It is three in the morning and another day has begun at the Korean Buddhist monastery of Songwang-sa…

Based on years of engagement with Korean Buddhist history as well as observation of this particular monastery, this monograph describes, in intimate and honest detail, what it is like to be a monk in Korea.

Wanderers of other religions advocate three kinds of seclusion. What three? Seclusion in robes, almsfood, and lodgings.

While other religions’ monastics focus on external seclusion, the Buddha taught his monastics to be inwardly restrained.

These commentaries, known as sūtra sannayas, and/or as sūtra vistara sannayas, were composed in large numbers beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century. In what follows, I present the historical context for this change in Buddhist textual practices…

The revival of the Bhikkhu Saṅgha in eighteenth century Sri Lanka was accompanied by a renewed focus on study of the Pāli Suttas and Vinaya. This necessitated (and, eventually, facilitated) the creation of a large corpus of vernacular commentaries aimed at educating novice monks.

You live in the mountains a few years and then you go into town, you sit on the bus… you look at all those people and you feel, ‘Who are you struggling for?’

It’s not easy I tell you.
If you can live here,
you’re sure to arrive
in the Pure Land.

A disciple of the hermits of the Zhongnan Mountains introduces us to the lifestyle and wisdom of his masters.

The paper explains how the hierarchy emerged historically out of the attempts by the Siamese government to exercise control over the monasteries and how its rigid hierarchy is tempered by the Thai sense of “suitability” leading to an organization that balances central goals against local concerns. Each level of the hierarchy and the parallel system of royally-bestowed honorifics are explained in detail, including their qualifications and responsibilities.

This surprising fact shows that the abbot was likely more interested in courtly trends than in Buddhist piety and was perhaps appointed for political reasons: a trend all too common in places where the state is entangled with the monastic Saṅgha. These panels also demonstrate how trends in non-Buddhist art and fashion can come to influence Buddhist temple art proper.

Without a coercive village structure to enforce giving, the low-tension temples found themselves without their effective retainer. With the first-best contract unavailable, many temples have turned to fee-for-service arrangements of which the abortion-related ritual is merely the most notorious. Ironically, the new environment presents an entirely different challenge: temples now find themselves competing with internet-based priest-dispatch services.

Through a study of three monks, Tōjū Reisō, Tairyū Bun’i, and Seishū Shusetsu, strategies employed to preserve Rinzai Zen spiritual legacy in the face of the turmoil of Meiji are highlighted. These monks did their best to continue their eremetic existence and to pick up the pieces left by the widespread destruction of Buddhist temples and monasteries in early Meiji Japan.

“We’re on the way to enlightenment”, he said. “And on this way, what should we do?”

This article presents the phenomenon of TikTok monks in Cambodia and the question of whether it’s appropriate to use social media to preach the dharma.

These were attempts in the first instance not to achieve liberation, but to revive the forest-dwelling way of life and re-establish hermitages, whence liberation could be sought. It is relatively recent history…

The biographies of several pioneering recluses.

Why do you live as if lost?

…importation of an ordination—an act of using trans-regional monastic intermediaries to enable local initiators of reordination to start a new monastic lineage—did not necessarily entail the transplantation of the lineage of the intermediary or any features associated with that lineage in its location of origin.

This book chapter explains transregional ordination lineages in early modern Southern Asia. It does this by following the movements of the monk Sāralaṅkā, an eighteenth-century Thai monk who traveled to Kandy and then to Burma. The overall study attempts to show that, even in a short period of time, imported ordination developed its own independent identity within its new surroundings, and how even trans-regional monks adapted to local conditions.

One is unripe but seems ripe,
One is ripe but seems unripe…

Four people similar to mangoes.

Bhante, on how many grounds has the Tathāgata prescribed the training rules for his disciples and recited the Pātimokkha?

The Ten Reasons the Buddha laid down the monastic rules.

Someone who formerly lived alone
and then resorts to sex
is like a chariot careening off-track;

The drawbacks of falling away from the celibate life.

You can get to know a person’s ethics by living with them. But only after a long time, not casually; only when attentive, not when inattentive; and only by the wise, not by the witless.

A diverse group of ascetics passes by, and Pasenadi asks the Buddha if any of them are perfected.

This essay takes up how state regulation of religion was managed by Soto Zen Buddhism, with particular attention given to rules governing the clerical ranks and robes.

The 1627 purple robe incident is examined as an emblematic case of the new power relationship between the new bakufu’s concern about subversive elements that could challenge its hold on power; the imperial household’s customary authority to award the highest-ranking, imperially-sanctioned purple robe; and Buddhist institutions that laid claim on the authority to recognize spiritual advancement.

