The Bitter Pill of Honest Feedback

A monastery can feel like a secure place.

We leave the world behind only to join an exclusive society of robed, shaven-headed confrères with shared aspirations, striving to live by the highest principles. But don’t think that monks and nuns float around in saintly harmony and meditative bliss.

Monastic community is a melting pot of temperaments and karmic predicaments – with the heat turned up and the lid fastened tight. Being dependent on alms and denied our habitual escape routes – entertainments and free choice as to how and with whom we spend our time – render us vulnerable and teach us how we must let go. Yet, in spite of our commitment to awaken and purify ourselves, sometimes we break down or ‘break’ each other down because we are human – and fallible.

When we fall, our monastic siblings, much as our friends or family, hold up a mirror for us to reflect what we are doing and how we have strayed from the Path. That can be humiliating and galling. The opportunity to reconcile emerges when we ask for forgiveness, a practice core to the Vinaya, our moral code of discipline.

Under the protective canopy of community, we help each other forward and re-establish rapport according to prescribed conventions: we acknowledge our error, are formally forgiven, and begin again.

As wisdom matures, we learn to swallow the bitter pill of honest feedback. Without it, we keep believing – wrongly – that others are to account for our distress or outrage. When there is no ‘need’ for forgiveness, when we can live in harmony, pure loving-kindness naturally arises – and we no longer blame.

This reflection by Ayyā Medhānandī Bhikkhunī is from the book, Gone Forth, Going Beyond, (pdf) pp. 4-5.