To monks, nuns, and ascetics

Today I wrote a letter to someone who is rather preachy with his Buddhism. This is my response to him and to monasticism in general. Marianna the Prophet-much? ;) Warning, the content you are about to read is itself preachy, serious, abysmally long, and full of helium. Beware before you take on this acid trip.
PS: Oh yeah, it's also biased, argumentative and probably overly confident and cocky. Forgive me, I would like to be the first to admit my flaws galore. On the other hand, I do believe in the way in which I try to live, and I am not sorry about that. Take it with a grain of understanding, this is my blathering blaaah-g after all.

About your monastic longings:

I appreciate that the skills you have acquired through meditation are useful for controlling yourself and I realize that I myself could benefit from such an ability - I overreact to life sometimes, and yes I see the value in your ability to separate yourself from your surroundings, to float above it all and be at peace with the world. That's a great skill to have, one that I could have used while growing up with my mother - I turned to poetry writing instead. It helped, but of course only afterwards, not during the horrible fights, the skandali we used to have. (In fact, the more I think about having such a skill, the better it sounds because yes I am overly emotional and reactive at times, and sometimes wish I just didn't care so damn much.)

While I agree that your ability to not be bothered is a wonderful one, I see that it is ruling your life, and I would not want such a thing. The monk and nun's life was never for me, nor the life of any ascetic. Only at times of great pain have I wanted to be "comfortably numb," to anesthetize myself from the hurt, the bullshit, the prickly thorns everywhere. I would like to have access to this "skill," it is obviously really useful, but everything in moderation. The problem for me with the preachings of ascetics, monks, and nuns, is that while they can teach you to live a peaceful existence in which you are constantly striving for some connection with a greater being or knowledge, this is too extreme a disconnection from the world.

You say that you love people. In an "at peace" sort of way, through the lenses of the monk that you wish to be, I'm sure you do. But you do not love the world. You do not want to be part of it. You want to be beyond it. You do not wish to be involved with it or with the people that reside here, you just want to "love" them from a distance, like a god or a deity looking down on the silly humans with their silly, silly emotions. For me, this is not "living," this is a fear and restraint of the corporal, the emotional, the bodily, the animalistic, the physiological. I am proud of my ability to feel pain, love, attachment, anger, irritation, warmth, affection, frustration, etc. Yes, pain and all the negative stuff as well. That is experiencing life - not being afraid to experience the nuances of emotion that come with this strange condition of being human. I embrace it.

You want to escape involvement with others, and that is your choice. I cherish my involvement with others. I have understood much about myself from the reflection of myself in the eyes of the other, mainly through my relationships. That is the most intimate place in which you find out who you are. You can separate yourself from that for the rest of your life if you want, some do, but you will never experience the passion, the joy, the bliss, that I do. I'll take the emotional roller coaster over the monk's peaceful nothingness on most days.

As you have noted, I love the workings of the human mind. But the mind is not some disembodied, spiritual entity floating in outer space. It is physical, corporal, chemical, and emotional. There is no disconnect, disconnect can be a useful or detrimental illusion - depending on the circumstances. The body-mind split has been a topic of debate for centuries, but now we understand that the only split that exists is a fantasy. We are not gods, we are incredibly intelligent animals, endowed with self-consciousness, with the ability to appreciate the absurdity of being Einsteins who shit and sleep and fuck.

I am not afraid of this. I love it. I love the paradox that we are. I would never wish to escape my appreciation and connectedness with the world, except perhaps temporarily, to avoid getting unnecessarily upset about something that is not worthwhile, but otherwise never constantly. Restraining yourself too much from physical pleasure, desire, connection, and emotion is a denial of what you are - I would not wish to live under a rock or in some monastery, (real or symbolic.) The very understanding that I have of the world, the clarity with which I appreciate its nuances, comes from the openness with which I experience its complexity. It is unhealthy to be avoidant of your body and its needs. That is when a human being can eventually explode from the buildup of imbalance in his or her life. I believe in balance, and in not unnecessarily restraining the body but understanding how to help it best work in the crazy, complex reality in which we live. And keep this in mind: while some cultural ideas are useful, others are not. Just because an idea has survived for a long time does not mean it is a good one. Obvious examples being kamikaze pilots and suicide. The same goes for religion, customs, traditions, stereotypes, etc. Try to see beyond what your mother or your father or your teacher or anyone (including me of course,) tells you about the world when you make up your mind - question, question, question - that is one of our greatest powers as human beings.