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Is buddhism compatible with common life goals (e.g. marriage, a house, a family)?
DaltheJigsaw
Mountain View Veteran
Is buddhism compatible with common life goals (e.g. marriage, a house, a family)?
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Does it make any sense to embrace a religion that says, "Oh, by the way. The secret to life is only found if you leave all that taking care of family, raising a new generation and being part of society stuff behind you."
And that doesn't mean you can only be a second-rate Buddhist, useful for supporting the monks, the "real Buddhists" who are the only ones with a hope to awakening. Granted, people being what they are, that attitude always infects any institution that sets itself apart from everyday activity. Even Buddhist monks.
"There has been no buddha in the past, nor will there be in the future, who abides in the household and who so established has achieved this supreme, highest enlightenment." - Samādhirāja Sūtra
"There has never been a bodhisattva who dwells in the household and who has awakened to unexcelled, perfect enlightenment. They all, moreover, having gone forth from the household, fixed their thoughts on the wilderness with a predilection toward the wilderness. Having gone to the wilderness, they awakened to unexcelled, perfect enlightenment. And [it is there that] they acquired the prerequisites [Skt. saṃbhāra] [for enlightenment; i.e., merit and gnosis]." - Ugraparipṛcchā Sūtra
What do you make of them?
It depends upon your own morals and thinking along with to what extreme you take the dharma. The buddha taught his teachings in a variety of different ways as he understood that people differ from each other when it comes down to mental disposition. There would be no real point in creating one set way to live your life as it would not help the majority of the people who came across his ideas.
So, the wise and compassionat fellow that he was, the buddha put his teachings in different forms so all types of people could relate to them. For example, you may not be able to life a life of monk or nun, whereas for others it is idealistic.
Also, it may be good to note that the buddha himself left his wife and son, along with his entire village and kingdom without a single word of notice. That would be largely seen as a flakey father by most people, more so in this day and age.
For girls, the picture is even worse. In much of the world, girls are married-off shortly after puberty, and then risk pregnancy after pregnancy until they are either dead or infertile. They rarely have any real choice about this.
We must remember that most of us here are from the First World, the rich third of the world where most people aren't starving. Two thirds of the population of the planet are at or below the absolute poverty line, under constant threat from war, famine and disease. They have no choices at all in their lives.
To suggest that that only lives where enlightenment can be found, are those of monastics, is effectively to say that 2/3rds of the planet have no hope. I do not believe this, especially in the light of the many teachings that show us that human life is a precious and rare thing: the only life during which enlightenment can be found.
But the Buddha's teachings give hope even to the poor. Whilst they may have no choices in their physical reality, Buddhism gives them a chance to escape their suffering. In fact, such poverty and distress may mean their attachment to this world is far less than those of us who live in comparative riches.
Temple monks become temple Buddhas. Lay Buddhists become lay Budddhas. In truth, Buddhas are where you find them. Anything else is faulty understanding of the Dharma.
You think the monks in the temples are living special lives that put them on the fast track to Buddhahood? Wherever a monk goes and whatever he does, he takes his mind with him. That mind is filled with selfish attachments in spite of shaving his head and moving into a dormroom. This mind doesn't care what is surrounding you or what needs to be done in your life, those attachments form. So the monk gets attached to his temple, his teachings, his Patriarchs and his rank among his fellow monks instead of his house, his family, his job, or whatever.
Jack Kornfield. The Eightfold Path for the Householder
http://www.urbandharma.org/pdf/ritepath.pdf
The question shouldn't be if buddhism is compatible so much as if one's conduct is compatible with what buddhism is trying to get to (and not buddhism itself).
My question is: why wouldn't it be compatible with lay life? The Buddha taught lay followers as well as monks. Maybe too much emphasis is placed on monasticism. From what I've heard about life in some monasteries, they're not at all conducive to the spiritual life. According to some Westerners who have lived in them, they're hotbeds of jealousy and power plays.
The goal of Buddhism is enlightened life. It is about you and me in our real-life situations here and now.
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln260/Vimalakirti.htm
(fast-forward to Chapter 2)
Namaste
Auto spell-check can be a blast, can't it...?
But there may be still some lingering feeling that lay followers are somehow second-rate practitioners. I feel uneasy about it.
I feel you have made some incorrect statements in your post ... Is it really in "much" of the world? I know it happens, but for me "much" means "most" or "a lot", ie at least half or more, and I don't believe that's the case. I better word may be "some". I believe the number of people considered to be in poverty is more like 1 billion. Now, that is a lot of people in poverty, but it is not 2/3 of the planet, it is more like 1/7.
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world hunger facts 2002.htm#Number_of_hungry_people_in_the_world
Also, just because you are in poverty does not mean you have "no choice".
If the World were 100 PEOPLE:
50 would be female
50 would be male
20 would be children
There would be 80 adults,
14 of whom would be 65 and older
There would be:
61 Asians
12 Europeans
13 Africans
14 people from the Western Hemisphere
There would be:
31 Christians
21 Muslims
14 Hindus
6 Buddhists
12 people who practice other religions
16 people who would not be aligned with a religion
17 would speak a Chinese dialect
8 would speak Hindustani
8 would speak English
7 would speak Spanish
4 would speak Arabic
4 would speak Russian
52 would speak other languages
82 would be able to read and write; 18 would not
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer
75 people would have some supply of food and a place to
shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 25 would not
1 would be dying of starvation
17 would be undernourished
15 would be overweight
83 would have access to safe drinking water
17 people would have no clean, safe water to drink
By 'poverty' I do not mean starvation, Absolute Poverty, I simply mean an extremely limited income, most of which goes on food and healthcare.
The significance is that if you are only about to earn a few dollars a day, or survive on subsistence farming, you have very few choices. You either keep working/farming, or you starve. The gap between relative and absolute poverty is extremely tiny, and the risks of falling through the gap extremely high: illness, death of a wage earner, drought, war... these all can mean the difference between survival and death.
A recent World Health Organisation campaign on women's health said that lack of access to birth control and lack of reproductive health care and access to adequate maternity services put woman at severe risk. This is a global problem. And incidentally, the USA had one of the worst records in the developed world, so maternal health poverty is not just a 'Third World' phenomenon.
Anyway, I'm tired and not in the mood to bandy statistics. Suffice to say, poverty, even relative poverty, reduces choices, especially for women. If you don't believe that, fine, but I recommend you watch one of the BBC documentaries like "Blood, sweat and t-shirts" about the garment industry in Asia and tell me those people have any choices in life. They are not starving, but neither could they up sticks and go into a monestary.
I guess the relevant point is that asking the accurate question is important as _Namaste_ has said above. For many individuals ( as the 100 people poem illustrates - if not exactly ) the life goals in the original question do not apply.
Whats the point of being discouraged and disempower ourselves. Why dwell on what we are not and find out for ourselves with tested experience what of the dharma we can bring into our lives.
Lastly, your claim that "In much of the world, girls are married-off shortly after puberty" is also absolutely not true. (Sadly) there are around 10 million child brides per year - but clearly that is NOT "much of the world".
http://www.icrw.org/child-marriage-facts-and-figures