There’s no evidence that this was ever the case in ancient India, at least not in a general sense. On the contrary, people travelled and stayed with different communities all the time. There may well have been specific cases where monasteries declared themselves “not in communion”, but this requires a good reason. Since there is no notion of “lineage” or “sect” in the Vinaya, these are not good reasons.
That would be “sectarian” monasteries, not “Vinaya”.
No, that was not a consideration. In fact, I’ve never heard of this idea except in the context of Pa Auk monastery. That’s not to say it’s not found elsewhere, but it’s certainly not common or universal.
Some maybe, not me! Traditions are fine—I just taught a course on the Visuddhimagga! We just shouldn’t be slaves to them, is all. A tradition is a living and evolving thing, and it always has been.
That’s not what “fundamentalist” means. Fundamentalism is a strand of postmodern religiosity. The name originally derives from an American Christian sect that rejected the findings of historical, archeological, and text-critical research—in other words, modernity—and insisted on what they called the “fundamentals” of their belief, which were, largely, unprovable dogmas such as virgin birth.
The basic idea of fundamentalism, then, is that it rejects reality, rejects science, rejects facts in favor of a supposed pristine belief system. That pristine belief system, however, is a modern imposition on the past. Most of the Biblical authors, for example, did not believe in a virgin birth, it’s only mentioned in a couple of passages.
Likewise, a modern Buddhist sectarian fundamentalist will look at how sects operate around them today and uncritically assume that that is how it’s always been. They’re not big on history.
Typically fundamentalists will latch on to a few small-minded ideas cherry-picked from a much larger scripture, insisting on a literal and absolute reading of the very worst things that their tradition has to offer—suppression of women being the prime example, closely followed by suppression of those of diverse genders and sexualities.
The real problem is that the people who gravitate towards fundamentalism are broken. There is something inside them that cannot tolerate the other, cannot tolerate uncertainty, cannot tolerate change. They find solace in the certitude of absolute and fixed laws, and they cannot imagine coping with them. This is why fundamentalisms are popular in prisons: those who have in the past learned no morality latch onto the clarity of clear, black-and-white rules.
And so, there is no having of rational dialogue with fundamentalists. I learned this years ago, when visited by Creationists. I used to enjoy arguing with them for ages, to see how they would twist and turn. Of course it was all very silly, and eventually I got bored. For them, reason is not a path to the truth, it is something to be used to persuade others that you were right all along. All roads lead inevitably to the narrowest, meanest outcome.
He made a Hitler salute to a Buddha image, so.
That is correct, although I wouldn’t quite phrase it that way. There is nothing in the Vinaya that gives monks the power to do otherwise, so it is not a matter of “allowing” but of recognizing that this is perfectly normal.
Again, just to be clear, there is nothing in the Vinaya that gives the monks any kind of power of command over bhikkhunis. Monks just get used to being in charge, that’s all.
Yes.
Yes.
As a general rule, in the monasteries I have stayed, when we perform ordination we try to ensure that there is a quorum of monastics from the same tradition. I can’t recall this ever not being the case. But this is not done because we believe that otherwise it would violate the Vinaya.
In the Vinaya, the role of the Sangha and the ordination procedure is not to convey some kind of magical “stamp” that marks someone who belongs to a lineage. It’s to accept someone into a community, a community that is defined by a certain lifestyle and values. So the important thing from a Vinaya point of view is that the new candidate has teachers and colleagues who can help and support them, and who will guide them in their vulnerable early days and years. This is why it’s a good idea for the ordination to be carried out by those of a similar practice and way of life.