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A note on the use of “Liests” in our Treeleaf Lineage …
In our Treeleaf community, we are advocating a modern view of Buddhist teachers fully transcending and stepping right through the traditional categories of “lay” and “ordained”, male or female. We thus step right beyond a certain divide that is plaguing western Buddhism. We borrow from Hua-yen, Zen and other Mahayana viewpoints: That one thing may be fully itself, yet fully embody and actuate other good things simultaneously and identically, free of the least conflict. In our “Sangha” Community, we offer a form of "ordination" or "office" that fully flies past the male/female/priest/lay divisions yet allows us to fully embody and actuate each and all as the situation requires. This is not merely some “combination” or “mixture”, but a total realization of one and all, each fully realized in its moment. When I am a married man and parent to my children, I am 100% that and fully there for my family. When I am a worker at my job, I am that and embody such a role with sincerity and dedication. When I am asked to step into the role of hosting Zazen, offering a Dharma talk, practicing and embodying our history and teachings, and passing them on to others, I fully carry out and embody 100% the role of “Priest” in that moment. When in a monastery, I am that, when performing charitable work in the community, I am that. Whatever the moment requires: maintaining a sangha community, bestowing the Precepts, working with others to help sentient beings. Even the names we call ourselves do not matter. In this way, we do not ask and are unconcerned with whether we are “Priest” or “Lay”, for we are neither that alone, while always thoroughly both; exclusively each in purest and unadulterated form, yet wholly all at once. It is just as, in the West, we have come to step beyond the hard divisions and discriminations between “male” and “female”, recognizing that each of us may embody all manner of qualities to varying degrees as the circumstances present, and that traditional “male” and “female” stereotypes are not so clear-cut as once held. So it is with the divisions of “Priest” and “Lay”.
We smile and laugh at the sometimes hot debates concerning who are the "priests" (many, these days, themselves married with kids in the Japanese Lineages) and who are the “lay teachers” … and thus sometimes I call us “p-lay”.
In my view, the role of clergy should be that of service and subservience to the community and other sentient beings, both “priest” and “lay” offering aid as the least among equals. Thus, I call us “liest”.