Indifferent to the Inner Journey
The monastery promotes the practice of the inner journey. Not unusual for a monastery. What might be slightly unusual about Little Creek is the notion that we are everyday life monks.
Everyday life monks and nuns don't have the so-called luxury (or punishing difficulties) of retreating to caves, retreating from everyday life. We must, instead, practice our callings within the context of family life, traffic, working a job, being a student, amidst illness, being caregivers or even living on the street. We must also practice in a world that does not support the notion of an inner journey.
I maintain that this everyday life approach can be orders of magnitudes more challenging than withdrawing to the cave. Because withdrawing empowers focus and concentration and often has the support of a monastic community complete with funding, while everyday life is abundant with distractions and little to no support.
But either way, the goals are the same: the honing of practices which contribute to a deepening of awareness.
Of course, not all of us in our monastery have the same focus. For one thing, I don’t like telling people what to do. Most people resent or resist guidance. I used to really resent correction, and still sometimes feel the flames of defensiveness shoot up like a meteor in my chest. But working through own resentments ended up helping me to better understand the resentments others suffer from. And one thing I realized was that we often behave as though we know the answer or know the Way, even when we are utterly lost. (I personally tend to view the concept of Certainty somewhat similar to how I view belief: as dangerous and alarming false prophet.)
Since many of us resist direction when it comes to matters of deeper awareness, it’s nonetheless helpful to come across strategically located road signs. Even the depths of hell have them. These are placed there as hints to help us traverse the terrain of defensiveness. For decades I have viewed these road signs as posts or blazes on a trail. Someone put them there because they’ve traveled that section of the trail and they know it will be helpful to future travelers. Some of them go back thousands of years. Others continue to emerge.
Little Creek Monastery, for example, promotes ancillary goals that serve as introductory trail signs. We promote the Principle of Fairness and also have vows for those who wish incorporate vows as part of their practice.
My personal challenges are hard, although I’d never suggest they are harder than someone else’s. In my own experience suffering is often more about how my challenges make me ‘feel’ compared to whether someone else would or wouldn’t think them significant. Truth is, I don’t think many people think all that much about someone else’s challenges, as we tend to be too drawn into our own.
Self-centeredness typically does not feel like self-centeredness. That’s because self-centeredness is utterly normalized. It’s like slipping into a comfortable sweater or donning a long overcoat. The garment becomes a protective barrier against the weather. Similarly, self-centeredness becomes a familiar, comfortable barrier that insulates us from deeper awareness.
If we remove our self-centeredness are we no longer protected against the weather of our indifference?
Indifference is basically a smokescreen objection to self examination. In light of this, the so-called inner journey is not viewed by most people as a normal psychology. With that in mind, anyone who focuses on the inner journey is viewed as an outlier. Consequently, since inner travelers are ‘abnormal’ it becomes conveniently easy to be frozen in our indifference… along with everyone else.
For an everyday monk/nun this indifference is not only a difficult personal challenge to overcome, but it permeates society. The shear mass of the distortion field becomes an immovable object. Self-examination also infects religion because religion often preaches ‘at’ us but doesn’t necessarily teach us ‘how to’ overcome our inner resistance to Truth.
Man is a moving being. If he does not move to what is good, he will surely move to that what is not. If this consciousness does not arise here, another consciousness will arise there. Man's mind goes through multifarious changes and never stops.
Issai Chozanshi, The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts