Are Monks Allowed To Drink Alcohol?

Are Monks Allowed To Drink Alcohol
HOME ARTICLES Thai Monks who Drink and Their Lay Supporters A Buddhist monk has his picture taken at Wat Saket temple as the sun sets in Bangkok on November 9, 2021. (Photo: Jack TAYLOR / AFP) Recent media reporting about a Thai monk caught drunk and indecently exposed follows a long line of attention-grabbing headlines about monastic misbehaviour. Even so, Thai attitudes about such rule-breaking are more nuanced than these reports would suggest.

Along with games of frivolous water play, many Thais mark the Songkran New Year festival by drinking.
The celebration of the holiday in April 2022 saw a monk in northeastern Nakhon Ratchasima Province drink himself into a stupor, only to be discovered passed out with his robe askew.
Having been found indecently exposed with a bottle of ‘ 40 Degrees ‘ rice whiskey nearby, he claimed that there was nothing wrong with drinking, jumped into a vehicle and drove away.

This type of story — of the genre ” monks behaving badly “— appears regularly in the Thai media. The ethnographer Brooke Schedneck labels such reports as ” everyday scandals ” used to police monastic bodies. Thai netizens resort to such policing for reasons ranging from prurient interest, to defence of the de facto (if not – yet – de jure) national religion, to concerns about the decline of the dhamma, a millennial anxiety across Buddhist history that the teachings of the Buddha will disappear from human knowledge.

Frequently popping up as local interest events that quickly lose the public’s attention, these stories usually focus on one of four types of monastic misdeeds: drinking alcohol, driving, embezzlement or sexual activity.
Occasionally, one of these stories rises to national attention because the misbehaving monk is a high-ranking member of the Thai Sangha or just because the story is so juicy.

The 2013 case of a monk discovered flying in a private jet with Ray-Bans and a Gucci handbag is the prime example of the latter. Coverage of one of these stories in the national media provokes handwringing over the state of Thai Buddhism, its commodification, and the failure of monastic institutions like the Supreme Sangha Council to properly govern monks.

While these stories contribute to anxiety about a crisis in Thai Buddhism, most monks are simply ordinary people. They have been breaking the rules of the monastic code of Theravada Buddhism, or Vinaya, for roughly 2,500 years, just as long as other monks have been breaking these rules. While some of the acts are horrific and contribute to anxiety over the end of the dhamma, there is also politics about inappropriate monastic activities which naturalises a specific way of being a monk (quiet and apolitical) and demonises other ways (boisterous and political).

Handwringing in the press and social media also ignores the attitude of lay folk toward supporting low-level infractions of the Vinaya. The alleged ‘crimes’ of the monk in Nakhon Ratchasima are, in fact, ambiguous. Driving a car is not an infraction of the Vinaya but rather something that the Supreme Sangha Council forbade of monks not quite a decade ago.

When interviewed, Thais, lay and monastic, have generally said that the injunction was made because it seemed mai suai (unattractive) for monks to drive and that this might damage people’s faith or confidence in Buddhism. They have also indicated that the monk’s intention matters; a monk driving a car for a good reason would not bother them.

While these stories contribute to anxiety about a crisis in Thai Buddhism, most monks are ordinary people and have been breaking the rules of the monastic code of Theravada Buddhism, or Vinaya, for roughly 2,500 years — just as long as other monks have been upholding them.

The injunction against drinking alcohol is also more slippery than it might seem. Admittedly, the five precepts that lay Buddhists agree to follow say that one should refrain from drinking alcohol and it is also one of the basic rules that novices and fully ordained monks are responsible for following.

However, in the Vinaya, it is a fairly minor offence—a pacittaya, something that merely requires a monk to confess. While contemporary Thai society has raised the seriousness of this offence by having police take monks to their superiors and requiring the superior to disrobe them, this is not an eternal Theravada practice nor is it universally followed in Thailand.

The Nakhon Ratchasima monk is not the first to say that he did nothing wrong by drinking. A number of monks have over the years given a variety of excuses why alcohol is not a problem, likening it to medicine or saying it is permissible if one drinks only ‘just a little bit’, or ‘as long as you don’t get drunk’.

Many Buddhists would disagree, but the matter is not as clear-cut as we might suspect. Veteran anthropologists have shared stories about monks drinking at village festivals in North and Northeast Thailand in the 1950s and 1960s, though, interestingly they never published these stories.

We might also ask where monks get their alcohol. If most Thai monasteries do not have stills out back and Theravada monks are not craft brewers, someone, presumably a lay person, is buying it for them. The person may be buying it on the orders of the monk or as a donation to the monk – a ‘ bad gift ‘, as it were.

What this means is that at least some Thai lay people think that monks drinking alcohol is not such a big deal. There is in the story from Nakhon Ratchasima at least a suggestion that the problem was not alcohol per se, but rather a pattern of drinking and behaviour that suggested that the monk did not fulfill his monastic responsibilities in other ways.

What alcohol do monks drink?

I know it is a bit late to say Happy New Year but we will say it anyway. How are your New Year Resolutions going or were you wise enough not to make any? Recently, we hosted our first in-person event of the year. It was a bit different to normal as it was a speaking gig only.

We did not have the luxury and distraction of drinks as we both spoke but we had fun and the audience loved it. Our client was based between the City of London and the City of Westminster and as this was an area that would have been filled with monasteries, we thought we would take a look at the impact of monks on what we drink today.

We loved doing the research for this event. It gives you a totally different view point on some alcoholic drinks and spirits that we enjoy so we thought we would share some of our findings in a series of posts. Here’s our first offering It is difficult to think of London being dominated by the physical and spiritual presence of enormous monastic edifices so if you are unsure of which orders had a foothold here, just take a look at some London street names and you can piece together the lost world of the holy brethren.

These have been gone since the violent Reformation undertaken during the reign of Henry VIII but a few clues remain.
Let’s start with Carmelite Street which is very close to Whitefriars Street.
These were the one and the same.
Carmelite monks first settled in Aylesford, Kent in 1242 and came to London and founded a monastery in the area where you will find the street names.

They were called Whitefriars as they wore white habits which brings us on to Blackfriars. We would have heard of the tube station which, along with the wonderful Art Nouveau pub, The Black Friar mark out the south-western corner of the where this Dominican order’s lands started.

St Bartholomew’s monastery was founded in 1123 by Rahere, a jester in the court of Henry I and this is still a hospital of the same name that stands where its precincts would have been lain out all those years before. There were nine Carthusian monasteries in England and you might not recognise the name but you may be more used to its anglicized version – Charterhouse.

This gave its name to Charterhouse Square and several streets in the City of London including Carthusian Street, Charterhouse Street and even the public school, Charterhouse. And of course, Temple; recently made famous by Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Temple has a direct link to the Knights Templar and the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem or Knights Hospitaller.

The inns are a legacy to the tradition of hospitality that was shown to visitors to the monasteries; not only accommodation but food and plenty of drink created by the various orders.
In this country, we had mead (made from honey from bees kept by monks) but around Europe there were plenty of other interesting, fortified wines and spirits evolving and being released to the general population as Northern Europe left the Church of Rome for Protestantism.

Now if we think about monks and monasteries and the kind of drinks they would be producing the most obvious one of course is Mead. If you don’t know already Mead in essence a honey wine. It is honey and water fermented by yeast. which can also have additional flavours from fruit, spices and other ingredients.

Whilst popularised by medieval settings the history of Mead dates much further back.
So far in history that no one really is sure when it was created but here are just a few moments throughout history where it appears: Mead predates beer and wine and a version of it comes from 3000 BC in the African bush.

Mead was created naturally in the hollowed-out crowns of baobab and other similar trees. During the dry season, wild bees would nest in the hollow of the trees and make honey; during the rainy season, the hollows would fill up with water. This combination of water, honey, naturally occurring yeast, created an early example of Mead which was enjoyed by early African tribes and bushmen.

