Below is an edited transcript of the video Is Becoming a Monk or Nun Necessary by Ajahn Ñāṇamoli Thero. 2477 words. Added 2022-07-10.
Q: So, about ordination. How necessary is it to officially ordain as a Buddhist monk in order to practise the Dhamma?
N: In itself, it’s not. It’s not necessary to go through the formal ordination and acceptance and so on. What is necessary is the lifestyle. So, the lifestyle that’s free from a householder’s concerns, let’s put it that way. That’s necessary for complete liberation from suffering. So of course, there’s a greater likelihood that you’re going to find, or have access to a suitable environment for practise that’s free from household life concerns, if you’re a monk or a nun. At least theoretically you have a better chance, because the ordained lifestyle generally, in the practice tradition, not just a temple tradition, is better than the crowded and dusty lifestyle of a householder. But, that’s not necessarily so. In the sense you might ordain, you might join a community, and be equally busy and full of daily concerns about running the temple, and duties, and all sorts of stuff that you can then seem justified in doing, because ‘look, this is for the greater good of Dhamma or the monastery’. But in reality, the motivation is the same as it is of a householder, who is just going around busy, and just doing random stuff to keep himself occupied.
So that’s pretty much the distinction that a person needs to make. If I were to ordain, would that improve my circumstances? Would that provide better grounds for keeping the Vinaya, better seclusion, more time for reflection? Or would it not really meet those requirements? Sometimes you might not be able to find something that would be so black and white, good or bad, it might be something in between. Such as, ‘well, you know, it’s not providing as much seclusion as I would want, it’s not providing as much of a basis, but it has potential to do so, more than my current living situation’. Then it’s still better to ordain. But in and of itself, wearing robes or whatever really makes no difference. It’s just an external statement, that’s it. Internally, it makes no difference.
Q: Because I was thinking, what’s really necessary is going forth, as in being prepared to leave the household life. I’m wondering if that necessarily implies wearing robes and being a Buddhist monk. And in some cases, I’m even thinking, if you just look purely at the lifestyle you can see certain people, not monks, living certain kind of lifestyles that are quite solitary, or quite remote.
N: Quieter, less crowded, less distracting. No, definitely. But I think what is probably the main thing here is the intention of the person doing it. Because you can have arguments for both sides. You can say ‘no, it’s still better to be a monk’, or you can say ‘well no, see, if my “household” life is actually quiet, and more secluded, and more remote, it’s better to do that.’ Well, again, in and of itself, it’s not a decisive factor. What is a decisive factor is your reasons behind choosing to do whatever you choose to do. So you can have people who might have very good lay conditions, quiet, remote, not crowded, plenty of time to practise. However, all of that life is still rooted in simply being afraid to let go of your environment. So you can say the environment is externally extremely suitable for practise of Dhamma, internally, it isn’t. Because it’s all based on the intention of your refusing to give up out of fear, or whatever it is.
Equally, you can have somebody giving everything up in a finger-snap, committing, unwavering determination to become a monk. Yet, it’s all rooted in this quite common view that people have, which is ‘as long as I become a monk, join the monastery, wear the robes, that’s it, practise will from then onwards be done by the environment. All I need to do is get there, and then I’m safe’. And that’s also not the case. And the entire ordination there is rooted in completely wrong reasons. So the intentions behind doing it is probably the most important, to be clear about that. And then you would know why you’re not ordaining, and you would know why you’re staying a layman, or you would know why you’re not staying a layman, and why you’re ordaining. You wouldn’t use one to avoid the other, or cover responsibility for it.
Q: Because what’s interesting also, like, you become a Buddhist monk and now there’s all sorts of things you don’t do, or you do, that are sort of automatically justified in your environment, because now you’re a Buddhist monk. That’s something I find interesting. Whereas if you’re not a Buddhist monk, as a layperson, doing things like, for example, practising sense restraint, spending time in seclusion, not engaging in all sorts of things, you really have to be sure about why you’re doing them. Or you have to work harder, in a way, to make it clear to yourself why you’re doing them, instead of ‘I’m a monk, and this is what monks do’.
N: Yeah, that’s what I meant, that can become an excuse then. The monks would then be practising sense restraint, keeping the rules, adhering to all sorts of observances out of a sense of duty, not out of a sense of taking responsibility for it. And that means as soon as that environment changes, your context will be compromised. And you don’t want that. If you have any wisdom you would realise, no, my practice should be developing me in a way that, even if my circumstances change, even if I end up in hospital, or the monastery gets destroyed, or I have to whatever, internally, my composure will not change. I will not depend on these circumstances that are quite tailored to and protective of certain sets of routines, and that allow me to just, you know, stop thinking about it. And yeah, that’s completely misguided.
Q: It’s like, it should be that it is the choice to live a certain lifestyle that makes you a monk, rather than, you live a certain lifestyle just because you’re a monk.
N: Yeah, yeah. Well the difference between kind of ‘formally’ doing it is something that you can’t really lie to yourself about. Like, if you say ‘oh, I don’t want to ordain because I have a good environment here, and I have a secluded property and so on, and I can live as a layman restrained and practise’, fine. But as I said, more often than not, that would be rooted in some sort of fear, and still having a thread of safety, like ‘well, if it doesn’t work out, I could still do this’. So from that point of view, actually formally ordaining will cut that thread. But if you’re honest then it would be obvious, and then you would know whether you should or not. But if you genuinely know where the practice is, generally you just need a secluded environment to amplify it. Then again, you could stay a layman, or change your lifestyle as in remaining a layman, not formally ordained, and still not live like a householder either. But for that, already some wisdom is quite necessary, some authenticity and transparency would be mandatory.
