Buddhist monks are the lifeblood of Buddhism. The Buddha himself was a monk of sorts, at least setting the tone of Buddhist monastic practice. Buddha's early disciples were all monks who took up the various ascetic practices of celibacy, fasting, poverty and right conduct; they wrote down Buddha's teachings and turned them into the Buddhist scriptures and they evangelized the Eastern world, from India to Japan and Mongolia to Thailand and Vietnam. Buddhism has no Pope, and it rarely has a developed hierarchy among monks between monasteries. Some monks have a degree of authority, like the Tibetan Dalai Lama, but other monks past their novitiate develop their own interpretations of Buddhist practice and theory, though they usually hew to tradition.
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