Nowledge of this naturally occurring alcohol travelled beyond Africa and into the Middle East and Europe. Mead can also be traced back to the ancient greeks and romans. The closer to home, the early Celts and Norsemen fell under the spell of mead and used it for their mystical and religious ceremonies.

Another bit of fun trivia for you is that the term Honeymoon comes from drinking Mead. A newly wed couple would drink honey (aka mead) for a moon (aka a month) as this was believed to have helped fertility. So mead has been enjoyed by people all over the world for thousands of years.

But why did the Monks become famous for it? Monks kept bees because they made Beeswax Candles which were better than candles made of animal fat which ‘spat’ as as they burned, not to mention the smell.
Honey was a by product of the beeswax production which was used to sweeten food and brew Mead.
Monks In London and all over England would have enjoyed mead but around Europe there were plenty of other interesting, fortified wines and spirits evolving and being released to the general population as Northern Europe left the Church of Rome for Protestantism.

Come back again for the next instalment of monks and how they developed and masted liqueurs and spirits.

Are monks allowed to drink beer?

Supporting the Monastery with Traditional Trappist Beer – Of course, beer is perhaps the best-known lifeline among enterprising monks. But beyond Belgium and the Trappist breweries throughout Europe, there’s one right here in the States. After making and selling jams and jellies for more than 60 years to support their community, the monks of Saint Joseph’s Abbey outside Spencer, Mass., began to realize that to stay on the property with 50 monks, they’d need an alternative source of income.

That’s where beer came into the picture.
When it came time to decide whether to take the plunge, “we had the greatest majority vote for anything we ever did,” recalls Father Isaac Keeley.
In case you’re wondering, monks do drink beer (though they don’t eat meat).
But before they had their own brewery, the monastery would enjoy alcohol only sparingly, at big feasts or holidays, says Father Isaac.

Once he got into researching beer — in particular, after enjoying a tall glass of St. Bernardus at a local tavern — he realized what they’d been missing. “I scandalize some beer aficionados, but that was the day I discovered beer can really be a lot more than the ‘ Clydesdales beer,'” he says.

The monks enlisted the help of a few local brewers — as well as a monk who trained at a Trappist brewery in Belgium — to help them build a process and brewery that would align with the traditional Trappist rules.
The first brew they released, Spencer Trappist Ale, was inspired by patersbier (Latin for “father’s beer”).

Normally, this style has a low alcohol content around 4.5 percent, but Father Isaac says he knew that if they wanted to sell any to the public, they’d need a higher alcohol content. The result was a 6.5 percent beer that he describes as having a hue “the color of sunrise at Nauset Beach on Cape Cod on the third Monday of September.” Needless to say, he’s learned a lot about beer since growing from a “helper” on the project to director of Spencer Brewery,

He’s also had to get creative during Covid-19 when sales of draft beer came to a screeching halt, he says.
The upside is that for the first half of 2020, packaged-beer sales were slightly ahead of the same period last year, and they’re continuing to bring in revenue for the monastery by contracting out their brewery space, currently larger than they need, to other local brewers.

The monastery itself is still closed at press time, but Father Isaac is already brainstorming how he can expand when things begin to normalize. “It’s a crazy journey for a contemplative monk to be doing this,” he says, “but it’s stretched me so much.” Published: September 9, 2020

What are monks not allowed to do?

Monks are forbidden to divine either good fortune or future tragedy by observing heavenly omens, thereby deceiving both the tennō and the people. They are also forbidden to possess and study military tracts; to commit murder, rape, robbery or other crimes; and to feign enlightenment.

Can a monk have a girlfriend?

Date Like a Monk ‘We’re not here to impress each other. We’re here to connect.’

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Are Monks Allowed To Drink Alcohol Credit. Brian Rea Published Jan.13, 2023 Updated March 21, 2023 Ten years ago, when I was 25, I hadn’t been on a date — or even considered the possibility of romance — for over three years. During that time, I had served as a Hindu monk, meditating, studying ancient scripture, traveling and serving throughout India and Europe with my fellow monks.

Monks are famously celibate, but celibacy doesn’t just mean you’re not having sex. It means you’re not interacting with other people in a way that could be considered romantic. The Sanskrit word for monk, brahmacharya, means “the right use of energy.” It’s not that romance and sexual energy are wrong.

But my practice teaches that we all have a limited amount of energy, which can be directed in multiple directions or one. When energy is scattered, it’s difficult to create momentum or impact. As monks, we were trained to direct our energy toward understanding our psyches, how we see the world and interact with it.

If you haven’t developed a deep understanding of your motivations and obstacles, it’s harder to move through life with patience and compassion.
We tried to avoid anything that would distract us from this mission of self-realization, be it video games, partying with friends, or dating.
When I returned to London as a monk, one of my old friends said, “We used to be each other’s wing man.

But you don’t drink anymore. You don’t hit on girls. Now what are we going to do?” Becoming a monk profoundly shifted my focus. During college in London, I had devoted so much time to a long-distance girlfriend that I missed most of my classes. Celibacy allowed me to use that time and space to understand myself and develop the ability to still my mind.

I thought I would be a monk forever, but I decided it was no longer the path for me.
When I left the ashram for good, I hadn’t watched TV, seen a movie, or listened to music in three years.
I didn’t know who had won the World Cup or who the prime minister of the United Kingdom was.
And, apparently, I had no idea how to impress a woman.

I had forgotten that I shouldn’t even be trying to impress a woman. Just months out of the ashram, I was already snapping back into societal norms of romance, trying to make the best first impression — and failing. “Do you think they have anything vegan on the menu?” my date said.

We were at Locanda Locatelli, one of the best restaurants in London, but as a vegan, she sounded more worried than excited. “They’re famous for their fresh pasta,” I said, trying to sound optimistic, but I had signed us up for a special tasting menu and didn’t know how much choice she would have. “Fresh pasta usually has eggs,” she said, “but we’ll see.” Radhi and I had been volunteering together to organize a charity event.

She thought people should be excited to attend from the moment they left the tube station, so we arranged for a street performer to play his trash can drum by the exit next to a sign for our event. Radhi had been the heartbeat of our team, and I already knew I liked her.

Once we had pulled off the event, I started planning this date, booking the restaurant a month in advance. I had little money — I was tutoring college students — and had taken her to see “Wicked” before dinner. The night was going to cost me nearly a week’s income, and I wanted it to be perfect. When we slid into a buttery leather booth, I winced; vegans aren’t known to appreciate leather booths.

But the lights were low, the ambience beautiful, and I was still hoping to hear how impressed she was. “The service is amazing, right?” I said. “And this pasta — ” She smiled politely, but she wasn’t eating much. After dinner, I drove her home and dropped her off outside her apartment.

She thanked me and waved a friendly goodbye, but the evening had fallen flat. Clearly, I had no idea what I was doing. I had joined the monks because I wanted to find my purpose and serve others. I didn’t leave because I rejected anything I had studied. On the contrary, I left because I wanted to bring what I had learned out into the world.

I was starting to do so now that I was back home in London, delivering small workshops about the intersection of eastern philosophy and modern life for anyone who showed up. But I hadn’t yet figured out how to bring what I had learned to my dating life.

Monks never try to impress anyone.
As a monk, you strive to master your ego and your mind.
We think love is its own puzzle, but when you explore the dark lanes of your own mind, as monks are trained to do, you develop patience, understanding and compassion toward yourself, which you can then bring to all your relationships.

Going through the process of learning to love yourself, as monks are also trained to do, teaches you how to love someone else. The fancy restaurant was a show-off move. My ego wanted to charm Radhi, wanted her to say, “Wow, thank you for bringing me here.

