[Buddha-l] Question for academic teachers of Buddhism

[Curt Steinmetz]

Christopher Fynn wrote:
>
> Many years ago a venerable Tibetan teacher said to me that if someone 
> sincerely wants to practice meditation and attain realization or to 
> study the dharma then they should devote their whole life to practice 
> or study - in which case, according to him, the obvious and practical 
> thing to do was to become a monk or nun. He felt that only a monastic 
> life would normally provide a person with the liberty to practice or 
> study the dharma full time which was necessary if one wanted to 
> succeed at either. He also stated that the "merit" of monastic 
> ordination meant that meditation practice would be 100 times more 
> beneficial when done by a monk than when done by a lay person. On the 
> other hand, he thought that if a person wanted to lead a lay life they 
> should dedicate all their energies to working hard and earning money 
> for their family - and, to gain spiritual merit and a better rebirth 
> they should simply use some of their hard earned wealth to make 
> offerings and support the sangha.
>
Historically as much as 5-10% of the entire population of Tibet were 
monastics. Maintaining the kind of rigid "division of labor" that this 
monk describes seems to be a pretty natural (and necessary) result of 
perpetuating that kind of very large monastic community. Every family 
must be pressured to provide warm bodies for the monasteries, while 
everyone else should consider it their primary responsibility to work 
hard and donate money to the monasteries. And anyone who wants to have 
it both ways should have been exposed to the elements as an infant. I 
don't honestly think that it is quite as cynically motivated as that, 
but it certainly fails to "avoid the appearance" of being just a scam to 
recruit more monks and raise more money.

Curt Steinmetz