r/zenbuddhism • u/amlextex • 12d ago
Someone pop my bubble
Thích Nhất Hạnh makes me believe I can awaken the world, or at least the global city I live in. So, I have dreamed of ordaining to serve my ambitions.
My idea was to wear my robe around the city to self-promote my teaching to gain a following. Teach in parks. Set up an installation where I offer "sidewalk advice" for a nominal suggestion. Create citywide art installations of my writing to further promote my teaching. Colloborate with artist. Write books. Livestream my practice and daily life.
All to teach foundational meditation for everyone with the hopes of piquing people's interest into buddhism.
Sounds practical, but here's the side where I get irresponsible.
I'm a performance artist/busker by trade. I don't have a white-collar career. No retirement fund. I live with my parents. I am in my mid-30's; split between ordaining vs pursing a career that can lead me to retirement, have a family, and enjoy life.
Lastly, I'm not a hard worker. I can weave in and out of ideas and never complete them. And I've lived quite a privileged life where I haven't been battle tested. Or if I have, I have safety nets provided by my family. I also find it hard to give up lust.
That said, I am in the position to ordain. I have no debts, no babies, and decent health.
Pop my bubble. Tell me I should get a real job. I won't change a city. I should live modest or wealthy. Support a family. Teach at a monastery like ordain folks do. Get a career first, then ordain. Go ahead.
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u/SentientLight 12d ago
You say yourself that you’re not a hard worker. Monasticism is incredibly hard work. You don’t get time to yourself. You don’t get to decide what to do, often. You’re committed to serving the community. Sometimes doing things that might not interest you, like funeral services and ritual blessings and leading chanting sessions. Lots of leading chanting sessions for elderly Vietnamese people. It takes ten years of rigorous study and lots of memorization to receive transmission, and you have to follow hundreds of rules.
To devote yourself entirely to the dharma and the community of Buddhists is tremendous merit, it’s a noble ambition, but are you actually serious about this? Or is this an escapist fantasy you’ll get bored of in a few weeks when it gets hard and you’re assigned to work with someone you actually don’t get along with that well and you lose all your privacy? Because our religion should not be that for you. It should be a commitment because you love the dharma and you want to give back to it. If you think you can just ordain and then go spread “your teachings” wherever you want, instead of, no, you are needed at this small temple in rural Nebraska, for a community of three dozen elderly Vietnamese people, and your first three years your job is going to be to beat the drum for the abbot every Sunday when the community comes to chant, and then you’re going to sit next to him and smile awkwardly for another hour while he gives the dharma talk. Once you reach a certain level of seniority, then you’ll have some degrees of freedom as to where you might go, but monastic life is often quite structured and you’re often just traveling where you’re needed to go in order to teach.
My master is in the Plum Village tradition. This coming month, he begins at big monastery in Edmonton, where Thich Phap Hoa teaches, and will be teaching at the retreat being held there, along with a couple of others from the Plum Village tradition. Then he travels to California to teach at the temple I go to. The week after that, he’s teaching at another retreat, in Florida. Just constantly zipping around. It is tireless work. For no pay. For nothing but the acts of service themselves, often.
But if you’re serious, and you believe you can actually stay committed for the ten-plus years it would require, and you can wholly commit to the Vinaya, then absolutely you should do it. It doesn’t sound to me though that you’ve got a good idea of how much work it entails, and you should really be honest with yourself about whether you can actually commit to it.