How did you score this reservation?” Instead of what she actually said: “I’d be perfectly happy to go to a grocery store and buy some bread.” My ego wanted to look good and win her admiration, but it had distracted me from what I truly wanted, which was to get to know Radhi and have her get to know me.

Before I became a monk, my dating habits hadn’t gotten me anywhere. Driven by my insecurity or need to feel valued, I did nice things for women so they would validate me. When I became a monk, I happily left that dynamic behind, but now, out of habit, I had reverted to it.

My monk teachers never tried to impress me and never wanted me to impress them. When I thought back on all I had learned from them, through hours of classes and study and stories, one simple gesture stood out as representative of so much of the philosophy: the bow. When we saw a senior monk, we bowed before them.

My teacher always bowed to me in return. Older than I was, wiser, and more worldly, compassionate and pure, he bowed out of respect and connection. I didn’t have to do anything or be anyone for him to bow before me. Our bows said that no matter who you are, no matter your position or background, you’re never better or worse than anyone else, and you’re not trying to be.

That was the underlying belief I wanted to bring to Radhi, a belief on which I hoped to build our relationship: We’re not here to impress each other. We’re here to connect. To recognize and accept each other. The bow was the greatest lesson I had learned about love. Radhi would later tell me that her community was concerned about her dating a former monk.

Her grandmother worried I would leave her and return to the ashram. Her friends assumed I was against watching TV or going to movies and imagined that all we could do together was sit and meditate. Even Radhi herself worried that by spending time with me she might be taking me away from my spiritual practice.

But monk training is mind training. Being a monk may have closed me off to certain things — I haven’t gone back to eating meat or drinking alcohol, for example — but it opened my mind to understanding and acceptance. I respected that everyone was moving at their own pace, in their own time. My way wasn’t right or wrong; they weren’t too slow or too fast.

I learned to see the essence of a monk in everyone I met. Everyone has a part of themselves that is compassionate, loving and beautiful. I saw that essence in Radhi the moment we met. She didn’t need to go to an ashram to acquire it. She was more of a monk than I would ever be, and we didn’t need a fancy restaurant to connect.

For our next date, I took her to an outdoor ropes course, where we helped each other swing from trees, climb walls and walk narrow balance beams.
We were bowing to each other, in our way.
Radhi and I have been together ever since.
I brought the lesson of the bow and all I learned from the monks to our relationship, and now I teach those lessons to others.

The monks, who say nothing about romantic love, had taught me everything I needed to know about romantic love. : Date Like a Monk

Why do monks love beer?

Catholic monks had a strong hand in the history of brewing beer Scott Mertie, a parishioner at Holy Family Church in Brentwood, followed his passion for the history of brewing beer around the world and back to Nashville to relaunch the Nashville Brewing Co.

Like universities and hospitals, the roots of the modern beer brewing industry run through the Catholic monasteries of Europe. And although many of the monasteries are gone, their beer lives on as some of the most well-known brands in the world, said Scott Mertie, a parishioner at Holy Family Church in Brentwood, a beer historian, and the owner of Nashville Brewing Co. “Their legacy is their breweries,” Mertie said of the monasteries. Mertie, who also is the president of Kraft Healthcare Consulting, LLC, an affiliate of KraftCPAs PLLC, recently gave a talk to the Catholic Business League on the history of beer and its ties to the Catholic Church.

Can a monk have a wife?

The root of all suffering, according to Buddhism, is craving—longing for objects of the senses and wanting things to be one way and not wanting them to be another. Freedom from suffering, on the other hand, is to be found in the extinction, or “nirvāṇa”, of this very craving.

Naturally, the path of practice that leads to this goal has renunciation—letting go of the things we crave and desire—at its core.
While the vast majority of Buddhist followers practise their creed in the midst of worldly life, there have always been some who aspire to commit more fully to the path of renunciation than what such a lifestyle can afford.

It was in order to honour and encourage such aspirations that the Buddha, himself a monk and renunciant, created the Buddhist monastic order, or Sangha, almost two and a half millennia ago. In the centuries that followed, the Buddhist movement grew and spread throughout the Indian subcontinent and beyond.

As it did so, the Sangha grew and spread along with it. Today the Sangha, if taken as a whole, is the world’s largest and oldest monastic order. The monk or nun in monastic garb and with a shaven head is also, besides images of the Buddha, the most recognizable physical representation of Buddhism. Part of what sets members of the Sangha, or any monastic community for that matter, apart from the rest of society, are the various renunciatory rules and precepts governing the lives of its members.

Of these, perhaps the most central are those concerning celibacy. According to the Vinaya-piṭaka, the section of the Buddhist canon concerned with the monastic code, or Vinaya, the first rule the Buddha ever laid down was a prohibition on sexual intercourse.

Not only does lust constitute an exceedingly strong and persistent form of sensual desire, acting upon the sexual impulse also leads to strong attachments and entanglements with the world.
Sexual activity is therefore particularly problematic in the context of a renunciatory spiritual practice and strikes at the very heart of the monastic concept.

This helps explain why sexual intercourse by a monk or nun was deemed one of the heaviest offences against the Vinaya code, on a par with theft and intentional homicide. Any fully ordained monk or nun committing the offence is expelled for life—automatically and with immediate effect.

With the passage of time, and as Buddhism became integrated into societies and cultures very different from that of its original Indian homeland, many of the lesser monastic rules were subtly altered or ignored altogether. As monks and nuns began growing their own food (itself constituting multiple minor violations), many communities scrapped the practice of mendicancy, or relying for their sustenance on offerings from the lay community; the injunction against handling money became overlooked by most; and in the colder climates to the north of India, monks and nuns grew accustomed to taking food in the evening, in defiance of the rule against eating after midday.

Still, the basic, fundamental precepts appear to have been maintained by most. To this day, Buddhist monks and nuns in almost every traditional Buddhist country are still expected to adhere to a monastic lifestyle and are enjoined from getting married and starting families.

As far as appearances go, the Buddhist clergy of Japan does not differ substantially from its counterparts elsewhere.
Its members live in temples or monasteries, wear monastic robes, and shave their heads.
Appearances, however, can be deceptive, for Japanese male Buddhist clerics do not generally observe monastic precepts, nor are they expected to.

In fact, the great majority are married—at a whopping 90 per cent, the share is significantly higher than for the population in general. It is common practice in the Zen tradition for new clerics to spend time in training monasteries, where they temporarily live according to monastic rules and regulations.

In some sects, such as those of the Rinzai school, holders of high clerical office are supposedly expected to remain celibate for life.
There are also, to be sure, some clerics who on their own initiative choose to live according to the monastic precepts.
But for most, getting married is not just tolerated, it has become almost a requirement.

Producing a son who can take over as temple custodian is often the only way for an abbot to ensure continuity from one generation to the next. The history leading up to the present situation is a complex one. The male clergy of the Jōdo Shinshū, or True Pure Land School, have been openly non-celibate since the time of its founder, eight centuries ago.

For the other denominations, however, this only became the case beginning in the late nineteenth century. Under the Tokugawa shogunate government, which ruled the country from 1603 to 1868, precept violations by non-Shinshū monks and nuns were serious criminal offences. Although prosecutions were few, the penalties could be severe: monks caught being too friendly with the ladies, for instance, might find themselves banished to some far-away island or, in some cases, even subjected to public execution.

Still, non-celibate monks outside Jōdo Shinshū may have been far more prevalent than the limited number of prosecutions would seem to indicate. Accounts of non-celibate clergy go far back in time. From as early as the Nara period in the eighth century, there are reports of large numbers of self-ordained monks.

