[Student]

Who should become a monk ?

[Lal]

Whoever has the desire to do so.
It is not necessary to become a monk to follow the Path.

[Student]

Actually I feel that the world is not for good people. Especially the place where I live. So I think about becoming a monk many times though it is very difficult.

[y not]

Student,

Welcome to the forum

Allow me to contribute my bit here; I must emphasize, not in the way of a teaching or even a guidance, but rather in that of my views and experience of ‘this world not made for good people’.

I myself have had that feeling since childhood and after that sought to learn what ‘all this is all about’ from books, avoiding as much as possible all contact with the ‘bad people’ out there, whom I saw as forming the great majority. A mistake – one born of juvenile idealism and utopic dreams. Life, the world out there, is made up of both good and bad people, and the meaning of those two qualities are wide indeed.. This reality is driven home, forced home even, soon enough. Life itself is the lesson.

Now if you want to become a monk, probably no one can prevent you. But do you have to? This is what Lal is saying. Following the Path is the result (in my case, at least) of having seen the unsatisfactory, the unfruitful, the detrimental in this world made up of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people. Even if the world were made of ‘good’ people exclusively, this anicca nature would still be a fact. From anicca, dukkha is the result, and there is then no way out (Anatta) The deva worlds, for instance, are the habitats of beings who are benevolent, generous and ‘good’in more senses than one, yet they have to experience viparinama dukkha followed by death. Only if they attain magga phala for a still higher plane of existence or for Nibbana itself before the end of their stay there will they be able to avert that.

Yes indeed, ‘thrown in at the deep end'(AND THERE ARE MUCH DEEPER ENDS) we struggle to crawl our way up out of suffering. At least from this end, ONLY so much deep (it turns out), we CAN crawl out of suffering. This is what IT is all about. Whether through monkhood or otherwise, no one but you yourself can decide.

However that may be,

May you progress on the Path
and in time attain Peace

Metta

[Student]

Thanks y not.

[Author]

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