BUDDHIST MONASTIC CODE I

Buddhist Monastic Code 1influence of the stars, determining propitious sites, setting auspicious dates(for weddings, etc.), interpreting oracles, auguries, or dreams, or — in thewords of the Vibhaṅga to the Bhikkhunīs' Pc 49 & 50 — engaging in any artthat is "external and unconnected with the goal." The Cullavagga (V.33.2)imposes a dukkaṭa on studying and teaching worldly arts or hedonistdoctrines (lokāyata). For extensive lists of worldly arts, see the passage fromDN 2 quoted in BMC2, Chapter 10. (For the connection between lokāyata andhedonism (e.g., the Kāma Sūtra), see Warder, Outline of Indian Philosophy, pp.38-39.)A bhikkhu banished for indulging in any of these activities is duty-bound to undergothe 18 observances listed in Cv.I.15 (see BMC2, Chapter 20) and to mend his waysso that the Community will revoke the banishment transaction. The Commentaryadds that a bhikkhu banished for corrupting families may not live in the monasterywhere he was misbehaving, nor enter the city or town where he was corruptingfamilies, until after the banishment is revoked (this point is based on Cv.I.16.1).Also, even after the revoking of the banishment, he must refuse gifts from thefamilies he had corrupted. If they ask him why, he may tell them. If they then explainthat they are giving the gifts not because of his former behavior but because he hasnow mended his ways, he may then accept them.If a bhikkhu, instead of mending his ways after being banished, criticizes the act ofbanishment or those who performed it, he is subject to this rule. The procedure tofollow in dealing with him — reprimanding him in private, admonishing and rebukinghim in a formal meeting of the Community — is the same as under Sg 10, beginningwith the fact that a bhikkhu who, hearing that Bhikkhu X is criticizing the act ofbanishment, incurs a dukkaṭa if he does not reprimand X. The question ofperception and the non-offenses are also the same as under that rule. As with thepreceding three rules, if the offender does not respond to the rebuke or recognizethat he has a saṅghādisesa offense for which he must make amends, theCommunity would then have grounds to suspend him as well.Summary: To persist — after the third announcement of a formal rebuke in theCommunity — in criticizing a banishment transaction performed against oneself is asaṅghādisesa offense.A bhikkhu who commits any one of these thirteen saṅghādisesa offenses is dutyboundto inform a fellow bhikkhu and to ask a Community of at least four bhikkhusto impose a six-day period of penance (mānatta) on him. (The Canon says, literally,a six-night period: At the time of the Buddha, the lunar calendar was in use and,just as we using the solar calendar count the passage of days, they counted thepassage of nights; a 24-hour period, which is a day for us, would be a night forthem, as in the Bhaddekaratta Sutta (MN 131), where the Buddha explicitly says thata person who spends a day and night in earnest practice has had an "auspiciousnight.")134