These were men who took on the monastic role without going through government-approved procedures.
While some were genuine renunciants, many are thought to have been laymen who only pretended to be monks in order to escape onerous taxes.
It is also well-established that many so-called monseki, aristocratic abbots of the medieval period, had families and passed on their abbacies in father-to-son lineages.

Around the end of the eighth century, Saichō, the founder of the Tendai school, one of the main schools of Japanese Buddhism, instituted a reform of the ordination procedures. Perhaps his intention was simply to remedy a situation where many monks and nuns had disposed with ordination procedures all together; perhaps he wanted to bring the procedures more in line with Mahayana tradition by de-emphasising the Vinaya aspect.

Whatever the case may be, as a result of his reform the traditional Vinaya-based ordination procedures became gradually replaced with ones based on the Bodhisattva precepts of the Mahayana Brahmajāla Sūtra.
These eventually became the standard method of ordaining new clergy, not just for members of the Tendai school itself but for virtually all monks and nuns in Japan.

The rules of the Vinaya are specifically, and exclusively, directed at monks and nuns who have been fully accepted into the Sangha according to the Vinaya’s own procedures. This means that, at least technically speaking, Japanese monks and nuns were from then on no longer bound by its rules.

This is of some significance as the Bodhisattva precepts of the Brahmajāla Sūtra are not specifically monastic. They may equally well be given to committed lay practitioners, as they often were. For while the Vinaya contains injunctions against all forms of sexual activity, the Bodhisattva precepts merely proscribe “sexual misconduct”.

In the case of monastics, it is true, this was usually understood to mandate total sexual abstinence. However, since that is not explicitly spelled out, there always existed a certain amount of wriggle-room absent from the Vinaya’s blanket prohibition.

An even more definite and far-reaching departure from the monastic model came four centuries later.
Shinran, a follower of the Pure Land doctrine, had been a monk from a young age but was at one point defrocked and forced into exile, perhaps because of an ambivalent attitude to the monastic precepts.

This, however, did not stop him from carrying on his religious vocation. A tireless preacher, he was highly revered by his mostly peasant followers. He married a nun and famously pronounced himself to be “neither monk nor layman”. Arguing that the monastic form, along with meditation and other nan-gyō, or “difficult practices”, was no longer suitable for the current age, he encouraged his followers instead to place all their faith in the saving powers of the celestial Buddha Amitābha (Jp.: Amida).

This ‘populist’ approach to the Dharma proved hugely popular, and the school which grew out of Shinran’s ministry, the Jōdo Shinshū, eventually became—and continues to be—the largest of all the Japanese Buddhist schools. Unlike the hidden non-celibacy which may or may not have been rampant in the other schools, the clergy of Shinshū, who had their own non-monastic ordination procedures, were openly non-celibate.

During the period of the Tokugawa shogunate, they were specifically exempted from the criminalisation of non-celibacy and other precept violations enacted against the clergy of the other Buddhist schools. A peculiar feature of the period was the uses to which the Buddhist clergy was put by the government.

Entrusted with registering and keeping a tab on the entire populace, they came to function somewhat like de-facto government agents.
To facilitate this, the great majority lived spread out in small village temples where there was little or no opportunity for contact with other clerics.
This made it more difficult to maintain strict monastic standards; motivation to do so may have been low; and they were also more exposed to members of the opposite sex than their predecessors had been in the large monastic complexes of the medieval era.

Under such circumstances, it is not unlikely that some members of the ‘monastic’ Buddhist schools decided to discreetly emulate their Shinshū colleagues. As was the case in post-medieval Europe, criticism of the clergy became commonplace among Japanese intellectuals from the late sixteenth century onward.

Several texts from the Tokugawa period castigate the clergy for being decadent and sexually promiscuous. Nikujiki saitai ben, a Shinshū text from the seventeenth century lists numerous temples from the supposedly monastic schools, both contemporary and of the past, where, it alleged, monks kept wives and had families.

Reliable evidence for such claims, however, is difficult to come by. Because of the criminal nature of precept violations perpetrators naturally sought to hide their infractions, leaving very little in terms of first-hand documentation. A perhaps better place to look is the clerical marriage registrations submitted during the period following the overthrow of the shogunate in 1868.

In 1872, five years after seizing power, the new government, known as the Meiji government after the Emperor’s era name, promulgated a law that put an end to the criminalisation of precept violations.
From now on”, the law stated, “it is up to monks eat meat, get married, or grow their hair”.
A similar law for nuns followed soon thereafter.

What this meant in practice was that the government would no longer police nor act as a guardian for the Buddhist clergy. Critics have also suggested it might have been a roundabout way of undermining and disempowering the Sangha. Whatever the case, the new law was staunchly opposed by clergy leaders but welcomed by many rank-and-file clerics.

Soon large numbers opted to get married.
The speed at which this happened, as well as the extent, suggest that many were simply coming out publicly about already-existing relationships, now that it was safe to do so.
By the 1930s, when the first surveys of clerical marriage were undertaken, it appears the majority of male clerics in the non-Shinshū denominations were married.

As the new government policies had in large part been modelled on those of predominantly Protestant Western countries, the system of non-celibate clergy found in the Protestant denominations had obviously been influential. But so had the example of the Shinshū school, which is thought to have provided the main blueprint for the non-monastic form which had now come to prevail.

Today, Japan still has tens of thousands of Buddhist temples managed by almost sixty thousand mostly male clerics.
Exquisitely beautiful and deeply atmospheric, Japanese temples are great monuments to the superb traditions of the country’s artisanship and testimony to an ancient spiritual culture.
But indications of present-day religious fervour they are not.

For, whether there is a connection or not, faith in Buddhism appears to have lessened in tandem with the disappearance of the monastic tradition. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, approximately 85 million, or almost seventy per cent of the population, belong to one Buddhist sect or another.

However, in recent surveys about individual faith, only about 27 per cent of respondents considered themselves religious. Thus, the Zen devotee visiting from abroad will be disappointed to find that the enthusiasm for Zen found in certain Western circles is strikingly lacking in its country of origin.

During my own sojourn in Japan during the 1990s, I had the opportunity to attend lectures on Buddhism at a Zen-affiliated university. There, almost all my fellow students were young men from “temple families”; that is, young men whose fathers were temple priests and who were studying in order to take over the “family business”.

Students from “non-temple” backgrounds were few and far between.
The same goes for the clergy itself: it has become a mostly in-house affair, with very few outsiders seeking to join its ranks.
On a final note, it should be mentioned that there is one group of Buddhist monastics who have mostly maintained the monastic form to this day—namely the nuns.

That, however, would have been more significant if there weren’t so few of them. Unlike in neighbouring South Korea, where nuns make up half of the Sangha, and Taiwan, where nuns vastly outnumber monks, the nuns’ community in Japan is but a tiny fraction of the male clergy—a mere one thousand individuals to the latter’s sixty thousand.

Their number has been rather stable for most of the previous century.
At present, however, it appears to be decreasing due to a lack of new recruits.
The author of one Japanese-language blog post considered the situation so dismal that he or she worried there might not be a single nun left within the next couple of decades.

It is revealing that this is lamented as a cultural loss, not as a spiritual or religious one. But who, in a modern, affluent society, would want to make the sacrifices required by the monastic life for cultural reasons alone?

What monks Cannot eat?

Buddha advised monks to avoid eating 10 kinds of meat for self-respect and protection: humans, elephants, horses, dogs, snakes, lions, tigers, boars and hyenas.

Are you allowed to touch a monk?

NO TOUCHING – Do not touch people you meet and shaking hands is considered bad manners. Also, do not touch monks ever.

Do monks get paid?

If the Sangha Supreme Council can’t divert monks from material greed, civil law will have to be imposed – Thai Buddhist monks are not allowed to accumulate personal wealth for the straightforward reason that it undermines the path to nirvana as strictly identified in Theravada tradition.

