Those with a sincere aspiration to cultivate understanding and compassion as their only career are welcome to join our monastic community. You would live, learn, and practice at Phuoc Hue Buddhist Temple.
Our Monastic Sangha
Our monastic community at Phuoc Hue is a small family. Though our monastic Sangha are Vietnamese and American, we are predominantly a Vietnamese community from a Vietnamese Buddhist tradition. To become a monastic in our community requires openness and the ability to embrace cultural diversity. The communal languages are Vietnamese and English, so one must be fluent in at least one of these languages.
Requirements
All applicants must be under 50 years of age. No academic degree is required, but highly recommended. If you are under 18, you must have permission from your parents. Those who have serious or terminal illnesses or severe disabilities can not be accepted as monastics. Monks and nuns are celibate and make a deep commitment to the community. They live, practice, and teach as a community and not as individuals.
Requesting Ordination
It is highly recommended that you have at least been a member at Phuoc Hue Buddhist Temple for at least one year and have taken the Three Refuges and Five Precepts and have participated in at least two or more retreats. If and when you are ready to “leave the home life,” the monastic sangha will conduct an interview with you to learn about your experiences with the practice, your background, and your aspiration to become a monastic.
The sangha will then meet to consider your request and may offer you guidance on how to improve your positive qualities and how to transform your negative ones. After you have formally expressed your monastic aspiration, requested an extended stay, passed a health check, and your aspiration has been confirmed and supported by the sangha, you will become an aspirant. At that time you are not required to contribute toward housing, food, and tuition. You will also be assigned a monastic mentor who will further assist you in your training.
Then the next step is the ceremony of Leaving the Home Life where your head is shaved and you take the eight precepts of an Anagarika. Anagarikas practice with the monastic sangha for at least one year and live a life of a monastic. This is also a kind of probation period. It gives the aspirant time and practice to fully emerse themselves into the life of a monk or nun, and allows the chance to leave and go back to lay life or continue with novice ordination.
Life as a Novice
After some time living as an aspirant, the community may decide that you are ready to receive ordination as a novice monk or nun. With this ordination, your life will be in the care of the monastic community. This begins a three-year novitiate period which precedes full ordination as a monk or nun (bhikshu or bhikshuni). But you do not have to wait until full ordination or until you are a Dharma teacher in order to help people. Right in your first few months as a novice, your practice of mindful walking, mindful breathing, and your peace and happiness can already be inspiring to many people who come to the practice center. Even when a novice is still very young, they can already be a sangha builder, bringing happiness to many people.
When you are ordained as a monk or a nun, the sangha is your family and our temple is your home. Even when difficulties arise, we do our best to live in harmony with our brothers and sisters.
Your immediate family is welcome to visit you and they do not have to contribute to expenses. You can also have leave to visit your family once a year or in the case of an emergency.
When you train as a monastic you have the opportunity to find the root of your freedom, solidity, joy, and happiness, and to help your society. When you ordain and wear the yellow robe you learn to cut through your illusions and your afflictions. You learn to transform your deepest suffering into a bright future and into an even brighter present. In this process of knowing yourself and facing your difficulties, you also learn how to change your society into one that is more compassionate, understanding, and happy. This is a natural process: as we discover the root of virtue in our own life we will also be able to help other people to stop creating suffering for themselves and for the world.
May you fulfill your noble aspiration for the benefit and happiness of all living beings!
Full Ordination
After at least 2-3 years as a novice, you can take full ordination (if you are under the age 50). Your monastic training is a great chance for you to learn how to live your life meaningfully, to discover brotherhood and sisterhood, and to make possible right here and right now the social change we have always dreamed about. Tasting the simple life of a monk or a nun and cultivating your spiritual life, you will be able to assist your elder brothers and sisters in organizing retreats and events for the community. You will be able to share your practice and transformation and help a great deal of people, including children, couples and families.
When we let go of the pursuit of wealth, power, and sensual pleasures, and put on the yellow robe, we do not need to wait many years to be able to help people. Right from the first day, we inspire those around us by simply walking with mindfulness, solidity, and freedom.
