Soldiers of Humanity

Attending the Gyōin was a massive shock for me. I left behind my wife and children, left the partners in my firm, my clients, everything. Once we checked in to the monastery, our contact with the rest of the world was severely limited. As my wife’s friend commented to her during my leave, it was like I was dead. If the boiler broke down in our house, I wasn’t there to fix it, and my wife couldn’t pick up the phone to call me. For me, on top of the challenge of the training, I was afflicted with worry about the world I left behind and all the people I was imposing upon by shirking my responsibilities to them. And of course, I missed them all, dearly.

We were, however, allowed for the first month to send and receive letters by postal mail. I wrote tear stained letters to my family every few days when I could find spare minutes. I told my wife how I missed her embrace. I told my children how I missed them and how sorry I was that I was missing their soccer season and reminded them to help their mother. I told them all how hard life on the Mountain was and how I wanted to go home. And I waited for a response. Days and weeks passed before I received a letter. I later found out it took about a week for letters to reach their destinations each way.

One letter I received was from a Dharma friend. He had heard how hard the training was and the difficulties I was having. He wrote encouragement, referring to the hardships Milarepa faced. He pointed out how the training described in stories of the great sages weren’t just stories, but were actually accounts of the kind of difficulties I was facing then. He included xerox copies of excerpts from books including this from Zen Stories:

Soldiers of Humanity

Once a division of the Japanese army was engaged in a sham battle, and some of the officers found it necessary to make their headquarters in Gasan’s temple.

Gasan told his cook: “Let the officers have only the same simple fare we eat.”

This made the army men angry, as they were used to very deferential treatment. One came to Gasan and said: “Who do you think we are? We are soldiers, sacrificing our lives for our country. Why don’t you treat us accordingly?”

Gasan answered sternly, “Who do you think we are? We are soldiers of humanity, aiming to save all sentient beings.”

Zen Stories, p. 73

Of course, the likening of monastic training to military training had occurred to me. In many ways daily life was like the stories my father told of Marines boot camp – lots of cleaning and preparation, and meticulous discipline in terms of our appearance and performance of tasks, which in our case were the daily rituals of practice. I also thought of the story when Gautama sat beneath the pipal tree in Gaya and resolved to remain there until he awoke. Some stories portray his victory over himself during that night as a great battle with Mara. In so many ways, we, too, were like soldiers, being prepared to go out into samsara and struggle for awakening ourselves and others – a battle of monumental proportions. Military soldiers are tasked with destruction as political action. Monasteries train us to overcome the Three Poisons and pacify the Threefold World. The effort, courage and bravery is no less than anything demanded on the battlefield.

Sometimes people ask me about my time on the Mountain and at first seem to assume it was like a peaceful retreat at a spa. I quickly explain that it was not peaceful, at least in the way they think, and that it was instead one of the most rigorous and challenging things I have done in my life. I tell them, I was often stretched to my limits, and broke, several times. In the midst of it all, it was peaceful in a way that I have never experienced, but the peace was within, at each moment. Outwardly, it was raucous with barked commands, chanting, frenetic activity, and mindfulness turned up to eleven.

We are indeed, soldiers of humanity, aiming to save all sentient beings.