Q: You could probably say it’s mandatory in all cases because if you’re not from the beginning, then becoming a monk will not necessarily make you more. So if I can paraphrase, is it about what will make me give up the thing that I would be holding on to, or what would be putting me in to a situation that forces me to practise more seriously?
N: Yeah, yeah. And sometimes, like that’s obviously if things are clear on that level, sometimes it might be a bit of both. And in those cases, you need to try and think about things in the long run. So ‘yes, I’m afraid to give up the household life, but at the same time I’m afraid if I don’t become a monk and stay a householder. So what do I do here?’ Well again, don’t cover up that situation. Endure it, without necessarily making your current household environment worse. Because sometimes people are like ‘oh, I won’t ordain, but if I don’t ordain, I have to get married’. It’s like, well, no, you can still live and practise the Dhamma accordingly even without wearing robes. So you don’t need to go the other way. But if it feels like it’s either/or, means that’s really the problem. It’s not that you’re not a monk yet, or that you’re still a householder. The problem is that you can’t restrain yourself and sustain that middle. Yes, you don’t need to become a monk, but that doesn’t mean ‘so, because I can’t become a monk for some reason, that means I can now engage in sensuality without any responsibility or fault’. And I even did that talk once, if Dhamma is your goal, even if you’re not a monk, there is no excuse to go to sensuality, there just isn’t. But that is sometimes taken like ‘I really want to become a monk, but there’s some circumstances, I can’t get a visa or something like that, or my mother’s sick and I have to look after her’, some externally valid reason that currently prevents you from becoming a monk. So, in the meantime, I’ll find a partner and marry and so on. And it’s like, well, no, that’s now a completely separate set of decisions that you don’t need to engage with either.
Q: Yeah, because I mean, let’s say for example you had the Suttas or you had access to teachings, but there were no order of monks. You’d still be forced to actually try to do something yourself about it. And I was thinking, it reminded me of Kierkegaard actually, the Christian philosopher, his life.
N: Well that was exactly the decision he made, that was exactly the point that he arrived at. ‘Wait a minute. I want to be an authentic philosopher, true to the pursuit of wisdom. And at the same time, I’m getting engaged and planning a family, and a government position’, work, whatever was lined up for him. And then he realised, well, no. If I want to do this, I have to say no to this. Many of them wouldn’t. Many of them would have been quite content in perpetuating the idea that they are here in pursuit of truth and clear philosophy, while doing very mundane, sensual things. Because many of them would not have been as honest as he was. So then he broke off the engagement, gave everything up, and then just continued pursuing wisdom in a very painful manner for the rest of his life. But at least he didn’t compromise. And that’s quite commendable.
Q: Yeah, and somebody who does that, like for him, he was really alone. He had nobody else who was confirming, or no external structure to tell him that what he was doing was the right thing. On that subject also, it reminded me of that, again, something I’d read often in the Suttas but had not paid that much attention to, like when he says ‘I did not go forth from the household life for the sake of robes, a bowl, medicine for the sick, and so on, I went forth because I was pursued by suffering, old age, and death’. I used to think of that in the sense of, when people just get greedy for these things, these kind of external whatever. But it can also be that you have all of these things that you have to get, and do, and accomplish, and go to this place as a monk and everything. That it can kind of obscure your basic reason for doing those things in the first place.
N: And the resulting complacency. You know, you have a big community, a big place, all registered, everything fine, an institution that’s all settled, supporters, you do duties, you teach and whatever else, and you go through these routines, and again, it’s all going to be rooted in just establishing that external sense of safety which is no different from, that’s the whole point of a household life. So although you’re wearing a robe, the principles of a household life are still applying to you. But again, that’s like, ‘for everyone to see for themselves’. Sure, you could have a relatively accurate guess and speculation about other people’s motives if you see how they behave and so on, but overall, fundamentally, it does come down to every individual for himself. Needs to know that, needs to be clear about it, because it’s not necessarily, in and of itself, a bad thing.
As the Buddha said himself to Mahākassapa, ‘why do you live in the hard forest? Come with me, plenty of food, plenty of nice lodgings, plenty of fancy silk robes and whatever else’. But he said ‘no no no, I actually prefer this, I want to do it’. So externally, yeah, you might think ‘you must never live in these suitable circumstances or environment’ but that’s not a guarantee, that’s not a sure symptom of an underlying problem. And sometimes equally, people can go and live in the rough forests and so on, for wrong reasons. Having said that, a rough forest, even for wrong reasons, is less likely to give rise to unwholesome states than the soft, pleasant, agreeable, safe conditions would.
Q: Where is your sense of safety?
N: Yeah, yeah, or like, are you still taking it for granted? Because you shouldn’t have a sense of safety upon anything. That’s like when the Buddha says in the Suttas, when the monk realises ‘ah, nothing is worth holding on to, nothing is worth acquiring and regarding as mine’. That’s why I’m unsafe, not because I haven’t found safety from all the threats. No, it’s because I’m making myself liable to threats. So then that’s the true safety, when there is nothing that you need for your safety.