I have met some monks who appear to follow that life. They are quiet and retiring. They don’t write a bunch of books, join email lists and organizations, or get involved in a lot of extra activities. They interact courteously with the laity when they receive dana, but also minimally. They spend a lot of time in their kutis. They frequently keep silent. Some leave the monastery altogether and wander the roads with a begging bowl and eyes downcast. It is very inspiring.
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have you ever lived in a monastery?
what is a “kuti/s?”
Are you at all familiar with the Eightfold Noble Path from the standpoint of practice?
Your point is that unless " to go forth into the order" which, i assume you mean a monastic life there is no hope for lay people to break out of Samsara?
“f one truly commits to the path to live it intensely as a way of life, one must retreat from most worldly affairs. Very few people actually do that. They orient themselves toward nibbana part of the time, and toward the world and its roiling passions the rest of the time.”
How do you know this to be true?
I’d appreciate a source reference for this statement if you would be so kind.
A Kuti is a hut. It is where monks live.
In Theravada Buddhism, people who are dedicated lay practitioners are sometimes called upasaka or upasikas. This means “ones who sit close by”, more specifically, ones who sit close by the sangha of monastics. So, Dkervick’s words are geared towards monastics and those who endeavor to be close by monastics in their practice of the 8 fold path. So his words about not getting embroiled in attachments to, or disputes regarding worldly affairs are from this perspective.
This is being misunderstood, I believe, as a rejection of the world.
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I haven’t lived at one, but I stayed at one for three days once. I visit one fairly often.
This is from Nagarjuna’s mūlamadhyamakakārikāḥ:
na saṃsārasya nirvāṇāt kiṃcid asti viśeṣaṇam
na nirvāṇasya saṃsārāt kiṃcid asti viśeṣaṇam
Samsara does not have the slightest distinction from Nirvana. Nirvana does not have the slightest distinction from Samsara.
nirvāṇasya ca yā koṭiḥ koṭiḥ saṃsaraṇasya ca
na tayor antaraṃ kiṃcit susūkṣmam api vidyate
Whatever is the end of Nirvana, that is the end of Samsara. There is not even a very subtle slight distinction between the two.
https://www2.hf.uio.no/polyglotta/index.php?page=fulltext&vid=27&view=fulltext
Probably not - at least according to the picture presented in the suttas. There are no clear cases in the suttas of lay arahants.
In at least one place, the Buddha says one cannot make an end of suffering without giving up the lay bonds.
Richard Gombrich’s opinion:
Did the Buddha think it possible for a lay person to attain Enlightenment? Probably not. He measured spiritual progress in four stages. In the first, called “stream entry”, one was guaranteed that one would have at most seven more lives and would never be reborn in a station lower than human. (At first, most people who accepted his view of kamma were held to have attained this.) At the second stage, the “once-returner” faced only one more life on earth. The “non-returners” would not be reborn in this world but in a high heaven, from which their attainment of nibbāna was guaranteed. Enlightenment was the fourth and final stage.
When asked about the spiritual attainments of his followers, the Buddha said that many hundreds of lay followers, both male and female, had become “non-returners.” They had given up sexual activity. He did not explicitly say that no lay follower attained nirvana in this life, but that is the implication. Elsewhere there is a short list of names of lay disciples, all male, who are said to have reached nibbāna, but it is a mere list and so placed that it could well be a late addition to the Canon. The tradition that the Buddha’s father attained Enlightenment as a layman is post-canonical. A post-canonical Pali text says that lay life is not livable for an Enlightened person, so if a layman becomes Enlightened he (or she) will either enter the Sangha or die within the day. On the other hand, there are plenty of canonical cases of laymen and laywomen who are said to have made spiritual progress.
Theravada Buddhism
pp. 75-6
But, you know, no harm in trying! Meditation is good for you.
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Well, the kinds of terms used for the goal include non-clinging to the world, non-entanglement with the world, release from the world, detachment from the world, dropping the bait of the world, cutting the fetters to the world, destroying the influxes from the world, and relinquishing acquisitions and all sense of anything that is mine in the world. The Buddha did re-engage with people following his attainment of nibbana, but it was all for the purpose of leading others toward the same path of release from the world that he had found.
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Well said. To clarify I am agreeing with your understanding-- my sense was some people misunderstand this as a rejection of the world. Thanks for your good words on this subject!
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Sustainability - fostering and sustaining life-support systems on ‘Earth’ is studied in the field of ‘sustainable development’.
The U.N. has sustainable development goals that are integral to the ‘Millenium Development Goals’ that include better human rights outcomes and better ecological/environmental outcomes.
Regardless of our political orientation it is in our collective interest that sustainable development theory and practice becomes the norm and not the exception.
Everyone one of us, whether we are lay or monastic Buddhists, is perfectly entitled to express an opinion on the climate-crisis and the destruction of the natural world and encourage sane and appropriate change for our collective benefit.
