Although mendicancy would seem to preclude cenobitism, many orders are mendicant and cenobitic at different times. The Hindu and Buddhist official orders are really both. Buddhist monastics in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Cambodia can be termed non-wandering mendicants, for the monks fan out in the early morning to collect food in their alms bowls but return to their houses to eat in a cenobitic fashion.

The Sanskrit term parivrajaka (“walking around”) connotes mendicant status and as a title is carried by a large number of Hindu monastic organizations. It has canonical sanction: the Hindu scriptural definition of a monk is “[one who] having renounced the desire for sons, for wealth, the fear of social opprobrium and the craving for social approval, he sallies forth, begging for food.” During his training the neophyte lives in a strictly cenobitic setting; on subsequent peregrinations he begs for food, which is part of his advanced discipline, and he eats alone. Here also there is a blend between the contemplative and the preaching life; the different Hindu orders place varying emphases on the one or the other, a distribution of functions that is similar to that within some Christian orders. The vow of chastity is spelled out for Hindu mendicants, but poverty and obedience are implied rather than enjoined. Hindu monastic organization is much looser than either the Buddhist or the Christian, and in this sense it resembles the earliest eremitic and quasi-eremitic types in Judaism and Christianity.

Mendicants developed also in the Christian world. They should be referred to as friars rather than monks, because in Christianity the term monk implies fixity of residence and friars are by definition peripatetic. The Franciscan friars (Greyfriars), founded by St. Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226), with their numerous subdivisions (e.g., Conventuals, Observants, and Capuchins), and the Dominicans, founded by St. Dominic (c. 1170–1221), were and continue to be the most powerful statutory mendicant orders. St. Francis founded his order with the aim of living in evangelical poverty in imitation of Jesus and the Apostles. The Dominicans, while also taking vows of poverty, emerged to combat the Cathars, a religious movement in southwestern France that was deemed heretical; they were thus primarily a preaching and teaching order. The synthesis of contemplation and the apostolic ministry is prominent in these orders; the Dominican motto “To contemplate and to give the fruits of contemplation to others” is significant.

Other organizational or institutional types

Whether membership is permanent or temporary distinguishes different monastic institutional types but has little bearing on organizational structure. In the Theravada Buddhist order (sangha) of Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, men join a monastery for an unspecified period of time. The Dhammayut, the smaller and more highly ascetic of the two sections of the Thai sangha, prescribes minimum periods of three months to a year; the Mahasanghikas, who form the monastic majority, do not specify any duration. Lifelong monastic vows are, in those regions, a matter of individual choice, and the order does not take any official stance on them. This differs radically from Roman Catholic orders, as well as from the Hindu organizations that initiate members by the viraja-homa (i.e., the Vedic rite of renunciation); since the initiate is declared dead by this ceremony, he cannot return to the world of the living (i.e., to society). Dispensations, on the other hand, are given—though reluctantly—to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox monks and nuns who want to leave their orders. In the Hindu monastic code, there can be no such dispensation—monks who return to society are highly stigmatized.

Sacerdotal

In addition to organizational and institutional forms, a typology is needed to classify monastic status and hierarchy. The first and most important such division is between sacerdotal and nonsacerdotal full-time supererogatory specialists. Most of the canon-based, or scriptural, religions of the world distinguish between priests and nonpriestly practitioners. In the case of Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christianity, the distinction is crucial at the sacerdotal end but incidental at the monastic end. Monks who are ordained as priests are full priests and full monks; monks and nuns who are not ordained are nevertheless full monastic members, sharing the same vows and the same discipline. Islam does not officially recognize monastic status, nor does it have priests—the imam is the leader in prayer, but he takes no special vows or ordinations. The dichotomy is also inapplicable to Rabbinic Judaism, which has neither priests nor monastics.

