Hi @Danamitra & others, thanks so much for an engaging convo. The thing I am emphasizing about the practice of renunciation, in response to Ven. Sujato’s question, is around meaningful material renunciation in a culture where there are few options for social movement for most people. You’re right that it’s a common misperception that renunciation is synonymous with the monastic vocation, and maybe I implied that a bit in my response above. So I want to flesh it out a little bit here.
I like that you’re emphasizing renunciation as seclusion from a certain kind of abusive relationship, particularly in relation to an unhealthy culture. What I’m thinking about here is what that seclusion actually looks like in practice. In American culture, a lot of people are trapped, economically, and don’t have a lot of room to disengage with the abusive system. Renunciation while still remaining a layperson demands that I have some wiggle room in my household economy to stop participating in some aspects of culture that I find harmful. What are those, exactly?
Most practitioners I know try to do this disengagement—renouncing unwholesome media, or buying only used clothes, etc. But unless one is free from substantial obligations like parenting, debt, or elder care, these renunciations don’t change one’s day to day lifestyle that much. I think a lot of folks project a kind of hedonistic delusion on American convert practitioners, implying that because American culture generally is one of excess and waste, folks are indulging in lives of excess individually.
I actually think Buddhism has been a wholesome influence on American culture in this way (and/or it’s converts self-select and were already drawn toward material simplicity). In every Buddhist community I know, both convert and heritage (and those classifications aren’t definitive), I don’t see a lot of excessive indulgence. And as I implied above, most people I know are working to middle class, with a lot of obligations, and not much room to maneuver toward simpler lifestyles. So any time we suggest that radical disengagement with an abusive system is morally superior, we marginalize people who are prevented from radical disengagement by their very real obligations, and I think that’s most people. To actually help people leave abusive relationships, they need safe places to go.
That should be monasteries, traditionally, but a huge lack here in American Buddhism is the presence of monasticism even as an option for most people. In the suttas, we see rich people either renouncing wealth and going forth, or becoming lay supporters. What do poor people do? They go forth, or take refuge and keep doing their obligations (and we don’t hear much about them, because the suttas favor the stories of monastics and wealthy laypeople). But I don’t know of any guidance for the poor layperson around renunciation except monasticism. So what happens when it’s not easy to go forth?
I suggest that the absence of a viable “monastic option” in a culture is one of the places modern Buddhism is failing to help American culture (or is being prevented by conditions from doing more). I think one of the most profound things that Buddhism has that can help us adapt and respond is the radically communal lifestyle of the monastic saṅgha. It’s a safe house from the abusive relationship. But if it’s not visible or viable in a culture, it can’t perform this function. One of the side-effects, then, of the globalized lay Buddhist meditation movements of the 20th century is the marginalization of the monastic vocation from the awareness of practitioners.
Once monasticism isn’t available as a refuge from poverty or the middle-class grind, renunciation for lay followers becomes just a psychological orientation: “letting go of anxiety about imperfection,” as a common quote puts it. In my youth I did a lot of disengagement from the abusive system, and it served me well, but I could only do that from within the rare privileged position of the lay Dharma bum—no money, no obligations, good health, good education, and lots of free time.
To loop this back to the OP around @Bernat’s excellent article, this (renunciation and vocation) is a place where there certainly is cognitive dissonance between lay people drawing on the EBTs for inspiration but not practicing in line with them. I don’t think we’ve reckoned as a lineage yet on the deeper implications of the intensive lay practitioner as a life path, and how it plays out in terms of the survival of the monastic saṅgha or lay people’s liberation journey itself.
And I’ve basically given up on understanding Tibetan Buddhism 