However, far too many monks nowadays seem to regard the rule as a mere suggestion.
In a survey conducted by Chulalongkorn University’s Centre for Buddhism Studies, most monks said they amassed money and some even used credit and debit cards.
The practice of accumulating wealth even after ordination has been blamed for several problems involving monks at the moment.

These include the controversy surrounding Phra Dhammachayo, former abbot of the Dhammakaya Temple, who is being hunted on suspicion of laundering massive amounts of money and accepting stolen assets. The Sangha Act – the law governing the Thai monastic community – has nothing to say about physical assets belonging to monks.

That matter is covered in the Civil Code, certain clauses of which are up for amendment. Under Article 1622, monks can be beneficiaries of a will. Article 1623 says a monk’s temple can inherit his assets unless he specifically directs otherwise. Those who propose changing these articles argue that barring monks from holding any assets would ensure they spend all of their time observing religious practices, and as such would render better service as monks.

Former judge Jaran Pakdithanakul, a member of the National Legislative Assembly working group considering the amendments, says these clauses – despite being in place for more than eight decades – “clearly” contravene the intention of the Vinaya regulatory framework that guides the monastic community.

He regards money as an unnecessary burden for monks, distracting them as they tend to their finances.
Lay people often give monks money as they make their morning alms rounds and for the prayers offered at funerals.
It is no longer common for monks to refuse donations in the form of currency, as was once the case.

Times have changed. It might be all right for monks to possess small sums of money to meet their daily needs, primarily food, medicine, clothing and shelter – except that the temples already provide those daily needs, through the support of their lay patrons and neighbouring communities.

Trusted temple affairs managers, who are members of the laity, typically handle the mundane business of running the temples and handling their assets.
One major problem now is that so many monks seek to amass larger amounts of money so they can buy products and services that have nothing to do with their ambition of attaining enlightenment or their ministrations to the community.

We’ve all seen monks with smartphones and other gadgets – the stuff of worldly desires rather than spiritual goals. There is little credence to the argument that Internet access assists them in their religious studies or in sharing the Buddha’s wisdom.

These things can be done, have always been done, without high technology.
The far greater problem, of course, involves senior monks accumulating significant personal wealth.
Temple abbots have on several occasions been found after their deaths to own sizeable bank accounts.
By law, substantial assets can only belong to the temple itself, but that often hasn’t been the case.

We have seen famous preachers and influential abbots – those who tend to draw large amounts of cash in donations – transfer considerable wealth to family members or close associates before dying. Unfortunately there is no answer to these problems other than barring monks of any rank from possessing much more than pocket money.

Can a non virgin be a monk?

Are Monks Allowed To Drink Alcohol Celibacy is not the same as virginity. Virginity means a state of never having had penetrative sex. Penetrative sex is the insertion of the penis into the vagina. Abstinence means giving up a particular thing voluntarily. This thing you give up could be a particular food, drugs, drinking, or intercourse.

Celibacy refers to giving up sex by choice.
A celibate person may have had sex before, but at present and the in future, they decide not to have it.
Celibacy may have different meanings for different people.
Strict celibates refrain from all kinds of sexual activity including self-pleasuring.
Other celibates may have romantic relationships.

Some celibates engage in kissing, touching, and other methods of non-penetrative intercourse with their partners. Celibacy may be temporary or permanent. Permanent celibacy is often pledged for religious reasons. Priests, nuns, and monks take a vow of celibacy when they are initiated into the Church.

Can a monk have tattoos?

Posted on March 13 2020 How do the world’s major religions view tattoos? Not surprisingly the answers for each religion vary and are anything but simple. There are nuances and exceptions to every rule and like everything else that involves religion much is subject to interpretation. Are Monks Allowed To Drink Alcohol This bible quote is popular in chat rooms and blogs about tattoos. Someone always brings it up when discussing Christianity and tattoos. Leviticus 19:28, “Do not cut your bodies for the dead, and do not mark your skin with tattoos. I am the Lord.” Based on this quote it would seem obvious that tattoos are not acceptable in the Christian faith.

However, this quote is taken out of context and the overall passage is really a warning about not practicing Pagan rituals or witchcraft.
There are also passages from Leviticus forbidding the trimming of beards.
Leviticus 19:27, “You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.” A literal interpretation of the bible would mean not trimming your beard and eating kosher meat only because rare or bloody meat is also forbidden in the Bible.

There are quite a few devout Christians that trim their beards and eat rare cooked steak. Are they disobeying the doctrines of the Christian faith? Does trimming your beard mean you are a not a good Christian? The simple answer is no. Tattoos would fall into the same category.

Only Christians that interpret the bible literally would take issue with them. In today’s world tattoos are no more of a problem for Christians than eating a hamburger cooked rare at Five Guys would be. TATTOOS AND JUDAISM Once again Leviticus 19:28 is the primary source of debate here. Many Rabbis interpret the statement “do not mark your skin with tattoos.

I am the Lord” as relating to the worship of false idols. In their view the doctrine has to do with not marking your skin with the names of false idols or other gods. There is also the misconception that Jews that have tattoos may not be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Even if a tattoo is interpreted as a violation of Jewish law it does not prohibit a person from being buried in a Jewish cemetery.
Many Rabbis agree that sinners are not to be excluded from burial in a Jewish cemetery.
So, does a tattoo of Jimmy Hendrix or Lady Gaga qualify as idolatry? Much like Christianity there are quite a few grey areas here and there is no clear or obvious prohibition of tattoos in the Jewish faith unless they depict the name of a false god or idol.

TATTOOS AND ISLAM Islam was started in the seventh century and is a much younger faith than either Christianity or Judaism. This is important to understand when discussing tattoos and Islam. Although you may find some differing opinions most Islamic scholars believe that permanent tattoos are banned in the Muslim faith.

This stems from the fact that according to Islam your body is a creation of Allah or god. A permanent tattoo is seen and desecrating god’s work. Therefore, Henna tattoos are a popular alternative in the Muslim community. The Henna used for tattoos is temporary and can eventually be washed away (this is not to be confused with the organic henna for hair powder that is used to dye hair).

This brings up questions about other forms of body modification such as ear piercings, tanning, makeup and jewelry. According to Islamic scholars these are acceptable because they are temporary, but we are all aware that ear piercings eventually become permanent. Are Monks Allowed To Drink Alcohol TATTOOS AND HINDUISM Not only are tattoos not restricted for Hindus but Hinduism is the source for countless tattoo designs including the very popular and sacred “Om” symbol. In the past Hindu women had the name of their husband tattooed on their forearm.

It was believed that they should never speak the name of their husband, so the tattoo allowed them to communicate it more easily.
The only restriction might be a tattoo that disrespected the Hindu gods in some way.
For this reason, Hindus don’t often get images of their gods tattooed on their legs, feet or posterior.

Placement is important and you won’t often see the god Shiva anywhere below the waist on a Hindu. They are also more apt to get the name of one of their Hindu gods as a tattoo versus an image of the god itself. Hindus are very liberal when it comes to tattoos as compared to the other Abrahamic religions such as Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Are Monks Allowed To Drink Alcohol Buddhism much like Hinduism is not particularly restrictive when it comes to tattoos. Buddhists believe that the body is impermanent and so are tattoos. Because they are viewed as temporary, getting tattoos doesn’t violate any Buddhist doctrines or beliefs.

Some Buddhists say that tattoos are an unhealthy attachment to the body.
However, even monks can have tattoos and some sects actually encourage them as a way to remember Buddhist teachings.
The story often told is that the spiritual leader of Buddhism in Tibet, the Dalai Lama, once met one of his followers who was covered with tattoos and remarked “Very colorful!” No matter what your beliefs are they belong to you and you alone.

