(Follow this link to see the July 2022 Priory Newsletter where this was recently published.)

Summer Nasturtiums

When I was a novice monk at Shasta Abbey, I was given the job of sacristan. The sacristan is the temple officer that is responsible for taking care of the Buddha hall and organizing ceremonies; it is usually held by a senior monk of the monastery. When I was first given the job, I felt honored since I was “just” a novice. I confess that I also had thoughts like, “oh good, now I can be in charge of something; now I can get some respect; now I can have some control over my life and what goes on around here.” While this was an honor and a really helpful opportunity for me, my dreams of power did not really come to pass, and this was probably for the good of all concerned!

Anyway, I was relating this to a friend recently and they wondered if this was where I discovered the “Third Position.” The Third Position was a way that Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett described the mind of meditation. Our thinking mind, where many of us spend a lot of our time, is in the habit of being in the opposites: we are are either for or against; with or without; inside or outside; light or dark; high or low. The mind of meditation helps us to let go of these opposite positions and sink, as it were, into a deeper part of ourselves, a Third Position.

As I was thinking about my sacristy experience in light of the Third Position, I realized that it wasn’t where I discovered that mind. I had discovered the Third Position long before that time – and I will submit to you, reader, that you are likely to know it as well. I had already discovered it, but I was only making a small use of it. What my experience in the sacristy helped me with was to clarify that my only real refuge was there, in the mind of meditation, the mind of the Third Position.

Because I had the responsibility to do the work of the sacristan – which at Shasta Abbey is a very busy job – but I did not have the same power that a senior monk would have had, I couldn’t rest in the usual perks of power and position and control that I might have imagined would come with the job and that I wanted – felt – that I needed. I had to do the work and undergo the same challenges so, instead of taking refuge in external conditions to get the job done, the job sort of forced me to go deeper into myself and take deeper refuge in the Third Position and from there, respond to the needs that arose. The situation asked me to let go of my fears and worries, to step beyond them.

Power and control and the authority to make decisions can be useful qualities to have when working with and helping others but they can also be misunderstood; they cannot fix our internal weakness, hurt, fear or worry or clarify the distortion that comes from these things. At the time of this sacristy experience, there were some things about me that made me misunderstand these qualities and so I tried to grasp after them. Being in a position of responsibility where these qualities were taken away, was very helpful to me in helping me to finally look at those aspects of myself that misunderstood and tried to take refuge in power and control.

I knew about the third position from my own experience but, until this time in my life, I didn’t fully recognize its value and my own need to take refuge there from moment to moment. Taking refuge in our own Third Position, asks us to help and go beyond our internal suffering.

By this time in my practice, I had begun to suspect that complaining about other peoples’ behavior and choices that had an effect on me was useless and so, while it was tempting to wonder if my seniors and teacher had set up the situation to deliberately make it more difficult for me, I just didn’t have the energy to pursue that line of thought. Like, instead of working on taking deeper refuge in the moment by moment practice of meditation, I could have spent more energy in complaining about how I was treated unfairly. But I am glad that I did not.

Whether it is deliberate or not, it is just the nature of life as human beings to encounter difficulty and, if we can accept this with a positive mind, it can be profoundly helpful. There is a quote from Wendell Berry from his Standing by Words, that expresses it beautifully:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.