“Who am I?”
 A Tale of Monastic Failure*

 

Abba Poeman said to Abba Joseph, “Tell me how to become a monk.”
He said, “If you want to find rest here below, and hereafter
in all circumstances say, Who am I? and do not judge anyone.”

From: Sayings of the Desert Fathers

 

PART ONE

 

There was once a young man who didn’t have the foggiest notion of what he wanted to do with his life. One day he said to himself, “I know what. I’ll enter a monastery, but not just any monastery. I want to enter a real monastery. So off he went determined to find a real monastery. He came to the first monastery he could find and knocked on the door. The porter answered the door and said to the young man, “Good afternoon. How may I help you?”

 

The young man said, “I’d like to enter a monastery, but it’s got to be a real monastery. Is this a real monastery?”

 

The porter towered over him and pierced him with his dark eyes. He said to the young man, “I’m sure you’d be more than welcome here, but I’m afraid I shall have to tell you we’re not a real monastery at all. We’re a fake monastery, you see. We’re only pretending. So if you’ve got your heart set on a real monastery I’m afraid you’ll have to carry on down the road a bit until you come to the real monastery. You’ll come to it before long. Now off with you. There’s a good fella.”

 

The young man was delighted. He bade the porter farewell and set off down the road to find the real monastery. Soon he came to a large sign pointing down a small road that led into the woods. The sign read, “Real Monastery 100 Yards.” Rubbing his hands in excitement, he followed the little road into the woods.

 

He knocked on the door, and the porter of the monastery soon answered. “Good afternoon. How may I help you?” The young man’s jaw dropped in amazement. He was certain it was the very same monk who was the porter at the fake monastery just up the road. The young man said, “I’d like to enter a real monastery.” The porter clasped his hands together and said, “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Just come right in, and I’ll take you down to the novitiate. I’m sure something can be arranged.”

 

On the way the porter explained to the young man how fortunate he was not to have fallen for that fake monastery up the road. The young man settled into the novitiate with relative ease. He found he liked all his fellow novices and pretty much all the monks he came across. It wasn’t long before he felt certain he wanted to stay here for the rest of his days. So he went to the novice master and said, “I believe I’m ready to make my profession.” The novice master said, “Well, the abbot will have to see you about this.”

 

In due course an appointment with the abbot was arranged, and the young man sat down to speak with the abbot about his vocation. The abbot asked him why he felt he was ready to make his profession. The young man said, “Well, I’ve come to like it here very much. Everyone is nice to me, and I like all the monks.” The abbot said, “Well, that is very encouraging to hear, and I’d have to say that we are very happy to have you and we hope that you stay. But just the same, I think you should go back to the novitiate for a while longer. It’ll do you no harm.”

 

The young man left in great distress. Why didn’t the abbot want him to make his profession? Did he say something wrong? Was he deluded about his vocation? Not a little disappointed, the young man returned to his life as a novice. The abbot’s gentle rebuff ended up teaching the young man a great deal about his own faults and failings and presumption. He began to grow in self-knowledge and applied himself with great dedication to the study of the monastery’s long history, its traditions, and various customs. He soon mastered all of this.

 

After more than a year the young man was convinced that now he would be able to answer correctly any question the abbot might put to him and he could see, moreover, the abbot’s wisdom in putting him off for a time. And so the young man told the novice master that he felt he was now ready to make his profession and could he please see the abbot. The novice master arranged this, and soon enough the young man was brought to the abbot. The abbot said, “I’m very happy to hear that you still want to make your profession and to live out your monastic life among us. But tell me, why do you feel you are ready to make your profession?”

 

The young man responded, “I’m convinced that this is what God is asking of me. I don’t claim to understand it. I only know it is something I must do. Moreover, I have been studying our tradition and our charism. I identify with it very deeply and think it confirms the sense of interior call that I feel.” The abbot was obviously listening to him very intently and sincerely. He said to the young man, “What you say is very edifying indeed, and I feel even myself encouraged in the life just listening to you speak the way you do about your conviction of God’s love for you and of his call. But I think you should go back to the novitiate, back to the novitiate until you are really ready.”

 

The man was in quite a state as he left the abbot’s office. He was in fact completely shattered. He couldn’t imagine what on earth the abbot could possibly have wanted to hear. He knew he belonged more in the monastery than half of those other wretched monks. But he returned to the novitiate. He had already completed his formal studies, so he took to helping in the garden, pruning vines and thinning carrots and also served in the infirmary. He carried on with these jobs for what seemed like years.

