For some unknown karmic reason, I had the fortune to visit or befriend a lot of Bikkhus from different Mahayana traditions this year, so I interviewed many of them about the renunciant monastic lifestyle. I then organized these conversations into notes and thought that the information might be interesting and useful for some others as well, so please let me share.
A bit of clarification is that I’m using the term renunciant monastic to distinguish the old-school, life-long Buddhist monastic practices from some recent development in Buddhist monasticism, mostly in Japan and for Western trainees, where the monastics stay in the training for several months to several years and then return to their ordinary life practicing householder precepts.
General Teachings:
Please let me start by sharing an article written by Ven. Master Hsing-Yun, the founder for Fo Guang Shan about the meaning of being a renunciant monastic for an audience that’s a mix of renunciants and householders: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/eQwsfPIQ3p9GUxq3fR2V0w
It’s in Chinese, so please let me summarize if reading the original takes too much effort. The gist is that the true meaning of becoming a renunciant monastic is to practice, cut off the three poisons, and be a role model to inspire all living beings to take the Awakened Path. Then it goes on to distinguish four types of renunciants:
1. Those who renounce in body and mind 心: Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis who give up all desires and vow to cut off all three poisons.
2. Those who renounce in mind 心 but not the body: householders who live an ordinary life but practice renunciation of desires and vow to cut off all three poisons in their mind and heart.
3. Those who renounce in body but not mind: people who may look like Bhikkhus or other forms of Buddhist clergy but are mired down by desire, pride, and other worldly pursuits, pure poison.
4. Those who don’t renounce in either body or mind: ordinary people.
These teachings and categories aren’t unique to Fo Guang Shan as the article makes references to sutras and other ancient classical sources. I have also seen it written elsewhere, old and contemporary. Most of the teachings clarify that while it is the best to renounce in body and mind, it’s not feasible for every practitioner in the society, so category 2 is worthy of aspiring to and much respect as well. Yet, those in category 1 and 2 would have necessarily renounced the desire of being objects of admiration. They go on to say that people in category 3 are worthy of condemnation.
The Jogye Order:
To become a renunciant monastic in The Jogye Order, the practitioner needs to join one of the monasteries under the tutelage of a fully ordained Bhikkhu or Bhikkhuni as a Hangja or postulants. They study Admonitions for Beginners and spend most of the days doing physical work for the temple to transition from an ordinary householder’s life to the renunciant monastic life. The Hangja period typically lasts for 6 months to a year.
Then they can receive the novice vows to become a sami monastic. The ten precepts of sami monastics include
• celibacy,
• no drinking,
• half-day fasting,
• and vows of poverty
• in addition to the 5 householder precepts called Jukai in Japanese Zen.
One of the toughest duties of sami monastics I witnessed include getting up at 3:30 or 4 am every day, snow or shine, to perform morning services, which is outdoors on this windy bell tower in Tong Do Sa. They also do temple cleaning and ceremonial roles like long chanting.
Only after powering through four years of the sami stage, a monastic can choose to take the 253 precepts to fully ordain as a Bhikku monastic. In addition to the 5 precepts and the sami vows of celibacy, poverty, half-day fasting, and no substances, the Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis
• can’t wear householder clothing,
• spend over three nights alone in dwellings that aren’t a temple or a
monastery,
• or run a personal business,
and these are just to give you a taste of the 253 monastic rules.
I was seriously considering becoming a renunciant monastic when I was in college, and one of my fantasies about it was that I can get away from all those exams and meditate all day. It turns out that I couldn’t be more wrong. On top of their vows and temple duties, which include a lot of cleaning, washing, cooking, and other chores, the renunciant monastics also need to go to Buddhist Universities and take exams! There are three tracks of collegial level studies for the renunciant monastics in Korea and there is even a Renunciant Graduate School which grants doctoral degrees.
