Being a Good Shepherd and Being a Non-Shepherd

Because I was in the area and hadn’t seen my friend for several years, I turned off the highway and drove down the dirt road to her converted farmhouse ashram. Even at a distance I could see something was wrong: the wide, swinging gate that had always stood open was shut. As I pulled up to it, I saw that it was locked, too, and that the long lane that led up to the house was choked with weeds. But I could see laundry hanging out in the sun to dry, so I called information to get her phone number and then rang the house.

When she came out to greet me, she looked old and tired. The light in her eyes had gone out. She had been a spiritual teacher of significance; but the once-thriving meditation and study group that she had headed for many years was no longer in existence. She lived alone now, and judging from the weeds, nobody came to study or to visit. She got in the car and we drove up to the shuttered house. "I’ve retired and gone back to basics," she said, "I study and meditate alone." "It’s more like you’re keeping your light under a bushel," I said, looking at the covered windows. She had been an important person in my own spiritual development, and I wanted to know why she was no longer guiding others. Over tea, she told me the details.

She explained that she had often given talks about the Bhagavad Gita to different groups; and in one of her lectures at a local college she met a young woman who became so enthusiastic about the Gita that she joined her group. The girl came to meditation sessions regularly and began to function as an assistant. The two of them formed a kind of mother-daughter bond; and when my friend had surgery, the girl stayed at the farmhouse to care for her and to lead the group while she recovered. Then at school the girl found some new friends and began to use "social" drugs with them at weekend parties. Sometimes, to the irritation of other congregation members, her drug-using friends would come to the ashram. My friend grew increasingly alarmed as she watched the girl become a regular drug user, her weight and her grades declining, the drug effects making her nervous and either depressed or manic. She needed help and my friend tried to supply it. She offered the girl a room in her house on condition that she cease all drug use.

The girl would stay clean for a few days, but sooner or later, she’d invent a reason to go out in the evenings or to stay overnight with friends at school, and the erratic behavior would begin again. The more drug-dependent she became, the more desperately my friend tried to save her. At first, her congregation members understood and were supportive. But the intrusive presence of the girl inhibited them from enjoying a personal relationship - the spiritual advice and counsel - of their teacher; and many of them ceased to attend services or even to telephone. After one meeting a member reported that money had been stolen from her purse during services. My friend made good the loss because, she admitted to me, she, too, had lost money from her own purse and also from the donation box which was in the girl's charge. The receipts were a fraction of what they had been for years. Still my friend was determined to help the girl.

She did not realize how emotionally attached she had become. The congregation, however, did realize it, and they resented it. "Toward the end," she said, "I'd get called to go pick her up at some hellish place. The few members who had stuck with me would come and maybe I wouldn’t be here. I was always distracted, useless as a teacher. Another meditation and study group formed in town. And then nobody showed up here anymore."

One day she awakened to discover that the girl had moved out during the night. A quick check revealed that jewelry and valuable sterling silver flatware were missing. "I never heard from my 'lost sheep' again," she said with a look that acknowledged that she was aware of having broken the first commandment of group leadership.

Years ago, when I was considering becoming a Buddhist priest, I used to worry about keeping all the injunctions that clerics of all religions have to respect. As Buddhists, we have the Five Precepts and the Eightfold Path to follow in our daily life; but as priests, we must keep additional rules, giving up many worldly attachments and abandoning our normal responses to people. We have to re-invent ourselves and find a new identity, one that doesn’t allow us to subordinate the Dharma or the interests of the Sangha to anyone or anything.

Ordination has a strange effect on a person. Secluded from the outside world for weeks on end, attending services for nineteen hours a day in an environment in which everything is tightly scheduled, few decisions need to be made and the mind and soul are free to attend to themselves. The transformation is not subtle. And so I found myself in deep reflection, subjected constantly to strong inspirational feelings. Ordination is so exhausting that whatever thoughts are formed are basic to the spiritual life. It's as if we are hammered into smoothness and the Dharma imprints itself on us, clearly. When we are in doubt we can look within ourselves and read it.

A priest must always be aware of the ground he walks on, the path he follows. He has to be aware of his responsibility to the people who look to him for guidance along the Way. Serving others is more important than serving himself for, in a very real sense, he is serving God. Regardless of the size of his congregation, a priest has to dedicate himself - not to individuals but to the group as a whole, the entire Sangha. And this is the most difficult rule he has to keep. A group is comprised of individuals. When a person brings his problems to a priest, the interaction is one-on-one. How, then, does a priest know where to draw the line and make the necessary allocations of time and effort?

In the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 18, verse 12, the problem is classically presented. "How think ye? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?" All priests would want to answer this with a resounding "Yes!" To save that one sheep becomes supremely important; and Matthew acknowledges this in the succeeding verse: "And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, that of the ninety and nine which went not astray."

During Ordination, it is impressed upon us that, as shepherds, we will always rejoice when we help to save an individual but that we should always fear an excess of emotional joy. We must temper our joy by acting for the sake of the Dharma and not for the individual soul. This teaching was still very strong in my mind when, shortly after I became a teacher, I had a student who informed me that he had found a "wonder drug." He claimed that he was often plagued with depression and that this drug made him feel "really good." I knew the drug was illegal and told him to stop taking it, giving him spiritual solutions to his depression problems and suggesting that he seek professional help if he needed any medications. But he persisted and soon began advocating the drug to others in the group, offering to supply it to them cheaply. I didn’t waste any time. I asked him to leave. It was not my function to provide a forum or a marketplace for such activity. I can’t say that I made this decision easily. It was difficult and I regretted having to sever my relationship with him; but especially after I saw my old friend’s shuttered ashram, I was particularly glad I had made it.

Of the many things that can destroy a Sangha, jealousy is one of the most common. Sangha members often relate to each other as family members. This is why, in all religions, familial appellations are used, and we hear such forms of address as father, mother, brother and sister. The same family problems that arise within a family arise within a Sangha whenever favoritism is suspected. If, for example, it is perceived that donated money is being spent inappropriately on the favored person, especially if that person seems to have gone beyond the limits of being helped (such as the drug abuser my friend tried to help) the morale of the group will be quickly shattered. Of course, if a man is a recovering alcoholic, he is an active participant in his own healing and the Sangha will provide encouragement and support; but when it becomes apparent that time and money are being expended to help someone who does not wish to be healed, the Sangha will become resentful. And no one can blame them.

A priest or spiritual leader needs always to be wary of forming any kind of attachment to members of the Sangha. We may recall an often-told story in Zen. A master goes to attend the funeral of another master, one for whom he had had the greatest respect. But when he arrives at that master’s monastery, he is shocked to discover the monks weeping helplessly as though they were children who had lost their mother. He knows that no legitimate master would ever have formed such emotional bonds with disciples, and so he leaves the funeral services in disgust.

Non attachment is integral to Zen and if we foster it in our relationships with others we free ourselves, and others, from the emotional torque that all too often leaves us spiraling out of control. If we abide in the path of non-attachment, we won’t get pulled into the tormented existence of the drug-abuser or the thief, and we’ll be able to provide unbiased, selflessly motivated guidance when troubled people come to us for help.

My friend had ceased to be a good shepherd when she abandoned her flock in order to lavish her attention on what she considered a sheep that had gotten lost. She had formed an attachment to an individual, a maternal projection, as if the girl had been her child. She hadn't considered how this girl’s problems would affect others. When I left her that day, I asked her to reconsider her decision to give up teaching. "Just don't allow yourself to get personally attached," I said, adding, "and don’t always assume that a sheep is 'lost.' Sometimes it deliberately runs away and will get you lost if you try to chase it."

But I think she already knew that.