In this article I will inform you about the monastic life of ordained Buddhists. Not in detail but more with a describing and understanding attitude of mine. Therefore I do not pretend to have an overall knowledge. It's more of a so far understanding from my side. What I am going to say is a recollection of my memory from all the texts and videos I have studied and seen so far. Which are a lot, to be honest.
I provide you with this kind of information because I see that people think of religious or monastic people somehow limited. Can we actually trust a monastic cell and its inhabitants? I will shed some light on this topic of "trust" mostly.
Overall, it is not about a "here" and "there", it is about a way to find trustworthy guidance but walk on own feet. Still, we expect people whom we find responsible to be generalists and to know everything. But that is not how our world is structured. We live in a world of separated specialities - actually for already thousands of years. Let's acknowledge this fact and have a look at the speciality of a monastic place and its purpose for people like you and me.
Difference as an advantage
Monastic life is something which requires certain hurdles to join it. To be a part of the island of a monastery you must want to be ordained as a nun or a monk.
Now, to become ordained those who make it possible must see your will and determination. You cannot just enter the scene and then demand to be a monk or nun. You must say yes to the rules set up. Those rules are not against you but set for a good reason. Why monastic life is so strictly ordered is for the very purpose that it must stick out towards the rest of human lifestyles. The difference between a worldly life and a monastic life serves the purpose to make the difference visible. The appearance of the buildings, the clothes of the inhabitants, the surroundings. It's best that this place is apart from the buzz of worldy existence. The place must be seen as pure. It must be comparable to the impurity of other places.
Not to make you feel bad or to envy this lifestyle but to think about the deeper meaning of such a place.
For a long time I somehow was upset about the fact that monks and nuns are not allowed to be married and that they drop every ownership. May it be money or possessions or property. I thought those people are a bunch of self centered folks that do not care for the problems of the average and environmental issues but feasted on their reduced lifestyle, actually cowardly flee the many challenges of a normal life.
Meanwhile I totally changed my mind on that.
But let me take a necessary detour.
In order to take trust into someone. What does it require?
Isn't it so that to trust in advice and support from another human being that I must be convinced of the fact that this person does not carry any self interest? When I seek a therapist or a consultant there is always this Hintergedanke, if he or she may not have some other interests than to help me to solve a problem. Also, I could be suspicious about this persons own entanglement in worldly matters like family or financial problems. How can I reassure myself that his helping attitude is not already some narcissist influence and that in helping me he finds satisfaction of his own neediness to be of use? How can I gain certainty about the pureness of a helping person?
The answer is: I can't. I must trust in the selfless ability of a therapist or a consultant. I must give my trust in advance in order to receive some trust back. When I block myself towards the process of therapy the therapist will notice that blockage and act to it in this or that way. In this very process a good educated and well meaning therapist sees a chance to reveal those very same conflicts between the patient and his world. He acts as a substitute. A good therapist can already be a kind of monk when he follows the principles of ethics to a very high degree.
Now, from where does a therapist or social worker/consultant gets his knowledge and insights?
From where does he get his education when all the scholarly and scientifically received education is exhausted and he still feels that the work with his clients does not fulfill recovery or healing? Where can a therapist look to find out more about the process of human relationships?
Exactly. He follows the trail back in history and searches for the purest form of ethical principles. When a therapist strives for selflessness and he not only wants to serve the client but also wants to develop an even better profession it's logical that he reaches out for sources he had not studied so far or not deep enough. This outer sources are actually a great fortune. Thousands of people have gathered valuable knowledge over time. Philosophers of all ages and places had built a path of ethical education and insights. But religion has the great advantage to offer knowledge which comes with a specific tag: that of agency. Why shouldn't I use an already accepted authority and make myself acquainted with the principles?