 

One day the abbot asked the novice master, “What about that man who was so intent on making his profession in our monastery. Is he no longer interested?” “He doesn’t mention it much anymore,” said the novice master. “Is he unhappy?” asked the abbot. “No, he seems content enough,” responded the novice master. “He doesn’t say much to anyone. He goes about his tasks in the garden; he consoles the old monks in the infirmary, and encourages the new ones in the novitiate.” “Bring him to me,” said the abbot.

 

The man was brought to the abbot who began to question him: “I was wondering if you were still interested in making your profession. You don’t seem as keen to do it as you once were when you were making such a thorough study of our tradition. Have you gone off the idea altogether?” The man looked at the abbot. The lines beginning to show round the man’s eyes reflected the fact that he’d been in the monastery a number of years now. But his face had the freshness and peace of those whose poverty had taught them they had nothing to defend. The man said to the abbot, “Jesus Christ is my monastery.” The abbot sat up in his chair and leaned forward. He gazed into the man as though looking for something; looked into him as though gazing into the heart of mystery. His gaze fixed on the man, sifting him, assessing every turn taken, every decision made in order to know if this man really knew what he had said. The abbot stood up slowly, towered over him and said, “You have learned our tradition well. May I have your blessing?”

 

 

PART TWO

 

After this man’s second request for profession had been turned down and the abbot had sent him back to the novitiate until he was truly ready, he was in complete despair. This last rejection had unleashed within him a flood of swirling anxiety. He was seen working quietly around the place, but in fact he was only keeping up appearances; underneath his novice robes were spasms of chaos that would assault him like pounding waves. Once the chaos within was churning, it was all he could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other and somehow just manage to hold on. When the spasms of chaos let up, he would merely try to catch his breath and hope against hope that this was the last of these tidal waves of fear and panic. But it never was. Weeks became months. He realized he needed help, but to whom could he go? The novice master was allergic to life, and his regular confessor was completely switched off. There were 150 monks in the monastery. Who could help him? A certain Fr. Alypius eventually came to mind.

 

Fr. Alypius was something of a maverick, but he was thought to be wise. He was the cobbler and more or less lived in his little shop down at the bottom of the garden. He rarely spoke to anyone. It was said that he could read people’s hearts, so everyone stayed away. The young man said to himself, “I’ve got to go to him.” The next day at prayers, he left a note in Fr. Alypius’s place in chapel. “Can I talk to you about something?” By early afternoon he got his reply. “Come to me this evening after supper.” So after supper he crept down to the bottom of the garden to speak with Fr. Alypius.

 

Crouched over a table, Fr. Alypius was sitting on a stool repairing someone’s shoes. He peered over the top of his spectacles and said, “Sit down and tell me what’s wrong.” The young man went on for an eternity. He told him everything about his life, about his search for a real monastery, about his refusal for profession. All the while Fr. Alypius was working away on this one shoe. When the young man had finished, Fr. Alypius said, “I have just one question for you: ‘who are you?’”

 

“I just told you,” said the young man.

 

“No, you told me about the clothes you wear. You told me your name, where you’re from, what you’ve done, the things you’ve studied. Your problem is, you don’t know who you are. Let me tell you who you are. You are a ray of God’s own light.”

 

“Sounds a bit silly,” the young man thought to himself. But he was intrigued, so he said, “What do you mean?”

 

“You say you seek God, but a ray of light doesn’t seek the sun; it’s coming from the sun. You are a branch on the vine of God. A branch doesn’t seek the vine; it’s already part of the vine. A wave doesn’t look for the ocean; it’s already full of ocean. Because you don’t know that who you are is one with God, you believe all these labels about yourself: I’m a sinner, I’m a saint, I’m a wretch, I’m a worm and no man, I’m a monk, I’m a nurse. These are all labels, clothing. They serve a purpose, but they are not who you are. To the extent that you believe these labels, you believe a lie, and you add anguish upon anguish. It’s what most of us do for most of our lives. In the secular world we call it our career. In monastic terms, we call it our vocation.”

 

“Before you can know in your own experience what the Psalmist meant when he said, ‘Be still and know that I am God,’ you must first learn to be still and know who you are. The rest will follow.”

 

Then Fr. Alypius said, “Tell me about your prayer.”

 

“Well, I never miss the community prayers,” the young man replied.

