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Is the pursuit of having children to raise and teach good morals unwholsome or wholsome?

Jeff Brown
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    potential duplicates: How to combine Buddhism with being a parent? and Should a Buddhist have Children. Also see http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/2352/buddhist-path-x-romantic-relationships-and-sons – Andriy Volkov Oct 01 '14 at 18:13
  • @AndreiVolkov yikes, they're all so similar. May be Jeff can tell us if any of the other questions have answers to his, and if not, maybe he can elaborate on this? – yuttadhammo Oct 01 '14 at 18:25
  • Using the words "unwholesome/wholesome" makes me wonder whether the question is related to kleshas. I guess that any activity can be "pursued" in an unwholesome way: e.g. with greed, with hate, etc. If so perhaps the only question then is whether this activity ("the pursuit of having children to raise") can be "pursued" in a wholesome way ... and whether 'academic-buddhism' has written anything about that. – ChrisW Oct 02 '14 at 01:40

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Since you tagged this with "accademic Buddhism" I'll point you to "Family Matters in Indian Buddhist Monasticism where the author reads all the various ancients rules for dealing with monastics that had family obligations of various types. I've only read the first chapters-- I don't want to pay $41 for the thing. The author's thesis is that the ideal of the "Rhinoceros Horn"-- quitting all social ties to wander away alone, was an ideal that people liked the sound of, but didn't really want to follow through with it. So they maintained contacts with their family after ordaining. Sometimes, married couples would ordain at the same time, ordain at with kids, and so on. What it remind me of were some sort of modern commune.

Anyhow, that's just ancient Indian Buddhism. The institution varies from place to place.

MatthewMartin
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