Editor's note: The new economy has given rise to new professions. Changing baby teachers, tarot teachers, accompanying doctors, aromatic teachers, network dubbing artists, AI prompt word engineers, artificial intelligence trainers, carbon emission managers, ......A number of new and interesting new positions are being created one after another.
Most directly, this not only provides more abundant employment options for new youth, but also reflects the new vitality of social and economic development. More practically, they are relatively niche or even officially recognized, but they have directly changed the mental outlook of the new youth.
At a time when "new quality productivity" has become a high-frequency word, the new profession has become a window and a mirror for insight into the new economy, new industry and new life, and each of us is directly or indirectly involved in it and may coexist with it for a long time.
The hydrogen consumption "New Era, New Professionals" series of topics hopes to document the changes that are taking place. This article is for young people who go to work in temples. Why did they make this choice? Can you really lie flat after entering the temple?
Written by Qiu Yu.
Edit |Li Kexin.
Young people choose incense between going up and going to work" This Internet meme is becoming a reality, and now when you walk into the temple, you will find that sixty percent of the people who come here to burn incense are young people.
Ctrip data shows that in 2023, orders for Chinese temple scenic spots once increased by 310% year-on-year, and the cumulative number of entries related to "copying scriptures" and "meditation" on Xiaohongshu is close to 3 billion.
And going to the temple to "work for the Buddha" has also become a new choice for young people to find employment.
In the era of involution, baldness and insomnia are no longer the standard for middle-aged and elderly people, and some physically and mentally exhausted "hairline boys" and "bald girls" are tired of their existing lives, and they are eager to find a way out from another way of life.
Going to the temple to "work for the Buddha" has been given the imagination of "spiritual peach blossom paradise" by young people, and the temple recruitment notices in the circle of friends have also attracted more and more young people. In just a social recruitment of a famous temple in Zhejiang, more than 3,000 resumes were received, during which there were not only white-collar workers from large factories, but also master's and doctoral degrees from famous universities such as Tsinghua University and Peking University.
But can you really lie flat when you enter the temple? The answer may not be that simple.
He lives in a temple, ** Courtesy of the interviewee
Go up the mountain
When it comes to the temple, the first thing that comes to everyone's mind is to take refuge in Buddhism, and from then on, the six roots are pure, the green lantern is the companion, and the Buddha is eaten and fasted. However, the temple recruitment information posted on the Internet is almost every year, and the jobs provided are not so simple: Guangzhou Guangxiao Temple recruits accountants, buyers, and warehouse keepers, Hangzhou Lingyin Temple recruits new editors and network engineers, and Fahua Temple recruits short-** choreographers ......and directorsThere are also many temples that offer jobs such as English translators, construction engineers, etc. to social workers.
"Go to work and not be a monk, no requirements for religious beliefs", "go to work at 9 o'clock, get off work at 5 o'clock, provide lunch", "no KPI, everything is according to fate" ......Compared with the salary upside down and "996 is a blessing", the work of the temple seems much more cordial. Whether it is out of curiosity about the temple or the transition choice to work in the temple as a "escape from involution", as soon as the recruitment notices of major temples came out, many young people were eager to try and apply.
I don't want to leave when I come" is the first feeling of living in the temple. Yiwen was originally a new ** editor, due to busy work, no normal work and rest, often fall asleep at three or four o'clock in the morning, long-term tension and work and rest disorder, and his weight has soared from 120 to 180 pounds. These factors prompted him to urgently find a clean place to restGoing to the temple to work as a librarian became a good place to go.
Xiaozhi's opportunity to go to work in the temple was very ingenious, when she was in the midst of a collapse due to the failure of the graduate school entrance examination, in addition to looking for a job every day, she fell into infinite internal friction, and she also had a serious illness during this period. When she learned that there was an internship, she accepted it without hesitation. The job just so happens to beGo to the temple as a docent.
Qingling works in the Internet industry, and her work is stressful, and it is common for her to go home after 10 o'clock in the evening, and her hair is becoming thinner. After going to the temple to volunteer a few times, she has been following the temple's *** in October last year and saw a post on *** to recruit oneGraphic designerAfter that, he resolutely submitted his resignation and applied for a job in the temple.
