A Buddhist monastery is defined as a place within a boundary where four or more fully ordained monks or nuns live and perform the three monastic rites (bi-weekly confession/Posadha, summer retreat, ceremony to end the summer retreat). Other entities that approximate this (for example with three or less monastics, etc.) can also be considered monasteries.

Places that are not focused on sustaining a residential community of full-time monastic practitioners but focus on providing Buddhist teachings to a community of local lay practitioners who live at their own homes and come for occasional classes or prayer gatherings and practice sessions are not considered monasteries. The term “Dharma Center” has become standard to refer to such places; they functionally operate much like a Church, Synagogue, or Mosque. Forest of Wisdom aims to develop strong foundations to support a monastic community while also providing learning and practice opportunities to the lay community.

Like religious and academic institutions of all world religious and academic traditions, monasteries are supported and run by (1) the residents themselves; (2) non-residential volunteers; and (3) donations given by members of the lay community.

In terms of sources of funding, monasteries typically do not have membership or tuition fees, and often even provide accommodation and board to all visitors and residents without a charge – they are funded, then, through an economy of generosity. People give when they see that the monastery is providing something of value to themselves and to the world at large and recognize the need for the monastery to continue to exist and thrive.

Furthermore, for those who believe in the principle of cause and effect of actions (popularly just referred to as “karma”), giving to a community that supports dedicated spiritual practitioners is a great joy and honor that will end up resulting in their own future well-being, ease of access to resources, and opportunities for spiritual learning and practice.

Monasteries are necessary for the Buddha’s teachings, or Buddha Dharma, to be sustained in the world. The Buddha himself was a monk. After living a privileged and sheltered life until age 29 and then being confronted with old age, illness, and death, he came to see the ascetic or monastic life as the missing link to find an ultimate solution to the problems of our ordinary state of unenlightened existence. He understood it was the ideal lifestyle to pursue his spiritual goal of liberation, and then maintained a monk’s life as the platform for him to teach others after he achieved his goal.

The Buddha also founded the community of ordained monks and nuns and it was under his watch that the first Buddhist monasteries developed. Having many people who are all seeking the same goals live together helps to pool resources, including the basic facilities and daily needs required for living but also the resources of spiritual teaching and inspiration.

Likewise, many people living together in harmony and single-pointedly pursuing spiritual transformation becomes a powerful force for the entire society; it inspires others and shows them in a very direct way that there exists a viable alternative to the standard goals set for us by society - earning income to support oneself and one’s family and enjoying pleasures, security, status, etc., which all only last for this lifetime and pale in comparison to the sources of deep meaning that come with a life devoted to altruism. The very presence of an institution that is based around the pursuit of true universal compassion, non-violence, and life-changing wisdom is a teaching in itself. It shows the world that the goals of inner peace and liberation are preferable to the goals that mainstream society sets for us by default.

Monasteries also enable a very focused study of the Buddhist teachings, allowing the monastics who train there to grow into the world’s leading experts in Buddhist theory and practice, ensuring that these teachings and methods can continue on in their fullest form to future generations.

Now, you may have the argument – “Well, how do we really know that the Buddha’s teachings can’t survive without monastic institutions? Has it ever been tried?”

In response, it’s perhaps simplest to say for now – That isn’t an experiment we want to try! Of course the role of monasteries in the modern world, and what serious Dharma practice looks like in an age of AI and automation, are big questions open for big discussions. Needless to say, it does seem evident that there will always be a subset of the population with a deep spiritual calling for whom monastic life is perfectly suited – they should, then, have the freedom to choose to pursue such a life of dedicated spiritual training, which the institution of a monastery enables.

Kindly read on, as the following sections continue to address this important question of why monasteries are needed.

While some monasteries are more secluded, Forest of Wisdom is part of the tradition of monasteries that are open to one and all. Anyone who wants to learn how to transform their mind can come and benefit in a variety of ways – through spiritual and philosophical teachings, guidance, and counsel from one of the residents, from staying for longer term study and practice periods, or by becoming a resident and ordained monastic oneself and having the supportive environment to train in and get your daily needs of food, clothing, shelter, and medicine provided.

