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The Burmese Monk Through the Looking-Glass An American Buddhist Life Bhikkhu Cintita Copyright 2014, Bhikkhu Cintita (John Dinsmore) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence. You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, Under the following conditions: • Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). • Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes. • No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. With the understanding that: • Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. • Public Domain — Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license. • Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license: • Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations; • The author's moral rights; • Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights. • Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Publication Data. Bhikkhu Cintita (John Dinsmore, Ph.D.), 1949 - Through the Looking Glass: An American Buddhist Life/ Bhikkhu Cintita. 1.Buddhism – Biography. © 2014. Cover design by Kymrie Dinsmore. Photo: Ashin Paññasīha and Ashin Cintita with lay devotees in Yangon in 2010. To the people of Myanmar. Preface One begins life with a certain innate personality, what Buddhists have viewed as residual karma from a previous life, a lump of clay, ready be be shaped but already exhibiting certain surprisingly distinctive forms. As a boy and then a man grows, as he makes decisions and acts in response to the world in which he lives, he slowly but continually reshapes that personality, as often as not without improving it. To commit to Buddhist practice is to undertake to shape that lump of clay into something astonishingly beautiful, something marked by virtue, serenity and wisdom. To take up monastic practice is to recognize the preposterousness of ordinary life and its threat, at each stage, to the potential beauty of a human life. To take up monastic practice is to pass through the looking-glass to live on the other side according to the way things really are rather than how they appear to the untaught. The autobiography in your hand has its roots in a travel log begun just before I embarked on the adventures in Myanmar recounted in the first chapter of this book. I set up a blog before my trip as a means of keeping in touch en masse with family, friends and students from a land with limited means of communication. I posted often about my impressions of Burmese culture, the sights of Myanmar and Burmese Buddhism. In particular I was interested in conveying my experience in ordaining and living as a monk in very traditional and thoroughly Buddhist culture. I have long been a fan of biographies, personal accounts of human development that make the complex concrete. I may have discovered in the blog sphere a hidden aptitude for narrative writing, which provided some incentive either to continue writing about the earlier aspects of my life or to turn to fiction, naturally as a way of communicating Buddhist teachings. Moreover, I have noticed that most of the few Western monastic autobiographies viii Through the Looking-Glass have been written by disillusioned and disaffected former monastics, while life-long Western monastics rarely report on their experiences in detail, perhaps preferring to spend their time instead on the cushion. As a European-American, very much an heir of the European Enlightenment, not enjoying the benefit of birth into a Buddhist tradition, and, for that matter, of limited aptitude for this manner of life and training, and yet as someone who has entered and found deep meaning in the monastic life I have chosen, I suspect that my example will be informative for the reader who wishes to understand the why and wherefore of Buddhist monastic practice in a Western context. With this in mind I have undertaken to adapt my own story as an account of how a personal soap opera gives birth to monastic aspirations and vows. The title, Through the Looking-Glass, is borrowed from Lewis Carrol’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland, in which, instead of accidentally falling down a rabbit hole, Alice intentionally steps through a mirror hanging on the wall, so that she might explore the world on the other side. Before stepping through the looking- glass, she sees only that right and left are reversed in the world staring back at her. After stepping through the looking-glass, she learns that much more than that is reversed. I’ve used the world of the looking-glass as a metaphor for conventional saṃsāric (soap-operatic) life, from which almost every aspect of the monastic life is reversed, hopefully thereby accounting for the status of nuns and monks as an oddity, a source of bewilderment, in the West. Standing face to face, monastic and common man stare at each other in the mirror and are mutually bewildered. My hope for this book is to convey an understanding, grounded as it must be in one way or another in my personal experience in the matter, of what it means to become a Westerner Buddhist monastic. My very special hope is that, for some rare reader, it will be a book not about me but about you, that it will be an inspiration for you to “go forth into homelessness,” to pass through the looking-glass, following in the footsteps of one Preface ix hundred generations of renunciate nuns and monks and thereby become part of the historical process of laying the groundwork of a viable and civilizing Buddhism in the West. Although this book follows the course of my life, it is a very interpreted life, selecting the more allegoric aspects to illustrate Buddhist themes and, when the opportunity presents itself, even breaking into Dharma. However, much of the content is intended merely to sustain the narrative or else is deemed interesting, useful or funny. I have taken a small amount of liberty with this account for the sake of readability in finessing some details, such as names that I no longer recall, or combining two events into one for ease of narration. Some flights of fantasy will also be clearly evident. Otherwise this is an accurate account. x Through the Looking-Glass Table of Contents Preface.................................................................................vii Chapter One: The Burmese Monk.......................................1 In the Land of the Golden Pagodas...........................................3 Ordination ..............................................................................15 Robes, Food, Shelter and Medicine........................................29 Three Seasons.........................................................................46 Chapter Two: The Way of Zen............................................59 New Career.............................................................................59 “Smart but not wise” ..............................................................69 Shifts.......................................................................................80 Dropping Out At Last.............................................................97 What is a Priest?...................................................................109 Chapter Three: The Dusty World......................................117 Letting Loose........................................................................119 Travels with Judy..................................................................128 A Tiger by the Tail................................................................140 Bardo.....................................................................................157 Chapter Four: My Karmic Heritage..................................171 A Mind Turned Inward.........................................................173 G.I. Discipline ......................................................................177 Reflection and Insight...........................................................185 Young Resolve......................................................................191 The Young and the Samsāric.................................................196 Chapter Five: Dust in My Eyes.........................................201 The AI Professor...................................................................201 Professional Strides...............................................................209 The Baltic Entrepreneur........................................................222 xii Through the Looking-Glass Afterward..............................................................................238 Chapter Six: Days of Zen and Robes...............................245 Putting on the Robes.............................................................246 Explorations..........................................................................256 The Zen Monk......................................................................272 A Nāga by the Tail................................................................287 Chapter Seven: The American Monk...............................301 Alms Round in Maplewood..................................................302 Strange Burmese in
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