No, it doesn’t have to be a life long commitment, and yes, it is very easy to return to lay life if you choose to do so.
A monk in any of the Buddhist traditions who wants to return to the lay life, even a fully ordained monk, not just someone who has taken their novice vows, just has to say to someone, just about anyone, that they give back the robes, and that’s it done. They don’t have to say this to their preceptor (who conducted the ceremony when they took the vows). They don’t even have to say it to a Buddhist. They can say it to anyone at all of sound mind, who can understand what they are saying.
And there might be many reasons for doing that. It might not just be that they find it difficult to keep the vows.
Maybe they find it easy to keep the vows, but circumstances have changed and they feel the lay person’s life is the direction to go now. A bodhisattva, for instance, could do that because they feel that they can help others more as a lay person than as a monk or nun.
So there is no reason at all either to feel that a monk is a failure if he gives back his vows (or same for a nun).
Rather the way it’s understood is that they have done something positive by keeping the monk’s or nun’s vows for whatever length of time they did. And now that phase of their life is over and they are doing something else.
In some countries it is normal for young people to take the monks or nuns vows for a short period, a few weeks, maybe 14 days, or a month, say, and then hand them back. They take the vows, knowing that they will hand them back two weeks or a month later. And this also is seen as a very postive thing to do.
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