The Power of the Robe (Today)

By Busshin Nash, Visiting Novice

For me, the power of the robe today is in its capacity to orient me toward tomorrow. As a young person trying to imagine a future, I can sometimes catch myself feeling victimized by the massive weight of uncertainty we are all bearing witness to in the world today. I hear this from my peers as well in various expressions of resigned despair and abject meaninglessness. By that same token, I can’t help but think that the casual cruelty and flagrant chauvinism we are seeing displayed among our leaders today is a result of our collective inability to metabolize this global uncertainty into states of mind and associated actions that are as urgent and wholesome as this moment demands. For me, the robe is one such way. I may not know where we’re going—who does?—but I know the directions I am willing to travel: toward renunciation, kindness, and harmlessness and the collective realization of our originally complete and awakened nature.

At the same time, the robe emerges from the past. It comes to me on the backs of hundreds of years of loving stewardship by our ancestors, known and unknown. That past gives me both a grounding sense of purpose and humbling sense of responsibility: I am grounded in my vow of service and humbled by the enormity of the task. Also, this connection to the past is how I manage to get out from underneath my own myopic views and fickle opinions about the way things ought to be. In doing the robe, I am assured that these aspirations—of relinquishment, kindness, and harmlessness for the sake of all beings—are worthwhile ones to hold. In other words, by stepping into a tradition, I step out of myself.