Buddhist monasteries grew out of a rule to stop monks trampling monsoon seedlings
Early Buddhist monks and nuns wandered, until they were told to stay put for about three months of the rainy season so they would not damage young plants or get stranded. Those seasonal retreats in donated parks slowly hardened into year-round communities, the ancestors of every vihara, wat and gompa today.
The word itself carries a paradox. Monastery comes from the Greek monazein, to live alone, from monos, because the first Christian monks were hermits; the ending marks a place where something is done. The oldest surviving use of monasterion is by Philo, a Jewish philosopher of the first century AD, in On the Contemplative Life. Yet most monasteries became collective homes, ranging from a single house with a senior monk and a couple of juniors to estates holding hundreds.
A typical Christian complex bundled a church, dormitory, cloister, refectory, library, bath house and infirmary, often with outlying farms, and might add a school, hospice, forge or brewery to stay self-sufficient. Vocabulary depends on who is in charge: an abbey answers to an abbot, a priory to a prior, a Carthusian house is a charterhouse, and Eastern Christians call a tiny community a skete and a grand one a lavra. Buddhists speak of a vihara, Tibetans of a gompa, Thais, Lao and Cambodians of a wat, Burmese of a kyaung, and Hindus most often of an ashram.
The Buddhist vassa retreat, which usually started in mid-July, became a permanent way of life around the fourth century BC, and Indian monasteries grew into centres of philosophical debate, a line that continues in Vajrayana monastic universities. Wealth crept in despite monastic rules against it. Chinese monasteries collected crop shares from peasant tenants much like feudal lords, Sri Lankan and Tibetan houses sometimes passed to a monk's ordained nephew, and in Japan, where monks could marry, temple headships were handed from father to son.
Most traditions demand celibacy and little private property, but the degree of withdrawal differs. Some communities isolate members even from each other; others teach, nurse or evangelise, and many Christian houses founded schools linked to universities. Stays range from a few days to nearly a lifetime. Theravada forest monasteries in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka focus on meditation, though shrinking wilderness and dangerous wildlife now push more of their monks indoors. Tibet's Drepung once housed around 10,000 monks.
Source: Monastery