What is obvious about all the major religions and their take on tattoos is that everything depends on how you interpret or practice your religion. Some religions like Islam ban tattoos quite clearly but others like Hinduism don’t discourage them. Everyone worships in their own way and there’s no reason you can’t practice Islam, be a Christian or follow the Jewish faith while tattooed.

Can monks have cell phones?

Image supplied by: Supplied by Sara Melvin The proliferation of technology into modern culture is evident in many Buddhist monasteries With its constant elasticity and ever-changing nature, technology has been associated with popular culture and modernity, diametrically opposed to the strict guidelines of religious belief and spirituality.

Throughout my semester in Shangahi and my travels throughout China and Tibet, however, I’ve witnessed the monks’ incorporation of these two seeming opposites, in ways that matched no previous conception I had of monks, technology or the Buddhist way of life.
It’s pretty hard to get bored in a city as metropolitan as Shanghai, but every few weeks I would feel encouraged by the incessant smog polluting my lungs and my slacker-four-day-weekends to travel.

The opportunities were limitless in the country of 1.3 billion people, 34 provinces and a 1,000-page Lonely Planet guidebook. After travelling through the provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan, both bordering Tibet, I have seen my fair share of Buddhist monasteries.

When I first discovered visiting a monastery was a must-see attraction of any small town or village in rural China, I had serious doubts as to whether it would be interesting—especially considering my severe boredom while touring mid-17th century churches across Europe: all cold, dank and annoyingly similar.

To me, Buddhist and Tibetan monasteries were a lot more of a cultural experience than a gaudy church. Buddhism is one of China’s five government-sanctioned religions and there are an estimated 105 million Buddhists in China. Depending on the size, the monastery complex might house anywhere between 100 and 1,000 monks and all monasteries have prayer buildings with 35 foot Buddha statues honoured at all hours of the day.

Red-robed men of all ages bustle through the cobble-stoned alleyways and park themselves in candlelit dens of spiritual practice, somehow maintaining a perfectly tranquil environment. Monks’ way of life has been nearly static for centuries, living in enclosed communities and always moving towards the goal of spiritual development in hopes of achieving enlightenment, or Buddhahood.

To attain Buddhahood means reaching a state of freedom from obstructions to liberation, as well as obscuration to omniscience. Achieving Buddhahood—a process that might take a lifetime—can only be done with the guidance of a guru or lama, a monk’s spiritual teacher.

Similar to the incessantly obsessive texting habits and the attachment to one’s cell phone, Blackberry or iPhone that’s so common in Western society, I was surprised to find out that monks don’t differ in that aspect from university students. Not only did every young monk I encountered in China have a little flip-phone that surfaced out of the depths of their pockets every five minutes, but many were wearing globally recognizable fashion designs under their robes—Armani Exchange, Puma and Adidas, to name a few.

I also learned that although monks don’t receive salaries—they are financially supported by donations and surrounding community members—they have the option of selling traditional oil “thankga” paintings on the side. Some of the more Picasso-bound monks cash in 10,000 Yuan for their work, equivalent to about $1,400 Canadian.

Not surprisingly, with their money and paintings going for $1,400 a piece, 10 per cent of Buddhist monks own cars.
The result of easy access to modern transportation means more traveling outside the monastery and more exposure to big city life.
Tibetan monks used to bathe in a shower only once every year or two.

But after visiting cities, I found that showering more frequently is a clean living habit,” Gasang, a 23-year-old monk from Shangri-La, said. “Now I take a shower every four or five days and I often persuade other monks to do so. The Buddha will be happy if we open the sutra with clean hands.” While in Kangding, a small town in between Sichuan’s largest city Chengdu and the villages bordering northern mountainous regions, I was invited to a workshop above the prayer hall.

Two monks were assigned the job of painting the Bodhisattva statues with gold paint and summoned us through the distinctly colourful hallways and up to their workshop. Although they didn’t speak much English and I didn’t know a word of Tibetan, we somehow ended up sitting on cushions, painting Buddhas gold and exchanging e-mails.

Ahangama Rathanasiri Mahathera, Chief Monk at Toronto’s MahaVihara monastery, said technology was previously frowned upon in Buddhist monasteries, but that has shifted to accommodate changing needs. “A monk’s life depends on the followers of Buddhism—and according to the situation of the people in this modern world, people don’t have that much time to support the monks, and the monks also have to enroll in modern life,” he said.

If the temples have enough financial capabilities, they hire workers to do the daily temple activities.
But if the temple doesn’t have enough financial assets to spend on workers, the monks have to do those things themselves.
When the monks have to start working and doing labour, they don’t have enough time to do meditation.” Tenzin Ananda, a monk practicing at MahaVihira visiting from Lhasa, Tibet, said the rules for technology use amongst monks aren’t clearly defined.

“There are no restrictions for the monks to use cell phones, but in the Buddha sanctuary there was no modern technology,” he said. “When the world develops, monks also have to adapt to society and modern world. But the thing is, when they adapt to the changing world, they should not change their main principles.

They still have to follow disciplinary rules.” Mahathera said he’s caught in the middle of the moral dilemma of spirituality and technology.
I have a computer and I use the computer to send and receive e-mails,” he said.
More importantly, I use it for developing the knowledge for myself and my supporters.

Whenever I need to know something, I go to the computer and check Google. I must accept it because although there are so many bad things on the Internet, I know that if the monks use the computers, it is solely for the good purpose and there is nothing wrong in that.” Mahathera said if he needs to communicate with his students, supporters or the outside community, e-mail is often the most effective way, adding that he would never dismiss technology if it helps the Buddhist community and increases his students’ knowledge.

“Dhamma, the doctrine of Buddha, is very beneficial for the people when monks use computers,” he said. “Through computers they can send the message of the Buddha to the people.” Mahathera also said although technology can be a great tool, it can also distract monks from their daily duties and responsibilities.

“The thing is, when you start using computers, you have to spend your time mostly on the computers rather than meditating,” he said. “This detracts from the purpose of meditation.” All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor.

Why are monks chubby?

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News in Science The jolly image of rotund Friar Tuck could be only partially true, according to a recent study of skeletal remains from monks that lived during the Middle Ages. Analysis of monks who lived from 476 to 1450 AD revealed most were overweight, but perhaps not entirely jolly.

They suffered from conditions associated with obesity, such as arthritis and back problems. The findings, presented at the recent International Medieval Congress at University of Leeds in England, has shed light on their monastic lifestyle. The research could also help to explain civil unrest aimed against monasteries toward the latter part of the medieval age.

Philippa Patrick, author of the conference paper and an archaeologist at University College London, analysed the skeletal collections at the Museum of London, Patrick said that by the time most monks were 45 and over, they were three times more likely than the overall population to develop a condition linked to obesity known as DISH, diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis.

DISH affects the spine with lesions, making it harder for the person to walk and move. The monks also were three times as likely to suffer from weight-related forms of arthritis. “The biggest difference was in terms of osteoarthritis of the distal interphalangeal joints which is strongly linked with obesity in the clinical literature,” said Patrick.

“Monks were six times as likely to develop this condition than their secular counterparts.” Monks were the couch potatoes of their time She said the monks’ sedentary lifestyle coupled with overeating led to the weight gain. Obesity was unusual in medieval times, a period when many people suffered from poverty, malnutrition and deadly plagues.

Diet has been classified as ‘a form of high class diet’. That would mean very few people, only the upper echelons of society, could have managed to match the monks in terms of quality and quantity of their diet, but the inactivity probably didn’t help either,” said Patrick. She added that the monks ate animals they raised and used for secondary products, such as milk, butter, eggs and cheese.

Monasteries also had extensive complexes of fish ponds to supply fish. The monks ate fruits and nuts, but vegetables were limited mostly to beans, peas, onions, garlic and leeks. Tony Waldron, a professor of archaeology at University College London, read Patrick’s study and came to similar conclusions in his own research on monks.