Just imagine, there were no searching results on Buddhism or Religion at all? How lost would that leave you when you tried to find something out about theistic matters? I would be blocked to navigate through the recordings of formerly set up systems and I would have to invent the wheel anew. What a waste that would be. And how difficult to come up with basic elements all by myself. So in order to understand "religion" I must read myself through many scripts and different perspectives. I must think and contemplate about certain insights and statements. I must check if the premises do still hold when I transfer the teachings into my own daily life. I must become an investigator and scientist myself.
Well. To become a pure and not by self interest driven therapist I indeed can reach a state of profession which serves the client almost perfectly well. When my life goes smooth and my finances are in order, when I live happy relationships and no disaster disturbs me everything shall be fine between my patients and me.
Now, what happens if I am in a middle of a divorce?
What, when my finances suddenly suffer a breakdown? What if I get into a conflict with my business partner? What if my teenage son causes big trouble within the family? What if a family member dies all of a sudden or gets seriously sick? All this examples are worldly matters. Those worldly matters cause me a great deal of thinking, acting and energy effort. How much capacity do I have left then for my clients and still fulfill my high expectations? Can I really be still calm when a client confronts me with the very same problem I am dealing with right now or it reminds me on the most horrible times of my life?
It becomes overly clear now why monks and nuns part from husbands and wives, from the need to make a living, from all personal financial matters. The very fact that they are not entangled in the process to make a living on their own serves the purpose to be of full service. That monks who usually live from the generosity of the worldly people who support the monastery with food and other goods becomes understandable.
That the villagers who willingly and happily give food and goods to the monastery now can be seen as a very reasonable act. They actually give support to their own well being. As they acknowledge the fact that as worldly people they are busy with worldly matters and therefore need some advice and spiritual guidance. This submission to the authority of a monastery seen in this light, helps to overcome prejudice one may hold towards religious institutions.
What you can see beautifully here is that one system feeds another one not by its similarities but mostly by its differences.
The villagers and the monastics differ a great deal from each other. Why they also get along well is also for acknowledging this differences as something good. The second reason is that of course it's the similarities as well which make two systems feeding each other possible. If you would think of the monks as some slimy and creepy aliens you never would accept advice from them. Not even visiting their place.
Think for a moment of a shaman of a little tribe. This shaman does not live amongst his own people. He has a hut somewhere up the hill. There, he brews his strange liquids and collects herbs and other sharp smelling things. But he also does not engage in sexual life with the women of the tribe nor in competing with the males over befriending the women. He must be an out-cast to some degree. But not too much as to still have a bond to his people. But not so much it affects his visionary capacity and healing powers.
At least a shaman, a monk and a therapist should show affection towards the death of a person, towards a loss of ones identity, towards the numerous sufferings to still be seen as a feeling human being amongst his own. When one totally detaches himself of the regular and normal emotions and cannot be noticed as human then the attitudes will change towards such an inhumane appearing helper. So, one must not cut the bond towards anger, tears and other emotions. "Only" to stay as the ruler of ones own emotions which must be there in the form of laughter and tears. But one must find an elegant way to serve both worlds. The spiritual one as well as the non spiritual.
Don't you also think that this is a high art to perform in such a way?
When we speak of non-corruptibility, we mean that someone acts in such a lack of self-interest that we can automatically assume that there is no bribery or seductiveness due to the lack of self-interest. Every person who is interested in his status, in the (self-)preservation of position and reputation is always seducible to the extent that he is financially and emotionally dependent on this kind of status in society.
So he who has nothing can lose nothing and therefore always only win in an immaterial sense.
Thus one could theoretically get the next absolution from a beggar who asks for alms homeless on the roadside. For what own interest could this man have, wouldn't he? Of course this is not a very good example, because in fact the beggar could have it in for the small change and give us for this reason a very bad advice.
But you never know, of course. And because you don't know that, the robe of the monk and his visible belonging to an order helps you to recognize in him the incorruptible one we are looking for.
