Laura Riding was an artmonk
“The mercy of truth – it is to be truth.” In reading Paul Auster’s fantastic collection of essays, The Art of Hunger, I came across Truth, Beauty, Silence, a stunning look at Laura Riding’s life and work. As the poets she influenced (Auden, Ashbery, etc.) are among my favorites, I have read a little ...
Alan Wallace on DharmaCafe.com: Renunciation as Emergence Out of X and Towards Y
In this excellent interview from dharmacafe.com (via @c4chaos), Alan Wallace says that what often gets translated from Buddhist texts as “renunciation” is something closer to “emergence,” as in when we emerge from childish strategies that don’t work toward something more authentic and fulfilling. It’s more than a radical disillusionment, like Sartre or Camus… They’re renouncing something, ...
Economies of Merit at play in Qinghai
Last year, the Taer Monastery reported ticket sales revenues of 36 million yuan (US$5.48 million). The money was used to pay every monk about 10,000 yuan in living allowances and to maintain the monastery buildings. In 2010, the per capita net income of farmers and herdsmen in Qinghai was 3,863 yuan, according to the National ...
Economies of Merit
In many monastic and religious traditions, ethical and spiritual “merit” gets traded like a commodity.1 Nuns and monks agree to live a certain way, abiding by a certain kind of behavior (which their society has deemed the most virtuous or ethical), and in exchange they don’t have to earn their own money to stay alive, ...
Disrobing “Big Mind”
I don’t know what kind of monk Genpo Roshi actually intended to be, but his recent disrobing brings up some good issues around a few of the elements of monasticism I’ve been writing about. Celibacy & Sexuality (can monks be sexually active? how ’bout unfaithfully so? polyamorous?) Vows (where do marriage vows and monastic vows overlap?) Hierarchy ...
Monastic Separateness & Engagement (part 3): Monasticism in Society
[This series of posts, "The Elements of Monasticism" asks the question, what exactly is monasticism? "Separateness & Engagement" will unfold in a series of 4 posts (links: 1, 2, 3, 4).] A gem from Father Louis (aka Thomas Merton), in case you missed it a few weeks ago: The monastery is neither a museum nor an asylum. The monk remains in ...
Proust was an artmonk
“[R]enunciation is not always total from the very first moment—the self that commits us to it is a former self, one that has not yet been acted upon by the fact of the renunciation itself, whether it be the renunciation of the invalid, the monk, the artist, or the hero… Before we have committed ourselves ...
Chapter 3 of Augustine’s Rule
[Part of the Daily Lectio series, named after the Benedictine tradition of lectio divina, "divine reading." For instructions and background on the series, click here. Subscribe to Daily Lectio. Send comments or suggested readings to nathan@artmonastery.org] Starting on October 2nd, I’ll be doing a Jesuit retreat on the Rule of Augustine (which I’ve written about here: “Up to our necks in Augustine”). ...
Chapter 1 of Augustine’s Rule
[Part of the Daily Lectio series, named after the Benedictine tradition of lectio divina, "divine reading." For instructions and background on the series, click here. Subscribe to Daily Lectio. Send comments or suggested readings to nathan@artmonastery.org] Starting on October 2nd, I’ll be doing a Jesuit retreat on the Rule of Augustine (which I’ve written about here: “Up to our necks in Augustine”). ...
Up to our necks in Augustine
On Saturday the Art Monastery, a community of artists from a wide range of spiritual traditions working to apply the tools of monasticism to art-making instead of religion, will embark on a 7-day silent retreat in the Jesuit tradition, in which the primary form of activity (and inactivity) will be to read the Rule of ...
