Pass through the dry place

 From "Stages of Monastic Life," by Norman Fischer.

The fifth stage, the dry place, we get to bit by bit without knowing it. Because we are never perfect in our letting-go to the healing winds of time. In a subtle way we hold on to our life even while we have given it up entirely in renunciation. We don't really escape our ancient conditioning. This subtle fact is not announced to us in a dramatic way, and we may not notice it. We go on practicing sin-cerely, seemingly going deeper and deeper with our renunciation, becoming more and more settled in the life of the dharma. But this becomes exactly the problem. We are too settled. We seem to be getting a little bit dull, a little bit bored. We've lost the edge of our seeking and searching mind and are feeling fairly comfortable. We have a position in the community, we are an experienced person, a respected member. We have a good grasp of the teachings, or at least we have heard them so often that we seem to grasp them. We can't go back into our old life, and yet there seems nowhere to go forward to. We are stuck.

Fear arises. Fear of never realizing or even glimpsing the path; fear of the world we have left behind; fear of what we ourselves have become. Sometimes none of this surfaces. We go about our business in the monastery, feeling OK, but actually dying a little bit more every day. Up until now our path may have been difficult at times, yet we have always been growing and learning. But at this point we have few difficulties and we have stopped growing and learning. This is exactly the problem. And we have mistaken the laziness or dullness that covers our fear for the calmness that comes of renunciation. It's true that our mind is calm, but it is a dark rather than a bright calm. Our creativity, our passion, our humanness, is beginning to leave us, little by little, and often we have no idea that this is happening.

If we can pass through the dry place-which is always done in the company of and with the help of others, and usually occurs spontaneously, for no reason at all-there is an opening into the simple joy of living the religious life every day. Even when the monastery has great controversies and problems, as any group of people will have, these no longer have a stickiness that catches us. We can enjoy being with the others but don't need to feel compelled by them. The quiet meditation periods, the daily work, the sky and earth of the place where we live and practice, all of these things take on a great depth of peacefulness and contentment. We come to appreciate very much the tradition to which we now truly belong, we feel a personal connection to the ancients whom we see as people very much like ourselves. Texts that formerly seemed arcane or luminous now seem biographical. We are grateful for the place where the monastery is located, for the people now and in the past who founded and support it. Our life becomes marked by gratitude. We delight in expressing it wherever and in whatever way we can. This is the sixth stage, the stage of appreciation.

Little by little this appreciation, which begins as a religious gratitude and is private and quiet and joyful, becomes more normal and ordinary. We begin to take a greater interest in the practicalities of caring for the monastery, and in doing so we begin to notice how marvelous are all the people with whom we are practicing. We see their many faults, of course, just as we see our own faults, which remain numerous. But as we forgive, and are even grateful for our own faults, we forgive and are grateful for the faults of others. We see others as they are, but despite this-or because of it-we love them, as we love the sky and the trees and the wisdom of our practice tradition. This love is different from the love we have known before, because this love doesn't include much attachment. We are willing to let people, places, and ideas go. In fact, this willingness to let go is the most essential part of our love. We know that we will eternally be with these people and that wherever we go we will see these same people, even if we never see them again. So we don't need to fear or worry. We are willing to see them grow old or ill, and die, and to care for them and to bury them and to take joy in doing this.