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meditation. I know of a monk who tried the latter for about a year and a half and then gave up. He changed to T'ien-t'ai meditation, which is somewhat easier. He did this for nine years, but still did not feel that he was getting anywhere, and so for the last eighteen years he has been reciting Buddha's name, which is the practice of the Pure Land sect.
Notice that there was no set career. A monk could meditate; he could recite Buddha's name; he could study. He was not committed to the practice of any one sect. It is as if in the West a Christian could be a Quaker this year, a Roman Catholic next year, and a Baptist the year after, regarding them all as complementary. Much of the Buddhist monk's time, of course, was spent in ritual which was common to all sects: chanting the scriptures morning and evening, rites to celebrate the anniversaries of buddhas and bodhisattvas through the calendar year, masses to release the souls of the dead from hell, prayers for the sick, prayers to avert disaster, and other ceremonies designed to assist the faithful with practical problems of life and death.
The newly ordained monk was, as I say, supposed to meditate and study for five years after ordination. Study was usually carried on in a seminary. The seminaries (there were about thirty-five of them) were established in the nineteen-twenties as a part of the general revival of Buddhism in China. I shall not go into the seminary curriculum, but it lasted from three to twelve years, depending on how much education the monk had already had. It began with secular subjects (history, mathematics, etc.), and ended with studying how to expound the sutras. Some seminaries had a tough programme: one monk I know got T.B. from overwork.
**
After the seminary the next stage of the monk's career was peregrination. I use this word because it properly means making pilgrimages. A monk would start off from the place he had been trained and wander up and down China. He might spend a week in one monastery, a few months in another, many years in a third. But in theory there could be no final settling down.
Peregrination was a hard life, and this was one of the reasons it was considered essential. It rubbed off superficialities—from interest in personal comfort to feelings of self-importance. More than that, it enabled a monk to learn each text and doctrine
THE BUDDHIST CAREER
43
meditation. I know of a monk who tried the latter for about a year and a half and then gave up. He changed to T'ien-t'ai meditation, which is somewhat easier. He did this for nine years, but still did not feel that he was getting anywhere, and so for the last eighteen years he has been reciting Buddha's name, which is the practice of the Pure Land sect.
Notice that there was no set career. A monk could meditate; he could recite Buddha's name; he could study. He was not committed to the practice of any one sect. It is as if in the West a Christian could be a Quaker this year, a Roman Catholic next year, and a Baptist the year after, regarding them all as complementary. Much of the Buddhist monk's time, of course, was spent in ritual which was common to all sects: chanting the scriptures morning and evening, rites to celebrate the anniversaries of buddhas and bodhisattvas through the calendar year, masses to release the souls of the dead from hell, prayers for the sick, prayers to avert disaster, and other ceremonies designed to assist. the faithful with practical problems of life and death.
The newly ordained monk was, as I say, supposed to meditate and study for five years after ordination. Study was usually carried on in a seminary. The seminaries (there were about thirty-five of them) were established in the nineteen-twenties as a part of the general revival of Buddhism in China. I shall not go into the seminary curriculum, but it lasted from three to twelve years, depending on how much education the monk had already had. It began with secular subjects (history, mathe- matics, etc.), and ended with studying how to expound the sutras. Some seminaries had a tough programme: one monk I know got T.B. from overwork.
**
After the seminary the next stage of the monk's career was peregrination." I use this word because it properly means making pilgrimages." A monk would start off from the place he had been trained and wander up and down China. He might spend a week in one monastery, a few months in another, many years in a third. But in theory there could be no final settling down.
Peregrination was a hard life, and this was one of the reasons it was considered essential. It rubbed off superficialities-from interest in personal comfort to feelings of self-importance. More than that, it enabled a monk to learn each text and doctrine
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