Her group is responsible for the temple's propaganda work, ** live broadcast, usually one day off a week, and she has to work overtime when there are activities, which is not as easy as imagined. However, most of the people who work here are Buddhists, "they are very polite to each other", "interpersonal relationships are simple", and Qingling has also found her long-lost happiness.
Unlike most young people who accidentally break into the temple to work, Chen Ping's entry into the temple seems to be a predestined thing. Born into a family of devout Buddhists, he was "a vegetarian from the womb", and when he told his parents that he was going to work at a temple in his hometown where incense was thriving, his family said that "this is a very blessed thing."
In 2022, he graduated from a second-class normal college, and when he saw the temple's recruitment information, he submitted his resume without hesitation. In the past, on the first and fifteenth days of the Lunar New Year, Chen Ping and his family often came to the temple to offer incense, and the day of the interview was the first time he stepped through the small side door to walk through the sign that read "Tourists Stop" and walked into the work area.
Unlike the hustle and bustle in front of the temple, it is exceptionally quiet. During the interview, he was asked if he was interested in Buddhism, "It just so happens that his family members are devout and believe in Buddhism, and they have been nurtured since childhood, so they are very comfortable talking about this topic."
Chen Ping is Wenxuangang in the temple, and he heard from two other colleagues that those who can come in are all in harmony. His job is:New ** operations, update two tweets on *** every day, assist the temple to carry out public welfare activities, and be responsible for taking pictures, writing copywriting, typesetting, and tweeting.
And for the number of readings and conversions, the temple has few requirements. "As long as the reading volume is not particularly low, you can get by." Except for the occasional weekend public welfare activities that require overtime, I can usually leave work on time.
As for how to choose in the future, he said that he may work in the temple until retirement. After all, it is backed by mountains, green trees, birds and flowers, and the office is also quaint, and there is a special tea and coffee area, where you can drink coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and a two-hour lunch break every day.
Someone went to the temple to escapeThere are also people who, after much deliberation, intend to spend the rest of their lives at the temple. Huihui is one of them. She has been working in a temple in Zhejiang for five or six years, with a low salary, five insurances and one housing fund. Her post is:Planning and operation of cultural activitiesIn normal times, we plan activities such as meditation experience, meditation scripture copying, theme exhibitions, and cultural research to spread Buddhist culture and traditional culture.
Because it involves a series of work such as planning, liaison, and execution to on-site control, when I am busy, I will work overtime for two or three weeks in a row. Even so, this job is still much easier for Huihui than her previous job.
The temple does not have KPIs, and only needs to submit work summaries in the middle and end of the year, and every time an event is held, I can feel respect from the people who participate in the event", which also brings Huihui more sense of value and accomplishment to her work.
Moreover, there are many idle times for this job, if it is summer, you can also listen to the sound of the cicadas chanting while listening to the chanting of the **, tactful and melodious, and the heart will soon calm down. ”
Descend the mountain
Some people imagine the temple as a pure land where there is no conflict with the world, as if when you go to the temple, you can find your lost self. But are temples really safe havens? Can young people flock to the temple to regain themselves or are they more confused?
In fact, temples, like other institutions in the world, have a secular side. Liu Zhiyu, a mathematics genius at Peking University who was ordained a monk 13 years ago, is now married and entrepreneurial. He once told ** that contrary to what most people think, the interpersonal relationships in the temple are far more complicated than the outside world. Even if you are a high-ranking monk, sometimes you can't escape the troubles of the world.
If Huihui and Chen Pingren's work at the temple is too Buddhist, then Lili's work at a temple in Shanghai experiences its secular side. According to her sharing on social platforms, after she successfully applied for the new ** operation post of a temple in Shanghai, the place where she officially joined was in an office building.
Go to work at half past eight, get off work at five o'clock, and punch in and out of work, in addition to colleagues calling each other "senior brother" and calling their superiors "**", in terms of work content,On the one hand, the temple must keep pace with the times and catch up with the changes of the times, on the other hand, it must attract offline believers, and at the same time link with cultural creativity and publishing. This is not much different from ordinary new ** workers.
