Since it's a complicated world, to what extent should monks and nuns, for example in their years of formative training, be aware of or learned in secular laws?
Enough so that they don't break them, I suppose.
It wouldn't do to have monks breaking laws.
Otherwise, trying to think, what exactly does that mean?
I mean, yeah, that's really it, no?
If what you mean is, should they know
that what they're doing is against the law in this way or that way, then yeah, I think that's quite useful.
Depending on the law, I mean, the whole copyright law is maybe an exception in my mind.
Don't quote me on that.
Don't make a video and put it up on the internet with me saying that.
But...
Other than that, I can't think of a reason why they would need to know the Vos.
To my understanding, we should not learn.
We should probably be aware of the laws of a country, but we should not study it because it is worldly studies and we shouldn't do that.
I think that is so.
I think as a monk, or a nun, we have the rules, we have the patimokkha, and when we keep it, and when we take it serious, we hardly ever can break, seriously, any law of a country.
I mean, there are some laws like,
the former mentioned.
But in general, if you keep your precepts as a monk, the patimokkha, you can't break really the laws of the country.
So there is not really the need to learn secular laws.
Yeah, I mean, the whole idea of, the whole premise that somehow the complexity of the world requires it is not really, not a sufficient reason to learn about that complexity.
There's nothing wrong with learning complex subjects if they're inherently useful, like how to sew a robe, for example.
It's kind of complicated.
But there's nothing wrong with learning it.
It's a good thing to learn because it supports your monastic life.
Learning how to use a computer, for example, can be useful to spread the teaching to people who use computers.
So the complexity is not sufficient, but...
There's nothing wrong with learning complex subjects to an extent.
Maybe you could go even further and say that because of the complexity we want to try to avoid that sort of thing as much as possible.
Hopefully you're not suggesting that monks and nuns should try to make their lives more complex as the world becomes more complex.
we're trying to give up the world and we're trying to give up the complexity.
So our lives should be as simple as possible, especially when the world becomes more and more complicated.
I would think that's reasonable to say.