Debts

[Reductor]

[Alex123]

फ़िलिप् पुअषुंद,

When, for example, you have a $500,000 mortgage with interest, or a $1 million debt due to failed business, those little expenses that you've listed do not even count.

When it is deep below freezing (as low as -20), you aren't going to be able to ride a bike to your work, and heating bills will be high...

[nalandaleong]

Hi ashtanga,

searched for 'effects of bankruptcy' and found this for UK: http://www.insolvencyhelpline.co.uk/ban ... y-faqs.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
hope it helps.
there are others for different countries, if the above is not relevant.

With metta.

[Ytrog]

I see a lot here on being debt free legally through a bankruptcy, but is it really debt free if those you had debts to didn't get it repaid. I mean: you don't owe them anything any more in a legal sense, but how about in a moral sense?

I think that before ordination you would want to have no debts legally or morally, because it is bound to hinder you. If you really couldn't help the bankruptcy then it might be OK, but I think it would be a bad idea to aim towards bankruptcy in order to be able to ordain. In a sense you would have cheated people then and I cannot believe that it wouldn't put a burden on someone's conscience. Let alone the kammic consequences it would have. Isn't one of the prerequisites for good meditation maintaining Sila, with one of the more important reasons for it that your conscience wouldn't be a burden during mediation?

Lawful is not always the same as ethical.

[kirk5a]

Lawful is not always the same as ethical.

Nor is it always different. The particulars of the situation override any generalizations.

Furthermore, let's not get carried away with the notion that "people are being cheated" when a debt agreement is voided. That is simply a vast over-application of an easy to understand person-to-person exchange. Let's remember that a debt arrangment is almost always one in which there is profit for the creditor, in some cases, obscene profit. Now that by itself doesn't mitigate the moral aspects of my breaking the agreement. But to cast everything in terms of "someone else is now saddled with your debt" - not even true much of the time. It might be the case that an institution has simply realized less profit, but no actual loss. It might be the case that the principle is recoverable through asset liquidation. It depends.

[nalandaleong]

Angulimala killed a lot of people but did not serve any sentences or imprisonment.
still he was accepted and ordained by the Buddha with full knowledge of this wrongdoings.
Angulimala did eventually become an arahant in that very lifetime , we were told.
what is debt compared to murder ?
I think , as long as the purpose of ordination is purely to seek enlightenment and not be avoid debts , then it should be acceptable.

[Bankei]

I haven't read the 7 pages of posts here, but......

I think it comes down to the Buddhist interpretation of being debt free. This interpretation will depend on the tradition you are ordaining in and the interpretation of the preceptor in the end.

Legally you can declare yourself bankrupt and emerge a few years later debt free (in most common law countries anyway). In ancient India this was probably not possible, but it is now. I think this would be enough to justify saying you are debt free during the ceremony - there are no credit checks done (though I hear some abbots in Thailand are insisting on criminal record checks).

[Tsetan]

What if you have student loan debt in a federal program where if your income is low, you have no monthly payment? My loans are in a program like this, and basically managed. After 25 years the loans are forgiven, even if you are poor the whole time and never pay on them. Would this debt still be disqualifying according to the vinaya? And can you become a shramanera, a novice monk with debt? Is it only the Bhikkhu that cannot have debt?