10 Benefits of Being a Recluse

10 benefits of being a recluse:

1. Solitude's delight: For instance, for slaves and farmers, freedom from servitude resulting in being "content with the simplest food and shelter, delighting in solitude" as well as the veneration of others.

2. Virtue's pleasure: "The monk ... consummate in virtue sees no danger anywhere from his restraint through virtue. Endowed with this noble aggregate of virtue, he is inwardly sensitive to the pleasure of being blameless."

3. Simplicity's contentment: "Wherever he goes, he takes only his barest necessities along. This is how a monk is content."

4. Mental calm: With mindfulness and alertness (see sampajanna), a monk cleanses his mind of covetousness, ill will and anger, sloth and drowsiness, restlessness and anxiety, and doubt (see the Five Hindrances).

5. Jhanic bliss: He attains the four jhanic states which are associated with the permeating of his body with rapture, pleasure, equanimity, and a pure, bright awareness.

6. Insight knowledge: "With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability — the monk directs and inclines it to knowledge and vision. He discerns: 'This body of mine is endowed with form, composed of the four primary elements, born from mother and father, nourished with rice and porridge, subject to inconstancy, rubbing, pressing, dissolution, and dispersion. And this consciousness of mine is supported here and bound up here.'"

7. Supernatural powers: "Having been one he becomes many; having been many he becomes one. He appears. He vanishes. He goes unimpeded through walls, ramparts, and mountains as if through space. He dives in and out of the earth as if it were water. He walks on water without sinking as if it were dry land. Sitting cross-legged he flies through the air like a winged bird. With his hand he touches and strokes even the sun and moon, so mighty and powerful.... He hears — by means of the divine ear-element, purified and surpassing the human — both kinds of sounds: divine and human, whether near or far."

8. Mind reading: He can discern in others states of consciousness such as those with or without passion, lust, delusion, concentration, etc. (see the Satipatthana Sutta regarding mindfulness of the mind).

9. Three knowledges: He can recollect past lives, see the rebirth of other beings, and knows the ending of suffering and the fermentations of sensuality, becoming and ignorance.

10. Release from samsara: "His heart, thus knowing, thus seeing, is released from the fermentation of sensuality, the fermentation of becoming, the fermentation of ignorance. With release, there is the knowledge, 'Released.' He discerns that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'"