How to ordain and last long in the monk life?

[RobertK]

@renaldo

Furthermore, you won’t really understand the defilements unless you become a bhikkhu or live as an eight-precept layperson in a monastic-type setting for some time (at least a few months). That is because you don’t fully come face to face with them without doing so, and you cannot understand the level of sway that they actually hold over your mind unless you do.

Was that what the laypeople usually did in the time of the Buddha or after according to the texts?