It is therefore much quicker to gain immediate trust in a monk than, for example, in an approved psychotherapist. We first have to get to know him for a few sessions, we sniff his trustworthiness, so to speak, we test him for his patience, his empathy, his educational background.
We want to learn as much as possible about his reputation and cannot simply trust him blindly. The desire to have some information at hand to support our judgement is therefore all too understandable.
It is not for nothing that therapists like to publish books that also provide information about the personality and perception of a therapist. For the same reason, we also want to know, for example, whether people in decision-making positions have long-lasting relationships or are divorced for the third time. What an obvious show-off they have with their status and finances and what dirty spots adorn their vests.
We need a relevant amount of information that suggests a clean and blameless life,
and we also understand it when someone exaggerates a little here and there and is guilty of one or the other misdemeanor. After all, we ourselves are not innocent people who should throw stones in the greenhouse.
All this is very human and comprehensible.
Why we are now also driven to investigate the purity and ethical behaviour of others has much more to do with ourselves than with the many others. When we complain and blaspheme about the laxness of politicians or CEOs, this is also due to the fact that we see a certain amount of ourselves in these people, which we are reluctant to admit.
The people who behave criminally in public serve us as scapegoats and certain perpetrators who belong to the pillory. But of course we also always denounce ourselves, because we are reflected in these personalities in the most excellent way.
So how can a religiously motivated community serve us when it exemplifies a life there that is shielded from such worldly influence?
It is a symbol of an ideal role model, it is free, so to speak, from greed and rage addiction as well as jealousy and competition through the purity of the spotless.
The reason why we start to trust the Buddhist abbeys in this context more than our Christian priests is that the religious office of Catholics or Protestants has become much more secular than it used to be (count in not the present but also the past). The pastors today, for example, can have families and do not live in celibacy or have houses with mortgages. Which is fine and I don't want to have it changed.
There is something missing
The price for emphasizing the worldly and for pushing back the spiritual is that we do not have an ideal living example in our Christian community that lives in our midst. We have only the figure of Jesus, who is an excellent supreme example. But we have lost a lot besides the example of Jesus. For the sheep that visit the church are no longer there because of purity and communal spiritual experience, but in many parts a kind of decomposition has begun, where even in a nave it is only a matter of seeing and being seen.
Not all people are truly delighted by the fact that in modern times almost everything has become secular. There is something missing.
Therefore the place and the visible of a monastic life is very important. We would have little of it if a monastic cell were stationed on the moon, for example. Or on the ISS. Or somewhere else in heaven. It is important to maintain a good connection and to have neither too much nor too little distance between the abbey and the world.
It is not for nothing that Buddhist monasteries and centres are enjoying increasing popularity and in the West there are new openings in many places. These intentionally locally run cells serve as places of silence, purity and learning all the more clearly for a spiritual purpose, all the less a society's own spiritual culture knows how to harbor within itself.
It would be naive to assume that modernity has to reject all religiosity and that all modern people, for instance, wanted to do so.
What they do not want are clergymen who no longer know the difference between ethical and worldly life. Christians (as well as other theistic religions) have clearly exaggerated the display of their faith and a worldly wealth that is deeply rejected by the people. Now these institutions are fundamentally worldly too. I don't find an aggressive offence against them if something good is done with all that money. But that is not the point here.
People long for less decadence and more modesty in the form of a living lifestyle that is neither gigantomanic nor ascetic. Neither is the true Buddhist inclined to chasten and starve himself nor to over-saturate himself.
The monastic local cell also has another function. To show the villagers or the people surrounding them the structure of their doctrine. This is not only about the theoretical principle but also about very practical things.