Beyond those direct benefits, the monastery hosts people who are committing their lives to a life of inner and outer peace. While militaries, police forces, and firefighters can provide protection from physical harm, monastic communities provide protection from the spiritual harms of greed, apathy, hatred, bias, and many of the mental health challenges facing people today: anxiety, depression, a sense of meaninglessness, attention deficits, and lack of executive control.

By providing an ethical example and role model, the wider community understands how to live a contented life with few problems. By praying and meditating, the world is made more peaceful. By studying, memorizing, discussing, and teaching the Buddha’s teachings, the practical knowledge embedded therewithin is made available to anyone who needs it.

Giving is a personal decision that one should only make with a sense of full clarity and comfort in one’s giving. If you have such an attitude, then giving even $1 or offering something as simple as water will have a very large beneficial impact over time in terms of the long-term karmic results. On the other hand, giving with a sense of pressure, confusion or uncertainty in your giving can lead you to feel regret, which then fuels a cycle of associating giving with negative feelings until you eventually just stop your acts of generosity. Therefore, it’s always advised to give an amount and to give in ways that make you feel joyful.

If you find that the work being done at Forest of Wisdom or another monastery is valuable to you and to the world, and want it to continue, then that is an excellent reason to support it!

Support can come in many forms – financial support and donations, volunteering your time and skills, and most importantly, engaging in the practices that effect your own inner transformation and improvement of your state of mind.

Monastic life is about courage, simplicity, and joy.

Courage

It takes courage to work towards enlightenment, because doing so entails facing oneself – including the ugly parts. It also entails abandoning attachment. It takes courage to abandon attachment – attachment to one’s career interests, to wealth and possessions, to reputation, to family, to romantic partners and sex.

We have a natural inclination to seek out those things and, at least to some degree, to do what’s expected of us by other people (whether it be parents, friends, or society at large). All of these desires are imprinted in us by conditioning – biological, social, and the prior activity of our own consciousness, including thought patterns and behavioral habits we developed in prior lives. Each source of conditioning is as powerful as the next.

It requires learning and study, consistent inner contemplation, and a bit of a leap of faith to develop the will to challenge all of this conditioning. It requires courage to simply make the choice to come to the monastery, and still more courage to continue to challenge your old conditioning throughout your life as an ordained member of the Sangha.

Simplicity

Monastic life entails a certain kind of simplicity – both in one’s lifestyle and consumption, as well as in one’s mind. Being dependent on the offerings and kindness of the lay community for the four requisites of food, medicine, shelter, and clothing, a monastic learns to be contented with whatever is offered.

When it comes to food, we learn to be happy with whatever is being served by the community kitchen even if we don’t get our first preference of food. For shelter, we learn to enjoy living in a simple room in a shared space, with just enough possessions to live and study. For clothing, we learn to enjoy having a shaved head and wearing the same wardrobe day in and day out, and matching all the other members of the community.

Medicine is a little different, since we need it to be healthy and to survive; yet we still cultivate an attitude of great gratitude for whatever medical services are provided and develop acceptance and contentment in the case of not being able to afford acquire a given medical treatment. Depending on the country or region, medicine may even be provided by the State, which goes to show how far-reaching the interdependence is between the monastic Sangha and the wider community; and monastics make prayers and dedications in return for the kindness that supports us.

Phone and technology use is still something so new that monastic communities are learning to deal with them in ways suitable to each community. Needless to say, a structure that enhances this lifestyle of simplicity would minimize unproductive technology use and provide communal computers and shared technology, reducing the temptation for monastics to spend time in unwise ways online.

All of this simplicity in terms of consumption leads to a more focused and settled state of mind, allowing a monastic practitioner to more fully engage with the Dharma, in both of its aspects (as something passed from one person to another in the form of words, treatises, books, and explanations, and as something realized and known internally in the form of a transformation of consciousness).

Monastic life also leads to simplicity in one’s mind. Much of the confusion and mental distress we have is involved in thinking about different people – “I want to be closer to that person” or “I can’t stand that idiot and hope they go away” etc. (and of course it gets much worse from there). When you commit to a monastic life, now everyone is on an equal playing field. You have the freedom to stop the games of getting people to like you and can stop worrying about what the bad person might do or how to seek revenge on them. You are here to serve all sentient beings, equally – and your role in society itself reinforces that.

