Sofa Enlightenment

by Robert Broughton

Table of contents


#7 – I, a Buddhist Monk

The narrator joins a Buddhist monastery near Meiktila in central Burma. He quickly settles in to the traditional life of a Burmese monk, going to nearby villages begging for food and meditating. But his idealized notion of the life of a monk is shattered. He suddenly realizes that if he remains a monk he will face a life of poverty completely devoid of sex. He finds he cannot stomach it and leaves the monkhood to travel to India, where a more modern spiritual movement has been gaining a foothold with young Western people.

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