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would have more insight with the first Buddhist noble truth, suffering. They will turn to religious or spiritual teachings in supporting them. Social aspects about Buddhist monastic life could affect relationship between monk and nuns with their relatives directly. Being an embarrassing parent, a mother or a father might not want to have further connection with a child who chooses a different road. Unlike Indian society, Chinese people do not consider renunciation as an important life stage; unlike Thai society, Buddhism is not a state religion in any of Han societies. What is normal behavior in one culture is considered as abnormal in another. Actually, people’s stereotypical conceptions and misunderstandings come from real facts of monastic lives they have heard or seen before. However, people often over generalized them as if they are the undoubted truths despites people, place and time. Moreover, these misconceptions can be passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, people’s attitude toward monastic life from one generation, sometimes, could also reflect the attitude of the last generations.
3.8 Gender, Birth Order and Marital Status
I did not conduct any specific research on other possible causes that might affect parents or family relatives’ attitudes toward the choice of monastic life.
However, from my own informants and other scholars’ research samples, there seems to be some facts that might alter parents or family relatives’ attitude toward choice of monastic life. Especially in lower income family, most of the parents would want their children to share economical burdens as soon and as much as they can.
Being an eldest son and daughter, they have to handle such a burden more and earlier than other siblings. Sometimes, they have to sacrifice their own life choice because their families count on them. In Li’s case, there was a nun, Yuan-rong (1905-1969), as the eldest daughter in the family, had to help her family’s business
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until when she passed the right time for marriage.133 The nun finally decided to spend her rest of life in the monastery, and she was sometimes consulted by other family members about important family decision even after becoming a nun. Similar cases happened mostly during the time when most of people still thought that women should get married before certain age. In another case of Li’s research, Ri-ni (1969~) had been treated badly by her own mother since young, and her parents ordered her to help out financially at the time when she could work for pays.134 When this nun finally wanted to enter the monastery at the age of twenty-six, her family was very angry with her selfishness of leaving the family behind. She was also the eldest daughter in the family, too. Usually in Chinese patrilineal family system, the responsibility should be put on the male descendents more than female descendents. However, we have seen that many daughters married with arranged marriages in order to improve the economy of her natal family. In addition to that, some parents would order their daughters to contribute money to their natal families but not sons. There are also cases that daughters are requested by their parents to solve other male siblings’ problems. Some parents saw their daughters as
money-loosing children (賠錢貨 pei quian huo) because they had to raise them, pay dowries and giving them away to another family after she marries. Thus, these parents thought that it was absolutely right to ask their daughters to help out the family as much as they can before she marries. Most of these daughters were not only the eldest daughter in the family but also first-born children in the family. For eldest son or first-born son, they also share more family burdens but in a different perspective. Some of them have to help out the family financially, but all of them
133 Yu-Chen Li’s “The Mother-Daughter Complex: Gender Identity and Subjectivity of Taiwanese Nuns”
in Hu (ed.), 2002, pp.387-388.
134 Yu-Chen Li’s “The Mother-Daughter Complex: Gender Identity and Subjectivity of Taiwanese Nuns”
in Hu (ed.), 2002, pp.387-388.
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have pressure of providing male heir to the family or continuing family’s business and inheriting properties. The eldest sons are the ones who have the responsibility of performing family ancestral sacrifices. Unless other siblings are willing to share all their burdens, they are unlikely to get their parents’ permission to enter monastic lives. I knew a monk who had always wanted to become a monk since young, but later he got married and had a daughter with his wife before becoming a monk just because he was the eldest and only son in the family. Right after the birth of his daughter, he got a divorce with his wife and became a monk. Both his family and wife knew about his reason for marriage, so they did not stop him from being a monk later, and he also inherited his family’s property. In some cases, eldest sons and daughters have more family burdens than other siblings, so there is a higher chance of them being rejected by their families and relatives in becoming monks and nuns.
Some of them, when they feel they have done enough to the family, they would become monks and nuns despites their family’s disapprovals. In turns of that, their kin relations tend to be distancing and cold.
In traditional Taiwanese society, unmarried daughters were encouraged to become nuns in order to prove their chastity. Although people did not accept extrafamiliar alternatives such as entering the monastery, it was still better to keep one’s chastity than being at a status of suspicion. If unmarried daughters joined the monastery, her family did not have to worry about her where about after her death, too. Sons are important in the family even for today, parents count on their physical and financial support in old ages, and their sacrifices after death. Therefore, even if there is more than one son in the family, parents are more reluctant to let them leaving the family. Especially for parents who have gender preference, they would be more willing to forgive their sons than daughters with their disobedient and unfilial decisions. Many members in C.F.S. had ever taken a leave from the monastery in
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order to take care of their sick parents. In percentage not number, nuns are more likely than monks to be asked by their parents or siblings to help out if their families need supports.
Entering the monastery is the alternative choice for men and women who have bad marriages previously. It is more acceptable for someone to divorce because he or she wants to join the monastic community than just to end a bad marriage.
Strictly speaking, parents would give more supports to their divorced sons and daughters because either they feel ashamed of their daughter being “abandoned” or because the children of their sons inherit the family’s last name and lineage. These attitudes might have been changed today, but there are people who still live with traditional notions and values. A divorced man or woman with children must rely on the family’s supports in taking care of the dependent children if he or she wants to join the monastic community. Most of nuns in C.F.S. who had dependent children at the time of their novice ordination relied more on their husbands’ supports in taking care of their dependent children. On the other hand, most monks in C.F.S. relied more on their natal families’ supports on taking care of their dependent children. It is both more acceptable and understanding for the society and the family with the choice of entering the monastery if one had marriage before because they believe the cause for their decisions is the problematic marital relationship. Thus, people will be more sympathetic when seeing others’ sufferings, and in the same time, they can be more understanding to extrafamilial choice when there is an explainable reason.
Not all monks and nuns who have been married before have dependent children at the time of their novice ordination. Many of people choose to enter the monastery when their dependent children become independent. Therefore, relatives and children of monks and nuns who seek monastic lives after finishing their responsibilities will be happier to approve the decision.
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3.9 Monastic Rules and Prohibitions on kin relations of Monks and Nuns