After two weeks at the monastery, I write a letter requesting to stay on and expressing my intentions in doing so. After an indeterminate time after that, minimum three months, I can get on the path to become a novice to become a monk. Or I can decide it's still not time and, shell-shocked, return to society and start blogging again. OR, renewed I return to society, maybe backpack to Tucson and start blogging again (hey, it's a blog, gotta keep our priorities straight).
I'm going in with the intention to stay and become a monk. I want the secular part of my journey in this lifetime to be over. But if that's not to be, it's not in my hands, I won't force myself to stay if I'm going to be miserable.
I still have many attachments to secular life that make me question whether I'll actually become a monk, but I also think once I'm in a monastic setting those attachments will slip away like burnt flesh but without the pain; or like hands slipping off the hull of a capsized boat but without the dire consequence. Riiiight.
The main attachment I have to secular life is progressive learning. There's still so much to learn and experience. What will I do without PBS, without bookstores, without DVDs and film? I don't believe progressive learning stops at the monastery, it will just take on a different form, I just don't know where the sparks of inspiration will come from. From within me? *yawn*, but maybe.
But nothing like the emotions and different perspectives of films, the easy access to ideas from books, magazines, and the internet; I don't know how I'll be able to keep up with the latest developments in cosmology and the Theory of Everything unless I can demonstrate to the monastery how it directly connects in with our practice and that I should be allowed to keep up with the latest research. I can do it. I can make that connection. But I can't make them care enough to deem it important.
No, I suppose much of it will be coming from mindful living and living in the moment. Probing the inner recesses of my memory and consciousness for the spark for ideas. Living in the moment is a nifty thing in itself. But once you start doing it, you realize that it sucks recalling all those past moments when you didn't.