To insist otherwise would be to suppress freedom of conscience and free-speech which is not a good idea.
We can all practice our lay and monastic ‘codes of discipline’ and still help to prevent the needless destruction of life as we know it on a fragile planet - it’s a no-brainer!
It is astonishing that these considerations don’t seem to register in some Buddhist minds.
When i was a kid in RC grammar school many many years ago, i asked the teacher, a religious, if “The chinese, not being RC would get to heaven?” She, without batting an eye, said “No, they would be going to hell.” It didn’t make much sense that something created by a god would be damned by the same god without any cause except a belief system that came along rather late in the game. In any event, your answer reminded me of that bit of experience. One has to be a member of the club, in good standing, of course in order to make the grade. People get a good laugh when i relate this story to them.
Here are my thoughts:
- Neither R.G. or anyone else can say that all the Buddhas of the past or present were monks of one sort or another.
- Neither R.G. or anyone else can say that all the Bodhisattvas of the past or present were monks of one sort or another.
- The Buddha Shakyamuni was not a monk.
- There is nothing in the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path, the 2 principle teachings of the Buddha, that says “You gotta be a monk for any of this understanding to ripen.”
- The purpose of the Sutras was not to count the faces in the crowd, it was to present a teaching.
- This approach of R.G.'s “probably not” is a good excuse for not doing anything because one is not a monk.
- In order to save time and space, I won’t get into the Sutras of Patanjali or Zen or Chan.
I could go on but these artificial impediments, to me, are the result of too much thinking and not enough practice. Wouldn’t you agree?
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Thanks for dropping in. I’d appreciate it if you could put a front and a back on your comments so i don’t have to sort through Dkervicks words. Do you mind?
…oh, ok thanks. A monastery is a microcosm of the macrocosm.
(My response to your response regarding whether or not you have lived in a monastery. Somehow got misplaced. )
I don’t think it’s a question of “being a monk” in the sense of joining any particular institutional religious order. The issue is whether one can achieve nibbana without going forth from worldly life, and without renouncing, and secluding oneself from, the busy and turbulent affairs of family, town, commerce and politics.
I think there is much reason to doubt it is possible. The snares of worldly passions and desires are strong. As social animals, the conditions for their arising are inherent in our nature, and are easily triggered by most of our customary social interactions.
The paccekabuddhas, who were already revered in the Buddha’s time as great sages who had attained awakening in the past, were not Buddhist monks. But they had walked away from settled society to cultivate a life of contemplative solitude and simplicity, away from the bustle of worldly affairs.
Nirvana = description of a state, a concept, not the state itself.
Samsara=description of a state, a concept, not the state itself.
Nirvana=concept
Samsara=concept
A state that transcends concept = no nirvana and no samsara.
My minder is telling me i should be talking to other people on this forum. So this is probably our last exchange. It’s been nice chatting with you. Hope to do it again. 
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“A state that transcends concept= no nirvana and no samsara” = concept
Either you admit that language can refer, that concepts can represent or point to phenomena outside themselves, or you think that concepts fail to refer.
There might be something else to consider? If you have been to ‘Ayers Rock’ or tasted honey, you may do your best to provide a description of what you have experienced first-hand.
Others may read about, hear about, see pictures of the ‘Rock’ or they may know the molecular-structure of honey - they may be ‘honeyologists’ - having never ‘gone beyond’ the outskirts of Sydney or Melbourne and never tasted honey in their lives.
I think this is what ‘basho the cat’ was trying to get at? For instance, there is a difference between liberating insight and reading the Suttas - a world of difference! In the Suttas we read about Samsara and Nibbana but that is not the same as understanding what these terms are related to - directly - IMO.
We may be able to infer many things about Samsara but miss important things as well? With regard to ‘Nibbana’ we may be largely ‘clueless’ but still speak as if we understand what we are talking about. I raised this issue in the thread on ‘language games’ and Buddhist scholarship. Waking up involves a bit more than reading ancient texts and repeating them. It involves more than what we have read or ‘heard’ about (by sitting near).
When freedom ‘arrives’ there are no words and no descriptions - no ‘concept’. Until then, we do the best we can with what we’ve got!
When we have knowledge and clear comprehension of the nature of ‘Samsara’ that includes its source in avijja and, its ending in ‘Nibbana’ we are probably getting somewhere/nowhere - don’t you think? This might be what ‘Nagarjuna’ was trying to express in his own way?
Sure, an experience isn’t the same as a description of it. But it seems pretty silly to think that a description that says nibbana is that which is beyond description such that even the word nibbana cannot be used in reference to it is ridiculous. The Buddha was the Buddha, Nagarjuna was a monk coming hundreds of years later. If you want to even be able to enter the path towards nibbana, you need to hear the Buddha’s dhamma and attend appropriately. Better to stick with the suttas than rely on later ideas.
Anyway, I digress.