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and child, when she finds no possible candidate to marry, when she is physically disabled or when she lost her marriage; It is expected people with the these conditions are more likely to have motivations to join the monastic order, and are more likely to be accepted by people of having an extrafamilial alternative. Women are sometimes praised to choose this alternative because that keeps their chastity.
This is more important than being outside of family system in Chinese society. If a widowed woman enters the monastery, she is believed of showing her loyalty to her dead husband. Thus, many filial sons would build Buddhist temples for their retiring widowed mother to spend their rest of life.
3.2 What might affect kin relations of monks and nuns?
There are several causes that could affect the relationship between monks and nuns with their lay families. These possible causes might also affect lay families’
willingness in supporting their monk or nun relatives.
Social and personal attitudes toward Buddhist renunciation
The attitudes of a monk’s or a nun’s family members toward his or her religious choice plays an important role in affecting their future relationship. If the monk or nun have his or her family’s permission and bless in joining the monastic order, they are more likely to have good relationship. Usually, it depends on the religious belief of the family members. Buddhist relatives are more likely to be happy seeing other relatives becoming monks and nuns. In many cases, if lay relatives of monks and nuns have Buddhist belief, they might also become lay supporters of the monastery where their monk or nun relatives join. They will visit the monastery more often than others to attend Buddhist activities or visit their relatives in the monastery. Therefore, Buddhist family members will have a closer relationship with their sangha relatives,
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and they also have more chances to see each other on a regular base. However, this is not always the case because some Buddhist parents are unwilling to let their child becoming a monk or nun for reasons. In my research results, religious belief of the families of a monk or a nun is not most important in affecting the relationship between the two. I will talk about that in more details later.
Some families are not strongly against such an extrafimilial alternative, but they are afraid of social gossips about their family members in becoming monks or nuns.
They are afraid how people see them, thus therefore, they will stand against another family member’s choice of becoming a monk or a nun to prevent gossips. The shameful feeling of these people is caused by social norms and values, and at the same time, people are affected by these norms and values, too. Most of people will follow social norms and values unless they have different perceptions due to their own beliefs and interests. Shameful family members are more likely to avoid seeing their monk or nun relatives. This is like someone in the family committed adultery, and they are afraid of opening this matter to others. There is a lower chance that this group of family members would support or keep close relationship with their sangha relatives.
Motivation of renunciation: solving family’s economical problems
In Welch’s study, he mentioned that about 75% of monks in China became monks for nonreligious reasons.58 Many of these monks were from poor families. Therefore, sending kids to the monastery could help solving family’s economical problems. In Sherpas society, sending kids to the monastery also helped solving family’s problem of property division among kids.59 Wealthy Sherpas families did not have that
58 Welch, 1972,pp. 258.
59 Ortner, 1978,pp. 14-18.
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problem because they would have enough lands and properties equally giving to their descendants. Only families in Sherpas society which they held small piece of land had problems of property division because if they divide their small piece of land and properties in equal division to each child, it would not be enough to support each child60. Both Chinese families and Sherpas families sent their children to monasteries in order to solve economical problems. The difference between the two was that Sherpas families had the responsibilities to support the living costs of their monk sons.61 In Chinese monastic tradition, monasteries will provide four kinds of supports to their members; these are food, clothing and bedding, medical care. Of course, not every monastery provides all kinds of support. Unlike Chinese monastic system, monasteries in Sherpas society required their sangha members’ lay families to pay for their living costs.62 Furthermore, the relationship between monks and their families were mostly close and dependent. The lay families relied on monk children to generate merit for the family and the monks needed their financial supports in return. I am not sure how willingly a family would support their daughter being a nun because women in Tibetan Buddhism tradition have a lower status comparing to men. I had met two Western nuns in 2009, and I knew from them that some Tibetan monasteries in India would ask the members to pay some fees for accommodation and food every month. Nuns who want to reside in that monastery needs to pay, and the amount is about forty dollars in my informant’s monastery. The American nun told me that she had to work for six month every three years in her hometown in order to save enough money to pay her three-year-study in a Tibetan monastery in India. Not every Tibetan monastery requires members to pay fees, but it is for sure that almost all Tibetan monasteries do not provide medical supports for
60 Ortner, 1978,pp. 14-18.
61 Ortner, 1978, pp. 14-18
62 Ortner, 1978, pp.14-18.
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their members, though, the exact number and percentage needs further research.
In Sherpas society, family members had to support and would keep a close relationship with their monk relatives because of their religious beliefs. In Chinese case, if those monks joined the monasteries because the family was too poor, then their families could not afford to support them. The monk might be close to their family emotional, but I think that is only when the family lives close to the monastery.
If the family lives far away, the chance for monks to meet their relatives is much lower.
