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Guang has always been close to her natal family, other family relatives and family friends. These people become important supporters not only to her but also to C.F.S. Although they have religious beliefs, they do not choose to support other temples or foundations for making merits. They support C.F.S. only because Guang is the member of its main temple. Without her parents’ help, Guang was unable to buy good robes and things she needed after joining the Order. I met her families and friends at her father’s funeral; I could tell that they were all respectful to her. Guang supports her natal family, too. Her father had been sick for five years, and if it were not her, her family had to spend more money on costs for hiring a special care taker.
Of course, every child has the responsibility of taking care of his or her sick parent, but Guang took over that responsibility fully. She helped her family more than a special care taker can do. Guang’s return to her family’s supports is important in maintaining her family’s willingness to continue being supportive. From Guang’s case, we know that parents have worries and concerns about children’s monastic life. They worry about their children’s old life, and fear them of having no support if they pass away one day especially when their children have no others to help them out.
Therefore, some parents would save money for their monk or nun child like saving for their dowries and wedding funds.
4.2 Monk Who Have No Marriage Before
Bin (M):
Bin is in his early fifties now, and he has been ordained as a monk for about fifteen years. As the youngest of twelve kids, he grew up in Taipei City with his family.
His family did not really have any religious belief. We can say that they believed in popular religions because they sometimes sacrificed popular gods and goddesses like
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everybody else. His eldest sister was adopted by his parents, but she was not a child bride because she had never been arranged to marry any of his brothers. Out of twelve siblings, half of them are brothers and the other half are sisters. Being the youngest child of the family, he was spoiled by his parents and elder siblings.
According to Bin, he never saw his parents and other siblings having bad temper. He was the only person in the family who had a bad temper. Since he was born, his health had never being good although there was never any acute illness. He described himself having a happy childhood, and received enough love from his family. He remained close relationship with his siblings even now. Number of sibling and age difference never becomes a problem for him in keeping close with them. I was quite surprised to know that he was close to all his siblings, and I believed that his family must have strong family values. Bin had a happy relationship with his natal family, but his love relationship never turned out good. Therefore, he had no
marriage before joining the Order. His father died when he was sixteen years old; his father was sixty four years old at the time of death. For some reasons, he never really knew, he began to be very sick. He suffered from epilepsy. He emphasized that he never had that illness before, but it started “right after” the death of his father. I had no knowledge about epilepsy, but I thought his epilepsy first broke out because of his emotional stress on the fact of his father’s death. He now explained his illness was the outcome of bad karma. After graduated from high school, he worked at a health equipment company. He began very interested in all health related things and issues after he started to work. This was partly due to his unsolved illness. That was why he chose to work at a health equipment company. During his working time, he had tried several scientific and unscientific methods to cure his epilepsy. However, nothing worked. In his early thirties, he started to visit different Buddhist temples. The reason for his visits to these temples was not because he was interested in Buddhism. He
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knew nothing about Buddhism at the time. He was told that making merit might have some helps to his illness. He was brought to a small nunnery in Taipei by his eldest sister-in-law. There were only two old nuns in there, and he did not have any conversation with them. Before leaving, one of the old nuns told him that with such a bad illness, he should become a vegetarian and commit no killing of animals. Eagerly in becoming healthy, he became a vegetarian from that day on. Bin described himself feeling much better after being a vegetarian, so he had stronger belief in Buddhism.
He attended all kinds of Buddhist activities in different temples; he had a wish to become a monk. At that time, C.F.S. Buddhist College was enrolling new students; he immediately applied for entrance permission. He was thirty four when he entered the college. He was tonsured and ordained as a novice the next year.
Bin told his siblings about his decision, but they did not make any comment in the phone. However, a week before Bin’s ordination ceremony, all his siblings visited him in C.F.S.’ main temple. They asked him if he was sure about his decision because monastic life was tough. People called entering monastic life was like “jia ko tsai (吃 苦菜)”; It is a Taiwanese term meaning eating bitter vegetables literally, and it has an underlying meaning of having a tough life. Bin told his siblings how confident he was that monastic life was best for him. After all, his siblings knew his lay life was never being easy due to his illness. Therefore, monastic life might help him to get well. Bin told me that it was true because his epilepsy was cured right after he joined the Order. None of Bin’s siblings attend his novice ordination, and they just wanted to make sure their little brother knew what he was doing, so attending his ordination was not that important. Bin was not bothered by that, too. Only his Buddhist friend attended it. There was a short procedure of saying goodbye to your natal parents, and the new novice had to make three prostrations to them during ordination. Bin asked his friend to be his “ceremonial parent” for him, then he prostrated three
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times to him. Interestingly, this old Buddhist friend became Bin’s monk disciple two years ago. When he was making three prostrations to Bin, he told Bin that he had returned three prostrations to him. Bin had some savings from his works before joining the Order. His illness was all cured, so he has no medical expense anymore.
During his fifteen years of monastic life, he remained very close to all is siblings. A day before our interview, he went back home to visit his siblings. He is now the abbot of a branch temple in Kaohsiung County. Managing a temple is not an easy task even though the temple is a small one. When he needed money for temple’s constructions, he would ask his siblings to donate. All his siblings would help him out if he
requested, and his second sister, who is in Canada, helps him out the most financially.
When a monk or a nun is an abbot or an abbess of a temple, then he or she would need more helps from their relatives; these relatives will become fixed supporters of the temple.148
In Bin’s case, being both a monk and the abbot of a branch temple makes his life easier than other monks or nuns. Comparing to nuns, monks receive more respects from lay people, and they are more likely to receive personal donation of any kinds from lay supporters.149 In addition, Bin is the abbot of a temple, so he receives even more respects from lay supporters than other monks. As an abbot, he also has rights to all financial decisions of the temple. If he needs medical bursary, he can grant himself one without any trouble. This is different for other monastic members because they have to apply for medical bursary, and whether one can be granted of
148 An abbot or an abbess has the responsibility on finding possible incomes for the monastery, and if a family member has the concept of making donation in order to gain merits, then he or she is more likely to support a specific monastery if there is a relative in residence, especially when the relative is a head of the monastery. On one hand, these supporters donate to support monasteries, but really, they are also supporting their relatives in the monasteries.
149 Monks and nuns are prohibited to receive personal money gift from unrelated laymen in C.F.S.
However, there is no strict punishment on such an offense, and if a monk or a nun take a money gift from an unrelated layman without telling anyone, the monastery will have no knowledge on such a violation.
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medical bursary depends on people who are in the higher management positions.
Bin’s relationship with his siblings is close and positive. It is hard to imagine one is able to remain contact with twelve siblings for so many years. Bin is the youngest child, so he gets more help and attention from the family, and it could be one of the reasons why his siblings are willing to support him.