Realism in a Monastic Community

Note: This excerpt, from the chapter titled “Stages of Monastic Life,” has to do with the various stages of insight and realism that one goes through upon entering the monastic life, whether it be in a traditional residential setting or in lifestyle. The excerpt describes, in part, what Fischer refers to as “Stage Two, Disappointment or Betrayal” . . . 

We begin to see that a lot has been going on in our lives that we were simply unaware of. We came to the community to find peace, to live in a kind of utopia where we will become enlightened and our problems will end. Few of us actually think these thoughts this baldly, but most of us have some unexamined version of them in our minds as we arrive. But instead of utopia we find an extremely flawed community; and instead of the imperfect people we figured we were, we find, in the stillness and intensity of the practice, that we are a raging mass of passion, confusion, hatred, and contradiction. Enlightenment — or whatever illusions we had about such a thing — is very far away. In other words, we feel worse off now than when we began,and we have to acknowledge that the job we’ve undertaken is much larger than we thought.

So we enter the third stage, to explore honestly, and without our former idealism, the actual nature of our commitment to the practice and to the community . . . 

Norman Fischer
from When You Greet Me I Bow; Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen