Brother Đạo Hành answers: What does it truly mean to be a monastic?

A month and a half ago, I was invited to reflect and write on the following questions: How does the monastic path inspire you to respond to the suffering in the world? How do you see the monastic path becoming rooted in the West?

Now, with less than four days to go before the article deadline, I think I’ve given enough time for insight to ripen. No, no, this isn’t procrastinating—the longer I wait, the longer it can simmer and the deeper the insight … right? The core question most alive in me has boiled down to: What does it truly mean to be a monastic? I ought to know this one after nearly nine years as a monk.

Suffering and the monastic response

Before sharing how the monastic path inspires me to respond to the suffering in the world, let’s first have a look at what our response actually is. It’s surprisingly straightforward and simple. Many of us, both individually and globally, find ourselves in a less-than-ideal situation caused largely by our inability to deal with suffering in a healthy way, our inability to be in touch with the conditions for happiness that are all around us at all times, and our inability to see the interbeing nature of all that is. This is the monastic response to suffering: by learning to be in touch with life, we transform, and in doing so, we transform the world.

The suffering in the world is manyfold. On a global scale we’ve got environmental degradation, social injustice, and wars raging, for starters. On a personal level we’ve got depression, burnout, trauma, a lack of direction, etc. Responding to these big, collective issues seems like a daunting task.

When we don’t know how to suffer on a personal level, we can react to suffering in unhealthy ways. I see this root problem on a global scale: we run away, we suppress, we consume, and we lash out in order to try and suffer less. Global issues like the climate crisis or the armed conflicts we face are often larger reflections of coping mechanisms we employ in our daily lives: running away, suppressing emotions, reacting in anger, and consuming unmindfully.

When we learn to take care of our personal emotions and ill-being in a healthy way, some major causes for global suffering are taken care of at the same time. In my years as a monk, I’ve seen how simple practices like mindful breathing and walking help people transform their relationship with their emotions. Their inner world improves, the relationships within their family improve, and the ripple effect radiates outward. Teaching people how to take care of their suffering is part of our monastic response.

Cultivating happiness as a path to healing

Once we learn to face suffering, we discover cultivating joy is an essential part of healing. Happiness isn’t merely the absence of pain, it is an active practice that enables us to handle difficulties with greater grace.

When we’ve had a great day at work and our partner says, “You forgot to put out the trash this morning” when we come home, we might simply smile and take out the trash. When we’ve had a bad day at work, our partner saying this might be the drop that overflows our bucket and makes us explode.

The exact same words from our partner might elicit two very different reactions. When we are in a tense and challenging period of our life, every little thing may cause us more suffering. However, when we are in a happy and content period of our life, the small daily difficulties have space around them and don’t cause us to suffer.

The cultivation of our happiness is a direct way to respond to our suffering. When there’s a healthy balance of peace, ease, spaciousness, and joy in our life, we have the space and patience to deal with suffering. Teaching people how to touch the miracle of life, how to cultivate happiness, is part of our response.

Understanding interbeing: our collective responsibility

The way we treat Mother Earth, how we treat each other, and how we treat ourselves shows we aren’t quite aware of the interbeing nature of all that is. We don’t recognize that every morsel of food we eat comes from the land we are defiling, that every breath we take comes from the air we are polluting, that the blood in our veins comes from the rivers we are contaminating. If we truly understood this, we wouldn’t be in the climate crisis we find ourselves in. We’d recognize that you are in me and I am in you, that your happiness and suffering is deeply connected to my happiness and suffering, and we wouldn’t find ourselves at war. We’d recognize the deep connection between our ill-being and our well-being and wouldn’t struggle so much when we’re in a muddy patch in our lives.

Interbeing is the insight that all things are deeply interconnected: our actions, thoughts, and the well-being of others are intrinsically linked. This understanding is crucial for healing ourselves and the planet. It naturally leads to more compassionate choices—not just for ourselves, but for all beings. Teaching people how to touch the insight of interbeing is part of our response.

