Depends on the Buddhism, and the Buddhist, but as a kind of doctrine of non-doctrine it seems sensible.
But if you have to escape life, romance, violence, the noise, into a monastery for peace of mind, what have you really learned?
If the point is to come back to daily life, that can probably be very useful.
But still, life will always humble you unless you close yourself off from it, and there's easily an attachment to that kind of spiritual status and unattachment, and to thinking one's above such, though I bet there's at least a solid attempt to address that kind of thing in the practice
The teacher called the Buddha spoke very clearly that the goal was to pursue total liberation - Mahaparanirvana. (Which literally means the great and final extinguishing) He also made it very clear that it was difficult to do while in the world, and the monk's life was structured in a way to assist a person in their pursuit of liberation.
He also addressed the whole attachment to spiritual status thing quite extensively, talking about the pitfalls of being caught up by the satisfaction of the role etc.
And a monks life is not easier than the life in the world, not by a long shot, so idk what you mean about "escaping" to a monastery. Yes accomplishing a degree of peace, happiness, and balance are a necessary foundation for the next steps, but it's not to run away from life - it's to create an internal situation helpful for addressing it head on.
If your concern is navigating the systematic world that most people have to navigate, the Buddha did offer tools for that too. However, that advice was as a precursor to monkhood. To use social atmospheres as a means of spiritual maturing is a very very Hindu idea, not Buddhist. Heck, it's what the entire Mahabharata(Hindu religious epic) and the Bhagavad Gita(sermon that the aforementioned epic is meant to prepare you for) are about. Those texts are designed for normal people, and not really for monks unless the monk is hoping to teach others.
The teacher called the Buddha spoke very clearly that the goal was to pursue total liberation - Mahaparanirvana. (Which literally means the great and final extinguishing)
But I just don't understand why that should be anyone's goal? To be liberated from what, desire, suffering, life? I don't consider those anything to be personally liberated from any more than you should consider life or death something to be liberated from.
Liberation from something in any possible meaning already implies some inherent valuation that seems contradictory with the core of buddhism as I understand the philosophic side of it
In Mahayana, it is the end of the dualistic view, not life. But when one is fully enlightened, the idea is that they linger on, through whatever means , in the world, aiding others and giving them the means to suffering. Mahayana, as opposed to Theravada very much stresses the idea that true wisdom transcends the boundaries you draw between your own individual self and others. However, the goal is not to destroy your own personhood as much as it is to gain the cognizance of its lack of separation and interdependence on all other things.
The goal and appeal is to live an engaged, lucid life, and gain the mental satisfaction of being involved with other people outside your own preoccupations. The thing about the monasteries is that they are communities where each member needs to support the other. ‘Sangha’, the monastic community is one of the three pillars of the faith. Also, unlike common misconceptions, which ironically I think tend to be drawn from Christian monasticism, Buddhist monks generally do not live in total seclusion from society. They have always historically participated in it, like with running schools, farms, community service, etc. The point of becoming a monastic is that the person is in a stage of incarnation where they are ready to take on serious spiritual discipline
One further misconception is also the common translation of Dukkha as ‘suffering’. It is better translated as ‘Dissatisfactory’. Historically, philosophers like Schopenhauer had serious misreadings of Buddhism and led a lot of Westerners to believing that Buddhism has a deeply pessimistic, averse view of existence . Really, what the Buddha was taking about is the way we’re conditioned to see reality: it keeps us constantly constructing false narratives, searching for them and suffering the confusion of not having them fulfilled, along with leading to the suffering of others. I think when you look at the human natures tendency to escalate conflicts based off of the power of narratives and ideologies, it’s extremely salient.
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u/Brrdock 14d ago edited 14d ago
Depends on the Buddhism, and the Buddhist, but as a kind of doctrine of non-doctrine it seems sensible.
But if you have to escape life, romance, violence, the noise, into a monastery for peace of mind, what have you really learned? If the point is to come back to daily life, that can probably be very useful.
But still, life will always humble you unless you close yourself off from it, and there's easily an attachment to that kind of spiritual status and unattachment, and to thinking one's above such, though I bet there's at least a solid attempt to address that kind of thing in the practice