Do you need to be a monk or a nun in order to make significant progress on the Buddhist path?
Here, of course, different people have different opinions.
Should You Become a Monk or Nun?
I would answer that question, "Do you need to be a monk or nun?" perhaps in the affirmative,
because it may be that you have to have that level of prioritization in your life.
Where making a living and being famous and powerful,
and having sexuality and sexual relationships and so forth,
you swear off of all those things,
and some of them are below the lowest priority, so you just don't engage in them.
And you have to of course be in a society where people will support your life,
feed you, and allow you shelter and allow you freedom from social duties in order to be able to do that.
Because committing suicide is not an option for attaining enlightenment,
or going and living and starving yourself to death in a cave.
That's not the way you can attain enlightenment, it takes too long and too lengthy a process
even for the brightest human being.
And so, you need to have that level of prioritization even if you are not a formal monk or nun.
Where you've really become determined this is the high priority of your life:
"I'm going to develop my compassion,
I am not going to give in to my anger and my lust and my greed and my envy and my pride.
And I'm not going to be sunk in depression and delusion to the sort of life and death level,
no way."
So, when one makes those resolves and puts the priority to be undoing those things that
cause suffering of the human being and enclose that human being off from enlightenment,
which means awareness of their own reality, then you do need to be that.
But it is possible in the modern economy,
and especially in a country where they don't really respect monks and nuns,
which I'm afraid are pretty much most of the industrialized Protestant-ethics dominated societies,
they really don't.
And it's particularly in those societies that think that everything you get out of life,
the only goods in life are things you have to get in this life.
And because you don't have a future life, because your mind and spirit do not exist actually,
your brain makes you think they do, but they don't.
Under this sort of dogma of materialism as a scientific worldview that people learned in high school,
and grade school and college and so forth.
Even if they're humanists, literary people.
In those societies, there won't be social support for people who make the highest priority
their spiritual evolutionary development.
And therefore, in those societies, I think it would be possible for a person to gain
enough livelihood where they have enough wealth to then be able to be kind of on retreat year after year.
At least for a time.
And so, to be part time monks or something like monks for a few years, things like that.
And in that case, you don't need to be a formal monk or nun, but in a way for some period of time
you will be the equivalent of a monk or a nun.
And then going the other direction, monks and nuns in Buddhist history and especially
in the latter phase of Indian Buddhism and in Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism subsequently,
it could be that some monks and nuns, relatively few but a small percentage of monks and nuns,
reach a stage as a monk or a nun where they need to go on into other types of practices,
where the monk or the nun vow, particularly in regard to sensuality,
could become a bit of an obstacle in certain types of practice, not necessarily for everyone, but for some.
And therefore, there is a tradition where in the case of someone like Naropa,
or the many famous adepts in India who resigned at some stage from being monastics,
and left or sometimes they were thrown out of monasteries because they were infringing
on certain basic rules often having to do with sensuality.
And in those cases, therefore, the monk or nun avocation is not necessarily permanent for a person.
But those are exceptional, and they are very carefully noted in the tradition as exceptional,
because otherwise young people in adolescence or in their 20s, when they were sexually very vibrant and vital,
would think it's absolutely essential,
"I can often have a girlfriend or a boyfriend and I can still be focusing highest on my spiritual practice.
And although I have this boyfriend or girlfriend, I'll be doing high level spiritual practice with them."
Well, then they would all leave the monkhood.
So those people are not yet really at that stage.
And there's a definition of what that stage is, they already have had some kind of a visceral level,
maybe not total, but some viscerality of their level of understanding of selflessness or emptiness
or identityless-ness or realityless-ness — all of the terms that you have for that.
That great negation that creates transcendence of the rigidity of self-identity.
You know, they have to have some taste of that at least, if not the full level of it,
which comes only at full enlightenment.
And they have to have some sort of positive attitude, which is the bodhisattva attitude of
wanting to make love the highest priority,
wanting to be loving and gentle and tolerant about beings, not wanting to violate them in any way,
or to harm them and the determination not to and so forth.
There has to be that kind of a level.
And in a way, in the Buddhist case,
even if I do things like engaging in sensuality,
if I engage in things that I wouldn't normally engage in as a monk or a nun,
I'm doing it for the purpose of attaining enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.
Becoming a perfect Buddha for the benefit of all beings and actually accelerating that evolutionary development,
in a single life or in a few lives, future lives as well as this one.
So those things are required.
If you have been a strong monk or nun,
and then you reach a level where then you need to maybe interact more with others in a less rule-governed way,
then it's acceptable to resign as a monk or a nun.
And it's unrealistic economically in an industrial society that is governed by a certain social ethic,
a sort of no-free-lunch society,
it's kind of unrealistic to expect those societies right away to jump in and have like a 100 or 1000 times
the number of monks and nuns than the Catholics will inflict on them.
It's not realistic, so there are new models that can be devised.
But still, I always say that when people ask, "Has Buddhism reached the West?"
When Buddhist monasticism is fully respected and supported by Western Buddhists at least,
then Buddhism has reached the country.
If it's not supported even by Buddhists, then I would say Buddhism is not really here.
Buddhist ideas and Buddhist practices yes,
but Buddhism isn't there until you have true respect for what the avocation of the monk and the nun is,
we say male and female mendicant, bhikṣu and bhikṣuṇī.
That is people who need the free lunch and who expect it and who receive it from a grateful population,
that they are putting their efforts so strongly and they're prioritizing so greatly
their personal development for the sake of everyone.
Which is a real thing, even though they may be a withdrawn in a cave.
But the fact that they're doing it for everyone, their ultimate goal is to be a Buddha for everyone,
which is the bodhisattva way, is important.
It's not just a verbal thing to excuse hiding in a cave.