Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte is an excerpt from a personal talk and#8220;Life as an Order Memberand#8221; by Lokeshvara, the last in a series of four talks given to men training for ordination on the and#8216;What Is the Orderand#8217; retreat at Padmaloka, 2011.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Life as an Order Member
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by free Buddhist audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. About 15 years ago, I sat in a little consultation room in Norwich having a chat with a mental health counselor called Brenda. She was a very good counselor. We sat there in a couple of armchairs and a low coffee table between us. I remember there was a box of tissues on the coffee table in case I burst into tears. I had about four sessions with her. This was probably the third session. She was helping me deal with some intense anxiety spirals. On that day, we were talking a lot about grieving and how men can find it difficult to grieve, or how they generally can hold their emotions quite tightly. As we were talking, she was a very good help, actually. She was a very good help. As we were talking, she said one thing to me. She said, "Yes, well, of course my role is to try and help you get better so that you can go out and function as a normal member of society again." As she said that, I silently reflected to myself, "Yes, well, thank you, Brenda, for everything you've done for me, but actually I've got a different project in mind." Actually, what I'm doing is questioning the core assumptions of that very society and I'm looking for something different. In a sense, that's a short answer to that question, "Why am I an order member?" That's what I did. I kind of went away and looked for something else. What I'm going to do is just spend 20 minutes or so unpacking that kind of reflective moment that I had and how I acted on it. I've got four little statements, if you like, and I'll just say a bit about each of them. The first one is, "Most of my life I've been looking for an alternative vision of what a human life can be." When I say "Most of my life," I think I mean from my teenage years, really. Some of that interest goes back or is inspired by people I met and stories I heard of the generation from the 1960s, and especially the communities that were set up in the west coast of the United States in California and Oregon. And in turn, what inspired those communities? I mean, they traced their roots back to what one of the roots is the German romantic movement or the kind of enlightenment thinking in 19th century Germany. That's already abandoned. It's got an interest in it at the moment. But there was something about people coming together trying to do something different. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] [BLANK_AUDIO]