BUDDHIST MONASTIC CODE I

The Robe-cloth Chapter Chapter 7.1The Pali formulae to use in forfeiture, confession, and return of the article for thisand all the following rules are given in Appendix VI. We should note, though, thataccording to the Commentary one may conduct these procedures in any languageat all.In this and every other rule under which the article may be returned to the offender,it must be returned to him. According to the Vibhaṅga, a bhikkhu who receives thearticle being forfeited without returning it incurs a dukkaṭa. The Commentaryqualifies this by saying that this penalty applies only to the bhikkhu who assumesthat, in receiving an article being forfeited in this way, it is his to take as he likes.For the bhikkhu who knows that it is not his to take, the offense is to be treatedunder Pr 2, with the penalty determined by the value of the article. In passing thisjudgment, the Commentary is treating the act of accepting the forfeited article as aspecies of accepting an object placed in safekeeping. However, it has neglected tonote that the act of forfeiture is worded in such a way that the offender is actuallygiving up ownership of the cloth; because the cloth then has no owner, it would notfulfill the factors for an offense under Pr 2. Thus it seems preferable to stick with theVibhaṅga in saying that, in all cases, a bhikkhu who does not return the article beingforfeited incurs a dukkaṭa.A bhikkhu who has received the robe-cloth in return after forfeiting it andconfessing the offense may use it again without penalty, unless he keeps it as apiece of extra robe-cloth beyond ten more dawns. Thus the wise policy is todetermine the cloth or place it under shared ownership immediately after receiving itin return.Non-offenses. In addition to the allowance to keep extra robe-cloth more than tendays during the robe season, the Vibhaṅga says that there is no offense if within tendays the cloth is determined, placed under shared ownership, lost, snatched away,destroyed, burnt, taken by someone else on trust, thrown away, or given away.In connection with this last point, the Commentary discusses proper and improperways of giving things away. The article counts as having been properly given if onesays, "I give this to you," or "I give this to so-and-so," or "Take this, it's yours," butnot if one says things like, "Make this yours," or "May this be yours." Apparently, ifone simply hands the article over without saying anything to show that one istransferring ownership, it again does not count. As we noted above, perception isnot a mitigating factor under this rule. If one gives extra robe-cloth away in animproper manner, then even though one may assume that the cloth has been givenaway it still counts as one's own extra robe-cloth under this rule.Current practice. As the origin story shows, the purpose of this rule was to preventbhikkhus from having more than one set of the three robes at any one time. With thepassage of time, though, gifts of cloth to the Community became more numerous,and the need for stringency in this matter became less and less felt. Exactly whenspare robes became accepted is not recorded, although a passage in the pupil'sduties to his preceptor (Mv.I.25.9) shows that the practice of having a spare lowerrobe was already current when that part of the Canon was compiled (see AppendixVIII). Mv.VII.1 also mentions a group of wilderness dwelling bhikkhus who were149