In other words, you can just be happy letting the world unfold around you with its theater of impermanence and shifting realities, keeping a strong motivation to be as kind as possible to whoever you come across. You’re not pressured to prioritize family or your children like you are as a layperson, so instead you can more easily love everyone equally. This brings a joyful simplicity to the mind.

Joy

And thus, monastic life is about joy. Living together in a community in harmony, with other people striving towards the same deeply meaningful goals is a joy. Your life itself functionally becomes a defense against the bias, greed, hatred and fear in the world, and thus your life increasingly grows fuller and fuller with joy.

By avoiding strong attachments and clinging to people or relationships, your mind will become freer and freer as time goes on, allowing you to offer a greater and greater purity of joy to the world as you grow into a mature monastic.

All Buddhist practices are contained within what are known as the three Higher Trainings – the Training in Ethics, the Training in Concentration, and the Training in Wisdom. We can see how monastic life aids an individual’s spiritual practice by examining how it influences each of the three Trainings.

Ethics

Monastic life begins with the bestowal of the novice ordination vow (sramanera for males, sramaneri for females). Ordination vows are necessarily received in a ceremony from a person who holds a pure vow, having themselves received it in unbroken succession stretching back to the Buddha.

After training in that, one may go on to receive the Bhukshi or Bhukshuni vow of full ordination. The vow is itself an attitude of ethical restraint and commitment to refrain from harmful actions. The specific trainings include 36 branches for the novices (shortened into 10 in some traditions) and between 211-353 for the fully ordained, depending on the particular tradition of Vinaya (monastic code) and whether one is a male or female.

The vow is meant to mimic the behavior of a liberated person; someone who has already achieved a spiritual goal of freedom from self-grasping ignorance and maladaptive cognitive appraisals will naturally live according to such conduct as is indicated by the vows. For us who are beginners on the spiritual path and still need to put in a lot of training and effort before we achieve those goals, taking a monastic vow sets boundaries that allow our behavior to conform to the behavior of liberated people, which over time molds us into such liberated people.

The trainings of the vows include some that are shared in common with the layperson’s vow, such as not taking life, using intoxicants, or taking what has not been freely given. They also include some conduct that is unique to the monastics, such as celibacy, not wearing jewelry or perfumes/colognes, not dancing or singing, and of course maintaining the outer signs of a renunciate, with one’s head shaved and dressing in monastic robes.

The ethical commitments of the vow itself are complemented by the training one receives by living within a monastic community, which tends to be more practically where monks and nuns develop their ethical compass – in other words, the ethical training comes on the ground through lived experience. This is one of the reasons why living in a monastic community is an irreplaceable component of growth as a monastic – just reading about ethical conduct is no real substitute, even though monastics who live independently can still hold their vow purely and have spiritual success (and that’s equally true for laypeople, as well).

When you live as a monastic and in a monastery, you learn to act in a way that promotes peace. You learn how to harmonize with others. You learn how to bring your own body, speech, and mind into internal harmony. You learn humility. By having to follow rules and a schedule, the most monstrous manifestations of ego and the sense of self-entitlement that insists “I” can do anything “I” want, when “I” want, naturally calm down. This leads to deeper insight into the nature of this “I” or the self.

While the monastic vows are directly concerned with physical actions and acts of speech, the effort to practice them makes the mind more ethical, as well. The mind becomes more loving and caring, more disciplined, patient, generous, and honest. The training in ethics naturally leads to a serene mind free of guilt and regrets, and thus is the basis for concentration.

Concentration

Monastic life supports the development of concentration by limiting distractions, providing guidance and encouragement from more advanced practitioners in the community and peers, and keeping the mind “clean” through observation of a clear set of ethical policies.

We all have concentration to a degree, but to develop the power of the mind’s positive qualities, above-average concentration is essential. Concentration is called “samadhi” in Sanskrit. It is a cognitive faculty that is a near constant throughout many different cognitions and emotions that arise in any person’s mind-stream throughout a given day.

While it’s naturally present in everyone’s mind, the practice of samadhi is where we intentionally strengthen concentration with the goal of achieving long-term mental health and well-being. Stable concentration must be cultivated through dedicated training.

