That’s very true. A little life hack I discovered is that it helps to actively visualise all the wise people you know when you witness unskilful behaviour. Let’s say I see people drinking alcohol. Then (without judging anyone of course) I’d bring to mind all the monastics and upasikas I know who don’t drink. Helps me remember that drinking is not a given and I’m not alone in abstaining. Its so easy to forget that the way of the world is not a given. That there is another way.
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Based on the overall conversation in this thread, I’m guessing people are talking about ordination and monastic life in the Thai forest tradition, or something close to it. I say that because, generally speaking, the amount of veneration shown to monks is definitely the most extreme in that tradition. In almost every other tradition, the monastics and laity relate to each other in a much more relaxed manner. Also, being a monastic in the West is quite different than in Asia. So, outside of whatever little Buddhist bubble a monastic in the West might live in, he or she will probably be treated with indifference, suspicion, or even hostility by the majority of people. Within the Thai forest tradition, the respect shown to monks is a bit of a double-edged sword. With that respect comes expectations of very high standards of behavior. So you can expect to live under a microscope pretty much all of the time. In addition to the laity’s expectations, one’s fellow monastics will always be watching you and correcting even the slightest mistakes in monastic etiquette. So I wouldn’t feel too guilty for having a “high social level” as a monastic. It’s hardly a picnic.
The Thai forest tradition also generally has the least strictly structured daily routine of any tradition. It’s probably on one extreme end of the spectrum, while a Chinese Mahayana tradition would be on the other. I realize most people here probably don’t know too much about Mahayana traditions, but I thought it might be interesting to some to point out how different monastic life can be from monastery to monastery, or tradition to tradition. The Chinese Buddhist tradition as a whole really emphasizes being active and working. There’s a saying by a famous Chinese monk that goes, “A day without work is a day without food.” So, that along with the bodhisattva ideal creates very busy monastics. In the Chinese traditions, you can expect pretty much every minute of every day to be filled with some kind of work, outside of some chanting and (maybe) meditation in the morning and evening. They also don’t live in kutis, but usually live in more of a dormitory style arrangement. So everyone is piled up on top of each other. It’s intensely social. But even in a Thai forest tradition monastery you have to interact with fellow monastics, and like I said in the previous paragraph, because of korwat, vinaya, and the rules regarding the authority of senior monastics, those interactions are pretty intense because every little thing you say and do is being examined. It’s a mistake to think that monastic life is all about sitting in one’s kuti meditating, and that you rarely interact with others. While it might be true that the amount of time you interact with others in a monastery is far less than that in lay life, the quality of interaction is quite different. In lay life, if someone at work is treating you badly, you can just wait to go home, and then not have to deal with that person again until tomorrow, or after the weekend. And that person can’t tell you how you should behave in general. But in a strict monastery, you live with that person, and they do have the right to correct your behavior. Another thing that’s probably worth mentioning is that it’s very likely that there will be other people living in the monastery who, in lay life, you’d never be friends with. So the person who keeps correcting your behavior might be someone you genuinely dislike. However, so long as they aren’t breaking any rules, and are justified in correcting you, there isn’t anything you can do about it.
Anyway, those are just some general observations I made over the years from staying at different monasteries and speaking with different monks and nuns about monastic life. It’s quite easy to romanticize monastic life, but it can be quite trying and not always for the reasons one expects.
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You’ve made some very good points, thank you for sharing. I guess the overall message perhaps is to ‘take advantage’ and practice however you can in whatever situation you find yourself in. 
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A nun once told me, “When you’re a layperson, you have the suffering of a layperson. When you’re a monastic, you have the suffering of a monastic.” So you have to chose which kind of suffering you want, ha-ha.
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This may be of interest to participants in this thread: an interview with David Holmes, an experienced lay practitioner and Buddhist scholar.
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Thank you for sharing, Viveka. Your path is inspiring and shows that it is indeed possible to practice very strongly as a layperson in the modern world. My plan is to create a similar living situation for myself in the future.
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Thank you for these great observations and reflections.
yes that was indeed what I had in mind
There’s a very similar popular saying in Italy which I heard a lot as a child, and which has marked me. And ironically the first time I felt free from that was when I spent a vassa at a monastery in the Thai Forest tradition. In order to develop your practice during that period you were encouraged to let go of all striving and doing - which of course includes work. So yes these traditions seem indeed very different.
The thing is that as a monastic at least in some traditions I understand that doing nothing is a very good thing, at least during vassa; on the other hand as a lay person you may be judged negatively, as lazy, so you might have to go against social pressure.
