The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.
© KYODOMonk sues temple at Mt Koya world heritage site over heavy workload
WAKAYAMA©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.
© KYODO
13 Comments
Login to comment
SaikoPhysco
Monk'u yuu naa! Was he being disciplined, were other Monks also overworked? He might be a lazy monk and they were trying to straighten him out.
Schopenhauer
Interesting. No exception in Labor law applications. I think they have two kind of people there. One is staff who handle office works of the temple and they are paid. The other who are training at the temple without pay to get a license to inherit his family temple at home.
maybeperhapsyes
What does a monk do?
Besides praying and general temple chores?
Do they work any harder than mothers or fathers who have children to care for?
They don't have any days off!
AgentX
This article shows clearly that religion is an organized, for profit, business as opposed to some kind of traditional, divine establishment that people like to imagine when they go to temples...
kohakuebisu
As AgentX says, behind the lovely buildings and the impressive words, there can lie all the usual human failings, some of which betray the sentiments of the impressive words.
Jimizo
Yes. I remember my local Catholic parish priest in the UK used to cruise around in a very swank Audi with an Old English Sheepdog looking out of the window.
Some things are similar around the world.
Goodlucktoyou
My friend was a monk. When the cats away, the mice will play...they get loads of sake, donated. Also they sneak out and scoff down yaki niku.
You just have to choose the right one.
ghosthand
Sorry he was overworked, but I was one of those visiting Koyasan for the 1,200 year celebration in 2015. Well worth going there though! Its stunningly beautiful there!
TheTiger
Thanks to the Meiji Restoration, monks in Japan live a very different life than other Buddhist monks. There are rules and order in Buddhist institutions, I'm sure Kukai would not be pleased if he was alive today!
BertieWooster
If a monk suffers from depression, he's in the wrong line of work. How can he sue his employer for his choice of work place? If it was getting him down, he should have left.
Aaron Brummett
Being a monk is a stressful job. Mikos (Shrine Maidens) are also over worked. He is not lazy. He is trying to make the world a better place by bringing light to this issue. Every monk needs a few days a month where he doesn't have to be a monk! Even in the Army, we got every 15th day off in Afghanistan to something fun! For me, that meant making pizzas because I like to make pizzas. Gotta have a day off!
Hung Nguyen
Through this news, the monk's lawyer presented a seemingly unprecedented case. Of course, under the current labor law, in case the monk told the truth, I believe that the temple admin should pay for their offence.
I presume that there must be some good deed in the way that monk had received the heavy workload. According to the practice of Esoteric Buddhism, to assist new monks to get rid of their bad karma right in this life, the Guru often give hard time to speed up the process of karmic retribution as evidenced in the story of the yogi Milarepa.