Ordination: Leaving Home

24 mrt 2016
4 minuten om te lezen

Sunday the 13th of march was an important day for me. It was a day that had been marked in my calendar and that I'd been looking forward to for a long time. It had also been the deadline for my big sewing project [NL: naai project] (sewing my okesa, see my previous post). That day was the day of my ordination ceremony, which happened on the last afternoon of a zen weekend lead by my teacher Irène Kaigetsu Bakker Sensei. With this ceremony I was ordained [NL: ingewijd] as a zen monk [NL: zen monnik] or more formally as a novice zen priest [NL: novice zen priester].

The ceremony is called Shukke Tokudo. Tokudo simply means ceremony in Japanese, and shukke means home leaving. Traditionally, home leaving signified leaving your wordly life with all its mundane concerns [NL: wereldlijke beslommeringen] in order to turn to and devote [NL: wijden] yourself completely to a spiritual life. Nowadays in western zen circles, there are those who adher [NL: vasthouden] to these traditional views but also those who interpret home leaving more symbolically. According to those views, letting go of solid ground and of our comfort zones are seen more as pertaining to [NL: betrekking hebben op] our inner life (the ideas, beliefs, opinions and preferences we have about the world and ourselves) than to our domestic situation [NL: onze leefsituatie]. As for me, I guess I agree with the last view, but having left my job and my physical home a year ago, this did influence the sense of freedom in my inner life a lot as well. At the same time, I may not (be able to) keep living a life without a home of my own. We'll see.

The ceremony involves taking vows [NL: geloften], a lot of bowing, chanting and rituals.

During the ceremony I renewed my vows to maintain the 16 precepts that I committed to during my Jukai ceremony that happened last year in march (see my post 'Jukai').

And my head was shaved. Or actually, when I came into the ceremony my head was already shaved, except for a little patch of hair on the back of my head. On the evening before that my head was shaved -except for the patch- during a special head shaving ceremony. I'd been growing my hair for almost 6 weeks prior to the ceremony, so that there would be something there to make a patch of hair from. This last patch of hair was finally cut off during the ceremony.

Also, I wore my new monk's robes for the first time (in public). I came into the ceremony wearing a white kimono. During the ceremony I received my koromo (a black garment with really long sleeves) and the okesa (that I'd sewn myself) from my teacher, as well as some other monk attibutes. My dharma friend Dick Kobun Verstegen dressed me.

During the ceremony I took three more vows:

To devote my whole life to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.
To live in the spirit of homelessness/home leaving and to let go of my attachments.
To live a simple life and not pursue wealth or fame.

[NL: 1. Ik beloof mijn hele leven te wijden aan de Boeddha, de Dharma en de Sangha.

2. Ik beloof te leven in de geest van thuisloosheid en mijn gehechtheden los te laten.

3. Ik beloof eenvoudig te leven, zonder rijkdom of roem na te jagen. ]

My teacher read the follwing text from the raisanmon during the ceremony:

"The source of mind is oceanically calm and the sea of Dharma is fathomless; one who cannot realize this will wander eternally and one who realizes it will be immediately at home. To be able to play freely in the field of enlightenment, it is necessary to cease from self-clinging. Because it is one with the way of all Enlightened Ones, home leaving is instantaneous enlightenment. Do not doubt! There is nothing surpassing ceasing from self-clinging for letting both body and mind become one with the Enlightened Way. Cutting one’s hair is cutting the root of human attachment, and if one cuts off human attachment even slightly, one’s true body is immediately revealed. Changing one’s clothing to the robes of the Buddha is stepping outside worldly delusion and realizing freedom of functioning. Among all the Buddhas in the Three Worlds, not one attained enlightenment without ceasing from self-clinging; nor has any Enlightened Master ever existed who did not cut off the root of human attachment. Therefore, among all merits the merit of ceasing from self-clinging is unsurpassable."

[NL: "De bron van de geest is oceanisch kalm en de zee van de Dharma is grenzeloos; wie zich dit niet kan realiseren, zwerft eeuwig rond en wie het zich realiseert zal onmiddellijk thuis zijn. Om in staat te zijn vrijelijk in het veld van verlichting te spelen, is het noodzakelijk gehechtheden en houvast los te laten en thuisloos te zijn. Omdat dit overeenkomstig is met de weg van alle verlichten, is thuisloosheid onmiddellijke verlichting, want dit doet lichaam en geest één zijn met de Verlichte Weg. Twijfel hier niet aan.Het scheren van het haar symboliseert het afscheren van de wortel van de menselijke gehechtheid. En wanneer men menselijke gehechtheid maar enigszins afsnijdt, wordt het ware lichaam onmiddellijk geopenbaard.Het veranderen van kleren is het stappen uit de wereldse verwarring en het zich realiseren van de vrijheid van functioneren.Temidden van alle Boeddha's in de drie werelden bereikte niemand verlichting zonder gehechtheden los te laten en dualisme te doorzien. Daarom, temidden van alle verdiensten is de verdienste van thuisloosheid en het gaan van het pad als zen priester onovertroffen."]

It was a really beautiful ceremony, my teacher did a great job. I think many of those who were present were touched. I certainly was, and even my parents (who were not very enthousiastic about me becoming a monk) were impressed and moved, probably without knowing exactly why an how. I guess that's the power of ceremony. Also, it was wonderful to be surrounded by so many friends from my sangha (which is my teacher's sangha). I felt carried and supported by them. It was a wonderfully moving and powerful experience. I am very grateful!