monasticism, an institutionalized religious practice or movement whose members attempt to live by a rule that requires works that go beyond those of either the laity or the ordinary spiritual leaders of their religions. Commonly celibate and universally ascetic, the monastic individual separates himself or herself from society either by living as a hermit or anchorite (religious recluse) or by joining a community (coenobium) of others who profess similar intentions. First applied to Christian groups, both Latin and Greek, the term monasticism is now used to denote similar, though not identical, practices in religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Daoism.
The word monasticism is derived from the Greek monachos (“living alone”), but this etymology highlights only one of the elements of monasticism and is somewhat misleading, because a large proportion of the world’s monastics live in cenobitic (common life) communities. The term monasticism implies celibacy, or living alone in the sense of lacking a spouse, which became a socially and historically crucial feature of the monastic life.
Even this aspect of monasticism does not extend beyond the cultures and languages that perpetuate the religious terminology of the so-called Abrahamic or prophetic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the Islamic world, Arabic and Persian terms that can be translated as monk or monastic do not mean “solitary,” as in the Greek. Instead, they are etymologically derived from other terms associated with monastic life in Islam (e.g., zuhd, “asceticism”). None of the many Indic terms for monk (Sanskrit apabhramsha; Pali prakrit) mean “single” or “living alone,” though monastics in those traditions—Brahman-Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain—live alone or in groups that are set off from the rest of their societies. The etymologies of the Indian and some of the Arabic and Persian terminology connote poverty, ecstatic states of mind, dress conventions, and so on, while other terms imply single, celibate living.
Nature and significance
Monastics have been instrumental in creating, preserving, and enhancing institutions of religious and secular learning and in transmitting cultural goods, artifacts, and intellectual skills down through the generations. Monastic institutions have also fulfilled medical, political, and military functions, though since 1500 the latter two have become completely secularized in most societies.
A definition of monasticism that covers all its forms would be so broad that particulars would have to be relegated to the analysis of specific monastic systems. Such a definition might be: religiously mandated behaviour (i.e., orthopraxy), together with its institutions, ritual, and belief systems, whose agents, members, or participants undertake voluntarily (often through a vow) religious works that go beyond those required by the religious teachings of the society at large. Such behaviour derives from the example of religious and spiritual founders who interpreted more radically the tenets that apply to all believers or to the whole society. Beyond such a statement, one can speak only of the principal characteristics of the monastic life and its institutions, since none of them is universal. Celibacy is fundamental to the majority of the world’s monastic orders but is by no means universal, as shown by the case of Buddhism in modern Japan. Another characteristic, asceticism, is universal, provided the term is defined widely enough so as to include all supererogatory (voluntarily undertaken rather than wholly prescribed) religious practices. The truly universal characteristic of monasticism follows from its definition: the monastic separates himself from society, either to abide alone as a religious recluse (hermit or anchorite) or to join a community of those who have separated themselves from their surroundings with similar intentions—i.e., the full-time pursuit of the religious life in its most radical and often in its most demanding guise.
Monasticism does not exist in societies that lack a written transmitted lore. Nonliterate societies cannot have monastic institutions, because the monastic responds to an established written body of religious doctrine, which has undergone criticism and then generated countercriticism in a dialectic process that presupposes a literate, codified manipulation of the doctrine. The monastic founders and their successors may either support or oppose the official religious tradition, but the presence of such a tradition is indispensable as the matrix of all monastic endeavour.
Purposes of monasticism
Discovery of the true self
Overcoming imperfections
All monasticism has its mainstay in theological convictions that life in society cannot generate the spiritual consummation stipulated by the religion’s founder. In some traditions, especially in those of South Asian provenance, the true “self” is held to be clogged and concealed by imperfections—by sin, ignorance, or other theologically suggested impediments. The ego with which the layperson and the seeking neophyte identifies is not the true self, which must be discovered or uncovered. Barriers—differently conceived as matter, individuated mind, or a soul-mind aggregate defiled by sin, ignorance, and perversion—must be broken through, or a veil lifted, so that the true self, the primordial spirit, may shine forth. In most traditions this breakthrough is held to be unattainable through a conventionally good life in society, and thus a new approach must be sought. The body and the mind, which are part or all of the impediment, have to be controlled, disciplined, and chastised; hence, monastics advocate either asceticism or a set of psychophysical practices that differ radically from the normal routines of life.
Spiritual perfection
The quest for spiritual intensification is elitist—even when, as within Christian monastic orders, humility is required. Withdrawal from society is necessary because the instrumentalities of perfection cannot normally be acquired and activated in the surroundings of everyday life. The basis of monastic life (orthopraxy) is a set of spiritual precepts that either articulate the supreme value or provide support for the body and the mind on their journey toward whatever supreme consummation may be envisioned. Intense contemplation, often accompanied by physical rigours, constitutes ascetic practice—i.e., prayer, worship, incantation, propitiation, and various forms of self-abasement or self-inflation. Monastics pursue all these forms of orthopraxy in enormously varied forms and degrees.