[Buddha-l] Monk/nun or lay person

[curt]

In addition to cenobitic monks and laypeople there are other categories 
of "non-lay" seekers. Usually when people talk about Buddhist monastics 
they are only referring to organized monks, as opposed to self-styled 
yogins, ascetics, wanderers, hermits, etc who do not operate under 
anyone's authority. To this day there are a wide variety of types of 
non-lay religious in India - and this was obviously the case during the 
time of the Buddha, because he is portrayed as going through a cenobitic 
(organized community) phase, then a wandering (but not solitary) phase, 
and finally a solitary (hermit) phase. The history of these kinds of 
religious vocations was possibly thousands of years old already when the 
Buddha came along.

This is important because in later "Mahayana" Buddhism these kinds of 
"loose-cannon" gurus, yogins, hermits and masters play a major role. 
Even if this was "new" to Buddhism (which I doubt), it only represents a 
re-introduction of a practice that the Buddha himself made use of (even 
if he perhaps didn't feel it appropriate for his students). I think it 
is more likely (although admittedly hard to prove) that this was always 
part of the mix in Buddhism. As I said before we know that such 
"independent religious vocations" were already a part of Indian 
spirituality and that the Buddha himself took such a path as a major 
part of his training. And we also know that at some point we once again 
find "Buddhists" who have left home, but who are not "part of a Sangha" 
per se. It is possible that for some period this practice was not 
"allowed" or something like that - but how did that work? Its more 
likely, in my opinion, that the cenobitic monks created a body of 
writing that self-servingly made it look like it was just them and the 
lay folks.

Executive summary: the "monk-lay" paradigm is a false dichotomy 
perpetrated by the organized monks in order to undercut any potential 
religious authority figures that they can't control. It is based on the 
underlying false assumption that all non-lay seekers are part of the 
organized monastic "orders" as well as the unproved and unstated 
assumption that Buddhists explicitly rejected the non-organized non-lay 
paths that that Buddha himself pursued during his training. A prime 
example of the type of "yogin" I am talking about are the founders of 
the Kagyu lineage in Tibet, who didn't establish a cenobitic monastic 
order until Gampo - prior to that they were just crazy people wandering 
around from place to place. The only evidence that this was a "later" 
"mahayana" "innovation" is the apparent absence of it during a period 
that is not exactly well-documented anywho (ie, we don't know the 
Buddha's own dates to within 200 years).

- Curt