For Buddhists, three factors belong integrated into life:
Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
Buddha
is the role model par excellence. It stands for the ideal, the purest example of an awakened human being. He forms an excellent role model by outlasting in history. It is the most important visual symbol to which Buddhists seek spiritual refuge when they seek consolation and confidence of mind. The persistence of this strong Buddha figure is truly significant. It is difficult for people not to have any idea of an ethical person, so they do indeed need a human figure, but at the same time it is sublime above any weakness of human existence. After all, one cannot think of nothing. One therefore loosely clings to the figure of the Buddha. This manifests itself in statues and small figures. And in this way they also help to conjure up spiritual manifestation. It is also difficult to seek refuge in a figure of which one is forced to think certain weaknesses and derogations. Certainly, the neighbor or ex-wife is not suited to offer spiritual refuge.
Dharma
means the totality of Buddhist teaching. All oral and written traditions that serve to understand and practice theory in practice. This teaching is truly gigantic. Not only is there not one Buddhist teaching alone. From the mainstream many undercurrents have developed as well as traditions and texts of different schools. This co-existence of different directions reflects the diversity and probably also the influences of cultural), climatic and geological conditions and circumstances in the respective regions and human communities.
Sangha
is the community. No teaching can exist on its own. One absolutely needs other people to form a community. This community offers a real physical space where those interested in teaching can also meet. This space of meeting offers different forms: Meditation, lectures in which one is the sole listener, question and answer sessions and debating with each other. But there is also the possibility to ask for a private conversation with an abbot. The monastic life itself is a community in itself. Furthermore, the monastics are interested in accompanying milestones of the ordinary people - the layman - in life, such as the death of a parishioner. In addition, Sangha also offers to connect with each other over distances and to have a virtual space in addition to the physically existing space. For example, the many youtube videos that are now available that film the monks during their lectures and where you often get to see the listeners and participants.
Coming all the way along to investigate Buddhism I also started to think of my Christian heritage. Still, I haven't started to dig into the philosophical scripts of some well known historical clergymen. But from what I already sensed and read on the surface I can clearly see that no matter from which theistic realm knowledge was provided there are similarities to find.
What I like most about the Buddhist doctrine is that there is no creator involved.
No cause of how life or the universe came into being. Total blankness about this for Christians so important matter. I like it a lot. When I can leave God out of the equation that means that I can focus on other things as constantly asking and torturing myself over the question: Where do I come from?
To not give you a wrong image of a monastery: From the lectures I listen to, which do contain highly amusing speeches and anecdotes from the monks and nuns, I learned that a monastery also inhibits all kinds of folks. The criminal, the insane and the wise. Do not think of the inhabitants as all wise and pure and awakened. They deal with the same struggles inside an abbey as we people do deal with outside of it.
A field stretching out
For some time I also thought that the advice of celibate monks could not be used for family or even sexual matters. In fact, one can ask oneself whether a person who lacks certain spaces of experience can advise another at all. For example, in matters of pregnancy, motherhood or parenthood. Or with regard to financial matters. At first one can apprehend that someone in the abbey really has no idea about such things.
But think about it: there are basic principles to all issues arising.
However, there is one thing that is not taken into consideration in this thought: the fact of connection and the travel of responsibility. It is utopian to assume that knowledge and experience prevail in a single person about all things. The monastery cell must therefore be imagined as an element that radiates from its centre and stretches a net. For the people who live and work around a monastery are not without every intellect and can certainly transfer the things they learn and recognize through Buddhist teaching into their worldly affairs. From there it travels further.
Finally, the knowledge and wisdom of a Buddhist teacher reaches us Westerners in our businesses and professions. In fact, I would often have been lost during my consultation hours with my clients wouldn't I have received some very god advise through the lectures I listened to. I am not telling my clients, who often mirror that I was able to support them, that I got my security through a Buddhist approach. But that is what actually happens. I also mix my knowledge with Western scientific knowledge as well. And it functions pretty well.
And that is, what is expected from the people. You should not consult a monk for every little decision and not run to your adviser whenever a difficulty appears.
So an experienced mother is still an experienced mother and wife and partner and has a profession or activity. As far as worldly life is in harmony with teaching, there is no reason why non-ordained people should not be able to advise themselves by the prior and continuous acquisition of a spiritual education.