The situation is markedly different in the religions of India. In Hinduism only a male person born into a Brahman (priestly) caste is entitled to perform sacerdotal Vedic ritual; this requires no further initiation than that given to all high-caste boys. A monk, however, cannot perform any sacerdotal service, even if he was born into a Brahman family—monastic ordination cancels his sacerdotal status. Hindu monastic organizations ordain monks in various ways, and the types of ordination are numerous; but monastic and priestly ordinations are mutually exclusive and totally distinctive in type, scope, and intent. The Brahman priest supports and enhances the mundane well-being of his client and the worldly estate of society through Vedic and other rituals. The monk, on the other hand, withdraws totally from the mundane in a radical sense by rejecting sacerdotal commitments, and he recommends such withdrawal to any of his clients who seek a long-term perspective.

Secondary and tertiary orders

The notion of secondary and tertiary orders was developed in the Roman Catholic world, though by analogy it could be extended to non-Christian cultures. The triple division within the Franciscans and the Dominicans epitomizes the following hierarchy: the first order consists of ordained priests and brothers who are not priests; the second consists of contemplative nuns; and the third consists of laymen and laywomen— “tertiaries”—who live under abridged, or “minor,” vows that may include celibacy. In the Theravada Buddhist world, such tertiaries have parallels in the sangha, which is similar to the first orders of Dominicans and Franciscans. Whereas the full-fledged Buddhist monk takes more than 200 vows, part-time monks (shramanas) take fewer than one-third that number. In Myanmar, quasi-monastic but unordained practitioners (upasakas) may stay at monasteries and participate in the meditative and congregational activities of the monks for a limited period upon payment of a nominal fee to the bursar of the cloister.

In all monastic traditions of the world, the status of nuns is considerably lower than that of monks. The only possible exception is that of certain famous saintly women in Hindu India, today and in the past, who were known for their extreme piety or, more importantly, for their physical-mental (yogic) and mesmeric (hypnotic) powers. These women gained high charismatic (spiritually influential) status that placed them, as individuals, above male monastics. Yet, with the possible exception of the double monasteries of medieval Europe, there is no truly hierarchical superiority whereby a nun, be she ever so exalted, could have disciplinary powers over a monk or even over a male novice. Though the Roman Catholic tradition has refused equal status to nuns because women cannot obtain sacerdotal ordination, the Indian attitude concerning the inferiority of female monastics rests on notions of ritual impurity—women, being innately defiled, polluted through the menstrual cycle, never gain access to the ritual complex; hence, their status is much lower—even though some noncanonical texts (e.g., the Bhagavadgita) assert spiritual, though not ritualistic, equality of women and men.

The Buddha apparently at first refused to allow women postulants (potential monks) admission to monastic orders; it is said that when his disciples and sponsors had succeeded in establishing women’s communities, he declared that this augured the decline of the orders. This did not discourage women either then or later. Buddhist nunneries are not numerous, and their ratio to male convents does not exceed 1:20 in any Buddhist country. The Buddhist monastic attitude toward nuns is one of embarrassed silence except in Japan, where the general loosening of monastic rules has worked in women’s favour.

Tertiary orders in the Christian world were established above all by noblewomen who combined piety with pioneering medical knowledge. These women promoted religious pursuits that approached the monastic in intensity of dedication. The term tertiary did not originally evoke gender, but by the 13th century it usually referred to women, often of aristocratic background, who led a saintly life in a cenobitic setting but were inspired by humanitarian ideals rather than by a longing for sheer contemplation. Women belonging to such groups were the first nurses, and their tradition has been continued in all Christian nursing orders and is emulated by some non-Christian orders, such as the Hindu Ramakrishna Mission. The humanitarian vocation also dominates branches of male tertiaries such as those of the Dominican and Carmelite orders.

Although the hierarchical arrangements in the Christian West must be viewed as serving organizational or managerial purposes, there is much greater variation in Asian orders. Among religions derived from the teachings and practices of India, a true hierarchy comparable to that of the Christian orders is found only in the Tibetan ecclesiastic setting. Contrary to popular belief, the lamas are not simply high-ranking monks but are viewed as incarnations of one aspect of the Buddha or of a teacher who in turn was such an incarnation. Although Tibetan monasteries have prided themselves on the presence of one or more lamas, they really stood above and outside the operational hierarchy, and their function was and is advisory rather than executive.