Do most Thai monks meditate much? Or do the monks just chant ,say morning prayers and go about their administrative  work similar to Catholic American priest .  If they meditated 5 hours a day ( I think  that's what the Buddha recommended) ,there would be Thousands of stream enterers ,wouldn't  there?

This is so general it's almost wrong, but in general they don't meditate much daily, but dedicated monks will try to find a place where they can stay and use the rains retreat (100 days) for intensive practice. Reading old stories of theravadian monks can be both inspiring and disallusioning. It took a lot of intention and luck to be able to practice well... plus at any moment, a tiger or parasite could be the end of it. 

In a way, it's not really that different now --- lots of opportunity for lay people to practice and go on retreats, but easy to find excuses not do so. 

The monks I enjoyed reading about are Chah, Mun, Fuang, Ledi, Pandita, and Mahasi. There are free PDFs with their history/biography... but it's about 10+ years since I went looking for them.

Anyone else have favorites?



Mun, Chah, 

So I don't know tons about Thai monks specifically, but I have spent some time with Sri Lankan monks and Burmese monks, and some monks definitely do practice a ton and some monks don't. Part of this is which Theravada branch you go with (like I noticed the Burmese monks are much more type A about practice, whereas the Sri Lankan monks were much much less invested in it). But it also depends on where you ordained because monks broadly think of it in two categories, 1.  City Temples (which tend to be more community centers, focus on letting people earn merit, teaching classes in native languages, etc) vs Forest Monasteries (which tend to have more of a reputation of you go there to meditate a lot and be hardcore and really austere). Finally, it also depends on what kind of monk you want to be. I remember hearing a talk by a Sri Lankan monk that briefly mentioned that monks tend to specialize either into academic monks or meditation monks, and its extremely rare to meet one who does both.

It's also worth mentioning, I came away from my ~1 year with monks and stuff thinking that there has to be a better way? Like I think, Burmese monks are intense about practice to the point where it creates additional suffering (it also reminds me of the Zen criticism of polishing a tile, and the 6th patriarch story of the poem battle), but I think the Sri Lankan monks were basically just following the monk rules as a kind of ritual and most of them struck me as not very serious about enlightenment in this lifetime, more like the equivalent of priests.

If only there was a path that avoided extremes.....

  

Yeah, it's funny how extremes and rights/rituals find their way back in. 

I can respect extremes,if that what ones heart wants . And they are capable of it. I would actually  like to believe that there are monks in caves ,meditating for hours a day , getting enlightened. 

Sure, but sometimes that idealized vision of things has embedded in it two subtle poisions:

1. the belief that only monks in caves can make progress on enlightenment
2. the belief that the monk's enlightenment solves our problems in some way

It can be fun to imagine that there are also buddha's walking around the grocery store... and often times there are. We just never look.

Tell me how this is wrong:

Monks hiding in caves and meditating for hours and hours every day end up lonely with wasted lives. 

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Why do I say this? I believe that we are social beings whose lives are intertwined inexorably with other beings. Awakening is life-enhancing. It is knowing deeply how our experiences depend entirely on everything around us, especially others. As long as those cave-dwelling monks leave their cave after awakening and return to society, bestowing their gifts on society, I'm okay with the isolation.

If they're called to do it, no big deal. If they think they "should" do it, then... yeah. 

Meditating in a cave is one of the many solo activities that people can choose to do with their time. Others are multi-year single-handed sailing, solo hiking and camping, intensive dedication to making art, scientific study, etc. Some people like that, at certain points in their lives. Other people would rather spend more time with friends and family. Both are fine. Neither needs to be considered a wasted life. Sometimes I think a month or so in a cave looks pretty nice but I would miss Netflix. 

I get intensive dedication. But then there's being a hermit. I'm not sure the legend of the solitary monk is a healthy one, Martin. Maybe for a very very limited set of people, like the ones who win the reality show Alone. We're social creatures and wouldn't survive without connections to others. I suspect this cave monk thing is more legend than reality.

I look for those Buddhas. Killed two of them over the last month.

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My Dad would spend months on a boat that was smaller than most caves. For some of that he would have people like me along, but for a lot of it he was alone. He liked it. I have a friend who rents a cabin in the woods every year just to be alone. Thoreau didn't have many visitors at Walden Pond and that was the appeal. It doesn't seem weird to me. 

That said, caves are not really ideal, hard to find a flat surface in most caves, and they tend to be cold. 

Like I said, some people. But if most of us just dropped out of society for extended periods we'd be screwed.

Yes, I will agree. Probably greater than 50% would not like it. Fortunately, not that many try, and the ones that do tend to be into that kind of thing. Bottom line, most people should probably do what seems good to them, whether it's sitting in a cave or going to the pub. 

Tibetan cave yogis are fed by villagers and I will guess that they deal with the "chamber pot" too.
Very rarely do the fraction of 1% go cave yogi. Very rarely do a few do dark retreats properly.
Very rarely do we actually get good data to know WTF about these few outliers...
There is some reality to the myths but sifting is difficult, we all love a good story vs shitting in a bucket.
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And meanwhile, greed, aversion, and indifference are right here not just in a cave. Everyplace is a meditation cave, if you meditate everyplace.

Woooohoooooo!!!