But because it is known by me, seen, found, realised, contacted by wisdom thus: ‘Here, when someone feels a certain kind of pleasant feeling, unwholesome states increase in him and wholesome states diminish,’ that I therefore say: ‘Abandon such a kind of pleasant feeling.’

The Buddha admonishes a group of monks who refused to give up eating in the afternoon with a unique teaching on the stages of the path.

… over a hundred and fifty training rules come up for recitation, in which gentlemen who love themselves train.

Even spiritually advanced people can break the minor rules, but striving to keep them is still worthwhile.

A mendicant with these five qualities is an exquisite ascetic of ascetics.

And if anyone should be rightly called an exquisite ascetic of ascetics, it’s me.

Bhikkhus, this spiritual life is not lived for the sake of deceiving people …

… rather, this spiritual life is lived for the sake of restraint …

A sutta on the proper motivation for “priests” in the Buddha’s religion… and for the rest of us too.

… the fourth meditative absorption, this is just like that tree gradually blooming.

A translation of a discourse from the Ekottarika-āgama which parallels the Pāricchattaka Sutta.

You’re right, brahmin, I don’t have
fourteen oxen
missing …

A brahmin is searching for his lost oxen when he sees the Buddha meditating peacefully in the forest. He laments the many sorrows of his life, celebrating the Buddha’s happiness and freedom from worldly sorrows.

Just as the great ocean has but one taste, the taste of salt, so too, this Dhamma and discipline has but one taste: the taste of liberation. This is the sixth astounding and amazing quality…

Spirits delight in the ocean for eight reasons, and likewise the mendicants delight in the Dhamma for eight similar reasons.

Tell me how you’re a farmer when asked:
how am I to recognize your farming?

A brahmin farmer criticizes the Buddha for failing to be productive, merely living off the work of others, so the Buddha explains his line of work.

There are, mendicants, these ten topics of discussion…

Oh, what bliss! Oh, what bliss!

A former king, now a monk, talks to himself.

… when that bhikkhu is developing and cultivating the Noble Eightfold Path, it is impossible that he will give up the training and return to the lower life.

… there is no true wandering: that is how it appears to me

Venerable Udena explains to a polite but sceptical Brahmin what makes someone a true recluse.

What did you expect, Aggivessana? For Prince Jayasena—living in the midst of sensuality, consuming sensuality, chewed on by thoughts of sensuality, burning with the fever of sensuality, intent on the search for sensuality—to know or see or realize that which is to be known through renunciation, seen through renunciation, attained through renunciation, realized through renunciation: That’s impossible.

The Buddha gives an outline of the ideal monastic life: from the level of the untamed to the level of the tamed.

For what purpose, friends, is the holy life lived under the ascetic Gotama?

Drawn during his last years by the Zen monk Giei Satō, these sketches recollect his days as an unsui, an apprentice monk. With humor and steadfast warmth Satō depicts the day of leaving home and the day of returning; the rainy season and the snowy season; the chores, the rainy season and the snowy season; the chores, the celebrations

There is no single bhikkhu, brahmin, who possesses in each and every way all those qualities that were possessed by the Blessed One, accomplished and fully enlightened. For the Blessed One was the arouser of the unarisen path

Some time after the Buddha’s Parinibbāna, Ven. Ānanda and some brahmins discuss how the Saṅgha will carry on without him.

Here, a bhikkhu lives in dependence on the Teacher or on a certain fellow monk in the position of a teacher, toward whom he has set up a keen sense of moral shame and moral dread, affection and reverence…

Eight conditions that lead to the arising of wisdom, its growth and perfection.

Buddhist ideas about suffering narrow the shape any acceptable theory of welfare may take. [This] narrowing process itself is enough to reconstruct a philosophical defense of the forms of life endorsed in Buddhist texts.

The Vinaya has outlasted Hammurabi and Justinian because it is a set of spiritual exercises rather than a legal system.

… there are these two kinds of gifts: a gift of material things & a gift of the Dhamma

And so too with sharing and assistance.

… monasticism in general is not ideal for some Western Buddhists—it is seen by some as too restrictive or anti-modern. While others find value in monasticism, they are aware of those who critique it, and some of these therefore offer instead a model that removes what they see as problematic, anti-modern elements.

The Buddhist Modernist Monk: a figure now familiar and beloved in American culture as an embodiment of compassion and rationality, yet with a history of prejudice and politics that has yet to be meaningfully explored.

How British and American antagonism to Catholicism shaped the English-speaking world’s engagement with Asia’s Buddhist traditions.

Whoever has no respect
for their spiritual companions…

… humans are driven by feelings. We feel the world, and when things feel right, we get a greater sense of meaning. And so it is with Buddhism.

If there isn’t a sense of voluntary commitment, […] it wouldn’t have the connection with the training of emotion and the training of wisdom which is necessary for it to be a “Buddhist” morality.

