Style and Substance

A monk is someone who has completely dedicated themselves to religious devotion. They have left the world and abandoned every part of their old life, to live a life of prayer and spiritual growth. So what does that have to do with turning your skin to stone and knocking arrows out of the air?

The monk class in D&D is clearly based on the traditional kung-fu movie archetype of the supernaturally powerful warrior monk, giving players the chance to take the role of one of these classic characters. All well and good, but this is an entirely surface presentation of that archetype. It's the style of traditional kung-fu warrior monks, but without any deeper understanding of what they are, what they do, and what the relationship is between martial arts and spiritual development.

The monk class description in the Player's Handbook mentions that their training gives them a direct link to the spiritual world, so that they do not need clerics or gods. But other then this brief mention of a very interesting potential religious side of monastic life, the majority of the section is about combat skills and special abilities. It does not give you the background necessary to roleplay a monk as a religious seeker. In this column I hope to give some of the background of those traditional kung fu heroes, and show how kung fu fighting can be a spiritual path.

This column is going to apply mainly to players or NPCs of the D&D monk class. However, I believe that the information can help anyone who wants to play a religious martial artist or other form of warrior from a spiritual background.

Buddhism in an Oversimplified Nutshell

The traditional kung-fu movie monk practices martial arts as a form of Buddhist spiritual practice. Buddhism is based on the concept of "no-self." Pretty much everyone believes that underneath the individual parts of themselves (memory, body, emotions, etc) is an inner self. All of these other things could change, but we would still be ourselves.

Buddhism believes that there is no inner self underneath all of our parts, that it is just an illusion. We continue to exist because we believe in the illusion of our self. Our belief in this illusion causes us to suffer. If we believe in the illusion of our self, we are doomed to continue the cycle of existing and suffering. Enlightenment is truly and totally understanding that there is no self, which frees us from that illusion and from continued existence.

Buddhist monks are those who have devoted their lives completely to prayer and meditation, with the goal of achieving this enlightenment. There are different activities practiced to achieve enlightenment, some of them physical action. For example, a common practice of some Buddhist monks is to spend part of the day walking and chanting prayers. The purpose of this walking is for them to quiet their minds and lose themselves in the moment of walking; to just be and to thus achieve no-self. Other monks have taken that philosophy and applied it to other forms of physical activity, including martial arts. The cool powers part comes from the belief that those monks who are extremely spiritually advanced have unique mastery of their bodies, which gives them those legendary flashy abilities.

Punching Your Way to Spiritual Growth.

This is the basic reasoning behind the Buddhist-kung fu monk of pop culture tradition. Those legendary monks are trying to lose themselves in the moment of the art, and to achieve spiritual enlightenment in that moment. If you are going to be playing a monk, or a monk NPC, keep in mind that there is a spiritual side to the cool kung-fu powers. Even if you don't want to use the underlying Buddhism of the traditional fighter monk, using Martial Arts as a means of spiritual advancement can apply to any religion that believes in achieving a certain mental state as the key to spiritual fulfillment.

For example, suppose your character is a Gnostic. The Gnostics were a first and second century Roman religion that believed (among other things) that holy people could achieve exalted knowledge directly from heaven, which would teach them religious truths that ordinary people could not perceive. As long as your character is trying to achieve some sort of moment of heightened consciousness, than Martial Arts training is a legitimate and internally coherent religious path. There is no reason you could not play a Gnostic monk. In a more specific D&D setting a character could use this type of monastic religious training in the devotion of any god of knowledge or mental enlightenment. A monk could be a worshipper of Vecna who believes that they can enter a heightened mental state to achieve communion with him.

Whatever motivation you might decide for your monk, adding a spiritual context to their training and practice gives them deeper motivation for the path to which they have dedicated their lives. It could be, like the Buddhist ideal, achieving a heightened mental state. It could be a belief in discipline and the perfection of the self, or a form of extreme self-punishment or mortification. A monk is someone who has given up everything to live a life of religious devotion. Figuring out exactly what that life means for them will help your monk have more interesting reasons beyond "They fight ... for honor!"

Questions? Comments?