Strong concentration arises through mindfulness, meta-awareness and attention. These are also present to a degree within everyone and must likewise be intentionally cultivated – however, holding vows by itself strengthens these cognitive faculties.

How? We often encounter situations where a vow transgression could occur, so the only way we can avoid the transgression is by having mindfulness of the precepts of the vow (in other words, actively holding them in working memory). If we forget the precept, we will assuredly have a transgression! Holding the monastic vow means being mindful and remembering many different intentions to act in specific ways, or refrain from acting in certain ways.

Meta-awareness (sometimes called “introspection”) likewise observes our mental, physical, and speech activity in real-time. While training our concentration, it is needed to clue us in to whether we are genuinely focused with a clear and single-pointed awareness of the object on which we’ve chosen to focus, or whether some dullness or over-excitement and distraction has creeped in.

Being constantly tuned in to our behaviors in order to maintain vows without transgressions naturally strengthens this capacity which then can be applied in concentration practice.

Another huge advantage of monastic life in terms of deepened concentration is the simplicity that the lifestyle allows. Have you ever tried to meditate? If so, did you ever notice how songs start playing in your head, or images from movies or tv shows flash before your mind’s eye? Or images of a person you’re attracted to or romantically involved with?

Monastic life cuts down all such distractions. While it takes consistent training over an extended period of time to completely and ultimately safeguard the mind from such distractions, they are greatly reduced at least for the time being by virtue of living as a monastic. With concentration readily available and a commitment to strengthen it more and more, your capacity for sharpened intelligence, insight, and wisdom will also grow.

Wisdom

Wisdom is the fundamental practice of all Buddhist traditions.

Developing wisdom involves holding things in mind - specific topics, questions, concepts, lines of logical reasoning – and engaging in an analytical process. The key word here is process – wisdom does not involve just a split-second flash of seeing reality, but involves a continuous stream of internal reflection and exploration within your mind.

Therefore, it depends on concentration. This is one way that a monastic life supports wisdom.

Another way is through the monastic culture. Having an environment with other highly-trained scholars and meditators allows you to benefit from their years of developing wisdom. You can learn from those living friends in the Dharma, and you can learn more from past Dharma masters. You will be able dedicate more time than the average person to the pursuit of study of the textbooks that explain about the nature of consciousness and how to understand reality.

You will have time to memorize texts, which allows you to very deeply absorb their meaning in a way not possible through just reading or listening. You will have opportunities to discuss with your monastic colleagues, whether it’s in the structured format of Nalanda Debate that emphasizes adherence to logical soundness of your interpretations of teachings, or even just through ordinary discussion and sharing of ideas.

All of these will serve to enhance your intelligence and understanding of the Dharma, leading to Pramana – cognitive states of doubt-free knowledge that clearly ascertain various attributes of our reality, such as impermanence, suffering, and selflessness. These then can be transformed into direct perceptions of the nature of reality through training over time.

There is just as much diversity in personality among monks and nuns as there are among laypeople. The one thing that someone considering monastic life really needs is a solid understanding of the core teaching of Buddhism – the Four Noble Truths.

If you contemplate the Four Truths thoroughly and come to the conclusion that no matter how successful your life is in any ordinary sense of success, you will still not have the happiness you seek, then monastic life may be suitable for you. That would mean, in essence, you seek the happiness of liberation and awakening. Seeking that for oneself and for all other living beings are suitable motivations to ordain.

For more points of reflection regarding monastic life, please read the excellent handbook Preparing for Ordination, compiled by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron. Clicking the title will open the .pdf on your device.

Functionally speaking, one can begin training like a monastic before receiving the novice ordination vow. If you begin to simplify your life, settle out your romantic relationships, regularly attend teachings from a qualified teacher, and begin some kind of routine of practice and study, then you are starting to think and live more like a monastic.

Monastic life officially begins when you request and receive the novice ordination or vow of a Getsul(ma)/Sramanera(i) from a Preceptor (Khenpo/Acharya). At that point you should already have an arrangement to live in and be supported by a monastic community.

Some monastic centers offer a pre-ordination training (often called Anagarika training, where you hold 8 precepts including celibacy and live with the monastic Sangha).