A talk on the seven skills of a wise person.

Human born.
Faculties intact.
Full of youth.
To encounter the Dharma is marvelous!

A short outline of the ideal monastic career.

The Buddha has rid us of so many things that bring suffering and gifted us so many things that bring happiness!

… take a person practicing to give up and let go of attachments. As they do so, every so often they lose mindfulness, and memories and thoughts connected with attachments beset them. Their mindfulness is slow to come up, but they quickly give them up, get rid of, eliminate, and obliterate those thoughts. I also call this person ‘fettered’, not ‘detached’. Why is that?

Udāyī, I even recommend giving up the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception. Do you see any fetter, large or small, that I don’t recommend giving up?

Again raising the rule regarding eating, but this time as a reflection of gratitude for the Buddha in eliminating things that cause complexity and stress. The Buddha emphasizes how attachment even to little things is dangerous and a burden.

The brahmins would indeed take umbrage at being closely associated with the officiant, because the very fact of his being there as an officiant means that he is doing a paid job and so lowers his status below theirs. [The brahmins, in contrast,] have no duties; they are gracing the occasion.

On (one of) the differences between a priest and a Buddhist monk.

… laxity within the Sangha is stressed ubiquitously by the Buddha himself as the cause of the decline of the Dhamma.

… wealth and power did not seem to ease disruptive conflict

The fascinating details of monastic life in medieval Dunhuang as told by their cave-preserved legal documents.

That Buddhism became so ritualistic, excessive, and subservient to the state even along the Silk Road demonstrates how common and impactful state intervention has been to the history of Buddhism.

My loved ones had slowly adjusted to my new direction in life, yet were still stunned that I carried out the final step, leaving everything behind—as this implied that the world has nothing to offer, ever. It made a big impact upon them.

The tale is best understood in the light of the need of the early Buddhist tradition to demarcate its position in the ancient Indian context vis-à-vis ascetic practices and ideology.

Bhikkhu Analayo teaches us how to read the Vinaya in light of the Suttas and parallels and against the background of its ancient Indian context.

… in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash.

The autobiography of an acclaimed Zen monk, containing a few extremely touching scenes from his life in the temple.

… these delightful mountain solitudes,
Are like the family estate to the supreme guide’s heirs,
And, as the best of protectors himself has said,
To rely on solitude is indeed the pinnacle of joys!

… power need not be only repressive. Think of how our parents, schools, employers, and even peers mold our behavior. This molding doesn’t just stop us from doing certain things. It makes or encourages us

A short pamphlet defining power in the political sense. When we think about how the sangha works, it’s useful to reflect on the complex and variable nature of power and authority.

… whatever the various reactions to a Buddhist monk people might have, fear is highly unlikely to count amongst them. People see a Buddhist monk and they know that he is not dangerous

Whoso has boys, has sorrow of his boys,
Whoso has kine, by kine come his annoys.
Man’s assets, these of all his woes are chief.
Who has no more, no more has grief.

In this dramatic poem, the Buddha and a cowherd debate who is more prepared for a coming storm.

Recollecting that nun’s faith, ethics, learning, generosity, and wisdom, [one] applies her mind to that end. This is how a nun lives at ease.

The Buddha interrogates a group of shy monks, and explains why he reveals the attainments of his disciples.

Is it possible, venerable sir, to point out any fruit of recluseship that is visible here and now?

One of the greatest literary and spiritual texts of early Buddhism, this sutta gives a thorough account of the path and benefits of renunciation.

What are the qualities that make one a contemplative?

The Buddha gives an overview of the path from the perspective of ethics, from the establishment of shame all the way to the realization of the highest good: Nibbāna.

What kind of bhikkhu, friend Ānanda, could illuminate the Gosinga Sāla-tree Wood?

A number of the Buddha’s greatest disciples gather together and discuss the qualities they admire.

Beside the creek, one can forget language altogether and watch meaning slip away with the current. It is humbling and awe-inspiring to merge into the creekside, just another natural formation.

Whatever doubts there are…
The meditators give up all these

The Buddha rejoices in Ven. Revata’s diligent meditation.

let a mindful one avoid at every turn
these sense-desires,
with them abandoned,
cross the flood

The Monastic Sangha is both training ground and dwelling place for the Noble Sangha, much like a university is both a training ground and a dwelling place for scholars.

Given the thousands of years separating us from the Buddha, Bhikkhu Cintita asks the excellent question of how it is that Buddhism has survived so well across time and cultures, and then uses this theory to ponder how modern, Western practitioners should approach this question of “Sasana.” An excellent and rare introduction to the sociology of Buddhism “from the inside,” this book is a must-read.