Becoming an aspirant at this monastery is the easiest thing in the world. People have become aspirants with one sentence letters. No joke. Literally. I heard one sister wrote something to the extent of, "I would like to ordain as a nun". Easy. And my statement of aspirancy got rejected!

I told a monk that I considered the monks' reaction a rejection, even though I understood that they didn't mean it that way. He seemed genuinely upset that I felt that way. We boiled it down to misunderstanding and miscommunication, but it was my turn to see things in black and white. I submitted a letter of aspirancy. The letter itself was supposed to act as my letter of aspirancy, regardless of what it said or didn't say, and my so-called mentor received it with the understanding that it was my letter of aspirancy.

But no, the act of submitting the letter was not prima facie evidence that I wanted to be an aspirant. I could have written the letter in fucking semaphore, and as long as it said, "I want to be a monk", it would pass muster. But the three page letter I submitted, including background information that I wrote exclusively for the benefit of the monks at the root temple since they don't know me, said everything except those scant, few words. Rejected.

From my point of view, I submitted my letter of aspirancy, it didn't matter what technical form it took. They had the choice to accept it or reject it. They said it wasn't clear. I wasn't unclear about it. I was clear about it, that's why I submitted the letter. They could have read it for its intent, that even without the words, everything about it looked like an aspirancy letter.

OK, he's an aspirant. We send him to the root monastery after his brother's wedding. We inform him what we expect of him as an aspirant. If they said that, I'd be an aspirant, expecting to go to the root monastery in August, and abiding by whatever guidelines they set for me, on the road towards ordination.

In my opinion, the de facto rejection was totally arbitrary. And it's consistent with the patterns in my life. My karma. The monk I talked to reminded me that we all have the power to change our karma, too, but that's theory. Practice is very different. Sometimes the rolling tide of karma is an undertow.

I leave here in less than two weeks a monastic reject because it is the path I've chosen. Other factors could have changed that path, but I probably engineered it to be this way. I couldn't predict that the monks would reject my aspirancy, but from the way I worded the letter, I set in motion the possibility.

In the meantime, I'm getting myself back on track and enjoying my last two weeks here and tightening up my practice and attitude, and continuing to nourish as many positive seeds as possible, pebbles as they may be. Never mind thoughts of nothing special, nothing elaborate, a short train ride down to the Jersey Shore, no excuses, no note.