DISH seems to be related to obesity and type II diabetes and is probably a multisystem hormonal disorder.
DISH occurs frequently in human skeletal remains, particularly in those recovered from monastic sites,” Waldron wrote in a paper for the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology,
Patrick believed that people today who eat high-fat diets and lead sedentary lifestyles could learn lessons from the medieval monks.

“Monks weren’t eating fast food and sitting in front of the television, but in a way the unbalanced diet and relative inactivity are comparable,” she said. “I wonder whether seeing some of these skeletal lesions might put a few people off their food and decide to pursue a more healthy lifestyle.” Monks hoarded food, which angered the middle classes While monks were expected to donate up to a third of their daily food as alms to the poor, this did not always happen.

In 1432, the monks of Peterborough were reprimanded for taking the alms food to another room and sharing it out amongst themselves,” Patrick said.
The middle classes in the 14th century, after the Great Famine and the Great Death, criticised monastery excesses.
After that, Patrick said gluttony became a common accusation against certain members of religious orders and monasteries, many of whom came from wealthy families.

Patrick’s study was funded by the U.K. Arts and Humanities Research Board, and analysed remains of monks from St Mary Graces Abbey, Tower Hill, St Saviour’s Abbey, Bermondsey and Merton Priory, all in the U.K. Tags: health, archaeology, palaeontology

Can a monk get angry?

Between enraged and engaged Buddhism: How to avoid Angry Monk Syndrome – Himal Southasian

Engaged: T hich Nhat Hanh in Hanoi Photo: Kerstin Duell

It would seem that an event with the United Nations logo plastered all over it should inherently try to be representative. As such, it seemed logical to assume that all of the various strands of Buddhism would be represented at the recent UN-sponsored conference for the Buddhist holiday of Vesak.

This, however, proved far from the case.
Indeed, top priority seemed instead to have been given to avoiding what can be referred to as ‘Angry Monk Syndrome’.
Immediately upon arriving at the United Nations Day of Vesak Conference, held on 14-17 May in Hanoi, it became apparent that there were very few Burmese or Tibetan monks in attendance.

After tracking down one of the few Tibetan monks in the vicinity, I asked him whether this was so. He nonchalantly said, “Yeah, it’s very political. I’m here as a teacher, not as a lama.” He said that he teaches occasionally in the US, and that he is a personal student of the most famous Buddhist to not be invited to the conference, the Dalai Lama.

Accounts differ here, of course: members of the International Organizing Committee, which put together the conference, claimed that an invitation had indeed been sent to the Dalai Lama’s office, but his representatives say that no invitation was ever received.
The rumour was that Thich Nhat Hanh, the renowned Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, had lobbied very hard to get the Dalai Lama invited.

Indeed, the conference would have come close to being a genuinely global event if the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh had been in attendance together. The fact that Thich Nhat Hanh himself was at the Hanoi conference at all was significant, though. After all, it was only in 2005, after four decades in exile, that Thich Nhat Hanh had returned to Vietnam.

Upon my return from the conference, I offered to show some photographs to a Tibetan monk whom I will call Lama Tenzin.
He wanted to know whether there were many Tibetans at the conference, and became slightly impatient as I searched through my 700 or so pictures.
When I finally showed him a photo of one Tibetan teacher at the conference, a monk named Lama Gangchen Rinpoche, who had presented a paper at the ‘War, Conflict and Reconciliation’ panel, Lama Tenzin almost spit on my computer screen.

“He supports Dorje Shugden!” he said. There is a schism in Tibetan Buddhist theology with regards to the issue of the deity called Dorje Shugden. The overwhelming majority of Tibetan monks support the Dalai Lama, who has publicly disallowed the propitiation of this deity.

But there are a few groups that refuse to take his direction regarding the appropriate way to relate to Dorje Shugden. Indeed, many of them vilify the Dalai Lama at press conferences, and on their temple websites; in a recent court case in Delhi, followers of Dorje Shugden even accuse the Dalai Lama of violating their religious freedom.

It seems that Lama Gangchen is one of the most prominent of the monks to disobey the Dalai Lama on this issue. So why had Lama Gangchen been one of those invited to Hanoi, amidst such an obvious deficit of Tibetan monks? A hint on the matter might be provided on the TibetInfoNet website, which suggests the political issues that could be involved.

According to information on the site, supporting Shugden – and thus becoming a ‘splittist’ within Gelugpa Buddhism, the sect headed by the Dalai Lama – is seen by some as an excellent career move.
The rush in championing the Shugden cause gives those cadres supporting it privileged access to funds and enhances their personal stature,” the site states.

“In a recently publicised letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao, Communist Party veteran Phuntsog Wangyal spoke of these cadres as people who ‘make a living, are promoted and become rich by opposing splittism.’ ” The worship of Shugden has become a kind of counter-issue: just as activists follow the Olympic torch from site to site, proponents of Shugden follow the Dalai Lama from venue to venue, shouting that he is an enemy of human rights.

To understand this surreal political display, we have to understand the larger dynamics of Angry Monk Syndrome, or AMS.
AMS and colonial history Opportunistic scrambles for political power and overt displays of anger appear particularly unseemly when they are connected with Buddhism, in large part due to the idea that Buddhism is more ‘detached’ or other-worldly than other faiths.

This high standard is in part because Buddhism has a system of inter-locking doctrines and practices designed to guard against seduction by commercial and political cooptation, but it is also a side-effect of Orientalist idealisation. In both realistic and unrealistic ways, then, Buddhists are expected to embody detachment and spiritual values.

The period from mid-2007 to mid-2008 has, however, been marked by numerous outbreaks of AMS, which causes discomfort at many levels.
For authoritarian regimes who wish to avoid meddlesome human-rights issues when bargaining with other countries, such outbreaks can be extremely inconvenient.
Buddhist monks and nuns are supposed to do more than behave well.

They are expected to personify perfection, or at least a more humanly attainable sort of superiority. They are expected to carry the burden of a discipline that most of us enjoy knowing about, but could hardly begin to sustain. This equanimity, achieved through rigorous practice, is believed to allow the individual – and a society – to triumph over gross emotions such as power-hunger, greed, jealousy and rage.

Monks, to be sure, must embody these qualities even more than ordinary individuals; and undoubtedly, the ability to overcome anger in everyday life is one of the hallmarks of a Buddhist monk. An angry monk, on the other hand, is inherently in the wrong. The Hollywood comedy Anger Management, from 2003, played on this belief for laughs, such that the lead actor’s incredibly annoying character forces a Buddhist monk to lose his temper in a most un-Buddhist manner.

The not-so-subtle theme of the movie is that anger is good for you, that you need to ‘get in touch’ with your anger. But as this film ridiculed Buddhism’s radical scepticism towards anger, the Dalai Lama has consistently denied – contrary to the Western notion – that it is better to ‘vent’.

Some Western psychologists say that we should not repress our anger but express it – that we should practice anger!” he once stated derisively.
Hollywood and the Dalai Lama can agree to disagree, but there is something more important at stake when we consider the figure of the Buddhist monk as a symbol of a certain type of political protester.

Why monks are so powerful?

Extremely Sharp Objects (& An Electric Drill) Don’t Break The Skin Of One Monk – A Shaolin monk named Zhao Rui trained his body to withstand extremely sharp objects. The skin on his temple doesn’t crack when someone uses a power drill against it. He can also bend an iron bar against his throat and lie unharmed on top of metal spikes.

How does he withstand such physical pain and torture? Shaolin monks may enter the monastery as young as the age of three.
Their days are long and filled with extreme mental ( chan ) and physical ( quan ) training.
They learn how to control an energy force known as “chi” through meditation.
It takes discipline and awareness to embody this concept.