After all, the whole thing is good for that. The separation between mind and matter that is thought in people's minds is only a mental one, but not a real one.
When you replace the term "therapist" and put in your own profession, you get the idea of what leading an ethical life is about. And that you yourself can be the best servant within your own social and professional life. Helping others does not have to be understood pathetically or in the sense of sacrificing yourself to an altruistic lifestyle. You can stay away to be a nuisance to other people.
Running a property
Amaravati Monastery at the eastern end of the Chiltern Hills in South East England run by the abbot Ajahn Amaro
Photo by Mb1347 - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45457361
One should not be deceived by the fact that leading an abbey, for example, does not require any modern knowledge of a commercial or managerial nature. An abbot should be a good computer and trader, someone who knows how to get the most out of it with the least means. There are buildings and gardens, hygiene rooms and kitchens as well as lots of equipment in a monastery. Just like offices and rooms that are prepared for guests and halls where many people find room to meditate, sing and gather.
A healthy and well-managed monastery is a place of silence just like a place of encounter and activity. There is a lot going on and the doors are never locked. There is something broken or lost and the monks have their friction and worldly worries, just like everyone else.
Surely there is enough human vanity, madness and semi-silk energy left to work with and on these qualities. Where better to do this than in a monastery? The community there doesn't just overlook you and ignore someone who has decided to ordain. One is there under care and has to take responsibility and integrate oneself into life without, however, doing everything with a yes and amen. One is called upon to contemplate the teachings, to reflect on them, to debate them and to put them to the test for oneself. On the other hand, one is not bound and gagged and is then bound to monastic existence forever. Those who no longer want to can take off their robes at any time.
First, when I started to confront myself with this topic I was only looking for entertainment. Indeed, I found and find it highly entertaining and not at all boring to listen to all the "ajahns" or "venerables", which monks and nuns are also called. A lot of them have attained a humor which you cannot so often find.
Some last words. All what I have provided here is a result of reading and listening to Buddhist topics or related ones. My study is not over, I constantly feed myself with new information and also re-new the already consumed ones in oder to establish and strengthen them. I will probably spend the rest of my life with the studies.
So far I hope, you got some valuable informations and insights as well. Thank you for visiting me.
Text sources:
Monastic life: http://elibrary.ibc.ac.th/files/private/Buddhist%20%20Monastic%20Life.pdf
Rules: https://www.urbandharma.org/G3/PDF/RevHengSureG3.pdf
Buddhism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism
Religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
Dharma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma#Buddhism
Different schools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schools_of_Buddhism
https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/4-publikationen/buddhismus-in-geschichte-und-gegenwart/band1/bd1-k07terwiel.pdf
Sangha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangha
Layman/Lay people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laity#Buddhist_lay_persons
Ajahn Sona at Standord University, youtube-video
No creator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheistic_religion#Buddhism
Amaravati Monastery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaravati_Buddhist_Monastery
Ajahn Amaro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajahn_Amaro
Further readings:
https://www.dhammatalks.org/vinaya/BMC_v170717.pdf
http://www.fgu.edu.tw/~cbs/pdf/2013論文集/q23.pdf
http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1011-76012016000100006
https://thubtenchodron.org/2011/06/west-ordained-life/
Picture sources:
Title Monastery: Photo by Nenad Spasojevic on Unsplash
Woman stretching hand: Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash
Single monk: Photo by Jordi Ganduxe on Unsplash
Goofy chimp: https://pixabay.com/de/schimpanse-verrückt-lustig-doof-44809/
Street life modern: Photo by Anubhav Saxena on Unsplash street
Monk in art gallery: Photo by Antonio Molinari on Unsplash
Buddha figure: Photo Mattia Faloretti on Unsplash
Old books: Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash
People: Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
Very interesting reading. You gave an approach to this that I think is quite correct.
This is something important, because only when we can spread the vices and material issues can we be really free to act according to our will. Once I heard that we are only free when we can say no to ourselves, that is, self-control.
