Buddhism

Introduction

Almost all great religious traditions work with the theme of "leaving home." To join the Buddhist order is to become a "home leaver," renouncing your worldly home and family for a life without possessions, home, or fixed identity -- a life of wandering. In the Bible, Abraham is rousted out of his home by God, who commands him to "leave your father's house and all that you know and hold dear and go to the land that I will show you." Jesus leaves the loving support of his disciples to enter the desert for forty days and forty nights (imitating his people, who abruptly left their unhappy homes in Egypt for the desert where they wandered forty years, and Moses, who prepared to lead them with his own long wilderness exile). Mohammed flees Medina. Native Americans go off alone into the mountains to fast and seek visions. As does other religions, early Buddhist communities emphasized the importance of "leaving home," or giving up family ties in order to live a life of renunciation.

Discussion

Leaving home means setting aside all we know, all that is secure, authoritative, comfortable, and binding, and shoving off for parts unknown with no road map and no guarantee of finding our way. Though it can look like, and even in some cases can be, a form of running away, an act of cowardice, real home-leaving is courageous, requiring heart and force. To go forward one must leave everything behind, and even though the past may seem to be persistent, lodged as it is in our bones, it is one thing to be bound up by the past, doomed to repeat it or to be held back by it endlessly, and another to use it as a springboard for a journey that goes beyond-to where, one can never know (Keown, pp.83-97).

When the Buddhism religion came into existence, there was no concept of monasteries; in fact, there was a wandering scholarly teacher and along with him his disciples. It was common, for Buddhism followers, in those days to seek spiritual guidance by attaching themselves to a guru. These gurus (or intellectual leader) lived in total isolation far from this world, in the forest hermitages or under the tree shelter (Smith & Novak, pp. 110-113).

The historical Buddha sought for renowned gurus of his time, and started his spiritual quest; where he found enlightenment, and the associates followed him. The Buddha and his associates did not have any fixed place to declare that as home. They begged for food, slept under trees, and had clothes which were patched together by cloth extracted from rubbish piles. The cloth was dyed with a variety of spices, which would turn it into yellowish-orange colour. Mostly spices or saffron was used for dying. The monk's robes till now are known as “saffron robes.” Initially, individuals who wanted to become direct disciples of Buddha directly approached him and asked for ordaining them, and, in return, Buddha would provide them with ordination (Smith & Novak, pp. ...