teachers in Thailand at the time Ajahn Pasanno was there, though they’ve both died now.

I had been to visit and pay respects quite a few times, but this happened on my last visit. He was quite old at the time; he was over 80, and his health was starting to decline. I had noticed over the years that he tended to pick up a theme and explore it for an extended period. He would speak on it from different angles. He was very skilled as a teacher, so I asked him, “Now that you’re reaching the last part of your life, what theme are you teaching now?” He just laughed and said, “Oh, I’m not teaching much at all these days. I just keep telling people, ‘Don’t be selfish.’” That really struck me. Once you start unpacking that teaching, you start reflecting on it and implementing it. You realise that it covers everything. It covers whatever aspect of the Buddha’s teaching and whatever aspect of life that you apply it to. “Don’t be selfish.” Being able to make it explicit in the mind, so that one keeps reminding oneself how to live like that. If we really want to be free from suffering and to awaken to truth, then we can’t be selfish. We can’t be bringing selfish concerns or selfish perspectives. The Dharma goes one way and selfishness goes the other way. They go in opposite directions.

This theme is a very big feature in Ajahn Chah‘s training and the way that he set up his monastery. That sense of going against the stream of any kind of selfishness. On a practical, social level, in how we live as human beings, there’s always an encouragement to see how we can help with everything. There is an encouragement to be present at everything that the community is doing.

So their formal practice has a lot of similarities to ours. When you live in a community, you’re around people all day long and do things together.

There was that sense of stepping back from selfishness. Selfishness plays itself out in so many ways. There is your normal assumption of selflessness, which is around greed and self-concern, but there’s also that self-orientation, that self-protection and self-cherishing. Living together really helps to go against that very ordinary human tendency of selfishness. By sharing community, we share everything in common. There is so much selflessness just on a social level, amidst the pandemic, and in the conflicts that have been occurring in America for the past decades. ³

(Ajahn Pasanno must have given this talk during the Covid pandemic.)

Rev. Master Jiyu set up a practice at Shasta Abbey for monks and lay practitioners of community life, in which we train ourselves and help each other. We built a lot of what is Shasta Abbey – the rock houses were here, but we built mostly everything else. And we didn’t know that much about building(!) We got better over time, though. Over the years people have really given of themselves. And when people walk in the gate here, they sense something – peacefulness.

We’re having people come in and do some remodelling on our property at the moment, a couple who run an electrical business came in, and the woman said she suffers from anxiety, but she said she came in the gate and all of a sudden she felt relieved. I don’t know how, but I think it must be the result of all the training of people who have come here over the years. It’s not just the monks, it’s not just the people who have stayed. It’s the training of all the people who have come here and given of themselves, and not been selfish. We had very little at first here, we had a roof over our heads but we didn’t necessarily have heating. But we were young, you know; we survived. Some of us went out to work to support the monastery at times. Rev. Master Jiyu used to take trips to the Bay Area so she could teach at UC Berkeley, and she received money for that which she brought back to support the monastery. While in the Bay Area she would stop by the Parisian bakery for donated bread. It was one of the big French bread bakers in the Bay Area – it was in San Francisco at the time; probably doesn’t exist anymore. Rev. Master would bring back all these day-old loaves of French bread. If you keep French bread in a paper bag it doesn’t go mouldy, and we made bread pudding, and maybe some dressing, and it was great – we had bread. Yes, we were poor, but you know, some other people were a lot poorer than us.

The daily schedule here is such that we practice together, and that we offer a service to each other, to the community. It’s just something we do in monastic life. We’re not just doing our own thing. We’re all in the kitchen each day after lunch and the medicine meal cleaning up. I’ve heard some people describe kitchen clean-up as a dance because you get all those people in there, and to not run into somebody who’s carrying the knives to be put away after being dried takes some skill. Occasionally we bang into each other. But usually the choreography is good. And when we have a big retreat here you get even more people in there, and yet after they do it for a day, it goes very smoothly. Or it’s like the setting up in the hall for morning service, which has many nuances. But by the second day of an introductory retreat, people know what they’re doing better than I do.

So as we age, how we contribute in the community changes a bit, but we can always contribute. When Rev. Master Jiyu talked about Kohō Zenji in Japan, she said he would say, “As long as I can raise one finger. I can be of help.” He was wheelchair-bound in the later part of his life. But he felt that he could do something. And Rev. Master Jiyu used to talk to us about the old monks in China, how they would be the first ones in the meditation hall every morning. They’d been doing that for years. You know what happens after a while, if we do something that has a routine, when it’s time for meditation, you just go to meditation. You don’t have to get into a big argument in your head, it’s just time for meditation.

Rev. Master Jiyu was so generous to beings. She had this enormous heart; she was willing to help and teach us young hippies here. Because sometimes we were a bit ‘out there’(!) And occasionally, we’d come up with some project which wasn’t going to work, but she couldn’t convince us, so she just let us do it. And it didn’t work – and we learned from that.

And the thing about Rev. Master Jiyu was that although she was so generous, had such a big heart and was such a great teacher, she had really poor health. Really, not good. And her physical strength was limited. But what she did, within that, is unbelievable. I had the good fortune to meet her when I was in my early twenties. She was like a breath of fresh air in all the confusion of the time. She was knowledgeable: wise, kind and compassionate and she didn’t rub it in your face. Because in those days, you know – late 60s, early 70s – people did something for a month and they thought they were an authority. But she had done serious training, and she wasn’t trying to be the big authority. She was trying to help and offer people the Dharma. She also could be very tough, and just give it to you straight on. Rev. Master Meian and myself always talk about how grateful we are for that. Rev. Master Jiyu’s teaching and her everyday example changed my life.

Through the years of my monastic training, I sometimes come to a place of not quite knowing how I’m going to proceed. I just don’t know what the right answer is, or necessarily what to do. Believe it or not, life in a monastery can sometimes be complex, and definitely challenging. I remember years ago being on the phone with some company and the person somehow figured out that I was from a monastery, and she said, “Oh, it must be so peaceful there.” Well, it just turned out that day there was all kinds of stuff going on. It wasn’t that it wasn’t peaceful, but there was just a lot happening.

So, a number of times when I found myself at this crossroads of not knowing what to do, the quiet mantra arises. “Don’t be selfish with your life.” This is simple and solid advice. If studied and followed, it will help carry you and all beings to the other shore, and you’ll find freedom from suffering. What more could we ask for?

Notes

1. The Liturgy of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives for the Laity. Shasta Abbey Press, 1990.
2. Buddhist Writings On Meditation And Daily Practice: The Serene Reflection Meditation Tradition. Translator Reverend Hubert Nearman, OBC. Shasta Abbey Press, 1993. p. 259
3. More Than Mindfulness: Widening The Field of Practice. Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, p. 93.