Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA
I talked more to the person I mentioned before who was turned down for novice ordination after spending nine months at this monastery. I'm not so worried about my prospects now. It didn't take any mystic insight to see that he clearly is not ready. One day he might be a monk, he might even be a great monk, but right now, even I can see that he's too immature, too impulsive, and not clear enough on his path.
He hit upon a revelation that he didn't need the approval of the Deer Park monastics to go straight to the root monastery in France to continue his training towards ordination. And he's right about that, but that was true all along. As a revelation now it's pretty weak, but he was hyped up and rarin' to go like Luke Skywalker in 'The Empire Strikes Back' on speed.
He can go to Plum Village without the blessing of the Deer Park monastics, but the results will be the same – they will also see that he's not ready. And how will that feel? The happiness he thinks he will gain by becoming ordained is false. It's the same happiness that people get when they land a new job, move to their dream city, or buy a house. You can hate your job or get fired, find out your dream city isn't all it's cracked up to be, or your house can burn down.
Of course, you can love the job, love the city, and live in the house without ever anything bad happening, that's not the point. It's the attachment to some idea to find happiness which is counter to this practice. He is attached to the idea of this practice to find happiness, and being a monk requires more than just being able to do this practice. It requires all the causes and conditions for a seed to bloom into a beautiful flower.
He is definitely a seed, but he's a seed on dry sand. And he can be a happy ordained seed, but without the life experience and personal development the Deer Park monastics seemed to be hinting at, i.e., the shit life throws at us to become fertilizer, he won't grow or bloom into anything. He will just be a seed doing the practice.