The monks use Qi Gong and a special method of breathing with the lower abdomen to transform their bodies into armor. This allows them to withstand powerful blows, including those from dangerous—and sometimes sharp—objects. By cultivating their inner calmness, they are able to ward off mental, physical, and emotional stress. Are Monks Allowed To Drink Alcohol By Noelle Talmon, contributor for Ripleys.com. : How Shaolin Monks Obtain Their Superpowers

What do monks drink?

Buddhism and tea

Buddhism was closely associated with tea soon after it was introduced to China in the Han Dynasty(206 BC-220).
Longmen Grottoes in Henan, China

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Close ties

Monks became attached to tea by sitting in meditation. As shown in historical records, Shan Daokai, a famous monk of East Jin Dynasty, cultivated himself according to Buddhism doctrines at Zhaode Temple. He was assiduous in his practice of sitting in meditation.

To recover from fatigue and drive away sleepiness, he drank tea.
It showed that in the beginning, the purpose for monks in drinking tea is to facilitate meditation and self-cultivation.
Sequel Biography of Famous Monks says that Shi Fayao, a monk of the Southern Dynasty, excelled in Sado.
He lived for 79 years.

One secret of his longevity was to drink tea with meals. Eventually, it became a common practice among monks under Buddhism doctrines.

Sado

Buddhism tradition Buddhism deems that tea helps with cultivating the body and mind. Therefore, drinking tea has become a common practice of monks. As recorded in the Song Dynasty, monks “get up, wash their face and hands, and drink tea in the morning.

Then, they sit during meditation and then take a nap. When they get up, they wash face and hands, and drink tea. They have a meal. Then, they wash face and hands, and drink tea.” In brief, everything is connected to tea. Monks are inseparable from tea in daily life. In the Song Dynasty in particular, many Chinese temples formulated a set of ceremonies for drinking tea.

The most famous was the tea banquet of Jinshan Temple.

What liquor comes in a monk bottle?

The Frangelico bottle is distinct and is linked to the liqueur’s alleged 18th Century history. It is shaped like a monk’s habit and includes a rope that is tied around the bottle as a belt. The liqueur is used as a compliment in cocktails or can be served on the rocks.

What do Zen monks drink?

What is Matcha – Matcha is one of the most premium and oldest variety of Japanese green tea (Tencha) granite ground by artisans to produce a fine powder. It’s enjoyed by drinking as tea or as an ingredient in lattes, smoothies, ice cream, chocolates and much more! Matcha is made from a premium spring-picked Japanese green tea.

Blocking direct sunlight slows the rate of photosynthesis in the tea leaves and results in a higher amount of amino acid called L-theanine.
The combination of caffeine and L-theanine, increases alpha-brain wave activity that induces a calmer, yet more alert, state of mind.
The health benefits of Matcha tea exceed those of green tea because when you drink Matcha you consume the whole leaf, not just brewed water.

Since over 800 years Zen Buddhist monks have used Matcha tea as meditational drink. Matcha is very exquisite: only a few dozen tea farmers in all Japan own the extensive know how to produce this tea. Matcha tea leaves grow slowly in shaded tea plantations.

The fresh leaves are dried and milled by granite stone mills into an ultra fine, jade green powder, and finally whisked with a bamboo whisk.
The result is a uniquely creamy, full-bodied and beautiful cup of green tea.
Matcha is a special type of premium Japanese green tea (Tencha) granite ground by rare artisans to produce a fine powder.

Its enjoyed by drinking as tea or as an ingredient in lattes, smoothies, ice cream, chocolates and much more! Matcha is made from a premium spring-picked Japanese green tea. Blocking direct sunlight slows the rate of photosynthesis in the tea leaves and results in a higher amount of amino acid called L-theanine.

What do Tibetan monks drink?

Buddhist Tea – Fo Cha A wonderful green tea, basket roasted, clean, savory & vegetal sweet. Item Number: G-BT-1-O-2 Type: Green Province: Zhejiang Pinyin: Fó chá佛茶 Caffeine: Medium – high Organic: Yes Main flavor: Savory, sweet & vegetal Packaging: Loose In the sixth and seventh centuries, tea drinking became increasingly popular with Buddhist monks as they recognized the green leaf as a means of clearing the mind and providing stimulation for longer sessions of meditation. The monks realized they gained mental sharpness while also noting the enjoyable aspects of drinking this special tea.

Cultivation followed and, in time, the monks crafted a cultivar rich in flavors and aroma.
Our Buddhist Tea is a classic vegetal-tasting green made of early-spring leaves grown on one of the Zhoushan Islands near Hangzhou.
This lot was harvested in April 2022.
Lot Notes.
The leaves are a pleasing light green coloration mixed with ample white buds.

The lot is carefully crafted to form tight, consistently sized curls. Centuries of cultivation have developed a leaf with a grassy-sweet aroma and fresh, vegetal flavors. The tea is smooth with only hint of astringency. For those that enjoy a well-rounded, rich tasting green tea, this is a great choice.

Tea Facts.
Tea farm is located on China Sea side of the island.
Bathed in sunlight and ocean breeze, it is an ideal location for cultivating a rich green tea flavor.
This lot is basket roasted giving the tea an extra sweetness.
This cultivar is noted to be high in amino acids, alkaloids and polyphenols which contribute to the wonderful aroma, fresh flavors and healthy aspects of this tea.

These compounds create a tea that is vegetable sweet and clean. Tasting Notes. Offers a distinctive vegetal, grassy flavor, with a light note of early spring asparagus; soft and sweet on the palate with a lingering finish. The taste is mellow and smooth.

The cup color is a rich yellow-green the result of the flavanols in the leaves.
Brewing Suggestions.
Use 3 grams of leaf (about a teaspoon) for 6-8 ounces of water at a temperature of 185-195 degrees F.
We recommend an initial steeping of 2 to 2.5 minutes to enjoy the subtle qualities of the leaf.
For greater body & 2nd infusion, steep for 3 minutes.

This tea is slow to turn astringent. The leaves will yield 3 steeps.

5 Posted by John Dame on 15th Feb 2022 I tried brewing this Tea in several different levels of strength, and whether it is brewed lightly, or of medium degree or very strong, I enjoyed each example immensely ! 4 Posted by Devin Bryant on 18th Feb 2021 Tastes like the morning dew under a spring time sun 5 Posted by Kay on 23rd Sep 2020 This is the best bulk green tea I’ve used. It has a medium flavor, wonderful coloring and most important, does not upset the stomach as some green teas do. Sweetener is optional. 5 Posted by Michael Hoffman on 6th Jun 2020 Wasn’t sure what to expect but I was not disappointed. Delicious flavor, amazing bouquet. This will be one of my favorites. 5 Posted by Luke on 17th Jul 2019 I have tried almost all of the green teas from Silk Road. I’ve settle on this one for my daily morning tea. Great tea. 5 Posted by Sarah Llywellyn on 30th Jul 2018 Green grass and floral aroma. Distinct but mellow flavor. If you like Green tea this is an outstanding choice 4 Posted by Unknown on 16th Mar 2018 This tea has a delicate mouth feel and has yet a nice taste profile. I think it is good. It is not as strong as I thought but has a supple and soft taste. I enjoy green tea that is rather strong and this is a little lighter and it has an interesting flower after taste which surprised me. Since I am a guy with not the best taste but this I could taste. Never tasted a green tea with flowery vegetal notes like this one. Also, it is a forgiving tea which is good for me. As far as value is concerned. I can say it is between average and good. But I think organic tea has this profile. 5 Posted by Unknown on 1st Aug 2016 one of the best green teas ever 3 Posted by Unknown on 3rd Jun 2016 This is a smooth and adequate green tea with nice subtlety. However, for the price I was expecting something special with a more exquisite taste.

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