An interesting and well-known priest, Raimundo Panikkar was
asked to attend a conference of monks who wanted to discuss
what they deemed the "traditional monk" vis-a-vis the
"non-traditional monk." I note that this was not exactly a new
consideration, because this conference occurred some 30 years
ago in Massachusetts. It had been sponsored by the Aide Inter-
Monasteries (A.I.M.), which is the Secretariat of the Benedictine
Confederation. Also, the North American Board for East-West
Dialogue was involved in this conference. The conferees chose
Fr. Panikkar as the respondent. In turn, some of the major
discussions as well as Panikkar's observations were published
in 1982, in BLESSED SIMPLICITY: THE MONK AS UNIVERSAL
ARCHETYPE.
Well, when I saw the monk as "archetype" as part of the title, it
only took me a few seconds to decide to buy this book. (I'm
glad I did, because it is now out of print.)
If I may, I should like to present Panikkar's discussion via quick,
understandable points. (Quoting from pages 10 through 16 in
his book.) To quote:
• By monk...I understand that person who aspires to reach the
ultimate goal of life with all his being by renouncing all that is not
necessary to it.
• The monk is the expression of an archetype which is a constitutive
dimension of human life. This archetype is a unique quality of each
person, which at once needs and shuns institutionalization.
• One does not become a monk in order to "do" something or even
to "acquire" anything, but in order to "be"...
• Human perfection: The perfection of the human individual is not the
fullness of human nature; it is not nature but personhood. Yet there
are people who actualize their dormant potentialities and others who
don't, people who reach a high degree of humanness...and others
who don't.
• I shall call the *humanum* this core of...humanness that can be
realized in as many fashions as there are human beings. Religion
is a path to the *humanum.* [Also] the poet, the intellectual, the
craftsman, the man of action...all express different facets of it.
• The archetype of...the monk is an expression [that] corresponds to
one dimension of this *humanum.* Monkhood is a dimension that
has to be integrated with other dimensions of human life in order to
fulfill the *humanum.*
* The monk within the institutionalized framework often suffers from
the fact that his vital impulses toward full humanness are curtailed
merely because they are absorbed in the total institution.
• One of the crises of present-day monasticism is precisely this kind
of *quid pro quo,* that something which belongs to human nature as
one of its constitutive dimensions loses a good part of its force and its
universality once it becomes a particular form of organized life.
• The monastic vocation is essentially personal...[involving] the
search for the center...[which]...is immanent to the human being...
but at the same time...it is transcendent.
• Monasticism is not a specifically Christian, Jaina, Buddhist, or
a sectarian phenomenon; rather, it is a basically human and
primordiallya religious one.
So--reading over these initial points, I began to realize that my sense
about being a monastic might not be so strange after all. :-)