If you or your kids watch Korean drama or listen to J-Pop, you probably know that Korea is an affluent country: the lifestyle outside of the temples are pretty similar to here in the U.S. in terms of food and comfort. So, one of the surprises for me was how there are still thousands of people, some as young as teenagers, who voluntarily take up this hardcore lifestyle and ordain at the Jogye Order.
Yes, there are some individual variations and scandals here and there, but overall the Jogye Order is serious about these rules. Thanks to Yangil Sunim and his connections, many of the higher-ups and senior monks such as the chairman of Jogye Order and the abbots of Tong Do Sa welcomed us in a part of their family, so I was able to witness some of their living conditions. It is overwhelmingly simple. None of them have beds. Instead, they all sleep on a kind of rolled up futons pretty much like a thick duvet. I spent 10 days with this type of sleeping arrangement, so I can say with first-hand experience that they feel like indoor camping. The chairman, the elders, and the ex-abbots can have private bathrooms and that was considered one of the fanciest upgrades, I was told that the others must use communal facilities. When I was little, most Chinese people didn’t have private bathrooms either, and we had to go to these bathhouses where everybody of the same gender gets naked and do their thing all together. I asked Yangil Sunim about it, and he said that was pretty much the same as the monastics’ facilities.
Although they live in these exquisite mountain temples, even the most senior monks typically have only two small rooms of personal spaces: one for sleeping and one for meeting with guests. When we visited, Seung-Pa Sunim, the current elder of Tong Do Sa was in teaching in Milan, but his senior disciple knows my teacher, so he took us to a room which I thought was a warehouse with a side storage room. Only later that I found out it was the elder’s bedroom. It says something about the Korean notion of privacy and a typical monastic lifestyle. One of Yangil Sunim’s good friends, Hyuen-Mun Sunim was an ex-abbot of Tongdosa Monastery and converted his guest space into a traditional teahouse after retirement. His teahouse had a wall-to-wall library on one side and sliding glass doors opening to a balcony facing a beautiful canyon on the other. Hyuen-Mun Sunim treated us with 60-year-old Pu’er tea and antique tea set. After spending the afternoon with him, Yangil Sunim said to me quietly, “This Hyuen-Mun Sunim is a bad boy. How can a monk live like this?” So I guess that’s as fancy as it gets, but Hyuen-Mun Sunim still doesn’t have a bed. (Koreans traditionally don’t sleep in beds, but many people enjoy beds now. )
This renunciant monastic lifestyle is not unique to the Jogye Order, but a default in Asia. It’s pretty well defined by the Vinayas and everybody else is Ju Shi, aka. householders. I know a lot of people, young and old, taking this life-long renunciant monastic commitment.
Local Variations:
I’ve also interviews renunciant monastics from the Han-Chinese and Vajrayana traditions, and confirmed that most of vows and precepts were the same but there are still some local variations:a
Vajrayana (Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, and parts of India and Pakistan):
- I interviewed an ethnically Tibetan Khenpo who lectures on precepts at Larungar Buddhist Academy, the world’s biggest Buddhist university for this information.
- Follows the Sarvāstivāda teachings for renunciant monastic precepts.
- The process of novice, sami, and Bikhhu is the same as in Korean Buddhism.
- Also takes the full Bikhhu vow as a life-long commitment and holds the position that Bikhhus rescinding on their vows need to be low-key. It’s not good to say: “I used to be a monk studying in Tibet/Nepal/Bhutan, etc. so I’m very practiced now as a householder. You should follow my teachings.” (In addition to hearing this from Khenpo, I also have personal stories to illustrate the point.)
- There used to be Tibetan householder families that take Buddhist practice very seriously, so there are Rinpoches in each generation and the title may pass from father to son. However, the Khenpo isn’t aware of such practiced families anymore and some families still do this as a family tradition. It’s not good.
- Because of the mountainous landscapes, the Vajrayana regions have many different local customs regarding the details of Buddhist ceremonies, marriage, and inheritance. However, the precepts for fully ordained renunciant monastics stat the same.
