Purposes of monasticism

Overcoming imperfections

All monasticism has its mainstay in theological convictions that life in society cannot generate the spiritual consummation stipulated by the religion’s founder. In some traditions, especially in those of South Asian provenance, the true “self” is held to be clogged and concealed by imperfections—by sin, ignorance, or other theologically suggested impediments. The ego with which the layperson and the seeking neophyte identifies is not the true self, which must be discovered or uncovered. Barriers—differently conceived as matter, individuated mind, or a soul-mind aggregate defiled by sin, ignorance, and perversion—must be broken through, or a veil lifted, so that the true self, the primordial spirit, may shine forth. In most traditions this breakthrough is held to be unattainable through a conventionally good life in society, and thus a new approach must be sought. The body and the mind, which are part or all of the impediment, have to be controlled, disciplined, and chastised; hence, monastics advocate either asceticism or a set of psychophysical practices that differ radically from the normal routines of life.

Spiritual perfection

The quest for spiritual intensification is elitist—even when, as within Christian monastic orders, humility is required. Withdrawal from society is necessary because the instrumentalities of perfection cannot normally be acquired and activated in the surroundings of everyday life. The basis of monastic life is a set of spiritual precepts that either articulate the supreme value or provide support for the body and the mind on their journey toward whatever supreme consummation may be envisioned. Intense contemplation, often accompanied by physical rigours, constitutes ascetic practice—i.e., prayer, worship, incantation, propitiation, and various forms of self-abasement or self-inflation. Monastics pursue all these forms of orthopraxy in enormously varied forms and degrees.

Salvation

The ultimate purpose of the monastic endeavour is to attain a state of freedom from bondage, where both bondage and freedom are defined in theological terms. The languages of most cultures with monastic traditions possess special terms to denote bondage and freedom; a few languages adapt terms of common parlance that are then understood by members of society to refer to theologically adumbrated types of bondage and freedom. For example, the term salvation in the Christian context means deliverance from the powers of evil that arise from original sin and that beset a person’s body, mind, and soul. Notions of salvation, liberation, and emancipation are generated by, or closely related to, the way in which a society conceives of the individual’s status within the larger universe.

These concepts presuppose a specific cosmological view against which to frame the answers to the question—formulated or unformulated—“What is it that is bound and that can, should, or must be freed to achieve the most desirable state within or vis-à-vis the totality of things—e.g., the cosmos, God, and other absolutes?” The question implies spatial and temporal parameters that need to be articulated. In some of the indigenous South Asian religions, salvation can be achieved during one’s lifetime, but whether this actually happens or is delayed is irrelevant to Indian notions of liberation (Sanskrit: moksha). In Christianity and Islam, but not in Rabbinic Judaism, salvation cannot be fully achieved as long as the body exists. Thus, salvation and its semantic equivalents in other languages refer to both the present and the future in the South Asian religions but to the future above all in two of the Abrahamic ones. The life of the monastic consists of full-time seeking of salvation, in contrast to that of the “part-time” quest of the general believer.

Redemption

The concept of redemption as deliverance from the spiritual effect of past transgressions may or may not be identical with salvation, though the terms are synonymous in many contexts, notably within Christianity. As part of a vocation, the monastic seeks redemption from his or her sins and usually intercedes for others to advance their redemption. This is accomplished through personal sacrifice and may involve forms of self-mortification. The practice of self-mortification, which intensifies or stabilizes the austerities required of the monastic, is found in all monastic traditions. Whether the autocentric or the vicarious aspect of the quest is emphasized depends entirely on the doctrinal framework within which the monastic functions. In either case, however, monastics improve their chances of redemption because, in mortifying their own bodies and minds for the benefit of others, they also help their own advancement along the spiritual path. When a Jain monk volunteers to lie upon a bed infested with vermin that suck his blood, he may do so to diminish a client’s or patron’s burden of bad karma (the notion that every deed, good or bad, receives due reward or retribution), but at the same time he practices the monastic virtues prescribed for him as a monk. When a Franciscan friar (a follower of Francis of Assisi, the 12th–13th-century Italian mendicant leader) serves the poor and the sick, he also exercises his own virtues of service and humility, all of which are signs or instruments of his own redemption.

Liberation

When liberation (moksha) from cycles of birth and death constitutes the foundation of a belief system, as in the basic Indian pattern of samsara (the ineluctable process of death and rebirth that can be broken only through supererogatory efforts of asceticism), monastics become disseminators of methods of liberation. In India, Tibet, and Southeast Asia the monk stood at the centre of religious life, whereas in the Western Christian world he was and is marginal to the main liturgical and ideological thrust, albeit not always deprived of high social status. In principle, the importance of the monastic life in a religious system (if not always in the social system) is related to its eschatology (doctrine of last things). Thus, if the state of existence after salvation is continuous with the present life, as in the Abrahamic religions, then the monastic will have less prominence than would be had in belief systems, such as those of South Asia, in which salvation implies a different state that cancels finitude and eradicates all traces of separate individual existence.