Indeed this can be pretty worrying. Wouldn’t this however depend a lot on the monastery? I inquired about a similar point with a monk I know, and he said that in the monastery I was talking about there’s a non-spoken rule that the abbot is like the sun and all the other monks are lie planets gravitating around him. So it would be the abbot who teaches and (hopefully) the one who corrects you. So insofar as one would ordain in a monastery because they are inspired by the abbot, and you respect and trust him, then it would be a good thing to be corrected by him.
I completely understand your point. However, like you mention, they would/could correct you if they are justified in doing so. So in this sense wouldn’t you say that they are rendering you a service?
What would be worrying, or even scary, is if they exerted their power on you just for the sake of it. For example there was a story in one of Ajahn Brahm’s books about an abbot telling a monk to wash his robes after an all night meditation session; I never understood how that could lead to any benefit and indeed I found that a bit scary to be honest.
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Yeah, I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all solution for this. People who in lay life are very motivated or ambitious, and fill all of their time with activities and projects, need to spend some time doing the opposite now and then, I think.
Yes, it would depend on the monastery. Even within the Ajahn Cha monasteries there’s variation, especially between monasteries in Thailand and those outside Thailand. All of my experience with the Ajahn Cha tradition is at monasteries within Thailand. However, according to Vinaya, even someone ordained 1 minute before you has seniority. So they do have some authority over you.
It will depend on the size of the monastery and the popularity of the teacher, among other things. Take Wat Marp Jan, for example. The abbot is Tan Ajahn Anan, who was a close disciple of Luang Por Cha. Tan Ajahn Anan is believed to be an arahant. He now has many monks living at his monastery, many branch monasteries he’s responsible for, and probably has thousands of lay followers. He is so busy that a monk living in his monastery would be unlikely to interact with him much on a day to day basis (although I think he still tries to make himself available to his monks as much as possible). Anyway, Tan Ajahn Anan is not going to take responsibility for resolving every minor issue within the monastery. There’s no way he has time for that, and the Vinaya is set up so that every monk, regardless of seniority, is able to correct another monk, actually. So he isn’t even expected to handle things at that granular of a scale. The only time a problem with a monk in his monastery will be brought to his attention is if the monk refuses to change his behavior.
I probably wasn’t clear enough on this point. Yes, a perfect practitioner would thank the monk/nun and see it as a service rendered. But people aren’t perfect, and it’s always easier to accept criticism from someone we like than someone we don’t, isn’t it? So imagine you just don’t like this person (maybe they’re openly sexist, which happens…you never know!), you have a history with him/her, you didn’t sleep well the night before or something else is bothering you, and they come up to AGAIN to correct some minor thing you did wrong. Because you aren’t enlightened yet, you get upset (which is perfectly normal as an unenlightened being), and bang, you snap at them or have an argument. And it’s your fault because they were in the right to correct you, even though they knew you were having a rough day and could have waited, but didn’t (because they aren’t enlightened yet, either). That sort of thing isn’t too uncommon, from what I’ve seen.
I’ve seen that sort of thing happen. You can object to it, but it can always be turned around on you as an opportunity to practice. This kind of stuff seems to happen more often when rules and discipline is emphasized over metta.
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I have been reading this forum for a while now, but was inspired to create an account to respond to your point above, because that particular story of Ajahn Brahm’s has been something that really benefited my practice, and I think about it quite often.
In the story as I recall it, the monk is a bit upset at having to wash the robes because he’s tired after the all night meditation. Ajahn Brahm, having been in that situation before as a younger monk, gives some advice: “Thinking about it is much harder than doing it. The hardest part of anything in life is thinking about it.” Once the monk who is washing the robes understands, he lets go of the upset feelings about being asked to do the task when he’s tired, and just washes the robes with his mind unburdened by resentment.
This story comes back to me often when I’m “stuck” in a situation where I’m having some resentment or resistance to life circumstances and my mind gets going in a loop of negative emotions. If I can remind myself that the suffering is coming from what I’m thinking about the situation, not really from the situation itself, I can often drop the negative emotions and the situation immediately becomes much less difficult to deal with.
This is just my own personal take on that story, but it really did lead to a lot of benefit in my own life and practice, so I thought it might be helpful to share. 
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Thank you so much for sharing your point of view - and for creating an account to do it! 
Yes I see exacty what you mean; I was similarly inspired by the wheel barrow story by Ajahn Brahm which offers a similar teaching (‘pushing a wheel barrow is easy - thinking about it is difficult’).
I guess that probably one thing that makes a difference is also your faith in the person giving you the order. The wheel barrow story involved Ajahn Chah and Ajahn Liem who are both extremely highly regarded, so it’s easier to see that they are doing it for your benefit rather than as a way to exert power. In this sense, you will welcome it as a teaching, instead of experiencing it as an ‘abuse’ of power.
