Monks are getting so Cool
- 16 Feb 07, 11:51 AM
Have you seen ? French Carthusian monks living in a remote outpost in the French Alps as communal hermits. Have they and other monastic orders got something to show us all?
The in his book Finding Sanctuary (ISBN-10 0 297 851322) is on to something. Christopher Jamison is a Benedictine monk and Abbot of Worth Abbey and he writes of . The banner one-word titles of these steps are a bit hard core: Silence; Contemplation; Obedience; Humility; Community; Spirituality; Hope.
The Carthusians are hermits spending much of their day in isolation, in silence and in prayer. The film Into Great Silence - the director (Philip Groning) of which had to wait 16 years to be invited in after writing - melts the boundary between the film and you through the extraordinary medium of silence. During the two hour and forty minute film a word is hardly spoken and the camera immerses you into a world of meditation and routine. It makes you realise how much most of shout and scream - And in us all the noise of the world around us is omnipresent.
The Benedictines use silence a lot - but they are not hermits. They live in a community and reach out to the community around them. "There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence" - how many of us feel comfortable with silence? Not many I bet....And the other monastic steps in everyday life are about dissolving the line between the individual and the group, and a lot more of course but there's an essence there - it's about generoscity and humility towards others.
I've written about a lot on this blog - And they fascinate me. is a good show - you can see it on the 主播大秀 too - a great natural soap opea about some of the wild words great characters. I've written a lot on this blog about how the interest of the individual and interest of the group in this groovy animal appear to merge as one. Biologists looking at that relationship get very close to the glue that binds the group together as a functional and sustaining unit. In fact the desire to keep the group together is so strong that individuals spend time being vigilent for others instead of breeding, they will give their food to the offspring of the dominat female, sacrifice their life to ward off enemies orders of magnitude larger than them selves and generally be good citizens of their society.
Arrh, but there's a snag. Research into these little devils shows that life is far from the halcyon snap shot. The dominant female will kill her grandchildren to keep control of reproduction, this hideously behaved creature will evict those that challenge her - certain death for the loser - they all have the potential to be despots, the dominant female becomes one because of all the testosterone raging around her - And she applies the rules of communal life - with the threat and use of a heavy hand. We shouldn't overlay human values on animal behaviour - but here is an illustration of an animal society that functions because it has rules that apply in the interests of maintaining the group as a viable community.
Into great Silence didn't reveal those tensions of communal living amongst the . we all know that it's impossible for people to live together without tensions - The Carthusians for sure have rules to solve and help those tensions resolve to maintain the community as it is. But there were glimpses - more than glimpses - of tension in the 主播大秀 series The Monastery broadcast in May 2005 - where 5 men spend of different backgrounds were filmed for a few weeks trying out Monastic life in the Bendictine monastery at Worth. The Abbot, who writes about the interpretation of this tensions in the light of what Benedict rule helps understand and resolve it, is an enlightening read. Silence, he recalls - even for 30 minutes, was one of the 5 mens most testing experiences.
The meerkats have evolved rules - probably over millions of years. Rules that seem harsh but nevertheless keep the group together and enable them as a species to flourish in one of the harshest environments around (the Kalahari Desert). This species has evolved a society has as a survival tool.
As the 5 men struggled to come to terms with their tastle of monastic life - what came out of it was the rules - the monastic steps as understood by Abbot Jamison - had an answer to all the tensions, complexities and prejudices the men had. The rules that the Benedictine monks apply to their communal living and their spriritual life had relevance to those outside monastic life. That's interesting - And surely important.
Monasteries all over the world and of different faiths have evolved over many hundreds of years rules/steps that maintain sustainable communities - harsh rules, but nevertheless rules trhat have shown remarkable resilience over time. And some of these monastic orders are not poor - they have enormous land and material assets - It's just the monks don't see material wealth having anything to do with the meaning of life.
Monks the world over have a window on the world that we could truly benefit from. It's good, that the shows a new pact between developed and developing economies to slow down the emission of green house gases - a step to slowing down the pace of global warming - but some commentators think it's too late to tackle . That might be your view too.
It seems we all have to learn to live with less and learn to live as communities more - perhaps the era of the individual, where anything you want you might be able to have, is drawing to a close.
We could become very wise looking carefully at the well honed steps of many monastic societies and get some rules in place to sustain viable communities for the long term. If we're not prejudice, it could be dead cool. And my foray into this convinces me that some pretty cool monks out there know the answers to the ethical issues raised by the affects and causes of global warming - and we need to embrace them (the monks) as collaborators to get our global communities right.
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I have spent a month in a country where I have spent 90% of my time on my own and realised how difficult it is to live without human contact and conversation.
I wanted to retreat away from the world but sometimes you have to talk !
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right sister r
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sometimes i think of it to be far from this world ..i know this worldly possesion , wordly relation will one day betray us and no remedy will left with us..
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