In my opinion probably the most fascinating factor about TikTok is the proliferation of subcultural communities that flourish on it – WitchTok, BimboTok, KinkTok, NunTok. Essentially the most unlucky factor about TikTok, conversely – properly, apart from the alarming power it gives the Chinese government – is that there isn’t a actual approach to discover these cultures on the platform, you simply hear about them on the information. This week, I occurred to listen to in that method about one such subculture of specific curiosity to me – and that’s MonkTok.
In Cambodia, that’s, youthful Buddhist monks at the moment are making movies on TikTok and getting well-known for them, drawing up to half a million followers. From what little I learn about this phenomenon – mainly drawn from one article this week – I’ve blended emotions about this.
The monks interviewed by the article say they’re doing it to unfold the dharma, the Buddha’s educating. I’m, in fact, all for spreading the dharma! Getting extra individuals into Buddhism is, in itself, an excellent factor.
The place I get a bit extra nervous is with the signifies that the monks use: singing, dancing, posing with money. These are issues that, in line with the vinaya (monastic code), monks aren’t speculated to do. And I believe that there’s cause for that.
I like singing and dancing, and I’ve little endurance for ascetic texts that inform extraordinary individuals, house owners, to keep away from such actions – which is why I’ve such a deep dislike for the Sigālovāda Sutta and its injunction against theatre. However monks are a little bit of a distinct story.
The purpose of being a monk, so far as I can see, is to voluntarily topic oneself to a way more stringent algorithm and restrictions than extraordinary individuals face. A few of these restrictions are simply there to take care of the nice popularity of the saṅgha (monastic order) – a rationale often cited within the Pali texts – however that rationale obscures the extra essential query of why there ought to even be a saṅgha within the first place. And that, so far as I can inform, has to do with being extra dedicated to Buddhist follow than laypeople are – voluntarily foregoing each the thrill and considerations of family life, from intercourse and dancing to money-making, to be able to focus one’s wandering thoughts most totally on the hunt to liberate and be liberated from struggling. Once I went on a ten-day Goenka vipassanā retreat in 2005, I learned more from its monastic restrictions than I did from the meditation periods themselves.
So, the query then follows, in case you’re not going to comply with these additional restrictions, must you even be a monk in any respect? Must you be inspired, and even required, to go away the order?
The vinaya’s reply to the latter questions is a reasonably clear sure, with a full authorized code on what ought to occur to rule-breakers, from public confession of minor violations to expulsion for main ones. In follow, we all know that the majority residing monastic traditions don’t truly comply with the vinaya all that strictly. (Most notably, the vinaya says monks aren’t supposed to the touch cash, however in follow they do on a regular basis.)
So too, individuals’s precise causes for turning into a monk usually are not all the time what they’re speculated to be within the texts both. In Thailand, there’s a social expectation that each younger man be part of the monkhood as soon as briefly, for one wet season (three months or so); males who don’t do that are sometimes thought of unmarriageable. I’m unsure whether or not Cambodia now follows the identical customized: their traditions are comparable and carefully associated, however issues could have taken a distinct flip after the Khmer Rouge’s horrific repression.
Nonetheless, insofar as individuals are becoming a member of an establishment dedicated to asceticism, it appears affordable to require a certain quantity of asceticism from them. The explanation former monks are thought of extra marriageable in Thailand, as I perceive it, is that they’ve discovered higher to restrain their wishes – or no less than that’s the idea. Being a monk is meant to be pleasurable in some ways, nevertheless it’s not speculated to be enjoyable. And I’d be notably anxious to see younger monks parlay their rains retreat right into a profession as a social-media influencer: that appears relatively the alternative of what they’re speculated to be there for.
I don’t know sufficient concerning the state of affairs to have a agency opinion or particular solutions; I’ve simply learn the one article. So I don’t wish to make any agency pronouncements right here about whether or not this can be a good factor. As with so many circumstances, the satan is within the particulars. Perhaps MonkTok actually is a honest promotion of the dharma, and possibly that’s value it. It does appear to me that senior monks would do properly to no less than query the junior monks’ TikTok presence, and maybe place controls on it in the event that they’re not happy that the follow is for one of the best.