Moreover, the threshold for entering the temple to work is not low. Even if the temple work is leisurely, it is not so easy to lie flat. When Huihui joined the company, although the recruitment announcement did not require a master's degree,However, after layers of selection, the young people who joined the company basically started with a master's degree. Among the Dharma teachers, there are also overseas study backgrounds, master's degrees in Buddhist colleges, etc.
Influenced by the atmosphere of the temple, Huihui began to read historical and cultural classics, and exchanged allusions with colleagues. In order to improve herself, she also took the postgraduate examination for a local university.
In recent years, cultivating modern temple management personnel has become an important task in the Buddhist academic circles. In the past, Shanghai Jade Buddha Temple cooperated with Shanghai Jiaotong University to give monks MBA courses; Later, Hangzhou Lingyin Temple cooperated with China Jiliang Institute to launch a standardized management system for temples. In fact, temples are not as "Buddhist" as they used to be.
At the same time,Temples also have a lot of rules to followFor example, there is a certain reverence and understanding of religion, you can't eat meat and drink, girls can't wear high heels, shorts, short skirts, you can't dye your hair with bright colors, boys can't shave your head, and so on.
In addition, when eating in the dining hall, you should also pay attention to the ritual of passing the hall, after sitting at the long table, you need to stop talking, put the dishes and chopsticks according to the regulations, wait for the hall (to fight), and stop talking when you are in the hall, and use the corresponding gestures to express yourself eating more and eating less. For most young people, it is difficult to adapt to this kind of pure-hearted life.
As a result, some people "go up the mountain" and some people "go down". Those who have been reported to have left the temple before, including Zhao Liangui, the new ** of Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, Liu Zhiyu, a mathematical genius of Peking University in Longquan Temple in Beijing, and so on.
In 2016, Lingyin Temple's open recruitment became popular all over the country, and Zhao Liangui, a young man born in the 90s, was the only staff member of the Propaganda Department among the thousands of applicants at that time. In an interview with **, Zhao Liangui shared his work and life in the temple: go to work at half past eight, get off work at half past four, and arrange the rest of the time by himself.
As for KPI assessment questions such as account reading volume and traffic monetization, the temple's reply is: don't force it, everything is as it is. Every day, the Buddhist department goes to work, practices calligraphy with the master in his spare time, or walks in the temple surrounded by Sanskrit sound and green trees. But even with such a quiet and leisurely ideal life, in the end, Zhao Liangui still chose to resign from Lingyin TempleThe reason is that his mother bought a house for him in his hometown of Anhui and needs him to repay the mortgage every month.
For Jian Ning, a post-90s female master in philosophy who works in an Internet celebrity temple, the temple is also not a place that can be avoided all the time. The temple is suitable for relaxing and retirement, and she is indeed very happy to work in the temple, but when she thinks of the pressure of survival in the future, she can't lie down.
Jian Ning's family conditions were not good since she was a child, and her sense of material security was insufficient, and after she had the idea of going, she accepted an invitation from a game company to do game plot design, which was related to the creation she liked, and her salary increased several times.
In her opinion,Temples seem to be more suitable for young people who have no life pressures themselves, or who live a pure life and have low materialistic desires。The former category, for example, has local demolition households among her colleagues, who are not bad for money; In the latter category, there are two senior brothers of the same class, both of whom are highly educated young people who can endure their temperament, they have strong comprehensive ability, and they can live well in big cities, but they have independently chosen the special working environment of the temple, which is a real joy for the temple life.
As for most people, in fact, it is difficult to be without desire and be content with the status quo, even if they are far away from the hustle and bustle of the world, and walk into the temple to eat coarse tea and light rice, I am afraid that there may not be a "taste of the world is a joy".
Be able to adapt to monastic life", this is not a simple requirement, it requires people who are really indifferent. Plus work in a templeThere is no room for growth and development prospects, and most of them do not belong to the personnel within the temple establishment, but labor dispatchThe salary level is not very attractive in big cities, so if you want to come to the temple for the purpose of escapism or short-term recreation, it is better to choose to volunteer.
A few months after Chen Ping joined the company, several colleagues around him left one after another, some opened stores and started businesses, some returned to their families, some immigrated abroad, and some re-entered the mainstream workplace.
Nevertheless, it is invaluable for the young people of today to be able to briefly gain joy and relaxation from temple life, and to accumulate the courage and confidence to get back on the road.