BUDDHIST MONASTIC CODE I

Buddhist Monastic Code 1this aside and we'll all have it together in the evening." Almost all cooking is done atnight, venerable sir, and very little during the day. But on considering our love andrespect for the Blessed One, our sense of shame and compunction, we gave upthat evening meal."'It used to be that bhikkhus going for alms in the dark gloom of night would walkinto a mud hole, fall into a cesspool, stumble into a thorny hedge, stumble into asleeping cow, encounter teenage gangs on the way to or from a theft, and bepropositioned by women. Once it happened when I was going for alms in the darkgloom of night that a certain woman washing a bowl saw me by a lightning flash. Assoon as she saw me, she shrieked out in terror, "I'm doomed! A demon is after me!""'When she said that, I said to her, "I'm not a demon, sister. I'm a bhikkhu waitingfor alms.""'"Well then you're a bhikkhu whose mom is dead and pop is dead. It would bebetter for you, bhikkhu, that your belly be cut open with a sharp butcher's knife thanthat you go prowling around for alms for your belly's sake like this in the dark gloomof night!""'When I remember this, venerable sir, the thought occurs to me: "There are somany painful things the Blessed One has rid us of, and so many pleasant ones hehas provided; so many unskillful things he has rid us of, and so many skillful oneshe has provided!"'"This shows clearly that once the rules were in effect, bhikkhus were saved from thedangers of going for alms in the dark. It further suggests that dawnrise can be noearlier than the point recognized by the Vinayālaṅkāra.As noted under NP 1, the Vinayālaṅkāra's definition of dawnrise corresponds inmodern terminology to the onset of civil twilight. Although the Khuddakasikkhāstates that this period of whitening occurs 24 minutes prior to sunrise, this figurewould apply only to locations that, like Sri Lanka, lie near the equator. At otherlatitudes, the length of time from the onset of civil twilight to sunrise would varywidely according to season, with the variations most extreme at higher latitudes.In addition to the controversy surrounding dawnrise, there is also a minor issuesurrounding the word dawn.The non-offense clause to NP 2 states that there is no offense under that rule if therobe is lost, etc., anto aruṇe, a phrase that can be translated either as "duringdawn" or "within dawn" (just as anto māse under NP 3 means "within the month") oras "before dawn" (just as anto pātarāse means "before the morning meal"). (Thephrase anto aruṇe appears at one other point in the Canon, in the non-offenseclauses to Bhikkhunīs' NP 1.) Some scholars, opting for the translation "withindawn" and, noting the Vinayālaṅkāra's statement that anto aruṇe means prior todawnrise, have argued that, in canonical usage, dawnrise is preceded by a separateperiod of time called dawn, apparently beginning with the first reddening of theeastern sky, although this part of the definition is nowhere clearly stated.472