Bankei wrote:The anagarika is a modern invention. Just a person with a shaved head.
Why not just become a monk? How many anagarikas do you read about in the Sutta?
Actually the anagarika isn't just a modern invention!
besides the fact that any Buddhist mendicant can be called an anagarika which literally means homeless one (Luang Por Liem calls all Buddhist mendicants Anagarikas BTW), and an anagarika is to an extent nothing more than a white 'clothed' lay follower of the Buddha, and one who lives by the eight precepts all the time, this is mentioned within the texts, very infrequently but it is there.
but anyone not trying to live the five precepts as a minimum standard, can not be called a follower of the Buddha, a practitioner of the Dhamma-Vinaya, just because how someone is/wanting to practice isn't specifically within the texts, doesn't mean it isn't in-line with the texts or the Buddhas intention in setting up the training.
but as James mentiones it is a try before you buy deal, get a fuller idea of life in that type of environment (although as I understand it, in the west it is always a minimum of 1 year, in Thailand it is quicker for other reasons.)
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He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill