Monastic Communities
Monks of every Hindu order are guided and guarded by unseen beings who look after their lives as if they were their own. Families are blessed who share in and support the renunciation of their sons born through them to perform a greater dharma than the gṛihastha life could ever offer. It is the monastic communities worldwide, of all religions, that sustain sanity on this planet. It is the monks living up to their vows who sustain the vibration of law and order in the communities and nations of the world. This is how the devonic world sees each monastic community worldwide. This is how it is and should always be. This is how humanity balances out its experiential karmas and avoids destroying itself as it passes through the darkness of the Kali Yuga. The monastic communities that surround the planet, fulfilling their dharma, compensate for the adharma that is so prevalent, thus ensuring that humanity does not self-destruct in these trying times. We must, for the sake of clarity, state here that monastic communities are either strictly male or strictly female. Coed mixed-group āśramas are not monastic communities, but classed traditionally as communes.
Our Holy Orders of Sannyāsa introduce monastic life in the following passages: “The two fundamental objectives of sannyāsa, renunciation, are to promote the spiritual progress of the individual, bringing him into God Realization, and to protect and perpetuate the religion. Renunciation and asceticism have been an integral component of Hindu culture from the earliest days, the most highly esteemed path of the Sanātana Dharma. Sannyāsa life has both an individual and a universal objective. At the individual level, it is a life of selflessness in which the sannyāsin has made the supreme sacrifice of renouncing all personal ambition, all involvement in worldly matters, that he might direct his consciousness and energies fully toward God Śiva. Guided by the satguru along the sādhana mārga, he unfolds through the years into deeper and deeper realizations. Ultimately, if he persists, he comes into direct knowing of Paraśiva, transcendent Reality. At the universal level, the sannyāsins foster the entire religion by preserving the truths of the Sanātana Dharma. Competent swāmīs are the teachers, the theologians, the exemplars of their faith, the torchbearers lighting the way for all. Paramaguru Sage Yogaswami sang: ‘Hail, O sannyāsin, thou who know’st no guile! Establish in thy heart and worship there the Taintless One—Pañchākshara’s inmost core. Thou that regard’st all others as thyself—who in this world can be compared with thee?’ ”
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 330: FACING KARMA IN WISDOM
Śiva’s monastics, knowing the law of karma, accept as their own karma all that comes. They forgive others of all offenses inwardly at once, but outwardly only after transgressors sincerely reconcile. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.