give up the monks, Doc the evil one

[Asger]

LoL. No wonder you've got such a high postcount zach. Look at mine, compared to when I registered

[zachsan]

yeah i'm one of many americans blessed with a job but no work.

[Shaolin_Disciple_8]

I'm agreeing what you said xing jiang. I'll answer to hinman. "Why I want to become a monk?" A want it because I like the relation master/disciple. I want discipline, someone to make me work. Someone to teach me gong fu but not only with a group. I want to teach gong fu when I'll be older. I think to teach the art of shaolin, the real, from a real monk is better. I want to study buddhism and have a master to teach me more and in the better way. Books are ok but not the best way to learn. I want to stay in a temple because the style of life seems cool for me. Very simple, peacefull, beautiful.. There is there only people intelligent. I want to live in a place where i know i wont disturb people or the natural environment. Its sure i want the name shaolin monk. Why them? because just be a buddhist is not for me, i want a physical thing and gong fu is perfect. To do both will be perfect for me. I don't want to pay 100000000$ to learn, i want to help the temple, to protect it like if the government want something bad of it. Its sure its disrespectfull to go there with the thing in mind that i'm going to leave later.. But if I go there just like a tourist i can't learn properly, it will be more costy, i wont have the best quality of training if i dont become a disciple. It's all the reasons that i should become a monk more than only a tourist who want to train in gong fu... The disrespectfull thing is bugging me. :-S I have to think about if i'll accept all the vows and for life or not... There is something that i can't find in my mind; there is a reason why it's possible to be there only for some years and leave after. A moral thing, an explanation but dont know what yet. More than family values because if i accept completly the buddha in my heart, i shoulnt want to have a wife.. I really want to try both style of life, its weird...

[doc]

You don't take the vows standing up there with your soon to be wife knowing you will leave her later after "trying out" the married life. Then go back to a dating life.

I can see you've never been to Vegas. There, getting married is dating....

[xing_jian108]

Ha! I'm sure. It is called the sin city, right? So obviously what they do there isn't what the rest of the world should follow.

[arhat]

none of that sounds like a vocation to me.

[arhat]

p.s.

I do not know a SINGLE monk who can keep all 250 "vows." I've never met one, Shaolin or otherwise.

It's impossible.

What good does it do the laity to have these spiritual masters reclused in their monasteries- it's selfish. I like the path of the engaged monastics. I can't wait for more of them to come out into the world.

This is the year 2004 by some calendars. I think it's time people rightly put aside the big spoonfulls of rice not small spoonfulls of rice "rule," or having to have your robes made of grave cloths and not by a woman or if it is then having to wait 3 weeks until her scent leaves the cloth blah blah blah.

Things tend to get very overomanticized.

[Fa Hui]

I would like to chime in here.

2 years ago when I was kneeling in front of the Buddha, I had no idea that 18 months from then I would be leaving the Monastic Sangha. I never planned it out like that, I wanted to be a monk till my dying day. But the conditions were not sufficient for that to happen. Plainly things just changed. I grew up in the monastery, and learned to let go all my childish ways of looking at things.

It is not easy to maintain all the monastic rules. For Mahayana monks there are 250 rules, nuns 350. These are training tools for monastics to spiritually and morally cultivate themselves. If you have never been a monk or a nun, it will be very, very, very, very difficult for you to understand these rules and why they are there.

Personally, I do not agree of anyone violating these rules. If there are monks and nuns who have formally accepted these precepts, and then violate particularly the ones that get you kicked out of monastic life, then they need to be dealt with properly.

If any of these monks have wifes and families, even if they have only the 10 novice precepts, they are in violation should not even be considered a monastic. They ended their monastic life the moment they violated the precept on no sexual relations whatsoever.

This was the Buddha's Way, if you can't do it to this extent don't do it. It's not an easy life. It can be VERY emotionally trying. It's not for everyone.

BTW, I just wanted to say that within the Thervadan tradion, a lot of people do tend to go in with the idea that they will leave, in fact the Buddha had said that was o.k. to do. It was until a few hundred years later when the Mahayana developed that they considered it wrong to disrobe. It is never wrong.

[daodejing]

So chenzen, I have a suggestion here. First, move to new york city. You can arrange to live in a monastary there, I beleive there's at least one zen monastary which will provide a place to live to people looking to cultivate themselves (the name I can't recall, a fellow student spent a year there though). Become one of Shi Guolin's students. (i think that's his name, forgive me if I'm wrong) Study hard, train hard, sit softly, walk softly. Be iron wrapped in silk. If you excel, become one of Shi Guolin's disciples. Spend five years with the man and see if you're still interested in monastic life, or if you are already where you want to be.

Because, from the words you've written that I've read, your not interested in being a monk. Your interested in living near a temple and studying with a monk. Do some research. I highly recommend that if you find a temple which will let you live there, make sure it is a buddhist temple which has no affiliation with shaolin. Any sort of chan or zen temple will do well I think.

Thats my two cents. Go live in a temple, go study gongfu under a master. But don't romanticize monasticism when you know it isn't the right thing for you.

[zachsan]

here's my suggestion. grab yourself an electric guitar and a bottle of jack daniel's and get to work.

[daodejing]

Or, if you want move like the 8 immortals, get yourself a waxwood staff and a box of wine. And get to work. You'd be surprised how easy and fun drunken boxing is, if you're already flexible and have some alcohol on hand. Personnally, I have reservations about people who train drunken style without drinking first. I dont think its healthy.

[Shaolin_Disciple_8]

"your not interested in being a monk. Your interested in living near a temple and studying with a monk"
No, it's not only what I want. Well i'm going to look the 250 rules if i can find them on the net. I'm a very disciplined guy and I already dont like alcool, drugs, sex only for fun, killind living creatures,... I think in China a temple will be more calm than one in united states, and I want to see China someday so if i want only a Zen Buddhism temple I'll go in china anyway. I think I understand what I'm going to do. I will train very hard under a master until I can become his disciple. And then (that is already a hard thing to do to become disciple, I'll be already proud of it) I'm going to try if i can achieve all the 250 rules. If I can't than I'll go with a family life, if I can, I'll enter the monkhood. If i can, this is meaning that I can live in the buddha way so I'll be happy and without a wife.

Can someone just answer a question for me? What buddha think about if evrybody became monks with no sexual relations so no next generation? I'm not sure if I have the answer, what i found is: If everybody becomes monk to reach enlightenment so they dont need the reincarnation. Is it the answer?

[doc]

Why live by rules?

[Shaolin_Disciple_8]

It's not really rules for a buddhist... It's just normal to don't kill, to pay attention to the language, to take alcool or drugs.

[xing_jian108]

It's normal to take alcohol and drugs?

You don't need to become a monk to reach enlightenment. You can decide to live how you wish. Give yourself your own personal rules and follow them. It will just be more difficult outside of a temple. But it can be done. If you are strong enough. It's all up to you. You don't need to go become a monk and have someone else give you rules to live by just to reach enlightenment. And monklife isn't for everybody. So not everyone would go to become a monk. But they can still live a right life wherever they are.

A mi tuo Fo
-Xing Jian