I could have grown my hair in anticipation of leaving the monastery, but I find that I prefer to have super-short hair. Besides being far easier and cheaper to care for than a regular hair "do," it also frees me from a certain kind of self-beautifying behavior which I don't particularly want to cultivate. And it conveys a certain sense of difference, indicating that I am not exactly like everyone else.
When I lived at the monastery, I gradually became comfortable with being looked at when I went to town. even in this university town, people look at me. But, unlike the rural Scandanvian folks around Clatskanie, some Corvallians actually keep looking at me.
Perhaps it’s not actually about me at all? They could just be spacing out--and I happen to be wandering through their line of sight. Even so, being in plainclothes in the world entails a loss of advertised identity, which forces me to contemplate who I am-- and who I want others to think I am.
When I was wearing samue (the little kung-fu work jacket that is the semiofficial monastery uniform), it was clear that I was in some sort of “club”-- or possibly a cult! The monastery is part of the local color in the tiny burg of Clatskanie, and is pretty well-known in the surrounding region. So although people may look, and look away, they know who they’re looking at.
Wearing the samue, I knew that my behavior reflected on the monastery, and on Buddhism. Any openness, generosity, or kindness I manifested also had an educational benefit. Now I am how I am, without obviously being a public-relations advertisement.
After so long as the public face of a zen monastery, now I embody the practice without anyone knowing what I am. Beyond being anonymous; I’m unrecognized. And my own sense of myself as a practitioner is no longer reinforced by others’ recognition.
Now, recollecting my vows and practice must come from the inside, because nobody around here knows me from a cute lesbian chick.
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