Disrobing

 

Attached to Bhikkhu or homo monasticus

Do not think that I regard suicide as praiseworthy—that there can easily be an element of weakness in it, I am the first to admit (though the Stoics regarded it as a courageous act)—, but I certainly regard it as preferable to a number of other possibilities. (I would a hundred times rather have it said of the Notes that the author killed himself as a bhikkhu than that he disrobed; for bhikkhus have become arahats in the act of suicide, but it is not recorded that anyone became arahat in the act of disrobing.)

 Nanavira Thera

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The majority of those who entered the monkhood at Wat Pah Pong did so without any intention of disrobing at some point in the future, but without completely discounting the possibility; they made a determination to give themselves to the training, and to find out whether they did, indeed, have what it took to stay long-term. Even amongst those who felt no interest in pursuing a life of family and career, few were willing to offer a hostage to fortune by declaring a lifetime commitment. To most it seemed arrogant and unwise; who knew what the future held?

The Vinaya does not stipulate that candidates for Ordination take lifetime vows. If monks become unhappy and wish to return to lay life, then they are free to do so at any time, without stigma and without the psychological bar of a long, forbidding disrobing ceremony.

Leaving the Sangha could not be more straightforward. Disrobing is accomplished when a monk informs any person who understands the meaning of his words that he is abandoning his monkhood. From that moment onwards, even while still wearing the robes, he is, technically speaking, a layman.

In practice, a short ceremony is performed. The monk formally requests forgiveness from his teacher, for any offence or difficulty he might have caused him, before informing him, using a short Pali phrase, of his decision to leave the Sangha. With these few words, he becomes a layman. Having changed into lay clothes, he requests the Five Precepts and some words of advice for his return to the world.

A key reason why disrobing is made so easy, both practically and psychologically, is the recognition that few people have the vocation to stay in robes for their whole life, and that it is better for someone who wishes to leave to do so, rather than live on in the monastery in a half-hearted and discontented way. Miserable monks tend to make those around them miserable, and their lack of commitment to the training easily leads to disharmony and decline in standards of the Vinaya.

Few monks avoid periods of doubt entirely. Consequently, understanding the nature of doubt and learning how to deal with it wisely is one of the most important skills that a monk can master. Until that skill is developed – and it may take many years – the teacher is there to offer reflections and encouragement. If he sees a monk’s discontent as a superficial wobble rather than a genuine inability or unwillingness to live the monks’ life any longer, he will try to help the monk find a renewed sense of purpose. The teacher will be aware of many monks who left the Sangha in haste only to repent at leisure.

In the early years at Wat Pah Pong, Luang Por put considerable effort into dissuading restless monks from disrobing. As he got older, he was less inclined to do so – a pattern common, almost to cliché, amongst leaders of monastic communities. Helping monks to emerge from a period of dissatisfaction with monastic life was hard work, and more often than not, resulted in a postponement rather than a complete ending of their desire to disrobe. As teachers matured, they tended to become more stoic about the loss of promising young monks and saw the need to be more discriminating as to how they spent their time and energy.

Some monks disrobed in order to take care of an ageing parent; some left due to chronic illness. But probably the most common cause for disrobing was the strong pull of the sensual world. Many monks found that celibacy could be managed without any great stress, and more than a few found it easy; but when lust did take hold in a monk’s mind, it could be of an ogreish intensity. To those who were struggling with lustful feelings, Ajahn Jun remembered how direct Luang Por’s words could be:

“Luang Por would say, ‘Really think about it … [women] have got nine holes in their body just like you do, and every one of them is filled with a different kind of waste. There’s nothing beautiful or good or clean in any one of those holes. You sit there and you walk about daydreaming, imagining all kinds of pleasant things, but they’re not true. You’ll lose your freedom. You’ll be under a woman’s thumb. You’ll lead a life of frustrations and strife. You’re being seduced by sexual desire. Don’t believe it. Don’t disrobe just because lust tells you to. You won’t die if you don’t follow it. Believe me: lust has been deceiving you for countless lifetimes.’ ”

He also recalled how on alms-round, Luang Por would point out the sufferings of lay life to monks assailed by lust. The sound of a husband and wife shouting at each other, the sight of a tired-looking woman trying desperately to console a screaming child, or of a woman – prematurely aged by a hard life – trudging off to the fields: any such figure might be indicated with the words, ‘Is that really what you want?’

When monks first ordained, they could be so inspired that the very idea of someday disrobing seemed unthinkable. But, as time went on, their initial faith-driven perceptions, so apparently rock solid, could waver. If monks lacked the resources of patience and endurance needed to bear with the difficult periods when their inspiration ran dry, it was staying in robes that might suddenly come to seem unthinkable.

When a monk started to doubt his capacity to realize the Dhamma in his present lifetime, he could come to feel caught between two stools: the pleasures of the lay life being behind him and yet no clear path to the profound happiness of inner liberation visible before him. The thought of reaching the end of his life in that unresolved state could come to seem intolerable. It was the classic monastic version of the male midlife crisis. Some monks faced no particular moment of truth, but it was as if their sense of vocation just gradually faded like a flashlight battery, until there was no light left to see their way by, at which point they left.

Disrobing was seen by almost all as an admission of defeat.[8] To some, return to the world after putting their best effort into the monk’s life, seemed like accepting an honourable discharge from the army after an ultimately unsuccessful campaign. Most were humble. They would say that they had not amassed enough good kamma to enable them to stay in the Sangha any longer; their store of merit had allowed them only this much time in the robes. Now they wanted to return to a less intense level of commitment to the Buddha Sāsana: to lead a good life as a householder, support the Sangha and work to accumulate more good kamma.