Motivation of renunciation: running away from the family and unpleasant life experiences
As I mentioned before, 75% of Welch’s informants joined the monasteries for nonreligious reasons. Most of them wanted to escape from the secular world. Similar information provided by Spiro that the majority of Burmese monks entered monastic life to escape a harsh life.63 In Fan Tsung’s research, many nuns joined the monastic communities because of their suffering in their families or marriages.64 It is very unusual for a woman to abandon dependent children to join a monastic community, and if they do, they often feel guilty about their abandonment.65 Nuns who abandon their dependent children must have a suffering life, so they want to escape from the family. Some argues, it is easier for men to separate his relationships with either his natal or married families. On the other hand, there are also many cases about
mothers abandoning their children to become nuns when there is no family problem.
She escapes because she is not satisfied with her life. It happens to one of my informants. Most of my informants ran away from their problematic marriage
63 Fan Tsung, 1986, pp.190.
64 Fan Tsung, 1886, pp.190
65 Fan Tsung, 1986, pp.191.
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although they would not admit it, and one of them ran away from both her natal and married families. Monks and nuns who ran away from natal or growing families always have life-long family problems that they cannot solve. There are two types of kin relations among this group of monks and nuns. Either they still have contact with their families or they do not have any contact because of their bitter memories. For the latter category, there will be no contact or no continuing relationship between the monk or nun and their families.
There was a case in Li’s research66 which was similar to one of my informants.67 Zhi-ni (1969~) was the eldest child in her family. She had to help out all family chores since she was a kid, and raised the family after she worked. She gave most of her salary to her mother every month. She had a tough life before becoming a nun, so that might be the reason why she wanted to join the monastic community. Her parents were furious about Zhi-ni’s decision because they wanted her to help out family’s finance. Even though she got her family’s understanding many years after, she seemed to have very few contact with her family after she became a nun at age of twenty-six. Zhi-ni chose not to be too close with her natal family because that was the place she wanted to stay away from. In Zhi-ni and some other cases, they
violated Buddhist precepts and some individual monastic regulations. According to the Vinaya, a woman is not allowed to join the monastic order without her parents’
and husband’s permissions.68 On the contrary, a man only needs his parents’
approval but not his wife’s in the Vinaya. Despite all these, society’s negative views and criticisms of Buddhist renunciation could be caused partly by these violations.
Another example was my own experience on the train. I met a lady on the train,
66 Yu-Chen Li’s “The Mother-Daughter Complex: Gender Identity and Subjectivity of Taiwanese Nuns”
in Hu (ed.), 2002, pp.387-388.
67 See Chapter four, informant Zhan’s story.
68 Karma Lekshe Tsomo, 1996, pp.
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and she told me that her mother was also a nun. Her mother entered a quite famous monastery in Hualian. The lady told me that she and her other siblings could not find her mother, and her mother had not contacted them for a while. She tried to call the monastery, but they said that her mother had left and the monastery did not know where she went. I asked her further why her mother would try to avoid having contact with her own children, she told me about the problems of her younger brother. The lady’s younger brother was furious about her mother’s decision of becoming a nun because he thought that his mother should stay home and help him out in his married family. He had a bad temper and unstable mood. I was not sure whether the information from the lady was true or not, but I just had to listen. The lady asked me if there was a way to find her mother. Personally, I did not think that her mother wanted to be found. If the story was real, then the nun mother must suffer from her lay life a lot, and she might have a bad relationship with her children because she refused to contact any of them. She just disappeared. It is a typical
example of someone becoming a nun in order to run away from problematic lay life.
Blood relation
Among all cases in Fan Tsung’s study, there were two kinds of attitude of nuns toward the relationships with family and kin: first, “relatives are always relatives, no matter what happens”; and second, “we’re people who have left out families;
relatives are no longer important to us.” 69 Two kinds of response can also be heard among monks and lay family members. Although it is true that Buddhism sees family attachment is an obstacle in blocking one’s way to enlightenment because it is hard to leave one’s family both physically and emotionally, Buddha Gautama never set the rule to prohibit a monk or a nun maintaining necessary relationship with their
69 Fan Tsung, 1986, pp. 174.
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families. It is encouraged for a monk or a nun to help their parents out if they need. I will talk about that later in discussions of filial piety. Only very few monks and nuns would go to the extreme in avoiding contact with or being found by their families.
Many family members support their monk or nun relatives because they also believe that relatives are always relatives. Blood relationship is not something one can just ignore, especially in a society where familism is strong. There is the belief that if one becomes a monk or a nun, he or she will forget the family, too. Of course, we know from real cases that it is not always true. Some family members, monks and nuns who believed that blood relationship is important are more likely to keep their relationships with their families or relatives in the monasteries despites their religious beliefs, social ethics and values, personal values and other factors.
