Here in my corner of southern Indiana, the time for Fall is visibly approaching. Soon, all around my hilly, wooded corner of the globe there will be all sorts of mid-western tourists coming around to ride the curvy roads in the moderate weather and enjoy the beautiful autumnal mosaic of wind-swept bark and birch. Earlier this year in July, I was a part of something truly fantastic and bitter-sweet; the final grad school retreat of Naropa's Master of Divinity degree.
Though I have a few semesters of course work and other requirements to wrap up, at this point, going up into the mountains of Colorado for week-long retreats is no longer part of the curriculum. This summer retreat involved very little meditation however, and instead the time spent on the land involved completing and participating in two major assignments. Each student in this final retreat has to co-lead a spiritual-care teaching for the group and each student also has to lead a ritual for the group. For our teaching component the instructor was really happy with the teaching myself and two fellow students offered; we gave a teaching on living with simplicity (I couldn't be a worse poster boy for that!!) That said I would like to describe here my experience with ritual because, for the first time since Pujari ordination last November, it involved stepping fully into the role of ordained priest.
Some self-locating here: I came to the Buddhist path through a gate very, very far from the traditional religious dimensions of faith, belief, and ritual in my early 20's. I entered through Buddhist philosophy, scholarship, metaphysics, and meditation. My interest in these things didn't stem from beliefs handed down to me, but from my own experiences in altered states of conscious awareness. Although I have experience with all of these very traditional dimensions of religious belonging and spirituality now, this class still worried me. Even with having a college-level course of reading, discussion and contemplation of ritual I worried: what can I offer to everyone that's truly authentic? Even if I understand the principles of ritual, can I hold the space for everyone? What if I'm an imposter? That said, ritual properly done is powerful.
Let me open this topic by bringing in some broad, macro-level thoughts on ritual experience, since my retreat time participating in roughly 20 rituals straight over the course of about 5 days. Ritual is not just about rote religious participation in a prescribed format that most congregants complete while they are mentally checked out. Far from it, rituals engage the mind and the spirit in that most pivotal of human activities: making meaning of life. Rituals can be about healing, purification, letting go, grieving, transformation, and much more. Rituals involve some sense of boundary, a designated activity in which time and space get partitioned off as sacred and held in that divinity by the ritual leader until the ritual is over. It is powerfully involved in meaning-making because participants intuitively understand that within the bounds of the ritual their usual social parameters don't apply and they are about to be subsumed into the unknowing of liminal space.
Because ritual involves boundary, clear intentions, and this facet of social de-masking (our usual walls coming down) a space can go from ordinary - everyone is talking and hanging out - to profound just a few minutes later (with literally every participant in tears). I knew early on in this retreat after experiencing some of the other rituals that if I was going to offer something to the rest of the class that was authentic I would have to somehow drop myself into liminal space as well.
Rituals can be very traditional where every movement, every, action, and every meaning is extremely culturally-specific. Rituals can also be very idiosyncratic, where each element and it's symbolic meaning is designated by an individual outside of any historical context. My ritual was a blend of these: I took large inspiration from a documentary I watched about Japanese monks of Tendai Buddhism called 'Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei'. The documentary describes what is essentially a years-long ritual in which everyday for seven years a monk circumambulates a mountain along a 20+ mile path while praying at shrines along the path. At the end of this long pilgrimage the monk then undergoes a purification period of a week sitting in meditation without food, water, or sleep. If he survives he is then held to have ritually become a Buddha and he goes into town to offer blessings to the townsfolk. My ritual included each of these components: pilgrimage, purification, and blessing.
First I went up to the mountain behind the Drala Meditation Center. I meditated until my mindfulness and concentration felt strong, then I just mindfully watched the body as it climbed toward the peak. During that climb I inadvertently experienced a rapid, intense breakthrough into liminal space in which the content of the blessing became clear. At the top of the mountain there was a small, unmarked shrine with a Buddha statue where I offered a sincere prayer to the sky and the ancestral Sangha to grant me the authority of giving the blessing to the class.
For a few days afterward, I fasted eating one meal a day and completing extra meditation at every opportunity. Then on the day of presenting my ritual I explained the blessing to everyone so they could decide for themselves whether or not it felt appropriate for them. I led them out into a small field with the walking stick that I had carried up the mountain and back. Then, with the class huddled around physically touching either myself or the stick I finally offered the blessing to everyone present; reaching as deeply as I could into my own conscious embodiment. I was imagining myself as a vessel of the land compassionately extending it's gifts for all of life on Earth.
These days, as the nights bring coolness and the leaves will surely begin to fall, I'm looking forward to a camp fire. The chance to watch flames dance, reflect on these experiences, and feel gratitude for all of the beings in my network of relations. Those that have supported me in this path or opened themselves to accepting my support. A little 'Fall ritual', I guess.
Buddha's blessings,
Rev. Prakasa