The Desert Koan

“An elder said: Here is the monk’s life-work, obedience, meditation, not judging others, not reviling, not complaining. For it is written: You who love the Lord, hate evil. So this is the monk’s life – not to walk in agreement with an unjust [person], nor to look with his eye upon evil, nor to go about being curious, and neither to examine nor to listen to the business of others. Not to be proud in his heart, nor to malign others in his thoughts. Not to fill his stomach, but in all things to behave with discretion. Behold, in all this you have the monk.”
—Wisdom of the Desert

So the essence of the monk’s life is simplicity. It is not great works of charity, not purity of heart, not piety and religious observance, not visions and rapture. It is a quiet, open, non-judgmental embrace of things as they are, without the need to achieve or control. In fact, it is letting go of the need to achieve or control anything.

The physical austerities and solitude of the desert hermits would have been far more challenging than our own everyday modern lives, but is the simplicity of heart they were seeking any less challenging (or any less necessary) for us? It is harder to discover, in fact, because we are assailed by the temptations of material success, gossip and physical excess on a daily basis.

The koan for us modern, married monks is this: how do we realize the desert experience without going to the desert? How do we nurture the simplicity of the monk’s heart, to love the world with compassion and acceptance, which is of course to love ourselves with compassion and acceptance, just as we are?