‘Like Rain About to Fall …’

Ordinations and disrobings of junior monks are such a normal part of monastic life in Thailand, even in forest monasteries, that they occasion little remark; however, when a senior monk decides to leave the Sangha, considerable shock waves pass through the monastery, particularly amongst monks who are themselves caught in a web of doubt. So it was when the abbot of one of the branch monasteries (and one of Luang Por’s senior disciples to boot) arrived one day – strained, pale-faced – with the unenviable task of announcing that he had fallen in love with a lay supporter and wanted to disrobe and get married.

To Luang Por, a monk intending to abandon monastic training because of romantic infatuation was about to take a foolish step backwards and downwards. He considered lust as merely the immature expression of a noble emotion, something that should be ‘flipped over’ into mettā, loving-kindness.

You’ve got to flip this personal love of yours over into a general love, a love for all sentient beings, like the love of a mother or father for their child … You have to wash the sensuality out of your affection, like someone wanting to eat wild yams has to soak their heads first to wash out the poison. Worldly love is the same: you have to reflect on it, look at it until you see the suffering bound up in it and then gradually wash away the germ of intoxication. That leaves you with a pure love, like that of a teacher for his disciples … If you can’t wash the sensuality out of love, then it will still be there – still bossing you around – when you’re an old man.

Sexual desire was to be clearly understood – not repressed, but investigated. Luang Por suggested, as teachers have generally done in this situation, a temporary change of surroundings. He made an appeal to the monk’s pride:

Reflect on the suffering of sexual desire until you can let it go. If you can’t solve the problem with wisdom, or at least reduce its strength, then leave your monastery for a while. After you’ve re-established your practice, then return. When you fall down, you have to know how to pick yourself up again. You have to know how to struggle and crawl. When you’ve been knocked over, don’t just lie there helplessly and give up.

But once the idea of disrobing has become real to a monk, it gains an almost irresistible momentum. A sense of inevitability – which, following an excruciating period of indecision, often feels like a blessed relief – undermines the monk’s willingness to question his decision. It was this sense, that there was no longer a way back, that Luang Por sought to counter:

According to the old saying, there are five unstoppable things: rain about to fall, excrement about to leave the body, a person about to die, a child about to be born, and a monk about to disrobe. The first four are true, I’m sure, but not the last one. I’m confident that a monk can be stopped from disrobing. I myself once considered disrobing, and I changed my mind.

In trying to puncture the unrealistic visions of the future that the monk had created, Luang Por could paint a vivid picture. Whereas the monk’s life was untrammelled, he said, with the opportunity to go walking carefree through the forests and mountains on tudong, the householder’s life was cramped and constricted:

Having a family imprisons you … You end up with the baby crying, your wife grumbling, your father-in-law scolding you, your mother-in-law hating you, hemmed in by pots and pans. Think about it.

He reminded the monk of the difficulties of making a way in the world, of how so many years of living by a high moral standard made surviving in a duplicitous world awkward and painful. He called to mind monks who had left and, once the novelty had worn off, bitterly regretted their decision to disrobe. He described the pleasures of sensuality as superficial and fleeting – like the taste of good food on the tongue – in no way comparable to the profound and lasting well-being that could be realized through Dhamma practice:

If you keep meditating until your mind becomes calm and lucid, and you see the Dhamma, then you will truly be at ease. Sometimes you can be so full of bliss that you don’t need to eat at all. And it’s a profound ease, not just a pleasant sensation on the surface of your tongue.

The fundamental message Luang Por sought to convey was that lust and longing were not things outside the monastic training pulling the monk inexorably away from it. On the contrary, dealing with such emotional crises was an integral part of the training. Looking at the suffering, letting go of the desires that fed it, freeing oneself from the suffering through the practice of the Eightfold Path – this was the very heart of monastic life.

Whatever kind of suffering arises, then contemplate it. Look at it until you see it clearly. Sometimes, when it’s not clear, you have to fast and go without sleep and fight with it, be willing to die. Ven. Ajahn Tongrat once considered disrobing. He wouldn’t listen to anybody who tried to dissuade him, his mind was made up. But then one day he asked for an axe from the villagers and started chopping logs. He chopped for three days and three nights until he was exhausted and his hands were covered in blisters. Then he shouted out loud, ‘Now do you know who’s master?’ He was talking to his defilements.

Great masters have been through this. One of Luang Pu Mun’s disciples fell in love with a woman who regularly put food in his bowl on alms-round. His friends took him off to meditate and shut him up in the Uposatha Hall. He fasted for five or six days, and then his mind flipped upright. He saw the unattractiveness of the body, his mind became calm and lucid, he saw the Dhamma – and he survived.

Sexual desire is your weak point, and you have to remedy it with meditation on the unattractive parts of the body. Keep testing your strength until you know how much you can take. Don’t let the defilements keep punching you on your weak spot until they knock you out. Develop more skill in meditation. If the defilements come high, then duck underneath them. If you’re not strong enough to take them on, then when they come at you low, jump over them and run away for a while.

The decision to disrobe may not be completely irrevocable. Nevertheless, once a monk has made up his mind to disrobe, even the rhetorical skills and charisma of a master like Luang Por Chah rarely succeed in changing his mind. He feels a momentum. It’s as if he’s travelling downhill without brakes and is being encouraged to turn around and climb back up the mountain. In this particular case, after a short period of reflection undertaken out of deference to his teacher, the monk disrobed. Little was heard of him after that. Perhaps he lived happily ever after; perhaps he did not.

Stillness Flowing The Life and Teaching of Ajhan Chah