As you well describe, apparently Christianity lost weight or influence in society, many people lost trust in their institutions.
"According to statistics" atheism is increasing, especially in economically more developed countries, this is due to the inherent economism that these current economic models entail, on the other hand, scientism now occupies the space that Christianity once had. In other cases, people search answers in Buddhism, as you said.
This principle is the key to success in an organization, if it were applied more frequently in our societies, things would be something different.
I must say that it was interesting for me to read about the vision you have about this, I think it is enriching. Regards!
Thank you, I am pleased that you found it interesting to read my personal vision about this topic, as you are a deep and sharp thinker.
What you said about the statistics triggered a flash of a memory and I started to search for an article where - I guess - it is said that even though we think to become more and more atheistic that does not mean that we give up all what else is connected to spirituality. Unfortunately I cannot find it ... I also assume that not all the water is spilled out with the baby. But clearly disappointment with our Christian celestials is there.
... thinking about the term "a-theistic" it makes sense. As a non theistic worldview cause much less headaches:)
Headache I also get when I think how can rules be established in a company that, for example, already has an unethical business model from the ground up? I keep thinking about the activities of the common good economy. I think I already told you about it.
Again, questions must be asked in which form companies can test themselves in order to establish rules.
Here, I think you'll find that interesting:
https://www.ecogood.org/media/filer_public/5d/4d/5d4d17bc-156b-44ec-9115-fe6b37c63187/ecg_compact_balance_sheet_workbook.pdf
All the best!
Well, I have some objections to atheism, really since a few months ago I have an incomplete text about atheism stored in my folder dedicated to controversial post.
On the other hand, it's interesting that you remind me about Gemeinwohl-Ökonomie, I checked my blog a few days ago, and I saw that I had written down that concept a few months back when you mentioned it, so I did research on that precisely this week.
In the past I spent a lot of time studying all the principles that sustain the economy, I would say that it is one of the things that I have dedicated the most time, my conclusion is simple, we can not have a moral economy by making a change in the legislation and in the economic system, simply fail, the dominant culture and ideas are more important than the normative and material structure of the economic system, is the fundamental reason why everything that is not the current system ends up failing.
Many regulations can be implemented to control the economy, but then the illegal market will begin to emerge, and these can only be stopped by the use of force in a systematic way, and that will sooner or later lead to failure.
My conclusion is that we must change culturally, we must impose idealism above materialism, then, we will willingly do things without taking into account our material gain, the economy will adapt accordingly to our moral actions.
In this publication, although I don't propose it directly, I propose to replace the idea of homo economicus with that of homo honoris, the perception of what it means to win and lose would change radically, the change in the economic system comes later.
Likewise, I see that it is more a question of will and whose mind you are a child of, how things will change in the economy.
Nothing that is reformed or pushed from above can really reach the individual. The ideal always wants to be found first in myself, before I question and change my attitude and my perception of life.
So a "yes" to what you say about cultural change. It's all quite an intimate affair, isn't it? Because to develop culturally means to develop personally at the same time.
I'll see if I can read the article you suggested in a different way than I did last month :)
You have anticipated many questions your post may provoke. The essence of this, of course, is trust. Each of us, based on experience has a different trust threshold. As a therapist, you likely understand the foundation for trust is laid early in childhood, likely infancy. While rationality can inform us about someone's integrity (trustworthiness) our 'gut' response may defy this assessment.
I'm glad you address the fact that people who assume the roles of piety are not necessarily pious. Though-- I personally have found at least one person who lived a life of religious vocation while at the same time eschewing conspicuous demonstrations of this dedication. I worked closely with a nun who wore secular clothes and engaged in secular work. She was hard-nosed, practical, analytic (trained as a mathematician)--but she was the most ethical person I ever knew. She ran the only charity my husband would hand money over to without hesitation because he knew every penny would go to the poor.
