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dependents if these children want to be with their parents. Another impact of such a change is gender differentiation of monastic positions within a monastery. Usually, nuns are more likely than monks to be assigned for cooking positions. Some
monasteries sent their monastic members to get higher public or sangha education, so it also gave nuns more chances and abilities to take over important monastic positions. Unlike traditional Buddhist monasteries of Taiwan, larger monasteries established by monks fled from China and highly educated monks and nuns give younger generation different expectations of monastic life.174 Younger and highly educated people are more willing to become monks and nuns, and some parents also became more open minded to their children’s choice of joining the Order due to these changes and influences.
5.2 The Changing Kin Relations of Monks and Nuns
The prospect monastic life is different from now and before. People who
become monks and nuns and reasons for them to become monks and nuns play very important roles in affecting the majority’s view on Buddhist renunciation. With the increase in educational level of these monks and nuns, their social status has been brought up at the same time. Unlike countries like Thailand, Buddhism is not the state religion in Taiwan. The social status of monks in countries whose state religion is Buddhism is much higher than monks and nuns in any Chinese society. Intellectuals have always been highly respected in Chinese society, so the improvement of the educational level of monks and nuns helped changed their social image. After 1949, many monks fled from China to Taiwan, and many of them had higher education in either Buddhist colleges in China or public schools. Many of them started giving Buddhist lectures to the young people, and that attracted many young educated
174 Examples are Fo Guang Shan Monastery, Dharma Drum monastery and Chungtai Chan Monastery.
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Buddhists willing to join the monastic community. For instance, Chan master Sheng Yen had a PhD degree in Buddhist studies from Rissho University of Japan. Highly educated and famous monk like Sheng Yen attracted a lot of young and highly educated followers, and was able to establish one of a few representing Buddhist monasteries in Taiwan175. Also because of the improvement of the social economy, having higher education is more accessible to most of the people. Moreover, some of our social values changes with the increase of the majority’s educational level.
People start to look at what they really want for their lives but not the lives society wanting them to have. Extrafamilial alternatives are no more an unacceptable choice for most of people. This is not to say that the majority has fully accepted extrafamilial alternatives such as becoming monks and nuns in our society, but people who want to have an extrafamilial life is more willing to fight for it. All these social changes helped to create a more positive image of Buddhist renunciation, so people of the parental generation gradually becomes more open minded with their children’s choice of life that they want. Monks and nuns who join the monastic community with the approval of their families tend to have a better relationship with their kin, and many of them will also stay close with their kin after entering the monasteries.
Geographically, Taiwan is a small island comparing to China. Unless a person joins a monastic community far away from Taiwan, the chance for a monk or a nun to visit their relatives, or vice versa, is high. With better technologies today, keeping contact with someone is easier than before; therefore, even if the monk or nun joins an overseas monastery, there are still ways to keep contacts with families. Many monks and nuns actually come from places where their monasteries are located, so their families can visit them in the monasteries at anytime they want. When parents or relatives visit monks and nuns in their local monasteries, it is like visiting a married
175 Dharma Drum Monastery, see www.dharmadrum.org.
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son or daughter. Thus, Buddhist renunciation is no more a lifelong separation between parents and children.
Today, some monasteries encourage their monastic members to keep positive relationships with their families, and most of the monasteries allow their members to have regular contacts with their families without intervention. A good example will be Fo Guang Shan Monastery’s twice annual family gatherings that the monastery will invite relatives of their monastic members to attend. Another example is that Puyi Yuan Monastery allows their monastic member to have one to two day-off after Chinese New Year to visit their lay families, and it is more like Chinese tradition that married daughter visiting their natal families on the 2nd of January lunar month during Chinese New Year celebration. Both annual family gatherings in Fo Guang Monastery and day-off to visit lay families of Puyi Yuan Monastery help monks and nuns keeping close relationship with their families, and by doing that, they also assure to their monastic members’ relatives of their well-beings in the monasteries.
There is a quite important change to the relationship between monks or nuns and their families. Before, people believed that someone who entered the monastery would leave family responsibility of taking care of their parents behind, so Buddhist renunciation was seemed as an unfilial act. Nuns might not have that problem if there was another male sibling in the families, but that had been changed in today’s society. Both son and daughter have the same responsibility of taking care of their natal parents. As I mentioned in the previous chapters, many monks and nuns go back to their lay families because their parents or siblings need their helps. In people’s stereotypical thinking, monks and nuns should be the ones who leave the family responsibility behind, and become totally disconnected with their lay families forever. However, this is not true from my findings in the field research. Few monks and nuns in C.F.S. even have to earn money by doing private Buddhist rituals for lay
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people in order to raise money for their parents because their other siblings are either unwilling or unable to take care of their parents. Monks and nuns are also the siblings in the families who are more likely to be asked by other siblings to take care of their sick or old parents because they are busy with jobs and married families, or because they are unable to pay more for nursing cares. Even though some of these monks and nuns have the approval of their families to join the monastic communities, they might never think about having family burdens one day in the future. Most of the monasteries are lenient with such an excuse if a member has to take a leave from the monastic position, but not all of these monasteries are willing to provide
continuing welfare and allowance for that person. Thus, the monk or nun who takes a leave from the monastery for that reason must look after him or herself while staying outside of the monastery. For other monasteries with good welfare system for their monastic members, they are willing to provide food and shelter for their member’s dependent parents if needed. These monasteries also tend to have a better medical welfare system for their monastic members in comparison with other monasteries. In good situation, the monk or nun share family responsibility of any kind with other siblings or relatives, but in the worst scenario, the monk or nun has to handle the problem all by him or herself with monasteries’ support. In C.F.S., more and more monks and nuns need to take a leave in order to help their lay families.
Different from the above is when some monks and nuns leave their own families burdens to their natal families after joining the monastic communities. There is an increase trend in C.F.S. that more and more new monastic member having marriage and children before entering the monastery. It is also because the average age of new members increases every year. With parents bearing fewer children today, both sons and daughters have more pressure on sharing family responsibilities of both taking care of their parents and having heirs for the family line than before. There is a
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reason for the difference between number of monks and nuns in Taiwan. Male children is less likely to be approved by the family to join a monastic community because caring for dependent old parents one day and having children to continue family line are their responsibilities for their natal families. That is also why, in average, more monks have married with children before joining the monastic community than nuns in C.F.S. Some monks married and have children just because they need to fulfill their responsibility of having an heir for the family line before entering the monasteries. After they join the Order, their lay families must take over their family burdens for these monks and nuns by taking care of their dependent children. Without monks’ and nuns’ family supports for that, they would never have a chance to join the monastic order unless their children become independent one day. With more and more newly ordained monks and nuns having young children before entering the monasteries, more lay relatives of these monks and nuns today would have to take over their family responsibilities.
5.3 Systemization: Caring for Monks and Nuns in Taiwanese Monasteries