Question asked by Patrick
Dear Rinpoche, maybe you still know me. I gave your greetings to Zong Rinpoche some days ago. I´m planing to become a monk as soon as I have fulfished my parents wish to get an apprenticeship because they want my future to be safe if being a monk doesn´t work. And of course I need my teacher Loden Sherab Rinpoche to allow it. How should I prepare for being a monk ? How much money should I keep because I will start to support nomads and monks within the next days and how important is learning Tibetan ? Do you have any other advice for me ? Your stories from Gaden are a great inspiration for me.
Dear Patrick,
I wish you very much good luck to become a monk. I rejoice for you.
1. Thank you for giving my greetings to H.H. Zong Rinpoche.
2. Read the monk vows carefully to prepare for monkhood.
3. Start acting, living and operating like a monk now. Don’t wait till you become a monk, but start living like one now. So it will be a smooth transition.
4. Have a bodhicitta motivation to become a monk. The motivation is very important. It is what will carry us through till the end of journey successfully.
5. How much money I cannot say as it’s individual and where you are living. Many factors.
6. Learning Tibetan would be an asset.
Being a monk in Europe or in the East (India/Nepal/Asia), the advice would be different.
In general feel happy you are able to take on the holy vows in order to cut the direct grasping to sensory attachments. Sensory attachments bring about the ‘pleasures and pains’ from uniting with the attachments. Creating grasping and then all the emotions arise. From action arise karmas. From karmas, results. Hence samsara. And it goes round and round.
Being a monk will cut sensory attachment directly and quicken our spiritual paths if we hold our vows and develop our mind.
I wish you great great great luck. TR