I'm considering ordaining and I want to know how much interaction with family members is proper.
I've seen the passage in the Anguttara Nikaya 232, my family worries they will not see me as a monk.
I actually looked this up and if your numbering is the same as mine, it's something to do with gratefulness.
232, if your numbering is actually the book of twos, number 32, then it's gratefulness.
So I assume you're saying, wouldn't it be ungrateful if I avoided my parents?
Now, if you're going by some other, maybe the polytext society of numbering, then I have no idea what that sutta is about.
Numbering is difficult because there's so many different numberings.
So you may be worried about being grateful, but anyway, we'll take the question as it is.
I can't think of any instance where interaction with family members is improper.
There are certainly many instances where the Buddha gave exceptions for family members.
For example, your parents, you're allowed to give them food first.
If you get food even before you've eaten any, you're allowed to give to your parents.
You're allowed to ask for medicine.
You're allowed to actually go to someone's house and beg and actually ask them for medicine.
Now, of course, there's no offense, but you shouldn't just go up to a stranger and ask them.
But the meaning is it would be someone who supports you.
So you can go stand in front of their house.
If they say, what do you need?
You can say, look, my parents are sick and I need medicine for them.
This is actually allowed.
You're allowed to go to visit your parents.
during the rains because during the rains you're normally not allowed to travel but you're allowed to go visit your parents even if you're not invited if there's some reason and you know that they're sick but they don't send a messenger for you but you know that you find out that they're sick you're able to go to them and stay overnight up to six nights this kind of thing so there's an obvious
potential for relationships.
That being said, it's not advisable to get too close to family members, besides your parents especially, so getting involved with brothers, sisters and cousins and so on, just because they're relatives, it can be dangerous, because the reason for associating has nothing to do with the Dhamma often.
So that being the case, something that we should regard with certain care.
Now your parents, of course, the idea of being grateful to them and giving something back to them inspires us often to want to meditate with them or encourage them in good deeds and stay with them to hopefully rub off on them, for example.
So there's nothing wrong with that.
So I would say basically what you can tell your family is there's no need to worry that they will always be able to see you as a monk.
It's not because you're a monk that they won't be able to see you.
It might be because you're off in the forest in Thailand.
That being the case, yes, they may not see you for many years until you have the support and the ability to return or until they have the ability to come to visit you.
So that's something you have to deal with.
Of course for Thai people this is a non-issue or for Asian people in general it's usually a non-issue because the person will ordain nearby and so they're able to actually visit with each other.
But there's certainly nothing about being a monk that requires you to be apart from your parents at the very least, and really your relatives in general.
There's nothing to say that we have to be apart from people as Buddhists.
We're to try to cultivate seclusion as a general way of living our lives, but you can do that when you're around your relatives as well.
You go to visit them and you're in your room a lot of the time.
You come out to visit, to talk, and then you go back and rest and do your meditation in your room.
There's no incompatibility there.
But there is a nice story in the Visuddhimagga that I would encourage you to read about this monk who was so intent on solitude that many years later after he'd ordained he went back to see his parents and they didn't recognize him.
And they fed him and supported him for three months and he never told them he was their son and they never found out that he was their son.
So they gave him this robe at the end and sent him back and said, could you give this to my son?
I know he's in the monastery that you're headed to.
And so he headed off and halfway along the way he met his teacher going to visit this village where his parents were.
And so he gave the robe to his teacher and said, look, I'm much happier back at my monastery.
I'm going to go back there and live in seclusion.
And the teacher looked at the robe and didn't quite understand, but he went on
and came to the village and the mother saw this monk's teacher coming alone and thought that that meant that her son had passed away because she assumed that the son would be with the teacher.
So she started crying and the teacher said, what's wrong?
She explained how she'd given the robe to be given to her son.
So he pulled out the robe and he said, was it this robe?
And he said, that was your son.
You spent three months with him.
But he's so dedicated to seclusion, he didn't want to get involved with his relatives.
So that's the kind of story you maybe don't want to tell your parents if you're looking for their permission to ordain.
But he was the example of a very ardent meditator.
And the Buddha, one of the first things he did was go back to see his father and teach his, not one of the first things, but eventually he did go back to see his father and teach his wife and his son and so on.
So there's certainly nothing against that.
And following by that example, we can certainly try our best to help them out to realize the goodness that we've realized.
Thank you.