During my years in the monastery I have known several
monks who had held important jobs, and once their terms of office were
completed, quietly took their place once again in the ranks of ordinary monks.
That must be a very difficult thing for a person to do: to let go of a position
of responsibility and power and certain honor and then go back and lose himself
in the ordinary -- or was it find himself in the ordinary?
And yet, that is a moment which most of us must face,
each in own given professions and vocations. The time when our prowess has run
its course, a time when our strength is on the wane, strength that was never
really ours but only lent to us for a moment for the good of others. The time
when we can feel the pain of not being able to do what once came to us so
easily. The sages tell us that what we need to learn to do to prepare for such
times is to place much more emphasis on being than on doing. One’s
sense of self cannot become overidentified with one’s job or rank or prestige.
We are also warned by the sages that if we fail to learn
this lesson, we risk becoming bitter old people, cursing life, cursing faith,
because we placed all our self-worth in our own abilities rather than in
who we are. I have also noticed in my time as a monk that the monks who live to
be the oldest and the most at peace are the monks who have learned these
spiritual truths long before the day of their waning.
