Best Of

Hi @Jeffrey… nice to see you again….yeah, I would agree there’s a huge difference between theater for the monastic and theater for the householder. The list of things that keep householders/lay from the monastery is pretty long, I’m sure. 😁
In that vein tho, one of the temples I used to attend was in a very rough neighborhood (gang territory) and we were taught to meditate with gunshots going on outside..that the “goal” was not to be distracted and continue on.
BTW…the roughest people there were so nice and would often come in just out of curiosity and wonder about these foreigners and ask questions.
The few monasteries I’ve been to here in the US are waaaay out in the woods and far from city or nearby distractions… though I did see Monks a few times in Sam’s club getting food and supplies, haha

I was just reading about meditative concentration from the 6 paramitas of Mahayana Buddhism. In the section about meditative concentration they talk about the virtue of a monastery compared to the householders life. A monastery was defined as 500 armspans away from a town (an earshot). I think that theatre could be spoken of as a negative if they are keeping someone away from having a very peaceful life where it's easy to reach meditative concentration. So the problem of theatre might be that it's one of the things in the householders life that keeps them away from a monastery life. I also read that even walking 7 footsteps (symbolic or literal?) towards a monastery was a very virtuous offering to the Buddhas, even more virtuous than making extensive offerings of food, drink, flowers, and so forth.

From my reading (translation of the Jewel Ornament of Liberation):

The Good Qualities of Solitude. Escaping from agitation and staying in monasteries for the sake of enlightenment and of sentient beings has many good qualities:

a) It is an excellent offering to all the Buddhas,
b) one will renounce samsara, will be free from the eight worldly concerns, and will not encourage the afflicting emotions
c) meditative concentration will arise

Off shoot from the game thread.

Is theatre wrong/unskillful ? This scripture was presented in that thread

theatre:

“Thus the actor — himself intoxicated & heedless, having made others intoxicated & heedless — with the breakup of the body, after death, is reborn in what is called the hell of laughter. But if he holds such a view as this: 'When an actor on the stage, in the midst of a festival, makes people laugh & gives them delight with his imitation of reality, then with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the company of the laughing devas,' that is his wrong view. Now, there are two destinations for a person with wrong view, I tell you: either hell or the animal womb.”

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn42/sn42.002.than.html

I present this

THE BUDDHA’S GREAT THEATER OF LIFE
BY TONEN O’CONNOR

Not a long read

https://ancientwayjournal.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/the-buddhas-great-theater-of-life/

“ ….. Also with reference to the apparent conflict between the early Pali scriptures and the importance of theatre to our lives, it is important that we not attempt to use Buddhist scriptures as immutable teachings, with the sometimes mistaken notion that the earlier they are the truer they are. The idea that any and all early sayings retain a higher truth throughout centuries of change contradicts the Buddha’s original teaching on the impermanence of all things. “

“ … I have found my answer to the question as to the nature of the relationship between the theatre and Mahayana Buddhism: empathy. Empathy is the ability to experience what others are feeling, to put oneself in another’s place. This is what we need if we are to fruitfully live our Buddhist understanding of our responsibility to the whole. Empathy is essential for the development of compassion. And this is what we experience as we sit in a darkened theater, experiencing the unfolding of lives, of situations, of emotions that we may perhaps never experience in any other way. An audience and actor connect in this mysterious exchange of understanding”

🎭