Anyway that’s a question I have been pondering about for a while and about which I have doubts. I do not know whether this is the best way to teach and I haven’t come across stories in the suttas where the Buddha deliberately made people suffer, as in the story of the sleepless night followed by washing clothes, in order to give them a teaching.
I didn’t so much leave my job as the job left me. It changed my practice quite a bit because now there was enough time to experience how boring life is. Having a job was nice because one had some excuses for avoiding the boring bits, could pick and choose when to practice, and when the practice became boring, choose to work a bit more. Always trying to be mindful, but not really taking it seriously enough.
So, when there was nothing left to do about my situation, I chose to do nothing and embraced the boredom of being, and now the boring bits give life meaning, and practice runs smoothly.
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The Ajahn Brahm story link for anyone interested “Thinking about it is the hard part”:
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Thank you for sharing. In a way it’s an advantage if it’s the job that leaves you rather than you leaving it, because having the choice can be torture!.. especially If you have a job that is generally regarded as highly desirable one can be afraid of doing something stupid and then regretting it…
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Thank you for providing the inspiration to finally join this most excellent and helpful forum. 
I guess my perspective on it is slightly different. Even when I’m in a situation with a difficult person who most likely doesn’t have my best interests at heart, it’s still really only my own mind that’s causing me to suffer.
I think that’s why this little story has resonated so strongly in my life, it’s a reminder that while I don’t have any control over external circumstances, it’s always possible to react to them in a way that doesn’t lead to suffering. In that way, even people who I don’t trust or who are just trying to exert power over me can still be my teachers… because the whole situation is teaching me to better discipline my own mind.
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yes that’s definitely true I think it’s just that as was noted above it’s not at all easy, unless you are enlightened
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I really appreciate and enjoy Viveka’s comments. I’ll add a few baht to this discussion to mention that for me, the training applies primarily (but not solely) to the groundwork that is being done to cultivate meditation. I took an anagarika ordination in Thailand about 6 years ago, and spent about three years living with and keeping 8 precepts. I saw this as a training period, and have now set aside the 8 precepts and keep the 5 precepts. The quality of the training under 8 precepts affected immediately and directly the quality of the meditation training; for me, that’s the key point. Letting go of entertainments, sexuality , social interactions etc. really allowed for a calm and stable foundation for mindfulness and meditation. It proved to me a correlation, and benefit, with keeping 8 or more precepts and meditation.
I feel that if one can keep a range of 5-8 precepts, the benefit lies in personal peace and ethics, a level of mindfulness, and a higher quality of meditation. With the OP in mind, practicing as a lay person means getting as close as one can to letting go of as many of the social and behavioral entanglements as one can, in order to provide support for the 7th and 8th steps on the path ( and indeed, all of the N8FP).
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I am a retired. And, I still have doubt whether to go or not. To be realistic, even though I am dedicating my left time in a meditation-centre (accomodation and meals ready) but I still need money to buy small personal things such as toothbrush, towel, simple clothes (not to mention if I take Anagarika path), soap, etc. I think it is hard to proceed.
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Best wishes for your journey ahead. It may not be the easiest, but it is the most worthwhile thing one can do. May your aspirations come to pass
With much Metta 
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Hi Stef,
I left my job in July 2015 and have mainly focused on practicing meditation and the dhamma since then.
My job was pretty intense - probably averaged about 60 hours a week, so leaving it has given me plenty of time to practice.
Since then I spent 17 months at Bodhinyana monastery - 10-1/2 months as an Anagarika. I left to help my family once Covid hit, but plan to go back later this year.
This time has been wonderful for my practice, I’ve made more progress in 6 years than in the previous 20 as a meditator. I could relax more into my practice and give it time and my mind has inclined more to the dhamma and peace as a result.
Of course, I haven’t needed to work because I have sufficient savings to look after both my partner and I - a result of working for about 25 years pretty intensively. But we live a very simple life, 2 meals a day, very little socialising and I have developed a sitting practice of about 5 hours each day. Outside of that I study Buddhist texts, but I also remember to have some fun - I sometimes watch movies, play the guitar, listen to music and I’m there for any friends or family, including my two cats, who want to share some time with me. The cats seem to always get the priority!
I’m going back to the monastery because I feel that I’d like to try the monastic path and give up all worldly obligations and delights; perhaps I can progress further that way. But the life I have now is remarkable to me for it’s happiness, harmony and peace.
Definitely better for me than the forced association of work places and the drive to generate money that was a big part of my life before.
With metta
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I’ve had the great pleasure to meet this redoutable lady during the last 24 hours. She is friendly and works tirelessly, begging visitors to “go and take some rest.” Her commitment shines.
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