We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a Protective Monastery of Aesthetic Truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.
Silence is difficult and arduous, it is not to be played with. It isn't something that you can experience by reading a book, or by listening to a talk, or by sitting together, or by retiring into a wood or a monastery. I am afraid none of these things will bring about this silence. This silence demands intense psychological work. You have to be burningly aware of your snobbishness, aware of your fears, your anxieties, your sense of guilt. And when you die to all that, then out of that dying comes the beauty of silence.
Even in a remote monastery, you may still be remote from the truth! To find the truth, all you need is a sound way of thinking.
The early masters also introduced walking meditation and hard work to the monastery, for too much sitting could reach the point of diminishing returns.
We need to make our own the ancient pastoral wisdom which. . . encouraged Pastors to listen more widely to the entire People of God. Significant is Saint Benedict's reminder to the Abbot of a monastery, inviting him to consult even the youngest members of the community: "By the Lord's inspiration, it is often a younger person who knows what is best".
Running is just such a monastery- a retreat, a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal.
When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery. We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness.
Fatigue can make it hard to have faith. Too much busyness can make it hard to have faith. Too much of too little solitude can impact faith. For that matter, so can a bout of hunger or overwork, anything carried to an extreme. Faith thrives on routine. Look at any monastery and you will see that. Faith keeps on keeping on.
My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.
I believe there is also a Tim Roth Monastery.
Most of the utopian community ideas actually are religious. They're based more on the idea of the monastery than the commune.
The person who's in the Zen monastery, who's doing a kind of poor job at meditating and a half-ass job cleaning the gardens is not doing very good yoga.
I AM what is called a Feminist. Thirty years ago I left a monastery and began a sane human existence. Within two or three years, I find, I was defending the rights of women.
Personally I would like to have pupils, a studio, pass on my love to them, work with them, without teaching them anything. . . . A convent, a monastery, a phalanstery of painting where one could train together. . . . but no programme, no instruction in painting. . . . drawing is still alright, it doesn't count, but painting - the way to learn is to look at the masters, above all at nature, and to watch other people painting.
Turn your car into a monastery.
I first had a version of this at a Japanese monastery during a silent retreat-don't ask, it's a long story.
Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation. "A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!"Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole.
[Thich Nhat Hanh] the one that revolutionized Buddhism. Instead of being monks just engaged in meditation, it was active Buddhism. You went out and felt the ills of the community around you. Instead of retreating to a monastery, you were out in the streets working. And he's been a great help to me, just reading his book, so I don't feel helpless about what I can do about all the violence around me.
I like the monastic life. . . in the prayer and the praising. . . this has charged me with new energy, spiritual energy. This is very important for my ministry outside the monastery.
Satan stations more devils on monastery walls than in the dens of iniquity, for the latter offer no resistance.