- At Larungar Buddhist Academy, anyone breaking the vows of celibacy will be expelled immediately.
Han-Chinese Buddhism (Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong):
- The precept of vegetarianism is taken very seriously and everybody in the Han-culture knows about it. Most temples encourage the local populace to report to them if they see monastics eating meat, drink or gamble outside of temple grounds.
- There are detailed ranks among Sami monks ordered by age.
- The Sami stage is a preparation period for taking the full Bikhhu vows after two years. And the full Bikhhu precepts take 30 to 40 days to transmit.
A side note about general Han-Chinese culture: sexual relationships between teachers and students are considered a type of incest worse than marrying your first cousin. With vows of celibacy or not, it’s very disgusting to have sex one’s teachers or students.
The community at Large:
To 97% of Asians, when we see a fully-ordained Buddhist monastic, we take them a renunciant who made the pledge to spend their entire life in this manner. It’s a very difficult lifestyle, so there are people who take the Bhikkhu vows and later gave them up. I think it’s understandable, but the community at large in most of the traditionally Buddhist countries still consider them to be less respectable than householders who keep their vows as simple the 5 precepts. Unless his or her teacher orders the renunciant to become a householder to better practice the Bodhisattva Way. They will usually clarify this important distinction front and central in their biography if that’s the case.
In traditional Buddhist cultures, the entire community will also step forward to enforce these rules. Let me illustrated with some stories I have either experienced or come across.
Korea: I took the Boddhisatva Precept at Tong Do Sa this April and witnessed this in action. In a typical Bodhisattva Precept ceremony that occurs every 2 to 5 years, there would be about 14000 participants but we only had 7000 this year. The householder community was boycotting this ceremony because two of the Sila masters were confirmed to break the precept of celibacy by having children and the abbot of Tong Do Sa refused to change them out for some unknown reason. The renunciant monastics including my teacher boycotted the ceremony too: the seats reserved for senior monks at the front and center of the ceremony hall were all empty. Right before the ceremony, the 10 Sila masters all went to Ven. Yangil’s room to beg him to come to the ceremony, but my teacher refused and said he was too old for it.
Bhutan: I taught in Bhutan for 2 months in 2010 and some of my coworkers were renunciant Bikkhus who rescinded on their vows. The other teachers would whisper behind their back and say things like those ex-Bikhhus were very sinful, or that they and the women who made them break the vows would reincarnate into hell beings.
Mainland China:
- There was a scandal involving Ven. Xuecheng, the abbot of Longquan Monastery in 2018. Despite being one of the most well recognized Buddhist leaders in China, Ven. Xuecheng was caught sending suggestive messages to female volunteers and Bikhhunis. I read the public materials very carefully but still wasn’t sure if he actually physically touched anyone. Still, the national police department stepped in, so now Ven. Xuecheng is now under temple arrest and stripped of all of his roles including being the Chairman of Chinese Buddhist Association, which is the umbrella association that oversees activities of all Buddhism in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Tibet. (That’s some high-level position!)
- In addition to being very commercial, the abbot of Shaolin Temple, Yongxi, was rumored to have some mistresses and a luxurious apartment outside of the temple, but Shaolin Temple didn’t do anything about it other than quoting some nominal investigations. Now almost everybody in China, including my family who is die-hard Communist atheists, take Shaolin Temple as nothing more than a tourist attraction. All of its historical importance can’t save the over 1000-year-old Shaolin Temple, where the Bodhidharma used to live and teach from its fall from glory because it doesn’t enforce the renunciant precepts. (As a side note, the Shaolin Temple is very tucked away in the mountains in He Nan, my ancestral province and one of the poorest regions in China, so I seriously doubt how “luxurious” the apartments can be. The food in the province is terrible! )
There’s already a lot of information, so I’ll stop here. Thank you for sticking with me this far!
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