The role of monastic life in the modern world

The monastic path can be regarded as a lifestyle. It’s a lifestyle that, for me, is conducive to living life in awareness and compassionate service to others. It’s a way to learn to take care of our ill-being, to learn to nourish our well-being, and to touch the insight of interbeing and the miracle of being alive. Once I have a lived experience of how to balance and take care of my own inner world, the path of service enables me to teach others to do the same.

We live a very healthy lifestyle in the monastery. Our schedule and way of living meet very basic needs for our well-being: healthy food, enough sleep, exercise, and spirituality. Our monastic life, rooted in the balance of practice, play, service, and study, becomes a model for how to live in harmony with ourselves, each other, and the world.

As our Plum Village tradition emphasizes, communal practice and living is very important and instrumental to the monastic lifestyle. We learn a lot from each other through the siblinghood we develop. We support each other to navigate our own paths; as a collective, the impact we can have on others is manifold. On my own I wouldn’t be able to fulfill the life of service and help as many people walk the path nearly as well as we can as a community. Thousands of people every year find healing in our monasteries and practice centers. When my battery is low, my siblings can step in, and vice versa. Together, we can support many people without getting overwhelmed.

We operate as a family: harmony, friendship, and siblinghood are the highest aims. This makes the whole path joyful, meaningful, and sustainable. With only a handful of monastics, we can cook for hundreds during a retreat. We only need a few tools, vehicles, and buildings when we live in community. Living a simple communal life saves many resources so we can devote all our time and energy to spiritual growth and to service for others.

The monastic precepts have been fundamental for the survival of our monastic tradition for over 2,600 years. The precepts, which include living a celibate life, give us the freedom to live the life we aspire to live. They protect us from wasting our precious time and energy and direct us to what is important in our lives. They form the basis for our ethical conduct, which helps to keep the community healthy and monastic culture alive.

Rooting the monastic path in the West

It’s exactly because the monastic path offers a practical and pragmatic way to respond to the suffering within ourselves and in the world that it has a chance to become rooted in the West. 

If the monastic path only helped ourselves without serving others, it would not be as fulfilling. Thousands of people come to our monasteries every year. It’s a great nourishment for monastics to see everyone find the benefit, healing, and transformation they need so much and that are so very needed in society and in the world.

We live in a time when many people feel lost in life. They can’t tell right from wrong, and they don’t know what makes their heart sing or why they get up in the morning. This is a big source of suffering. Buddhism is fairly new in the West, so we have to be patient as it takes root. Zen provides a framework for reconnecting with ourselves, our communities, and the planet. As more people experience the fruits of this practice, I believe it will naturally take root in the West, offering a way forward in a world in need of healing.

Before I was a monk, I was rather lost in life. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, didn’t know how to take care of myself, really, and didn’t know how to help my loved ones. What do we do when we see family suffer from burnout, friends suffer from depression, or when we struggle in our communication with our partner? I felt stuck and stagnant for a decade, just going through the motions of life, living from weekend to weekend and vacation to vacation without really getting anywhere. Sure, I had fun along the way, but was this why I was here on Mother Earth?

Ever since living in Plum Village, I feel I’m blooming as a human being again. This community reveals the best in me through developing healthy habits and healthy ways of being. If you’re anything like me, developing a stable sitting practice, abstaining from smoking or alcohol, eating a healthy diet, etc., may be challenging to do by yourself, but as a collective it’s so very easy. Everyone is going in the same direction, and I just have to flow with this river.

Nowadays I’m a rather content guy most of the time, and I have a deep gratitude for Thầy and the Sangha. Having experienced the fruits of the practice, the only thing that really makes sense to me is to try and share them with others. The monastic path has transformed my life, and in sharing it, I hope it may inspire you as well. Whether you walk it fully or incorporate its wisdom into your daily life, it offers a way to navigate modern challenges with compassion, purpose, and joy. Will you join us in being part of collective transformation?

Photos courtesy of the Plum Village monastic sangha. Bio photo by Jerome Cabeen.