Reflection on lay life

I have now been out of robes for more than five days, and the transition is going smoothly for the most part. I have not given much time to reflect on how radically different my life is now. In some ways, it feels as if the five months I spent as a monk simply disappeared, and I'm suddenly back where I was five months earlier. This is true, in a certain sense, as I am returning to where I left off in the research work, but the sense of disconnect between my life as a monk and as a layman is hard to get my head around. My studies of Khmer Buddhism actually made much more progress during the time I was a monk than they did in the months preceeding my ordination. In the little time that remains, my increased knowledge and experience allows me to accomplish a great deal more than before, but it is just as easy to get too busy in research and other work that I forget to actually slow down and look carefully at things.

When I was a monk at Wat Bo, the environment was full of noise and distractions, and it was hard to find a quiet space, both inside (in my heart/mind) and outside (within the temple grounds). Eventually, I chose to live alone inside of the old main temple, which was the most quiet place I could find, and through carefully increasing my effort I was doing sitting or walking meditation almost the entire day (15-16 hours), with a couple of hours for begging, eating and washing up and four hours for sleeping. It was not an easy time for me, but slowly my mind began to settle out and I could see its contents and nature a little bit more clearly. I also remember being filled with radiant joy during this time, a feeling that I had not experienced for long periods of time before.

But little by little, I let distractions creep in and my practice began to weaken. In May, my teacher went to America and I decided that it would be a good opportunity to switch temples. Yet it took another month and a half at the new temple to settle into an intensive meditation practice again. As a layperson now, the distractions are infinite in variety, and it takes much more effort to settle the mind. I recognize, however, that slowing down and looking carefully at each moment is a source of great peace and happiness for me, and it allows so many for opportunities to be truly useful to others. But I have found that training this mind and heart, especially during transitions in our lives, is not easy for me, and that I need to learn to be patient on this path.