Bahiya

Bahiya

I am one of the crusty OMs causing the WBO's age graph to climb so steadily upward. As much as I would like to rewind, there's not much I can do to resist the advancing years so it's pointless feeling guilty. Now semi-retired after a lifetime in the security industry, I spend much of my spare time giving talks to beginners at the Bristol Centre's drop-in classes and talking about safe-breaking techniques to trainee risk surveyors. My nightmare is waking to find myself talking to a beginner's meditation class on the use of disk cutters by modern safe crackers.

At the Bristol Buddhist Centre on 2 April, 2006, 6 men were publicly ordained by Padmavajra, the first public ordinations ever to be held there.

The shrine room was packed with families and friends of the ordinands and a CCTV link was beamed onto the wall of the adjoining room for the overflow. Five of the newly ordained were members of the same Bristol based GFR group, sometimes referred to as The Dharma Bums after the novel of the same name. The sixth was a very welcome visitor from the Glasgow Centre. I don't think it is unique for all the members of a single GFR group to be ordained at the same time, but it is rare enough to be remarkable. I was proud to be amongst them.

What made it particularly unusual was that each of the 'Bums' had been involved with the movement for many years, in fact, added together our total experience easily exceeds 100 years. Using simple maths, it is obvious that some of us had been kicking around the FWBO for over 20 years. What took us so long to become ordained - or what took the Order so long to decide to ordain us? I guess each one of us would have a different answer but basically, it took a while for the Order to be ready for The Dharma Bums and it clearly took the Bums a long while to be ready for the Order. Even if your experience of the WBO is relatively recent, you must be aware of how much it has changed, even in the past 5 years; it is vastly different to the way things were late 70's and early 80's. Married men with families and regular employment had very little chance of being ordained. Even if we could find time to fit in all the retreats, there was no way we could contrive to take months off work to go to Il Covento or Guhyaloka. Unless we deserted our families, gave up our careers, moved into single sex communities and worked in right livelihood cooperatives, it was unlikely that we were going to see a kesa hung around our necks any time soon.

Even without these restrictions, many of us were uncomfortable with aspects of the Order as it was then and some of the Bums were outspoken in their views. Time has proven some of these criticisms to be well founded. One of two of us even felt driven away from the movement by some of these concerns, others were more stubborn and continued to strive to change attitudes.

All of that was a long time ago and the fact that five former 'troublemakers' were shoe-horned into a special two week ordination retreat at Guhyaloka last March clearly demonstrates how far the Order has come since those early days and how we in turn have held to our commitment to Going for Refuge. However, it was the power of true spiritual friendship that strengthened our resolve and eventually caused friends and supporters to campaign for our 'group' ordination. High amongst those most deserving of our gratitude are Prajnanada and Vessantara who attended our retreats, both formal and informal, took time to get to know each of us well and offered encouragement when we wavered.

For my part, the list of those who inspired me is long, but I would particularly like to mention Dharmabandhu who was the first Buddhist I ever met, Jayamati, who's LBC beginners groups must have launched the spiritual journeys of many dozens of men and women; Dhammarati who I am indebted to for making study groups fun, timely words of encouragement and for introducing me to both Talking Heads and the movies of Akira Kurosawa.

You can never second guess what will set the wheel of the Dharma turning in someone's heart and mind, it can be a casual word, a silent example, a passage in a book, a meditation experience, an unconscious moment that is so perfectly timed that its reverberations continue for generations. Surely there cannot be anything more exciting than supporting a beginner's class knowing that you are sowing seeds, many of which may quickly flourish and produce a rich harvest. But most magical of all, some of those seeds can remain dormant, taking an amazing 20 years preparing to germinate before bursting into a veritable bouquet of variegated blooms of every conceivable colour.

A million thanks to all who helped to make it all possible.

Bahiya

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