Lifestyles and Spiritual Progress

　　by

　　Bhikkhu Bodhi

　　© 2005

　　Newcomers to Buddhism often ask whether a person”s lifestyle has any special bearing on their ability to progress along the Buddha”s path, and in particular whether the Buddha had a compelling reason for establishing a monastic order governed by guidelines quite different from those that hold sway over the lay Buddhist community. Doesn”t it seem, they ask, that a lay person who follows the Buddhist precepts in daily life should be able to advance just as rapidly as a monk or nun and attain the same level of enlightenment

　　 And, if this is so, doesn”t that mean that the entire monastic lifestyle becomes something superfluous, or at best a mere matter of personal choice no more relevant to one”s spiritual development than whether one trains to become a doctor or an engineer

　　If we suspend concern for questions of status and superiority and simply consider the two modes of life in their ideal expression, the conclusion would have to follow that the monastic life, lived in the way envisioned by the Buddha, is the one that conduces more effectively to the final goal. According to the Pali canon, the ultimate goal of the Dhamma is the attainment of Nibbana: the destruction of all defilements here and now and ultimate release from samsara, the round of rebirths. This attainment comes about by eliminating craving and ignorance through the practice of the Noble Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path is open equally to both monastics and lay followers; monastic ordination does not confer any privileged access to the path or an empowerment that enables a monk or nun to make more rapid progress than a lay follower. But while this is so, the fact remains that the monastic life was expressly designed by the Buddha to facilitate complete dedication to the practice of the path in its three stages of virtue, concentration, and wisdom, and thus provides the optimal conditions for spiritual progress.

　　The monastic lifestyle does so precisely because the final goal is a state of renunciation, "the relinquishment of all acquisitions" (sabb”upadhi-patinissagga), and from the outset the monk”s life is rooted in renunciation. In "going forth," the monk leaves behind family, possessions, and worldly position, and even the outer marks of personal identity, symbolized by hair, beard, and wardrobe. By shaving the head and donning the yellow robe, the monk has given up — in principle at least — any claim to a unique identity as his own. Outwardly indistinguishable from a hundred thousand other monks, he has become simply a "Sakyaputtiya samana," an ascetic who follows the Sakyan son (i.e., the Buddha).

　　The life of the monk involves radical simplicity, contentment with the barest requisites, the need to be patient in difficulty. The monastic lifestyle places the monk in dependence on the generosity and kindness of others, and imposes on him an intricate code of discipline, the Vinaya, designed to foster the essential renunciant virtues of simplicity, restraint, purity, and harmlessness. These virtues provide a sound basis for the higher attainments in concentration and insight, which are essentially stages in the progressive purification of the mind and the deepening of insight.

　　Of prime importance, too, is the external freedom ideally provided by the monastic life. The monastic schedule leaves the monk free from extraneous demands on his time and energy, allowing him to devote himself fully to the practice and study of the Dhamma. Of course, as the monastic life is lived today, monks take on many responsibilities not originally mentioned in the canonical texts, and in a traditional Buddhist country the village temple has become the hub of religious activity, with the monks functioning as virtual p…

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