BUDDHIST MONASTIC CODE I

Pārājika Chapter 4There is a series of cases in the Vinita-vatthu in which bhikkhus provide medicinesfor women seeking an abortion, followed by two cases in which a bhikkhu providesmedicines to a barren woman who wants to become fertile and to a fertile womanwho wants to become barren. In neither of these two latter cases does anyone dieor suffer pain, but in both cases the bhikkhu incurs a dukkaṭa. From this, theCommentary infers that bhikkhus are not to act as doctors to lay people, aninference supported by the Vibhaṅga to Sg 13. (The Commentary, though, gives anumber of exceptions to this principle. See the discussion in BMC2, Chapter 5.)The pārājika offense is for killing a human being aside from oneself. A bhikkhu whoattempts suicide incurs a dukkaṭa.A bhikkhu who kills a "non-human being" — a yakkha, nāga, or peta — or a devatā(this last is in the Commentary) incurs a thullaccaya. According to the Commentary,when a spirit possesses a human being or an animal, it can be exorcised in either oftwo ways. The first is to command it to leave: This causes no injury to the spirit andresults in no offense. The second is to make a doll out of flour paste or clay andthen to cut off various of its parts (!). If one cuts off the hands and feet, the spiritloses its hands and feet. If one cuts off the head, the spirit dies, which is groundsfor a thullaccaya.A bhikkhu who intentionally kills a common animal is treated under Pc 61.Intention & perception. The Vibhaṅga defines the factor of intention in three contexts— the word-analysis, the non-offense clauses, and the Vinita-vatthu — analyzing itwith one set of terms in the first context, and another set in the last two. There aretwo ways of interpreting the discrepancy: Either the two sets differ only in languagebut not in substance, or they actually differ in substance. The Commentary, withoutseeming to notice what it is doing, adopts the second interpretation. In other words,it defines the factors of intention in markedly different ways in the different contexts,yet does not assert that one set of terms is more authoritative than the other or eventake note of the differences between them. In fact, it takes one of the termscommon to the non-offense clauses and the Vinita-vatthu and defines it in one wayin one context and another in the other. All of this creates a great deal of confusion.A more fruitful way of analyzing the two sets of terms, which we will adopt here, isto assume that they differ only in language but not in substance. We will take as ourframework the set of terms used in the non-offense clauses and the Vinita-vatthu,as it is clearer and more amply illustrated than the other set, and then refer to theother set, along with some of the explanations from the Commentary, when thesehelp to give a more refined understanding of what the non-offense clauses andVinita-vatthu are saying.The non-offense clauses state that there is no offense for a bhikkhu who actsunintentionally, not knowing, or without aiming at death. In the Vinita-vatthu,unintentionally is used to describe cases in which a bhikkhu acts accidentally, suchas dropping a poorly held stone, brick, or adze; removing a pestle from a shelf andaccidentally knocking off another one. Not knowing is used in cases in which thebhikkhu deliberately does an action but without knowing that his action could cause51