234 CHAPTER NINENovitiate ordination carries a tacit agreement to contribute another three
years of service to the monastery, usually as an attendant to the senior monk
who sponsored one's ordination. Formal studies begin, focusing on chants,
ritual performances, and Vinaya. Learning also proceeds on a more informal
basis through interaction with senior monks. This is the period during which
the young monk's sense of family identity switches away from his biological
family and becomes attached to the brotherhood of his institution. After three
years, the novice is eligible to ordain as a bhik~u. This involves a ceremony
during which he vows to observe the 250 precepts of the Mahisasaka Vinaya
(see Section 3.2.4). In practice, no one expects the monks to observe the pre-
cepts related to the mendicant life-such as the prohibitions against eating
after noon, eating stored-up food, handling money, and digging in the soil-
but all monks are required to observe the four parajika rules strictly (see Sec-
tion 3.4.1).
Bhik~u ordination marks the point when the ordinand has committed him-
self to the monkhood for life. Although disrobing is possible, it is considered a
great disgrace, unlike in Thailand and Burma (see Section 7.5.1). The other
primary change in the life of the new ordinand is that he now has the right to
travel and undertake studies at other monasteries, changing from a scrutinizer
of phenomena to a scrutinizer of principle, as he has now paid his dues to the
home institution. Most monks go to seminary, where they undertake a course
of study covering Chinese language as well as basic texts in Son and Hwaom
doctrine. Those who take the complete course, which lasts 12 years, are eligi-
ble to become teachers themselves, either in a seminary or in programs of out-
reach to the laity. Other monks, after studying the Record ofTa-hui Tsung-kao
(see Sections 8.6, 9._;1-.2), begin training in meditation.
Training begins in a meditation hall, which occupies its own separate com-
pound in the large monasteries, aloof from the compounds of the support
corps. In fact, most meditating monks stay away from their home monasteries
to escape the pressure to return to the support corps. As a result, the contin-
gent of meditators living at a monastery at any one time are there as privileged
guests, with few assigned jobs. Despite their heavy schedules of practice, med-
itators as a group are remarkably independent, beholden to nothing aside from
their own sense of devotion to the practice.
For six months out of the year, during the periods of"slackened rule"-
roughly August to November, and February to May-the meditators are free
to come and go and to schedule their individual practice as they see fit. Inten-
sive retreats, called periods of "binding rule;' are held during the summer and
winter months. During these retreats the meditators are expected to stay put.
Sessions are typically three to four hours long-beginning at 3 A.M., 8 A.M.,
1 P.M., and 6 P.M.-subdivided into fifty-minute periods of seated meditation
alternating with ten minutes of walking meditation. Lying down is prohibited
except during breaks before breakfast and in the evening. Work assignments
are minimal so that the meditators may devote their full energies to medita-
tion. The most arduous period of training is the week of "ferocious effort"
immediately prior to the celebration of the Buddha's Awakening (the eighth