Boys in need of a good upbringing or reform often go to the monastery for it in Asia. Vietnam is no different. There is a tradition of males temporarily ordaining to gain merit, benefit their parents, learn virtue and self-discipline, swell the ranks of the monks.
Because the motivation is rarely based on a spiritual aspiration, the candidates are as un-monkish as can be. This make for sensational and very misleading tales of "monks drinking," "monks gambling," "monks fighting," "monks playing with plastic guns," "monks stealing," or the best one "monks and their sexual misconduct"... when they are not "monks" at all.
"Boys will be boys" even when they are playing at being novice monks. Novices are not expected to become monks just to behave so long as they are in robes and in that way grow up to be good men. Playing with toy guns is what Southeast Asia and the world learns from the West (Woutertje010/Flickr.com).A "monk" (
bhikkhu, shraman, "recluse") is a fully-ordained spiritual aspirant who is no younger than 20. A "novice" (
samanera, "little recluse") by contrast is one in training, a probationer, petitioner, a try-it-on-for-size role.
Monks have 227 major rules, whereas novices have 10. Monks who break the four most serious rules (falsely claiming attainments, sex, stealing, killing) is instantly "defeated," disgraced, and thrown out of the
Sangha (monastic Order). Novices break their training rules all the time and, at worst, are sent home. There is not much shame in not keeping rules you were never really into taking on.
But it does make for funny headlines like this story about a bored 19-year-old novice who hijacked a scooter or had a girlfriend. One of the major motivations for temporarily ordaining -- for anywhere from a day to a week to three months (a summer) -- is to become suitable for marriage.
So some girls on the lookout for a husband often, oddly, look in the
Sangha. Girls know the vast majority of novices never intend to become monks and even fewer do. This is particularly prevalent in Thailand, a permissive but very Buddhist country, and leads novices to distraction. Of course, homosexuality enters the picture as well. It corrupts the Sangha.
Novice and puppy (tuhoc.blogspot.com)Gays everywhere crowd celibate all-male orders. Many go there to be celibate, to suppress strong sexual yearnings and non-normative behavior. Some stray. Some do not yet are no less gay and have to keep a lid on impulses stemming sometimes from childhood molestation or abuse. Vows do not keep. Vows are kept. The presence of gays has become an institution, a common feature of monasticism around the world.
- (Statutory rape, child molestation, and sodomy in the Catholic Church is not surprising. Molesters come for access to victims but also act out with the people they have access to and can get away with acting out on -- children and other men. Drinking, looking at or possessing prodigious amounts of pornography, does not even seem to violate any rules for priests, judging by how many convicts are revealed to have been in the habit partaking and how much of this begins in the seminary where seminal lessons are inculcated).
In the Buddha's time "gays" as we understand the term today did not exist. There were plenty of gay people but no one thought that's what gay meant. Gay was different. We are fortunate to understand. For most of history people have been full of fear, loathing, and intolerant -- except that there have always been progressive societies that do not see it as a problem. The thing to do is clear -- have a third gender. Asia has it, Native Americans had it, goodness knows the Greeks were well aware of the fluidity of sexual expression.
Rural Cambodian novices "or future little monks in training," get to ride ponies to collect alms (coffeecoffeeandmorecoffee.com)So "gays" were not much talked about. They do come up briefly in Buddhism in the Monastic Disciplinary Code. But the reference there concerns sex of all kinds; even masturbation is an infraction of the rules. Penetrative sex with any being spells instant and irreversible expulsion. The way the Disciplinary Code (
Vinaya) is set up, one throws oneself out.
If one stays in robes, one is
living a lie that the Buddha said is far worse than the violation of the precept or training rule.
So gays, not existing as we conceive of them, could not have been talked about. (Most of us do not realize What was talked about and was a known problem were
pandakas. Unfortunately, this term has been translated as "gay" when it really means a male with satyriasis, a "eunuch" (nonnormative male), transgressive, gender-bending "pervert," transsexual, cross dresser, or male prostitute. Such a person, unable to control his libido, has no place in the Sangha
"Monk" steals "bike" to take out girlfriendTuoitrenews.vn, July 2011 (via News.asiantown.net)Expelled from the monastery earlier for allegedly stealing a motorbike, 19-year-old [novice] Nguyen Thanh Lich from Binh Dinh province struck again. This time he took a small but pricey Honda motorbike to take his girlfriend out on a date, VietnamNet reported.
The exceedingly common motorized bike or scooter, which belongs to 45-year-old Dang Vinh Quang, was parked in front of an Internet cafรฉ on Le Hong Phong Street.
On seeing a key left in it, the brazen
novice (not monk) from a pagoda in Nho Ly district, Quy Nhon City grew greedy and took it.
He put colorful stickers on it to change the scooter’s appearance and even installed a fake license plate. What motivated him? The wayward recluse-in-training used the stolen vehicle to take his girlfriend on a date.
On July 13, Lich was riding the bike to a cafรฉ when he was discovered and seized by local police.
At the station, Lich pretended to ask for permission to go out to have vegetarian food. But he fled to a hideaway pagoda in Tuy Phuoc district, some 20 km from Quy Nhon City. On July 18, he was arrested again.
At the investigation office, Lich confessed he had been already expelled from Nguyen Thieu Pagoda at the beginning of 2011 for stealing a Nouvo motorbike from a visitor.
Later, Lich was stopped by police due for traffic violations and had that stolen bike impounded. It is still being kept at the police station.
