therapeutiae

There is an order of people in whom the monastic impulse is exceptionally strong. It’s not the disciplinarians who are the monastics, but the free thinkers, the ones with the broad interests and the tendency to sway in the breeze of many stimuli. These have both the artistic disposition and the desire for a life of simplicity, two traits necessary for a life of Rule. My own tradition buried its monasticism: there are practices that are like those of monks, but there are no jewish monasteries, no jewish contemplatives, no jewish anchorites. I had to look elsewhere to satisfy my desire for the Rule. My justification was that there was something I couldn’t find in judaism that was nonetheless vital for my spiritual development. The content of this experience didn’t matter to me, but the form did: I wanted to learn how to be a monk. And I did. After a while, having been temporarily ordained, I disrobed and embarked upon the life of a bhante Ngakpa: half monastic, half yogin, and to all intents and purposes, this is the life I still lead, teaching and studying and honoring my teachers and hopefully my students equally. Yet, there is also “the jewish practice” as my teacher called it. Recently, I gave a yogin’s garment, a teacher’s garment, and felt, afterwards, that I should have tied tzitzit on it for the person who received it. Because there can be such a thing as a jewish monk. There used to be, and Philo wrote about them: interestingly, these “therapeutiae” as they were called may have been “healers” as their name suggests. Or “servants” as they have been called. Or - as one linguist pointed out - their name may have been a transliteration of “theravadin” and they may have been jews practicing a buddhist form of monasticism that was brought to Alexandria by Ashoka’s missionaries.
There is no chance that such a tradition can be revived today; even in its time, it was judaism on the margins of the community, intentionally so, and therefore not part of the mainstream after the rabbinic revolution. We’re learning to be contemplatives however. Many have already done so. This is bound to have an impact. Perhaps it is an invisible stream, like an aquifer in the desert. Yet because of this living water, flowers will bloom and trees will bear fruit.