There is no program for pre-monastic training currently available at the Forest of Wisdom, but such training is available elsewhere. If you’re interested in pursuing the monastic life, an excellent introduction is the three-week Exploring Monastic Life course offered each summer at Sravasti Abbey in Washington state, USA. This program is exploratory and does not commit you to taking monastic ordination.

To learn about and register for the Exploring Monastic Life program, please visit https://sravastiabbey.org/program-overview/exploring-monastic-life/

Yes! Bet you couldn’t see that answer coming…

Western Buddhism or American Buddhism is something of a toddler now and we don’t know exactly how it will look when it matures. One thing that’s clear is that people still need opportunities to learn and to practice the Dharma. And those opportunities are largely connected to the existence of Dharma spaces. Buddhist monasteries offer this to society and the community – a place to come and do Dharma.

While local Dharma centers are also places to do and learn Dharma, they are different from monasteries. Monasteries belong to the public. They are open. They are free. They are meant for all, and they host people who are experts in Dharma and can impart their expert knowledge and advice to others.

When a lay person teaches meditation, they need income to support their family. When monastics teach meditation, people might likewise make financial offerings to support the community, but 100% of those financial resources are reinvested into the Dharma and the Sangha community. That means they’re making it possible for you to come back again in the future, always knowing there’s a place where you can learn and practice more. Again, a lay teacher also needs income to continue to teach the Dharma, but their income will be split with a spouse and kids who may not be invested in sustaining the Dharma.

The remainder of the discussion will address more directly what it means to preserve the teachings of Buddha and how monasteries are uniquely suited to do so.

Even to begin to answer the question of what American Buddhism is or what it should be, there are a few precursor steps that help to frame such a dialogue – these include making a few important distinctions. For one, we can see that there’s a difference between cultural forms and the Dharma teaching itself. Then within the Dharma teaching, there is a difference between the teachings that come out as words, what is communicated from one person to another, and then the teaching that is experienced in the mind of a practitioner. These two are commonly referred to as the Transmitted Teachings and the Realized Teachings.  

All of this is to say that no matter what happens with how Buddha’s teachings are explained and no matter what kinds of symbols or physical forms come to be meaningful for followers of the Buddha, the Realized Teachings must still be a living experience within the minds of practitioners.

These living experiences may be induced in slightly different ways from one culture to another, but the Realized Teaching itself will be constant across time and place.  In other words, things like the mind of great compassion, the worldview that knows emptiness, and bodhicitta, will be more or less the same for all people.

This brings us to the need for monasteries even in the modern world. While there may be less need for certain ritualistic elements of traditional monastic institutions, the value of having a place with the required infrastructure to engage in a dedicated, full-time exploration of Buddha’s Transmitted Teachings and subsequent production of Realized Teachings is as evident as ever.

Some of the basic principles of a monastic community – such as celibacy, following the community guidelines and schedule, following the head teacher or Abbot’s instructions, etc – simply ensure that the community stays harmonious and focused, so that each member of the Sangha can have success in their study and practice. This remains as true for the USA today as it was for India 2500 years ago. The benefits of a monastic community speak to some very basic elements of human psychology and how people function in various relationships.

What’s more, because the Transmitted Teachings – the texts and books recording what the Buddha said and then later commentaries by other accomplished practitioners – are so vast and cover such a wide range of difficult topics in philosophy and cognitive science, without a group of people dedicated to many years of full-time study, there is no way to continue the presence of these teachings in the world. They will become musty sheets of paper gathering dust.

When we talk about the teachings as they’re experienced – the Realized Teaching – we’re really talking about everything that the Buddha said being put into real-life practice. This includes the Vinaya teachings about the proper conduct for monastics.

Who else can have the living experience of the Vinaya teaching besides a monastic? Observing the monk’s or nun’s vow is itself preservation of the Realized Teachings. The moment the last Bhikshu or Bhukshuni in the world passes away, then the full Dharma as taught by our teacher, the Buddha, has been lost. As the Buddha himself said – wherever there is a Bhikshu or Bhikshuni purely observing the Vinaya, the Dharma is there in that place.

The necessity for monasteries and monastic practitioners, then, comes down to the necessity to sustain the Buddha’s teachings in our world.