 

“I didn’t ask you about saying your prayers. I asked about prayer.”

 

“Do you mean silent prayer?”

 

“Tell me about that.”

 

“I have trouble being silent,” said the young man.

 

“But you already are silent. I understand how there is a lot of noise and chaos swirling around. That’s true of us all. But you, you are silence. You are the silence that is aware of the chaos. You are the silence that sees the chaos. Again, I tell you, you don’t know who you are.”

 

“What’s all this chaos then?” asked the young man.

 

“It’s just weather. Tell me, what happens when you sit in silence?”

 

“I try to give myself over to contemplation and then get lost in thoughts.”

 

“But silence,” Fr. Alypius said, “silence and contemplation are concerned with what is deeper than thinking, with that vastness in which the things going on in your head appear. When this vastness full of vibrant emptiness is recognized to be the center of all appearances, even the inner chaos, then it becomes obvious that contemplation, silence, is always present.”

 

“I think I’ve glimpsed something of this, but normally I’m just lost in my thoughts,” confessed the young man.

 

“Are you? I thought you were a ray of God’s own light, a branch on the vine. Now you say you are something different. You say you are someone lost in thoughts. But isn’t this thought, ‘I am lost in my thoughts,’ just another thought, just another label that is being believed? We assume we are our thoughts, but look and see. Are you lost in your thoughts?”

 

“Not right now. But if I went back and tried to sit in silence, there would just be this inner chatter. I know my mind should be quiet. I should be having no thoughts.”

 

Fr. Alypius continued his instruction, “These new thoughts: ‘my mind should be quiet’; ‘I shouldn’t be having thoughts,’ are noisier than the previous thoughts. But these particular thoughts are believed to be the truth. Believing them to be the truth distracts you from the deeper reality. Silence is naturally present. Silence cannot not be there. When you think, ‘I’m lost in my thoughts; my mind should be silent,’ just stop for a second and ask ‘Who is lost? Who is not quiet?’ Do it right now.”

 

There was a pause. The young man looked hard.

 

Fr. Alypius asked him, “When you look directly into the thought do you see someone who is lost?”

 

“No, there is no one there. There is no one who is lost. In that moment there is not a chatterer, but then that moment is gone and all the chatter comes back.”

 

“That’s right,” cheered Fr. Alypius. “Thoughts keep coming back because that’s just what thoughts do. But if you look directly at the thought or feeling and ask who is the chatterer, who is suffering, you won’t find anybody, you won’t find a sufferer. There will be chattering, sure. Suffering, sure. The thoughts coming and going. Don’t look at the suffering, the anguish, the fear. These are objects of awareness. I’m asking you to look into the awareness itself. Not the objects of awareness. These have dominated your attention for decades. Let your attention rest in the awareness, not the objects of awareness. Yes, I can see on your face. The mind grows still. Tell me what do you see?”

 

“Nothing,” said the young man. “Just this vast nothing.”

 

“Tell me, what is the substance of all this chatter and chaos in your head?”

 

The young man responded, “It’s just fluff.”

 

“That’s right,” said Fr. Alypius. “Do you see how simple it is? It is not special or rarefied. It’s not because you’ve been chanting for nine hours straight or fasting for the last three weeks. These monastic strategies are of no use because it has already been accomplished. When you see that you are caught up in the storms of chaos, inner chatter, and mental commentary, ask yourself, ‘Who am I?’ Ask ‘Who is experiencing the chaos? Who is chattering? Who is the commentator?’ You won’t find anyone there checking to see if you are caught in thoughts. When you turn your attention from the object of your awareness to the awareness itself, there is just silent, vast, openness that has never been wounded, harmed, angry, frightened, or incomplete. This is who you are.”

 

On many evenings the young man would make his way down to the bottom of the garden for conversations with Fr. Alypius. They were all about the question, “Who am I?” The young man grew in wisdom and in this paradox of identity, and there was a great calm about him. On their final meeting Fr. Alypius said, “You have mastered the question ‘Who am I?’ I would like to put to you another question: ‘Who is Jesus Christ?’” The young man was fixed in a silent, inner gaze. As he looked at the young man, Fr. Alypius’s face brightened; he could see that the young man knew. He sat back and returned to repairing a shoe and said to the young man. “Well done. Now off with you. I believe the abbot wants to have a word with you.”

 

*From: Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird

Epilogue: Page 133

 

 

 

 

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