I’m so pleased to read this.
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An interesting link about this topic is:
http://www.suttas.net/english/vinaya/patimokkha-analysis-and-explanation/appendix-11-four-standards.php
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It sounds like you are doing good and valuable work there. Awesome!
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Hi Paul,
Thanks for your reply. Having traveled around Asia a bit I have seen and met a whole range of different monks and nuns practicing in different ways. At first, like you, I was kind of surprised. But then it started to make more sense. You know, now to be honest, I don’t think there are any monks or nuns who keep 100% of the Vinaya. Hmmm, maybe that’s a wild thing to say. But that’s okay too.
Not expecting monks and nuns to be better than me because they keep hundreds of rules, I have found has given me a better measure to ascertain their quality by. Are they genuinely good people? Are they loving, gentle and kind? Have they cultivated peacefulness? Do they spend time and energy cultivating meditation? These things can become apparent by spending perhaps a week with them.
While my perfectionism leaves with me a distinct discomfort to recognize that probably no monastics keep perfect Vinaya, I am still inspired by the commitment and development of truly good monks and nuns.
This is once again, not to say Vinaya is irrelevant. Not at all. But perhaps it’s not the only, or even the best way to judge the quality of a monastic (although it is perhaps the simplest).
I guess my thoughts turn to Vinaya reform, because if no-one can keep it, what’s the point? It makes me think of the broken window theory - once one window in a building is broken, the rest of the building is devalued and is more likely to be vandalized and ransacked. But then I guess I must also be somewhat of a traditionalist, because the idea disturbs me.
Anyway more rabbiting 
Thank you!
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Most rules may be dealt with through a simple procedure, and they don’t mean you can’t be a monk. It’s normal for everyone to break some rules now and then, just like everyone breaks a road rule now and then. But what should be considered is whether the rule breaking is habitual, and whether it involves anything intrinsically unwholesome. If a monk uses money to catch a bus to teach meditation, I am not going to be critical of that. But if he uses it to buy a fleet of vintage Mercedes, well, that’s different.
I don’t know if you can draw any clear cut lines. For myself, I always treat monks with kindness and respect, but I don’t trust them until I know them.
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A brief visit to Thailand, or the majority of monasaries in the West, would soon burst that bubble. I certainly wouldn’t want to defend laxity of observance, but I think it’s important to have a realistic, rather than rose-tinted, expectation, or one might become so disillusioned that one might assume that it’s all bad…
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as long as they haven’t committed a confirmed parajika and officially expelled according to the prescribed procedure, their status is intact
it’s like in the jurisprudence, until a person is found guilty and handed down a sentence they’re considered a free law abiding citizen (discounting the cases of placing suspects in a pre-trial detention)
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Think of Vinaya as a legal codex. It is humanly impossible to keep all the law 100% of the time. In especially legistlatively productive regions like California it is in fact quite possible to unwittingly break a law or two every hour or so. Even the more important laws are broken from time to time because of the personal circumstances or lack of knowledge. It doesn’t means law is unimportant, should be reformed or shouldn’t be respected, it means that we should be realistic about how the laws are kept in real life, which is reflected in the idea of letter and spirit of the Law.
Besides, I think in that respect there is a lot to be learnt from Christian monks and nuns. I don’t know about the Catholic monastics, I’ve never had much cultural or personal contact with them, but the Orthodox monastics still largely follow the Rule of Basil the Great that outlines the monastic life in relatively broad lines while its particularities are up to each monastery or even monk to lay out. Even the more important things in this Rule are sometimes ignored for practical considerations. Moreover, the degree of your devotion to your monastic path is reflected in this Rule as well. This is essentially the reason why there are no monastic Order in the Christian East. I think it is quite a bit more regulated in the West, but don’t quote me on that.
