A close friend from the Temple and I were carpooling to work one morning when she asked the fateful question: “Hey Alana,  are you planning to be at the mini retreat, the one where we will all take the 8 precepts and stay at the Women’s Center?” Those were basically her actual words, but what I heard was a secret message, roared in a loud, monstrous, voice saying something like, “if you don’t go to this thing, you are a bad Buddhist, and I know, you don’t want to go. Afterall, you never come to temple. In other words…you are a bad Buddhist. Bhaaaaadddddd Buuuddddhist, bad, bad, bad.”

When I looked over at my friend, she looked like her normal sweet self, not like a huge angry monster; I realized quite quickly that my friend wasn’t the monster, the monster was living in my head. What took a little more time — which is the contemplation I will share in the next few blogs — was figuring-out just where that monster came from and how to uproot the wrong views that had to be uprooted in order to get it to leave.

So, to be clear from the start: I absolutely did not want to go to this retreat. Most of all, I didn’t want to be dressed-up all in white like some good, pious, practitioner when I felt like just a regular old, non pious, person. The problem was, a part of me felt like I should want to go, or that even if I didn’t want to go I should do it anyway. Going, particularly going when i didn’t want to go, made me a good Buddhist and not going proved what I already ‘knew’ — I was a bad one.

There was clearly a lot going-on with the angry, conflicted monster in my head, so it took many days to actually break-down my beliefs/main issues into broad categories. Here I will share those and in upcoming blogs we will see more about how I challenged those views with the truth (impermanence).

1) I’m not ready — so Dear Reader, there is a little something you ought to know about me: I’m not a half-in kinda gal. If I commit to doing something, I do my damndest to do it. So, I am super careful about just what I commit to. In my mind, taking 8 precepts, even just for a weekend, is super serious. It reflects a commitment to practice, in a particular, non-lay person-ey, way thats a huge deal.

In my mind, to wear the outfit and take the vows, without the appropriate level of commitment –of feeling in my heart that it reflected where I saw myself/life/practice — was fraudulent. The problem however was that I felt terribly guilty about not being ready. I felt like I should be. That by not being, it proved that I wasn’t a good practitioner and that I never would be. Because –wrong view spoiler alert —  what I am today is proof of what I always will be.

2) I felt like I was being asked to push harder/more/faster than I was capable of — Truth be told, in the car with my friend wasn’t the first time I heard that angry/ judgmental monster voice. I had been hearing it a lot lately when I listened to teachings coming from the Wat. Everytime I heard about the need to be more restrained, more careful, to have moral dread over the consequences of my actions, my mind was pushing back; that monster started roaring while a little, desperate voice kept saying I am doing the  best I can do, I literally can’t do any more. I felt like the drill sergeant monster was standing over me kicking me and screaming at me to do just 1 more push-up, but my body literally wouldn’t/ couldn’t do it. Which brought me to number 3….

3) If I couldn’t do more and what I was doing wasn’t enough, I felt like I had only 2 options:

Option 1 — Just keep doing what I was doing and hope that with practice, training, chiseling away at my wrong views, I would one day be able to do more. Just like working out every day means slowly being able to do more push-ups. A part of me felt like the work I had done on my practice already showed results, that I had evidence I should just stay the course…but I felt like this side of my mind was under attack. Like my practice was under attack and that I had to protect it, nurture it, still see it as a refuge…otherwise that increasingly loud monster was going to push me to option 2.

Option 2 — Give-up.If I really couldn’t do more and what I did wasn’t enough, why keep practicing at all? Why put the work, time, energy and struggle into something that can’t be accomplished.  Spoiler alert #2 — just because something can’t currently be accomplished, it doesn’t mean it can’t be accomplished at all/ever. Inputs change and outcomes too, but more on that later… In that moment, as I weighed going to the retreat or not, I really worried that a weekend at the Wat , which felt like doom and gloom anyway, surrounded by people in  white cloth (that there was no way in hell I was going to wear) was going to be the push that pushed me to quit practice all together.

4) But other people do it so shouldn’t I  —  other people, like my dear friend, were going to the retreat and they seemed excited to take the precepts. In fact, these folks go to the Wat all the time and seem to love it. I, even when I am not feeling so doomy/gloomy, prefer to practice alone, to follow my own topics and experiences. I sometimes just find so much group practice/teaching overwhelming. But … I’m a Bad Buddhist… maybe if I were like them I would be a better Buddhist. So maybe I just need to suck-it up and sacrifice.

5) Real Buddhists sacrifice — A deep dive into why I feel sacrificing for sacrificing’s shake is the pinnacle of goodness and hence Buddhistiness is an analysis of another time (Spoiler alert #3 it is definitely a wrong view however whereby I think 1 approach, sacrificing, is always the best and that what I read as being sacrificial, and hence good, in other peoples’ actions is even a sacrifice from their perspective). Suffice it to say that I recognized this pattern in my thinking and it lead me to the the pretty ridiculous catch-22 that if other people could do it I should be able to as well (spoiler alert #4 –I of course don’t know anything about other people’s motivations, or their results and there is no way to know that what works for you will also be the exact thing that works for me). If I just bucked-up and do something I didn’t enjoy/ did not believe in/ didn’t feel right then I would gain “credits” toward being a good Buddhist, as long as I didn’t become so overwhelmed of course that I quit practicing all together…

Coming-up next time…a little Ubai — a small crack — through which I could begin to chip away at these beliefs and the wrong views that underlaid them…