When, as a young person, a most excellent and auspicious opportunity to take monastic vows arose, I balked. Even though it was under the auspices of the then senior Sakya scholar-monk, the Encyclopedic Deshung Rinpoche, Kunga Tenpay Nyima, and His Holiness the present Sakya Gongma Trichen, one of the greatest Sakya Trizins of a millennium long lineage. This too, even after it had rightly been said by His Holiness’s sister, Jetsunma, that I had ‘monk’s mind.’
In truth, I mostly declined because I thought I knew myself, at twenty-seven, well enough to say, ‘Who are you kidding? You could never keep all those vows. Especially celibacy.’
I was certainly not alone in thinking this. At that time, the mid-to-late 70’s, during the Sakya’s germinal development in North America, many New York Dharma students embraced the Nyingma school precisely because their vowed lamas could take mates or consorts, known as khandros.
Now I’m more inclined to think taking on monastic discipline, even with its dangers of vow downfalls, is superior in terms of spiritual benefit to remaining an un-vowed lay follower. Unless, that is, one hold tantric vows and completes the tantric path; be that the Sakya one of receiving, through initiation, the Anuttara Tantra’s four consecrations which utilizes the two processes of creation and completion (kye rim and dzog rim), or the more immediate Nyima, Guru transmitted, ati-yoga realization which are both said to accomplish a full Buddhist Enlightenment.
In ‘A Clear Differentiation of the Three Codes (sDom gsum rab dbye),’ Sakya Pandita asks whether it’s really “worse” to be a monk because you can incur more infractions than a layperson. He answers with a very pointed analogy: “A field comes with adversity, but it also brings the reward of a harvest.” He then drives the point home by directly contrasting monastics and laypeople: “Similarly, householders experience no infractions, but they also remain without virtues.” Sakya Pandita goes on to say that: without refuge you are not a Buddhist, without individual-liberation vows you are not a renunciate, without bodhisattva and mantra vows you are not truly of those vehicles. By this, he is unmistakably saying the two lower Sravika and Mahayana vehicles are to be correctly accomplished by practicing, in conjunction, the third Vajrayana one.
I see the real soteriological, or salvic, purpose of living at a Buddhist monastery, with early morning meditations, liturgy recitation and extensive ritual practices, is not necessarily just to create a life of ease through a highly regulated or ritualized existence. But more to live a life that is not filled with delusive, ‘false imaginings’. By that I mean in the Buddhist epistemological sense of not having, ‘Mistaken conceptual constructs that superimpose characteristics onto objects that they do not truly possess.’ Or, more simply, having ‘Thoughts or pictures in your mind that are simply not true.’
In short, being sangha then, well affords a more truthful life. One that sees the daily drama of thwarted wish-fulfillment, pulsating, even throbbing at times with pain or pleasure—leaving one exhausted, sporadically sick, and nearly always dissatisfied—as false and tragically misleading. It’s the rehabilitation of one’s false imaging, bad-faith life, that the Buddhist monasteries seek to remedy by providing an alternative, actual and ‘actualizing,’ real life. And while many of the same worldly concerns, such as praise and blame, fame and gain, reputation and disgrace, etc. are present in monastic life, the default goal is spiritually redemptive and not materialistic and degenerative. This cannot be said about living in the world at large, aptly characterized in this nineteenth century, Wordsworth’s sonnet:
The world is too much with us; late and
soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our
powers,
resulting in the default accumulation of non-virtuous habits that lead to personal decline, lower rebirths, and yes, even the hells (all sixteen of them!)
Without the acts of self-discipline and sacrifice for spiritual purification or atonement, confession and purification, instead of accumulating positive, compassionate instincts and means, one tends to gather instead negative, destructive predispositions that harm oneself and others—the exact opposite goal of the monastic life.
The tension between the sangha and lay communities is that worldly habits of self promotion, aggrandizement, enrichment, and decline do find their way into monasticism, just as, conversely, rules of good behavior and truthful, self-knowledge make their way out of the monasteries into the homes of the lay people. In the practice of all three vehicles, extensive rituals are mutually practiced together or individually on the same dates and times during religious holidays. For example, at year’s end when purification, pacification and protection, as well as merit building for good fortune in the coming new year, are observed.
We should never forget that an indispensable ingredient to the successful revival of Cambodian culture, after its near extinction at the hands of Khmer Rouge, was the revitalization of Preah Sang (Buddhist sangha) with its stalwart dedication to, and devout practice of to religious holidays and, the Vinaya—the house rules for Buddhist monasticism—which seeped, if not poured its soothing, curative balm into a broken and traumatized people, reconstructing in a relatively short time a once again thriving and beautiful nation. The same might be said for Tibetan Buddhism where similar but perhaps much more extensive year end rituals such as Bum ter, Jang chog, and Gutor were continued to be observed, perhaps with some difficulty, outside of Tibet after the Communist Chinese expulsion and diaspora of the Tibetan people from their homelands.
May both communities, lay and monastic, then come to good purpose in the protective well of the Buddha’s infinitely wise and compassionate footprint. Not forgetting that a ‘better to have tried than not’ judgement, on whether or not to take-up monastic vows was ultimately promoted by Sakya Pandita when he quoted this, from the Mañjuśrīmūlatantra, “They who have not obtained vows of full monkhood do not possess the title of a full monk…” Similarly, in a reductive, worldly equivalency can it not be said of those who’ve never loved that they were ‘lovers.’
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