While the Vinaya is much more detailed than the Orthodox Christian monastic rule, I think it can be approached in a similar way. There are some rules, like handling money, or even risking more serious offences like Sanghadisesa 2, that allow for ethical negotiating depending on 1) the reason why you could break them, 2) the degree of your devotion ot the monastic path. For a village monk it can be difficult to observe the Vinaya in its entirety, and his expectations for his practice can be quite modest. I think it would be dishonest and naïve to expect from him the same level of commitment as we do from hardcore forest monks. Of course, in that case we shouldn’t forgive the monastics for major offences like parajika or sanghadisesa ones, but even more importantly we should rather expect them to follow the Spirit of Vinaya if not its Letter.
To give you an example: as Bhante @sujato already said, it is not really a big deal to pay money for a bus ticket, because doing otherwise could be tricky in Europe or Australia. However, if you are ready to withstand these difficulties, it is even better, more power to you. In case of Sanghadisesa 2 imagine a pretty woman or handsome man drowning with no-one in vicinity to help except a monastic. Now, should this monk or nun risk commiting Sanghadisesa 2, which is, I’d say, quite possible under the circumstance? I would argue they must risk it. Should we reform Sanghadisesa 2? Not really. We shouldn’t even really reform the money rule, we should rather clearly realize why it was instated and when handling the money can be tolerated to a certain degree.
That could be also the middle way between reforming the Vinaya for Bhikkhunis and insisting on observing it to the letter. We talked about it on another thread. If we clearly understand why, e.g., the travelling rule was imposed in the first place I think many people would agree it makes a lot of sense even today. Yeah, it’s a bit repressive, but all Vinaya is; it’s easy to figure out for women on their own but I would argue that some people’s naïveté knows no limits or that a woman can have no idea the area she wants to walk in is dangerous, besides many other basic rules like parajika 1 also seem to be pretty easy to figure out on your own but it is still formalized. At the same time, non-systematic violations of minor rules like the acceptance to the Order of a married woman shouldn’t be a really big deal (if this married woman has the consent fo her spouse and possibly children, and I would expect the same from an ordinating married man) if they are duly confessed and unless there is a malicious intent behind it. I mean, the more strict nuns can choose to follow all or most of the Vinaya rules but if we want ‘village nuns’ to be a viable concept we should be as accepting as we are with monks.
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Interesting set of reflections, thanks everyone, in particular to PaulB for initiating this discussion as it’s one I can really wrestle with.
I think there’s definitely a point to which thinking of the Vinaya as a legal codex as Vstakan suggests makes a great deal of sense. However, I also think it’s important to spend some time considering exactly what the Vinaya is for.
To the limited extent I have engaged with it, three key purposes standout to me: to support a subscriber to the Vinaya deepen in the Dhamma; to guard the laity against potential abuses that might (and do) arise from the esteemed, venerated, status monastics enjoy, and to let the refined conduct of monastics serve as a beacon to others.
The canonical Buddha himself sets out ten reasons for establishing training rules for which I personally can go a little weak in the knees over out of gladness:
for the well-being of the Order, for the comfort of the Order, for the restraint of bad people, for the ease of well-behaved monks, for the restraint of corruptions in the present life, for avoiding corruptions in future lives, to give rise to confidence in those without it, to increase the confidence of those who have it, for the continuation of the true Teaching, and for supporting the training. (eg. pi-tv-bu-vb-pj1#bd.1.37)
I think taking a exclusively legalistic approach to the Vinaya might miss an important aspect of the value of upholding the training rules in the interests of monastics and laypeople alike.
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The interests of the lay people and monastics are something I would call the Spirit of the Vinaya, and it would still fit in the legalistic approach nicely. In legal proceedings it is frequently not even mentioned, but the law is supposed to have the public good as its purpose, at least in theory. It is seen more often in the decisions by the Supreme Court when they rule something out as unconstitutional, since in this case they tend to explain their motivation more often. But sure, not forgetting that Vinaya is not merely a number of rules but rather the second half of Dhammavinaya is definitely an important thing, this is very true.