3.3 Kin Relations of Nuns in Fan Tsung’s research70
Fang Tsung believed that loners in the monasteries relied more heavily on their relatives, and most of nuns still kept a relationship with their family and kin after entering the monasteries because as females, they were taught to look for security and help from family and kin. Nuns were able to manipulate the quantity and quality of relationships with both outside and relatives because they were not like being at homes that they had to keep certain closeness to other kin. About two-third of her nun informants maintain contacts with relatives. Many of these people received a regular or less regular financial supports from their relatives. Another one-third of her samples contacted their relatives rarely; among them, some avoided any contact with relatives actively and some nuns wanted to keep contact with relatives, but later lost their contact unwittingly or reluctantly. This category of nuns had bad
experiences with their relatives, so they did not want further contact. Religious
70 Fan Tsung, 1986, pp.174-195.
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ideology of detachment from the family became their reasonable excuses. Becoming a nun gave them more freedom to detach themselves from unwanted ties.71 In old time, becoming a nun might be more acceptable by the villagers than getting a divorce. In overall, half of the nuns got some financial supports from their relatives, and their family’s contribution helped them a lot. Nuns who had to rely on the monastery suffered from material deprivation, and they could not afford medical expenses even if they needed. Fan Tsung suspected that the loners had the most regrets in their monastic lives because they were not happy. In response to Fan Tsung’s argument on that, it did not happen to my informants. Whether loners regretted of being a monk or nun is unsure, but unhappy monks and nuns for sure will have more regrets than happy ones. Another interesting finding of Fan Tsung was that one out of every four nuns in her sample was little-daughter-in-law.72 They were adopted at the time when adoption was popular among Taiwanese society.
3.4 Substitutions of Family and Kin in the Monastery
Theoretically, one has to leave their family in order to join a monastic
community. At the time when someone decides to cultivate their Buddhist path in the monastery, he or she should put his or her attachments to their families aside.
Not every monk and nun leaves their family to be a monk or a nun. Many monks and nuns join the monastic community which is built by his or her own lay family. Within such private-owned monastic community, all family members still live with each other even after being tonsured, and the monastery is like a family business to them.
Chinese monastery, in particular, reconstructs another family system within the monastic community. An obvious evidence of this is pseudo-kinship terms used by
71 Fan Tsung, 1986, pp.300.
72 They were either little child bride (ton yan xi 童養媳) or just adopted daughters (yiang nu 養女).
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monks and nuns in the monasteries. Usage of pseudo-kinship terms by monks and nuns in Chinese monasteries will be discussed further in chapter four. Monks and nuns are not allowed to engage in sexual activity, and it is strongly prohibited by Buddhist precepts, so they will have no descendants of their own unless they married before. Thus, some nuns will tonsure their own disciples to be substitute children.73 We talked about women being taught by the society to seek security from their relatives, and nuns also seek for that security within the monastery, too.
The best way to solve the fear of insecurity would be having tonsure disciples. Monks and nuns cannot rely fully on the care from the monastery, but they can rely on their tonsure disciples as their own children. In Fan Tsung’s samples, nuns’ ideal
relationship of mother and child was substituted by master and disciple
relationship.74 It is unsure whether monks seek for that kind of substitution or not, but I am sure that they will be cared when they get old and sick if they have tonsure disciples. In addition, both monks and nuns are happy and proud to have as many tonsure disciples as they can like lay people bearing many children.75 Furthermore, nuns are very protective to their own disciples like mother in protecting their own children, and in return, a good disciple is like a filial child in which she fulfills her filial obligations to her master.76 Like Chinese ideology of filial piety, not only taking care of the live parents is important but also sacrificing dead parents and ancestors.
Because ancestral sacrifice is so important to Chinese people, so having a male descendant to continue such a doing is also important. Unless they have been married with children before, most monks and nuns do not have child sacrificing them after death. In this case, pseudo- or quasi- ancestral line will solve the problem:
73 Fan Tsung, 1986, pp.13.
74 Fan Tsung, 1986, pp.325.
75 Fan Tsung, 1986, pp.326.
76 Fan Tsung, 1986, pp.327.
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Such nun often created their own quasi-ancestral line by treating former nuns from the same temple as ancestors, raising tablets to them as an altar, and worshipping them in much the same way as the family did its real ancestors. In turn, of course, the nuns could hope to be similarly worshipped by those who were to come after them.77
Similar quasi-ancestral line can also be found in popular vegetarian halls in Hong Kong, too.78 The purpose for creating pseudo-kinship is to impose social and family
Similar quasi-ancestral line can also be found in popular vegetarian halls in Hong Kong, too.78 The purpose for creating pseudo-kinship is to impose social and family