Basic Requirements:
- Age 17 – 50: If you are under 18, you must have the consent of your parents. If you are older than 50, you may be given permission to ordain as a novice for life.
- Single or divorced: Your relationships with those close to you are settled, and your decision is in harmony with them, so that they will not be an obstacle to your training as a monastic.
- No incurable disease or serious medical condition: Your mental stability and physical health should be sound enough not to be an obstacle or a challenge for your training and for that of the community. A medical and blood check will be required for you to enter the program.
- No debt or financial ties: As monastics, we take refuge in the Sangha, and do not have debt or hold bank accounts and/or credit cards. If needed, you can freeze any bank accounts that you have and close credit card accounts, so that you may rely fully on the sangha for all your needs and sustenance (food, clothes, medicine, and shelter.)
- Commitment to study, practice, and serve: Our training is to flow as a sangha. You commit to learn how to practice as a community and to follow the guidance of the sangha, including attending all sangha activities. Monastics who cannot commit to following the sangha schedule and practices invite their way out of the community.
- Letting personal possessions go: As part of your training you will be asked to release items such as laptops, cellphones, etc. and to come into the community with your hands empty.
- Family visit: You can visit your blood family members for 14 days after training for two years as a novice, then once a year after that. You can keep in contact with them, care for them, and share your happiness with them by writing them letters and calling them from time to time.
Program:
- Inquiry period: Come to Phuoc Hue regularly for services, classes, and retreats. Consult a monk or a nun about his or her life to learn more about monastic life and living in the community. If you find that this way of life is in harmony with your deepest aspiration and you are able to find happiness with the daily practice, you can write a letter to share your desire to enter the monastic sangha. It is also recommended that you stay at the temple for a retreat for at least one month so that you can join the daily life of the monastics. This also gives you a chance to “sneak peak” into the life of a monastic. At the end of your retreat, the community will meet to discuss your request and may invite you to join the aspirant program when there is harmony in support of your request and when it sees that the conditions for your training are sufficient.
- Aspirant/Anagarika period (1 year): Once approved for the program, you will be given a gray robe to wear during your training as an aspirant and have the title of Anagarika. The Tonsure ceremony is the time when your head will be shaved and the eight precepts are transmitted. You will be invited to move into the aspirant quarters with the other trainees. An assigned aspirant teacher will guide you in this initial period of training and transition into monastic life. Your training is not just about learning knowledge and ideas. It is a practice that you learn to apply in your daily life so that you are able to transform your suffering and grow in your understanding and compassion. In this period you will be asked to release your possessions and worldly commitments so that you can be free enough to begin to live as a monastic. After up to one year of training, the monastic community will meet to look deeply at your practice and your aspiration. On the basis of this, the community will decide whether you are fit to be ordained as a novice, or whether it is more suitable for you to continue your practice as a lay member of the community.
- Novice period (3 years): Monastic life begins once you are ordained as a novice; you will then be invited to move into the monastic residence to live with the other monks or nuns. Your training will focus even more on monastic life and the regular duties and practices of a monk or nun. You should always keep in mind that monastic training is fundamentally different from academic pursuit at a university. Rather than just acquiring knowledge and developing our expertise, as a monastic we are reminded to come back to the basic practices of mindful breathing, walking, eating, and listening to the bell even when we have practiced for five, ten, or thirty years. You will train and develop mindfulness, concentration, and insight, based on the fine manners and precepts of a novice monk or nun, which take their concrete expression through your daily actions of body, speech, and mind. You will share a room with two, three, or four other monks or nuns and be assigned a mentor to guide your practice. After three years, you may be qualified for full ordination into the Bhikshu or Bhikshuni community, with Thay’s and the community’s approval.
- Full ordination: For this period, you will enter the Bhikshu or Bhikshuni sangha and practice as a full-fledged member of the monastic community, observing the higher precepts of a monk or a nun. As a fully ordained monk or nun, you are able to teach the dharma, lead retreats and activities, assist in precept ceremonies, and assist with other daily and special services.