So, I do believe those who devote themselves to a spiritual life can be totally trustworthy, but, I'm sorry, they have to prove it to me first. The robes, the symbols, the lifestyle have no intrinsic value for me.
Postscript:
I've returned to this comment for an edit. My mother was as ethical as the nun, and even kinder. My mother was modest in aspect but scrupulous in examining conscience. Although she did not pursue a religious vocation, she wore the signs of piety on her knees. These were thickly calloused from years of private praying.
Thank you for visiting me and commenting.
I think what you reply also reflects some of the thoughts of others. So I appreciate that you come up with them.
I am not a therapist but a systemic consultant for families and social issues.
I am happy about the example you gave with regard to working with the nun. I find such examples important to tell and to give an impression of the people to whom one could trust oneself. In return, people also think about such or similar encounters and acquaintances - the whole mental activity then changes direction and one remembers or searches for such real people and examples of their lifestyle and stories that can be told. When you mentioned the nun, I spontaneously thought of my history teacher back then. She was a similarly integer person who opened history to me. I will never forget her.
The visible signs can certainly have no inner value for those who do not wear them. Rather, they are external features that facilitate recognition. I like this clear recognizability and thus distinguishability as well as the accompanying symbolism.
Though, Christianity still is much closer to me and an image of a Jesus figure touches me much deeper than that of a Buddha figure.
That someone can be devout even though he is dressed in piety is without question possible.
It was important to me to make it clear that a place like a Buddhist order offers fewer possibilities to develop a worldly self-interest. A bit like being taken to a mountain hut that has no running water and electricity. Where there is no luxury or few amenities. By nature, a person in such an environment is less tempted to define himself by status symbols. I believe it changes people when they enter a monastery. There they are not alone. The social control and the monastery regulations also ensure that hypocrisy and dishonourable intentions come to light. As far as I know, the inhabitants of a monastery reflect and "supervise" each other in a much more sophisticated way ordinary people do.
What I want to say: environment, rules etc. increase the probability of trustworthiness. But there is no question that ambition and a personal form of egoism can also flourish in such an environment.
That is why I would say in any case that one always keeps one's judgement awake. Monasteries also have a reputation. I think, if one really wants to get to know one, one could play detective with the residents around such an abbey - there is nothing to say against a little espionage ;-)
I don't know exactly what I'm also noticing from you in this respect, but there seems to be something else I can't quite grasp. Any form of annoyance?
I don't know if the question is too personal, but did your mother have an exchange with others or some kind of spiritual refuge that made her this friendly and ethical person?
Yes--impossible to ignore the influence of environment. I agree temptation, almost in the biblical sense, makes it so much harder to be ethical. Which is why the monastic setting would seem to make piety more likely. My experience with this is very limited so obviously my judgement is theoretical.
As for my mother--I don't mind speaking about her. She led a very hard life--battled lung disease throughout, and suffered from hearing loss. She raised six children, alone. One of them was severely disabled and another became critically ill and stayed ill for many years.
Her piety predated all of this. It just seemed she had an internal mettle (I don't have it). She never spoke of it to anyone, except us. Just prayed and examined conscience. Faulted herself when she had an unkind thought about anyone. As she prepared to die, years ago, she called everyone she could think of and apologized for anything she might have done to hurt them.
What a model I had. Sort of ruined me for the world--which turned out to be a great disappointment :)
We've got some similarities here. Though I wouldn't say that my mom was particularly friendly - she became more of a mischief in her later age. Raised six children as well and hardly ever complained about her own miseries. I met her sharp tongue still once in a while and battled with her. As I see it you held alive your mothers good qualities in your own way. LOL! No ruin can so far be spotted:)
I have noted the similarities in our backgrounds before, including the presence of twins in the family, as I recall. She and I battled also. I had many questions and she was accepting of everything. I think it would have been better for her to be more combative, and challenging.
As for ruin...so much I try to hide :)
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