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Learning to Be Novices Monastic Education and the Construction of Vocation* Everyone needs love and affection. If I am affectionate with you, wouldn’t you like it?...I too am happy when you care for me and are concerned about my well-being. Love and affection is needed by all people in the world—young children, middle-aged people, and the elderly. Societies exist because of love and affection. Therefore, we [as older monastics] need to look after and care for the other [young] ones. —Venerable Narada, personal communication Here it is no problem to address [the temple’s donors] by the terms brother, mother, and father. People do not like to accept monks who are apart from society. Laypeople want to accept monks as people who are always connected to society. That is why people call us “Our Reverend Sir” [apē hāmuduruwo]. —Venerable Piyaratana, personal communication Drawing children to the sangha is only one dimension of Narada’s social service enterprise. The second one is educating them as Buddhist monastics in the hope of sending them out, as well-trained novices and fully ordained monastics, to the temple’s ever growing number of branch temples. In examining Buddhist monastic education and training in this chapter, my concern is the very processes through which lay children become Buddhist monastics. Although the formal monastic curriculum that novices follow in the first five years of their schooling (including the texts that they read and memorize) is important to the learning process, I suggest—by drawing on conversations I had with novices and monastic leaders (such as the two monks quoted above)—that social bonds that newly ordained novices form with other monastics, their preceptor, and the temple’s lay patrons also play a fundamental role in their socialization as members of the Buddhist sangha. Also, building on one point raised in chapters 1 and 2—that conceptions about acceptable monastic behavior as well as the aesthetic standard are more indeterminate—I posit that any understanding and embodiment of such conceptions must come through more diffuse pedagogical methods. In 4 64 • Learning to Be Novices that regard, this chapter explores ritual performance as a form of socialization, particularly how the participation of novices in so-called communities of practice instills in them ideas about ideal deportment and appearance that are sensitive to local concerns and needs. Finally, I consider how affective bonds that develop further between monastics, their teachers, and the laity impact the monastics’ self-identity, their understanding of monastic vocation, and their levels of commitment and devotion to society and the sangha. PREORDINATION TRAINING: COMMUNITY, EMOTION, AND SOCIAL BONDS As I began thinking about the training and socialization of newcomers to the sangha during fieldwork I conducted in 1999, I had a more limited image of monastic education: ordinands and novices learning texts and monastic handbooks in the more formal setting of a monastic classroom (pirivena) and during less formal nightly advice (avavāda) gatherings with their preceptor. Although pirivena studies and avavāda sessions are essential, I came to realize after speaking to ordinands, recently ordained novices, older monks, and monastic leaders that a significant amount of learning and training occurs as a result of the bonds that newcomers to the sangha form with other novices, with older monks, with their preceptor, and with the temple’s laity. When I spoke to Narada about how he goes about training newcomers to his temple, for example, he made reference to a preordination education that was largely informal and spontaneous. Making the case that young children learn more from their peers than from those who are considerably older, Narada explained, It is not my own advice that is important. The thing I do here is put them into the group. For example, take a trained group of hunting dogs. If you put another dog among them, the newcomer will be trained automatically . The newcomer doesn’t know what to do but by being in a group, he automatically learns. I cannot approach the ordinands so easily because I am older than they are. They have their own age groups so I cannot be with them. They do it [among] themselves. The method I am using here is like that. It is more important than the teachings I give them. My teaching is secondary. By placing potential candidates in the same dormitory rooms as novices of similar ages from identical regions or villages, close bonds naturally begin to form. [3.23.92...

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