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Yes, absolutely agree, the mechanism is very important, I just meant - as you pointed to - that both sides (legal framework and purpose) need to be kept in view. For my own personal tastes, the purpose supersedes the (very necessary) mechanism which in turn both leaves an amount of room for discretion and flexibility in handling legal transgressions, and simultaneously emphasises the importance of endeavouring to adhere to the legal framework.
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I feel the same way. What is the point of supporting a monastic community if they are not embodying the dhamma and providing a shining example of the holy life?
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In reference to village nuns, is this similar to the Catholic orders that are “out in the world”, or Sisters, v cloistered monastics, or Nuns? That idea makes alot of practical sense to me.
I would say they can be just like village monks who are quite often pretty much village priests. Your idea is cool anyway 
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You’re not rabbiting at all, this is all good for reflection and I am inclined to agree. I have also lived and travelled in Asia. It’s the 5% keeping vinaya that surprised me somewhat. I suppose I had a hopeful attitude that somewhere out in the wilds, lots of dedicated monks (and maybe nuns) would be diligently upholding the Vinaya as in the time of the Buddha. Silly of me really. I am well aware of the general attitude however so that doesn’t come as a surprise.
As I said before, it’s really hitting home how few and far between those keeping a dedicated life of peace really are so I feel a lot of gratitude to have the opportunity to contact them. As Bhante Sujato says, treating people with kindness and respect is a good model and, hopefully, nothing intrinsically unwholesome is going on - like the fleet of vintage Mercedes saga.
Hi Aminah!
Thank you for contributing to this and for reminding us of the ten reasons for establishing the rules - I do like that. With my limited understanding of Vinaya and the ‘living-out’ of it, what has been contributed so far by all has been most helpful in getting a grasp on the reality on the ground. I guess we can all have ideals about perfect observance but we must also balance ideals with compassion and understanding of the varied situations in which monastics find themselves. For one, I will not be so quick to judge those using money for a start.
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Such excellent and wonderful thoughts in this thread, thank you all for sharing them! 
I’m wondering what people think about the Siladhara vinaya, due to the fact that it was established by bhikkhus for the intention of creating a new ordination lineage. It is unclear (and unpublished - as far as I know) what exactly the Siladhara vinaya entails, though it is presumably to some degree comprised of rules from the Bhikkhuni Patimokkha (?).
I’m inclined to think, as others have mentioned, that it is the intention and not necessarily the full and unwavering keeping of the vinaya that warrants respect. I have also spent a little bit of time staying amongst the Siladhara community and was absolutely thrilled and awed to observe their compassion and dedication to the practice. In spite of this, I’m still greatly interested by the hodge-podgey synthesis of the Siladhara vinaya, and the fact that they were not assembled as a collection by the Buddha.
(I also found this picture of a monk smoking and feeding cats - while searching Google for “Buddhist monk with cars” - and it was too perfect not to share.)
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Hi Brenna,
Great picture and lovely articles attached - thank you. I will follow this for responses to your point about the Siladhara vinaya.
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i’d even go as far as to say (or i might have n/picked this idea from the suttas) that monastics forsaking the principles of renunciant lifestyle are akin to thieves and swindlers , they fall into arrears with the dayakas on account of which they eat their alms undeservedly and they deprive their lay supporters of the field of merit the Sangha is supposed to provide, so by doing dana to such monastics the laity doesn’t get what it as it were pays for
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Yes, it is. Bhikkhu Analayo is fond of telling us that if there is anything we don’t like, we should just stop feeding him and he’ll get the point quite quickly. But it is important to take into consideration that many western monastics don’t get much support and have to break some of the rules to get by. I remember Bhante G telling me he used to drive and mow the lawn because there was no one to do it when he first came to the US. So if we only support the good monastics who already have enough support to follow all the rules, e.g. the Ajahn Chah monasteries, then the others will continue to be unable to do so.
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