2022-01-10 A Dharma Life: Reflections on Zen Priest Ordination
IInsight Meditation CenterJan 10, 2022 at 5:45 pm16min
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00:02Gil Fronsdal
Warm greetings to everyone. Today I am going to mark the fortieth anniversary of having been ordained as a Zen priest. It is a little pause in our series on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. I feel fortunate, certainly, to have reached this fortieth anniversary and to have spent these forty years in the dharma, practicing and teaching.
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00:44Gil Fronsdal
But the fact that I am here at Insight Retreat Center is also very special. This also is a part of the wonderful dharma life I have been graced by or blessed by – to have this wonderful retreat center to practice in, be on retreat, and to teach in. To be able to open the doors of the center for so many people to come and practice here.
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01:20Gil Fronsdal
And coincidentally, the reason I am here is that we have a two day retreat for our teacher training. IMC started its very own teacher training back in April. In the past, people who trained in our tradition got trained through Spirit Rock or Insight Meditation Center. Here, we have started our own training for fifteen people. It is special, a kind of culmination of forty-five years or more of dharma practice, to come to the wonderful circumstance of training others to be full teachers.
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02:16Gil Fronsdal
All of this came together – being at IRC, the anniversary of my ordination, and the teacher training I feel so fortunate to be able to do. So I wanted to mark it. Forty years ago, I was ordained with two other Zen students, Victoria Austin, and Gary McNabb. I felt very fortunate to know them both. Both of them dedicated their life to the practice – in their case Zen practice – and the life of what became known as a priest.
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02:55Gil Fronsdal
I say "became" because at the San Francisco Zen Center, at the time of my ordination, it was called a monk ordination. The word "monk" was used both for males and females, referring to a monastic ordination. That is what I thought I was doing, ordaining as a monk.
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03:20Gil Fronsdal
I knew there was a track to become a teacher someday. But there were so many other monks, priests, ordained people at Zen Center when I was there. I calculated that it would be something like twenty-five years before it might be my turn to move up into even the very beginning teaching roles, or to be trained as a teacher. But I was not being ordained to be a teacher, I was ordained to be a monk.
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